DA "boyfriend" after pregnancy termination?

Please run away. This isn't an issue of only DA and alcoholism, this sounds like he has other mental health issues as well. He is inconsistent and has an inconsistent mindset. I can even imagine him manipulating you to abort the baby without him realizing he was doing it. Please please please find a good therapist if you haven't already. This man is so unhealthy, no matter the reason why, and staying with him is incredibly unhealthy for you. You probably are light years better on paper than his exes, but a subjective ranking and comparison means nothing because he's not looking for a healthy relationship. Neither are you if you stick around with him.

I'm so sorry about the entire situation. Unplanned pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages -- they're all tough on a person's psyche. I think you did the right thing to not be tied together with this guy because who knows how he'd have treated a kid. I don't think anything would have gotten better, though... likely worse, and he'd have likely taken his issues out on you (and possibly the kid). Please lean in to whatever support system you have, be kind to yourself, mourn, seek out a professional someone to talk to about all this, and if you can bring yourself to separate from him, do it and don't look back.

No. I'd take a breather, and look up "object constancy." I believe he's missing it, which can be a sign of a personality disorder. I'm sure his addiction issues aren't helping, either. But this is much deeper than you, and there's a lot of distorted thinking going on on his end, which is why it makes no sense to you. So you need to depersonalize his behaviors and focus more on what YOU need.

Have you had other situations in your past where you were capitulating to someone's needs as more important than yours, anything where you were effectively parenting a parent, or being in a position where you needed to grow up too fast and take care of younger siblings or something like that?

I asked because, this isn't intuitive at all, but accepting the way he treats you often is a reflection of the dynamics between the two of you feeling familiar somehow. Otherwise, you would not be comfortable or accepting of it or make any excuses for him. So, I tied it back to a couple guesses I had about cause and effect.

When you were younger, you needed to adapt to a scary situation to survive, because kids need adults to take care of them. If the adults can't emotionally care for them, kids still need food and shelter. Insecure attachment styles often develop as defense mechanisms to keep you attached to loved ones who can't fully meet your needs. You need a way to accept the unacceptable. A lot of children will internalize the pain they encounter, whether that pain is through inconsistency, neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, enmeshment, the list goes on... they may blame themselves and feel they deserve it. And you carry that into adulthood and date people who you can recreate patterns with because that's what you know about "love". Sometimes it's in an attempt to reenact the pattern to try to change it (but you can't change another person), sometimes it's subconscious self-sabotage because you don't believe you deserve better, sometimes it's a way to validate your worldview that others you want to love will always hurt you.

But this is where attachment theory begins to help if you're looking to start your own journey through and examine your own attachment style, the pain it may cause you by it keeping you stuck as an adult (it's very difficult for insecure attachers to fully emotionally process their feelings and their pasts without the right tools). Since you're still in the relationship with him, you may not be ready for that yet. But if you step away from him and give yourself some space to get out of the "fog" he's causing (the confusion of your feelings), if you start here, you're going to find that a lot of this isn't about him and you have a lot more agency than you may currently think. Yes, from your description it sounds like he's treated you in a completely unacceptable way, and that hurts and causes damage to you and that's on him. But we can choose who we decide to stay attached to, even if it doesn't feel like it right now with your current relationship tools, and more research about your own attachment style / multi generational trauma, and/or talk therapy, and/or somatic experience therapy can help you untangle all the pain you're currently feeling.

This is all so wild = I will be speaking to a therapist tomorrow so I'm taking in all the info everyone has brought forward and perhaps trying to figure out what my biggest 'asks' are from my therapy sessions.

I have wrestled with my inability to detach from someone as toxic as this guy. I know intellectually/logically that it's terrible - but my emotions, negative self talk etc reel me back into this painful cycle of self-flogging?

It's interesting - the points you bring up. Consciously I don't think I actively seek out ppl who will hurt me as a representation of love or that I don't deserve better - but the fact that I don't leave such destructive individuals worries me and perhaps leads to some subconscious choices that I REALLY need to unpack!

Thanks for your insights - they are definitely fodder for my therapy sessions going forward!

cft2022
Yeah, It seems that you’ve got some good male friends. Men are way better at reading other men, than women are.
Listen to them and see if you can get out of the relationship….

Your nerveussystem can get more out of balance staying with a guy like that, and you can be pushed into some desorganised attatment style / trauma.

You could be in a freeze state, and then it is difficult to act ?
If you tend to struggle leaving relationsships if it does not lead to a good relationship. Fighting stems from your disorganized pattern from your childhood to survive. ?
You could also be fawning/pleasing and appeaseing ?

For women it can sometimes feel more safe to keep the threat close

Fawning
pete-walker.com/codependencyFawnResponse.htm

taylorlab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/10/2000_Biobehavioral-responses-to-stress-in-females_tend-and-befriend.pdf

What is Fawning?

