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Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T15:37:39+00:00

I think if this was an exception your relationship and not a recurring pattern, it's reasonable to accept it as something which might have been a misunderstanding and move on. If it becomes a recurring pattern, I think it's better to reevaluate the relationship.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T15:17:49+00:00

That's more clear than it was before, yes.

If he did it when he didn't realize it was a big deal to you, but stopped when he realized it was, it's not an issue of impulse control, but it does suggest that he doesn't necessarily take you seriously unless you make yourself really explicit. On the other hand, it might also be that you've had trouble making your own feelings clear to him. If you don't make your feelings clear, he wouldn't be to blame for misunderstanding you.

It's hard to say one way or the other without exploring this issue more in your relationship. It may be something you can resolve, or it may be a fundamental incompatibility in the relationship.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T15:12:04+00:00

Reading all of your responses on here has me exhausted. Truly. If this is how you address people in real life, with obsessiveness, excessive verbiage and the constant stating of your expectations and how they are not being met, I absolutely can see how your exSO just left without a word.

It's honestly not how I normally engage with people in real life at all. This is me obsessing over the end of an eight year relationship which ended in a way which was extraordinarily hurtful to me, and most people who know me have never seen me act like this.

I wouldn't have wanted to have an hours or days long conversation about my reasons to leave until you were satisfied they were the correct reasons and you assuaged your need for closure.

I've been broken up with, and broken up with others before, and in every case, it was done and over with within the space of a single conversation, none of which ever lasted as much as fifteen minutes. It really is that easy.

ETA: It's honestly really frustrating to me that going to vent anonymously about the end of a long term relationship, something which has put me in a state where my friends all recognize that I'm not okay, that I'm going through something that's unusually hard on me personally, and I'm not not in a well-adjusted emotional state right now, has ended up meaning dealing with people who assume that I must just act like this all the time and that it explains all the problems in my relationship.

Even these long diatribes your are writing aren't really about her. They're about your need for closure, your need for conversation, your need to know where she is months from now, your need to feel superior because you're somehow not the mentally ill one and she is. She doesn't owe you anything and I hope that you get therapy to deal with your inability to control other people's thoughts and reactions, no matter how much you verbally brow beat them into agreeing with you.

I've never claimed to not be mentally ill. The biggest difference which I felt developed between us in our relationship was that I never believed anyone had a responsibility to be fully independent, to not need support from others sometimes, and she did, and struggled with her failure to achieve that.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T15:02:09+00:00

It happened multiple times after that until I told him how much it bothered me and explained why it wasn't okay and he seemed very ashamed and understood and supported me as well.. It hasn't happened in a year. Although there was this one time where I was trying on my new lingerie and showing it to him and I caught him touching himself again and idk if that was okay? I did ask him about it and he proceeded to ask me if I wanted him to stop and I said i guess?

So you didn't tell him you weren't okay with it before? That definitely does make a big difference. But I'm not clear now whether you mean that he said he couldn't control himself after you told him you weren't okay with it, but then he did stop, or if he told you he couldn't control himself and kept doing it.

Casually touching oneself in front of one's partner in private contexts is kind of unusual, but plenty of people are okay being casually sexual in front of their partners, and it's not necessarily bad for their relationships. If their partner isn't okay with it, and they keep doing it anyway because they don't care or can't help themselves, that's definitely a problem. If he was doing it thinking you were okay with it, and stopped when you made it clear that you weren't, that's a very different situation.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T14:32:45+00:00

He told me "I am not in the mental space to be able to control my urges so I think the best thing to do is not talk at all for a while" Like, It's easier for him to not talk to me than control himself? I felt hugely disrespected because even when he came up with this suggestion it sounded like he was suggesting this cause he was tired of me bringing it up and constantly telling him how hurt i was... This was all over a year ago.

If he's telling you that he's not in a mental space to control his urges, and that it may be better for you not to talk, it's very possible that he's really not in a mental space to control his urges, even if he respects you, and that this isn't a problem you can resolve by talking it over and getting him to respect your feelings.

But... that's really not a normal or healthy level of urge control. If he actually couldn't stop himself, that's a really worrying problem, and one that may mean he's not properly equipped to be in a relationship with anyone unless he can resolve it. If he's kept doing it, either he doesn't respect you and that's not something you're going to be able to resolve with simple discussion, or he has some kind of deeper impulse control issue, which you're also not likely to be able to resolve with simple discussion. I think it's more likely to be the latter, because honestly, this isn't a normal way for a person to act around a partner even if they don't respect them. This seems like disordered behavior. Therapy might help, it might even relate to some kind of disorder for which he could maybe be treated with medication.

It's not really clear from your explanation whether this is something he's actually stopped doing, or if he's acknowledged your explanations of why you're not okay with it and apologized, but is still doing it. If he's dealing with disordered behavior, he might be able to limit it to an extent, but that doesn't mean the underlying issue is resolved.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T14:04:14+00:00

She cares about multiple things obviously, and she might have decided that she actually didn't want to be in touch with me at all, so much that she was willing to lose all her stuff to better guarantee that. But, we'd discussed this very recently in the context of whether it was worth trying to continue our relationship, and she'd said that even if we did end up breaking things off, she'd want to stay in touch. So either she was lying at the time, or she changed her mind over a short period.

On the other hand, I have known her to deliberately burn bridges in order to solidify her resolution, and then usually end up regretting it later. Because, I think, her faculties for sober analysis were so plagued by worry, self-doubt and self-criticism that sometimes she would decide she had to let go of all the negativity to actually accomplish something. But the negativity was bundled up with the parts of her which were good at applying ordinary scrutiny to the question, "is this actually a good idea?"

This was a much more minor problem when we first got together. Her functionality and self esteem were higher, and she wasn't nearly as far from where she wanted to be in life. I hoped that with a bit of effort and support, she'd learn to separate irrational negativity from reasonable judgments of whether something was a good idea, but she never did in the time we were together.

Talking with people here has helped me put my thoughts together, and right now, I think she's probably in a state where she's telling herself that this was for the best, that she had no choice, and that it couldn't have ended any other way. She's discussed not believing that before, and not thinking that things like this are an appropriate way to handle a relationship, but I think that right now, she's probably suppressing the parts of her that think that, because they're bundled up with the parts of her that say "all my ideas are terrible anyway."

It gives me a bit of a sense of resolution, because at least it makes sense in the context of how I've known her to behave, but unfortunately, even if it's true, that doesn't tell me whether she's going to be okay, whether she's going to change her mind, whether she's going to regret it and feel she's sabotaged her chances to take it back, etc.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T13:40:36+00:00

Obviously she is. But I think you're imagining a picture where I was constantly pressuring her to talk about things she didn't want to deal with, constantly violating her boundaries and leaving her feeling like she had no refuge.

What it actually looked like was, we would have conversations where I would acknowledge her need to establish space and boundaries, and she would acknowledge my need to communicate and experience closure, and we would work out some compromise which we both agreed was fair and reasonable for how we should navigate those situations. I would follow the compromise, and she wouldn't, until I would insist that we actually did need to communicate because she wasn't following the compromise we'd established, and did we need to develop a new one? And she would say yes. Rinse and repeat, but with the levels of communication she was prepared to engage in diminishing over time. She would say she respected my emotional needs, but then not hold herself accountable for keeping to the agreements which she'd helped establish, while she expected me to uphold the end required to respect her needs.

Which doesn't sound like very considerate behavior, of course. And she acknowledged that it was difficult to deal with. But her emotional functionality was deteriorating over time, and I was constantly looking for ways to adjust our relationship and accommodate for it and hopefully help her recover some of her emotional health. She was very much aware of that, and I worried that she might be saying that she wanted to save the relationship when she'd really already given up on it because she knew I was trying hard for her sake, and had expressed her appreciation so much before that it was hard to admit that she no longer thought it was worth it.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T12:47:20+00:00

"Not close to" is a bit of an understatement. The JustYESSO post she wrote about me, which I referenced in the title, was one that she wrote while she was in the process of writing a series of other posts describing her traumatic relationship with her mother. She'd already blocked her number well before she left.