Fawning it is a protective state in which our nervous system unconsciously and automatically prioritises our safety over the authenticity of our expressions. The term was first coined by Pete Walker, therapist and author, and has been picked up by many interested in Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory.

Fawning is a stress response that allows us to imitate a “safe and social” ventral vagal state, when we are feeling threatened. It happens when it is either not possible, or it would increase danger to ourselves, to Fight or Flee (high sympathetic responses) from the perceived threat. It is also sometimes called appeasement or "people pleasing”.

In this state, we may say or do things that are incongruent with our true feelings, as a survival mechanism. We might act in a way that is friendly, agreeable, even funny, even though we are feeling angry or scared (threatened). We might surrender our own needs or preferences, due to fear that expressing them might make us more unsafe.
When it isn't safe to fight or flee, then pretending to agree with, and perhaps even flatter, the source of "threat" can be a way of achieving safety. The less threatening we appear to another (e.g. a predator), the less likely they are to attack us. They might even relax enough to allow us to escape from the situation unscathed (“Flight”).

An extreme example of Fawning can be seen when people are being held against their will, and attempting to Fight or Flee will not bring them more safety, but more likely lead to an increased risk of harm to them. This can become Stockholm Syndrome, where they begin to identify with their captor, and feel bonded with them.

In terms of the autonomic nervous system, fawning is thought to be a state that involves both high sympathetic activation (stress) and a degree of dorsal vagal (shutdown) engagement. That means that we have lots of sympathetic energy in our bodies, which by itself would make us act bigger, louder, and more threatening. But the dorsal vagal immobilisation tones down our expression, so we act smaller, quieter, and less threatening.

Females:

In trauma studies, we have tended to regard the nervous system as sex and gender neutral. However because women, on average, have far more estrogen than most men do, women are disproportionately impacted by the social nervous system, both its strengths and weaknesses. Estrogen is a bonding hormone that primes us to be perceptive and attuned toother people’s experiences. This awareness of and care for social bonds is crucial for the survival of our species and is an extraordinary gift. It evolved so that we would take exquisite care of our young.
That said, there are downsides to our bonding superpowers.

We are more susceptible to the social nervous system reactions under stress—both fitting in and fawning.
Women are often more prone to social comparison, concerned about how our actions are or will be perceived, and hung up on friendship and relationship problems. We can minimize our perspectives, opinions, intelligence, and aspirations to keep the peace or maintain the status quo of our relationships, family, or work life.
These concerns about belonging can become deafening and keep us in unhealthy situations—whether they’re dates or jobs or marriages—way longer than we might like or might be good for us, because we are afraid to break connection, to not be liked, to be labeled a tease, demanding, selfish, or bitchy. We are hardwired to care more about connection and be more socially invested in our relationships than men are.

A better understanding of the impact of hormones could also help us understand some of these behaviors. In the meantime, we can also develop considerable agency when we examine our relationship to social norms, which may be operating to create some level of primal safety but may not be serving our best interests and our true, long-term safety and well-being. Women are confused as to why hey went along with their doctor’s recommendation when it dident feel right, or stayed with an abusive partner, or had sex again with someone who violated them. Yes, our conditioning to be “good,” “nice,” and not disruptive comes into play here, but so does our internal sense of survival, which tells us that we may not survive separation or conflict.

Many women have gone back to their abusers, back into situations where abuse was likely to continue, or simply remained in dangerous environments even though they knew it was unhealthy. It makes no logical sense; why would we do that to ourselves? But the social nervous system sometimes compels us to pull threats closer, and we feel “safer” with proximity to a known threat than with one that is lurking somewhere out in the world.

Have you ever felt like you just couldn’t have a difficult conversation, even with someone you loved and trusted? You waited and waited, because that interpersonal conflict seemed like such a big deal you could barely handle it? Beneath the fear of confrontation or conflict might also be a fear of losing that connection, and depending on your past history of belonging and attachment, it can feel incredibly scary and difficult to end a relationship. Similarly, consider a more extreme situation in which a woman finds herself afraid for her physical safety, where someone has power over her. Her desire to please and remain socially connected can override her deeper impulses and instincts, and ultimately that can lead to a lot of shame and blame. She will ask herself questions like “Why didn’t I speak up? Protect myself? Get away? Fight?”

Once again, it is essential that we women remember this is not a moral issue; we need to learn about, respect, and have compassion for the survival mechanisms of this complex social nervous system of ours. The more we understand, the more power, more choices, and more true safety is available to us. Being attuned to our social environment is important. Can you imagine  if no one paid attention to how their actions impacted others? We’d all be terrible neighbors. That’s not a world we want live in. However, many women are on the side of taking up less space, remaining quiet, becoming invisible, swallowing their needs, so as not to create waves or conflict. We unconsciously choose these behaviors, which become habits, and personality styles, because conflict can threaten the intactness of our social nervous system that is critical to our survival.

What can you do if you tend to fawn

jebkinnisonforum.com/post/23822/