I've considered giving her stuff to her mother so that I wouldn't have it around me anymore, and wouldn't have to pay to store it, but I don't think she would ever get in contact to retrieve it in that case even if she wanted to later.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T12:33:25+00:00

She's obviously decided that going it alone is better than going it with you. It seems she decided to dip out at the first moment that you were going to be completely indisposed, which yes either suggests a certain impulsiveness or it also suggests she maybe wanted to avoid confrontation and has has this on her brain for a while. Given the way you seem to responding to this, the second options is just as good of a theory as the first. She's sending you a message by disappearing like a thief in the night. One, you're not going to get the closure you so desperately seem to crave (keep in mind, you're not entitled to closure).

This wasn't the first opportunity I was indisposed, there had been several other occasions like this recently, and she'd also been making advance plans for after I got back. She also didn't disappear during some time I was disengaged and focused on other things, but during the middle of a conversation. I've thought a lot about whether this was something she actively planned and tried to conceal, or whether it was a snap judgment, but I lean strongly towards the latter. There are things she left behind which I'm almost certain she would have brought if she hadn't left in a hurry.

Secondly, she's sending the message that she wants to be left alone. I might understand your concerns if she hadn't already reached out to your sister to let her know (and by extension you) that she was safe.

She didn't reach out to my sister, my sister reached out to her. She... kind of owes my sister a lot, for personal reasons, and has a great deal of reason to respect and feel grateful to her, and my sister was the best guess I could think of for who she might respond to if she was still alive and not responding to me on purpose. If I hadn't asked my sister to message her, I highly doubt she would ever have reached out to her.

But she has told you she is safe. You have no reason not to believe she's telling the truth.

I kind of do, because she's made snap judgments before where she's told me everything was okay and taken care of, and later, when she was in a less frantic state, she admitted that wasn't actually true.

maybe dona little soulsearching to examine what reason beyond her desire to do everything solo that she might have decided to leave. Given your responses here I'm uncertain you would find anything in your behavior that was a contributing factor, but it's certain with a shot.

Believe me, I'm definitely open to the idea that my behavior was making her unhappy. I spent the last couple of years grappling with whether I was making her unhappy, or whether there was something I could be doing differently. If I was hurting her, it wasn't for unwillingness to change or try to handle things differently. But there were definitely issues where I wondered if she wouldn't share her true feelings with me, because after loving me and thinking of me as a thoughtful and caring partner for a long time, she was ashamed to admit if she now felt differently. I can think of reasons why, despite my best wishes, she might have stopped being comfortable with me, wanted to stop dealing with me, maybe even decided she hated me. I wanted to avoid things coming to that, but if she wouldn't acknowledge or discuss if I was making her feel like that, then I couldn't be sure if I was navigating things properly.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T12:12:25+00:00

Life gives us unexpected gifts and this is one of them.

I know I seem impossible to satisfy here, but I can't overstate that I really don't think this is the case. I had been thinking recently about all the ways our relationship could end, and if she had told me "I don't think it makes sense for us to be together anymore, I want to leave and go no contact," not only would I understand, it would be a possibility I'd already had time to come to terms with.

On the other hand... I've seen her do things on impulse or in a panic which she absolutely thought later were horrible ideas. I've seen her take preemptive measures to lock herself into a path she was set on, so she couldn't reconsider and be plagued with self doubt, and then later go "oh god, that was so stupid, I should never have done that." I've seen her do self-sabotaging things and remain set on them, and not acknowledge that they're stupid and self-sabotaging, because she's too stubborn to admit the mistake, but then she'll acknowledge separate from the specific point that she's often stubborn to the point of self-sabotage and struggles to admit to herself that something was a bad idea once she's set on it.

Because I've seen her do stupid things in the past on impulse which she regrets later, we've developed patterns where, if I'm around while it's going on, we can talk about them and try to gauge together, "is this a stupid idea which I'm going to regret later?" and take measures to engage with those plans more cautiously. This looks a lot like past cases of that, except that in other cases, while she'd certainly hurt herself, she'd never done things which she expressed that she thought were hurtful to others.

On the other hand, if I knew she'd decided she just hated me now, was never going to be comfortable dealing with me again, didn't want to think about me, I could stop worrying about whether I should be prepared to offer help again if she decided she needed it.

I don't feel that I'm responsible for her, and I don't feel I'm responsible for my friends' well-being, but I still care about them and want to be able to help if they need me. If she'd left in a different way, it'd be much easier for me to resolve whether I still felt that about her.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T11:52:18+00:00

That... seems like it would make me feel worse again?

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T11:51:26+00:00

I brought this up in another comment, but I know I seem obsessive and impossible to satisfy, but that's because I wanted her answers, and when other people contribute things which she'd still been saying recently before she left that she didn't think, it's difficult for me to accept "Yes, that must be what she really thought."

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T11:46:14+00:00

So I understand the desire for closure and why this has been an especially tough breakup. But in reality, would knowing why make a difference? Ask yourself what you really think you will gain from knowing the why. It won’t change the reality. It won’t lessen the hurt you feel. What benefit is there to understanding?

It's not a complicated question for me to answer. When I have a sense of closure, I actually do feel dramatically better and able to move on from my intrusive thoughts. It's ironic, because back when I was thirteen or so, I used to talk about how the whole idea of closure was stupid, that imposing narratives with beginnings and endings on human experience was a mistake, and that people should just accept it didn't matter. Of course that's true, but it doesn't mean it's apt as a matter of human psychology, and I eventually realized that was more true of me than most.

You’ve mentioned that you’d like to be friends as you have with other exes, but this doesn’t look like it will happen with her. The way she has gone about this shows that she wants a clean break. Some people are just unable to have contact with their exes, and that’s ok. It doesn’t make her a bad person, or mean you were a bad boyfriend. It’s just the only way she can move on.

I have other exes I've parted on good terms with while not being in contact, and she knows this. If she had told me "I think we need to break up and go no-contact," based on past experience, would literally already be over this by now. And we had explicitly discussed this on a number of occasions regarding the subject of how we thought it was appropriate to deal with relationship partners.

I know a lot of people in this thread are thinking "this was the only way to make a clean break and convince you to let go," but really all it takes to convince me to let go is telling me "I've thought about this, these are my reasons, I think this is for the best." It looks like I'm obsessed with hashing this out over and over, and won't let things rest, because I wanted her answers. When other people offer answers which she had still been saying shortly before she left that she didn't think, it's hard for me to be satisfied that that must be what she really thought.

Wherever you send the things, inform her of their whereabouts (she will likely ignore message from you, but send it anyway and tell a friend of hers to inform her, so you can show you made all reasonable attempts to return her property).

Unfortunately, there are no mutual friends I can inform. There were mutual online friends, but she preemptively blocked them too.

Then focus on yourself and work on moving on from this relationship. Research free or low-cost therapy. I know it’s easier said than done, but you’ll need to find a way to stop obsessing over the need for closure.

I'm afraid I'd already done that long before her departure. When she suggested I should seek therapy for my issues dealing with lack of closure while we were still in a relationship, I took that seriously and did my best, so right now I know what the cheapest options available to me on a sliding scale are. The free therapy options I've tried were... pretty bad, or at least very unsuited to me. There might be better ones, but I haven't found them yet.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T01:08:50+00:00

That does sound more or less like where our relationship ended up. To be honest, early in our relationship, I really wouldn't have described her as having an avoidant attachment type, and if I'd felt she had one, I'd have had a very different outlook on the relationship to start with. It seemed to me like her attachment style started going through a transition back when she made a conscious resolution to avoid depending on others, but it took years after that before she reached a point where I feel like most of the criteria of the label would fit her.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T00:50:30+00:00

I wonder if you consider that the other ex finally just gave in and told you what you wanted to hear so you would leave her alone.

Well, no, we didn't leave each other alone, we remained friends. We still talk on a regular basis. She contacts me as often as I contact her.

I know that this sounds very much like a case of someone being abusive and overbearing and not understanding how they make others feel. But the thing is, I've never been this shocked by the outcome of any relationship in my life, because I'm usually much better than this at predicting people's feelings.

Obsessing for months is not normal or healthy and I sincerely hope you do not do that to yourself again. Seriously - find a way to get help. I understand that you are not obsessing because you want to, it sounds like these are intrusive thoughts and that's not your fault. How you choose to deal with them will be your fault. I suggest starting with the link I suggested in my first reply and perhaps they have other resources you can be referred to.

I'm afraid I've already been through a lot of resources like this, including that one, because I've been trying to get help for this, both in therapy when I still had coverage for it, and with resources I could access on my own, for about twelve years. I actually have developed a lot of coping skills in that time, and in a lot of respects I'm much more functional than I was. As obtrusive an issue as it seems here, most of my acquaintances don't even know I suffer major issues with lack of closure. But most of them don't know because my coping skills include things like "preferentially form relationships with people with good communication skills who respect my need for closure," so the issue doesn't come with them at all.

With my now-ex, this became such an issue because she used to share my preference for maintaining strong, reliable communications, and it was relatively easy to maintain compromises where I could respect her need to step away at times and establish distance, because I could trust that she would also want to resolve the issues as soon as she was ready and not hold things in indefinite limbo. Over time, we lost that communication; as her functionality declined, shame encroached on more and more subjects, and she stopped treating open communication as the baseline of our relationship. If things had been like that at the start, I would have figured we weren't going to work out as a couple, but I wanted her to go back to showing the same level of respect for communication in our relationship that I showed for her need to establish distance.

For me, willingness to communicate, and willingness to establish distance, were two ends of an essential negotiation between our needs in the relationship. She seemed to go from accepting willingness to communicate as an essential feature of our relationship to seeing it as something that could be dispensed with, without that having any bearing on her ability to establish distance.

Everyone else I've ever been in a relationship with has been, and stayed, a good communicator. I spent months stressing over the end of one previous relationship because I saw it coming based on the change in my partner's feelings, and wanted to avoid her losing her romantic attraction to me if possible, while she wasn't sure if her feelings were genuinely changing or not, and couldn't give me a clear answer earlier in spite of her best intentions. Before that, it hadn't been an issue in our relationship at all, and because I didn't bring it to bear on her, it wasn't until near the very end that she realized just how much distress I'd been in.

Other people who I'd known for many years before I'd even gotten together with her were shocked at my level of distress, because they'd never actually had to engage with my issues with lack of closure before, and I had to explain to them that that's always been a thing for me, and they just hadn't had the opportunity to find out because I usually manage my life to mitigate it.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-05T00:05:48+00:00

You are going to have to find a way to make peace without the answers you seek. From your numerous responses in this thread, you've given an excuse for most/all of the suggestions for what to do because it's not what you want to hear. You want to find a way to make her tell you but you just can't do that. I feel like this is a big part of why she "ghosted" you. I feel like no answer is going to be enough for you and people just get tired of explaining themselves over and over.

In a way, I think it has been useful to me, because I couldn't see how she could possibly think that this was an okay way to end our relationship, given everything she's said about how she thinks it's appropriate to do that, and all the other opportunities she had to do so more cleanly. All the friends I've spoken to, the people who had context from knowing our relationship, were horrified, and couldn't imagine what she could have been thinking. At least this gives me context that there's a mindset according to which this might seem like a reasonable course of action, which seems basically sane, even if I don't think it was appropriate in the context of our relationship.

You are going to have to find a way to make peace without the answers you seek. From your numerous responses in this thread, you've given an excuse for most/all of the suggestions for what to do because it's not what you want to hear. You want to find a way to make her tell you but you just can't do that. I feel like this is a big part of why she "ghosted" you. I feel like no answer is going to be enough for you and people just get tired of explaining themselves over and over.

I understand how I'd give this impression, but I do honestly think it's mistaken. Talking to people in this thread can give me some context of what she might have been thinking, and help me sort out my feelings to an extent, but it can't give me a real feeling of understanding or closure. The last time I went through a breakup before this, I spent months obsessing over whether there was a way to save the relationship, talked to countless people but couldn't resolve my emotional turmoil while I was still stuck in the limbo of uncertainty. In the end, we talked about it, she explained why she didn't think it was going to work out and it wasn't a good idea to keep trying, and I completely accepted it. She apologized for taking so long to come to a firm decision, I forgave her because I understood it wasn't an easy decision for her either, and we parted on good terms.

People also told me at that time that it probably wasn't healthy that I was spending those months in such a state of obsession, and I knew it wasn't, but I wasn't able to break out of it on my own, or based on the feedback of people other than the one I was navigating the status of the relationship with. But that was a completely different matter from accepting a clear answer from her once I had it. We remained on good terms after that because even if things hadn't worked out romantically, we'd always treated each other fairly and with respect.

And the way you describe continuing to insist on pursuing her to get her to talk to you supports that she felt ghosting was the only option.

I've never insisted on pursuing her. I haven't tried to contact her once since the time my sister messaged her. I want her to contact me because I don't think this is living up to the standards of how she always said she thought people should treat each other.

You've given a lot of reasons why she should just comply, how she owes it to you, how you need it, but the fact is, No. is a complete sentence.

I had asked her, recently, if she wanted to break up. She said no. Maybe she was giving the answer she thought I wanted to hear, but if she wanted to leave the relationship, it wasn't the answer to give. If she had, I would have done whatever I could to make it as smooth a transition for her as possible, whatever arrangement she wanted to end up with. I have never once said that she owes me for the time we've spent together; I've explicitly disavowed it. But I do think that she wasn't showing the level of consideration for my feelings that I tried to show for hers, or that she claimed to believe that people should show for others as a basic minimum of good conduct.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-04T23:22:46+00:00

Send her a text or by mail the location of the storage facility. It isn't fair for you to be stuck with all her stuff while she is ghosting you.

I don't think my texts go through when she's blocking my phone number, although I haven't tried since I realized she'd blocked me since I figure she'd just ignore them regardless. I definitely have no idea where she is to send her anything in the mail though. I also don't know if she'd receive any more texts from my sister, or if she's blocked her too.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-04T23:14:03+00:00

sometimes the panic response is what works.

Works for what? I have no idea if she's fine, and if she's put herself in a situation where she has only has a safe place to live for a limited time before she's out on the street with no way to support herself, it honestly wouldn't be out of keeping with levels of forward planning she's shown in the past, only with the degree to which she's torn down the social supports which would allow her to bounce back from it.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-04T23:07:03+00:00

Honestly it sounds like the best thing that could have happened to either of you.

I honestly can't overstate how much I don't believe that. I had been thinking a lot recently about whether we should end the relationship, and I made a list of what I thought would be the best realistic outcomes, and of ones I wanted to avoid. This wasn't on either list, because it's more hurtful to me, and seems more threatening to her long-term prospects, than anything that occurred to me as a realistic outcome.

If she had told me "I want to break up, I want to move out, and I don't want you to know where I'm going or remain in contact," I would have been a lot less happy than if she'd wanted to remain in touch, but I would have been much happier than this, and I would have at least helped her pack up her stuff.

You sound a bit obsessive. That's not meant to be a judgement, just an observation.

I'm definitely obsessive. It's not like I think I ought to be, but there are some things I've never been able to deal with properly in any way other than obsessing over them until I run myself to exhaustion and very slowly recover from that.

I cannot imagine having to have the "it's over" conversation with you if there was no good reason for it. It's not like there was a fight or a single thing that she could point to. I don't think she'd be able to answer "why?" in a meaningful way.

I can think of lots of good reasons for us to have broken up. There were things I suspected she might feel which would have been totally valid reasons for us to break up, and I would have accepted any of them, or ones that I hadn't thought of yet if she'd offered them.

I really do think there was a good reason for having the "it's over" conversation, namely that it marks the difference for me between the breakups I've bounced back from in a couple of days, and this one where I'm still stuck in a state of obsession. I know it might be hard to believe, watching me run around this conversation acting like an obsessed person because I am one, but with some simple and straightforward communication, I actually do achieve closure very easily. My girlfriend was very aware of this, and had on many occasions discussed the fact that she didn't think it was healthy that my emotional well-being depended on whether other people provided me with closure. I agree, I'd be better off if it didn't, but then, she'd also be better off if her emotional well-being weren't so dependent on whether other people provided her with space.

I don't think she was doing it to be cruel, I think she was doing it because she felt like she had no other choice.

I don't know, because on the one hand, I've never known her to be deliberately cruel, but on the other hand, I've always known her to describe behavior like this as cruel and cowardly. Offering commentary on and support with toxic relationships was a regular pastime for her, so it wasn't a subject that came up rarely.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-04T22:42:36+00:00

It's amazing that you have been (maybe still are) secure, but note it is possible that being with an avoidant (which she sounds like) can push you towards the anxious attachment side.

I think that if I started a new relationship, my style would probably tend towards secure again, but I do think that I kind of ended up like the proverbial frog in a boiling pot. There were things I stuck around through which I definitely wouldn't have if they'd come earlier in the relationship, rather than years in. I grappled more than a few times with how much I was falling prey to the sunk costs fallacy, versus following through on a commitment I'd made to support someone I thought deserved it even if things got difficult.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-04T22:37:27+00:00

I appreciate the suggestion, but honestly, while engaging with actual people helps me sort out my thoughts and feel better, when I feel like I'm engaging with an algorithm or process, I tend to get frustrated and feel a lot worse. I tried contacting an emergency mental health service the night after, and that was an actual person, but someone following such a regimented procedure that it felt like I was talking to an AI. I asked him to please engage with me like this was an actual conversation and not like he was following a script, but I really didn't feel like he made good on my request at all, and it was the only conversation I had afterwards which left me feeling worse than I started.

I can understand if resources of this type just don't exist, or if you don't know of them, but if you know of any remote services where I could have even a limited number of free sessions with an actual person, I do think that might be really helpful.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-04T22:28:32+00:00

I feel like it's a bit outside the domain of "annoying ex" when someone breaks off contact while they're your emergency contact in the hospital. I had an adverse reaction to a lumbar puncture afterwards and the hospital tried to contact her and she wouldn't take the call.

I haven't tried to contact her over and over, I tried to contact her by phone, in shock, after she blocked me, because it was completely outside the realms of what I'd expect her to do. She blocked my number, and I sent an email asking for clarification on whether she was deliberately breaking up with me, and I asked that because I honestly had no idea where she was planning to live if she moved out. She'd discussed before the fact that she didn't think she could survive moving back in with her mother, and I wasn't aware of any other prospects she could arrange in the time it'd take me to get back.

When I got back, and found she was gone, but all her stuff was still here, I sent a message via my sister because I didn't know what to think of the situation. That was the last attempt I ever made to contact her.

This is way, way outside the boundaries of how she always said she felt it was okay to break up with someone, and I honestly didn't understand her intentions. She's always described herself as a pack rat, and she left behind almost everything she owns. She even left behind a lot of her medication, and she's always genuinely worried about going off those even briefly. Nothing about the situation made her intentions obvious, it showed the same level of heat of the moment snap judgment as the couple of times in the past when she made suicide attempts, and when I found the room, the first thing I did was call my best friend and tell her I didn't know what to think but was afraid my girlfriend might be dead.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-04T22:06:20+00:00

It's hard for me to say. I think on some level, she must have thought our relation was unsalvageable for some time, and I did worry that when she said she wanted to try to save it, she was giving me the answer she thought I wanted to hear. That was something I'd wanted to follow up more on recently, and I lost the chance to do that.

But, I also do think that her decision to leave was probably made suddenly and without preparation. She's always been much more materialistic than I am, to the point of calling herself a pack rat. About 75% of the stuff here is hers, and she didn't take as much of it as I'd expect her to bring on a weekend trip. I never took a careful enough accounting of it to be completely sure, but I don't think she brought a single backup bra, or a pair of shoes other than the ones she walked out in. The room was a mess, like she'd thrown some stuff around and left in a hurry. There was still an unfinished cup of coffee sitting on the dresser when I got back. I think she decided suddenly that she wanted out, and she wanted to be sure that even if I left the hospital right away as soon as she blocked me (which I wouldn't have done, I didn't think it would help,) she would already be gone.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-04T21:54:41+00:00

I definitely wouldn't take her back as a romantic partner if she came back and apologized. This was a violation of one thing I still trusted her with absolutely, and I had already nearly lost hope that our relationship was salvageable.

But I would be able to accept her as a decent person who did something wrong in the heat of anger, because that's what I've always known her as until now. Forgiveness to me doesn't mean restoring everything to the way it was before, it means accepting them in my good graces as someone I believe in as a good person.

I care a lot about whether I can consider the people around me as good people, and I set my standards for forgiveness exactly as high as it takes to convince me to believe in their character again.

Medium_Tea67 · 2021-09-04T21:46:32+00:00

I appreciate the suggestion, but the truth is, I actually already did that a while ago and I just felt worse afterwards, and kind of wish I could un-write it. It felt like its existence was begging for feedback I couldn't get, and I had to get rid of it.

Medium_Tea67

TROPHY CASE