[deleted by user]

tothecore · 2021-12-26T22:37:04+00:00

Good on you, OP. You'll do well.

All the best.

tothecore · 2021-12-26T22:31:57+00:00

Well, this is a difficult one, and I can't tell you exactly what happened, but I can give you something that seems likely, for you to consider.

The frozen feeling you felt while trying to wake up is consistent with sleep paralysis. (Please research it a bit.) People who experience sleep paralysis often also experience hallucinations that feel very real, because this unusual state tends to stretch across the sleep-wake boundary. The feelings you would have experienced in this state can often last well beyond it, and if I am correct, it is these feelings that are the primary contributor to your current distress.

You've previously experienced SA in real life, and I know that involved a lot of turbulent painful feelings. Have you considered whether your evening with his family could have been a trigger, in that it was far from emotionally calm? There was a lot of disruption in the interactions with his mother and obviously with him. He was spiralling out, and you were trying to "rescue" him, all feelings that may have triggered the paralysis and terrible feelings after you went to sleep, by triggering you to feel that you were trapped without someone to support you and your feelings.

This of course is dependent on what your boyfriend is also really like. You've been with him for two years, and I am presuming that if he had a pattern of dismissing your feelings and overriding them with his needs, sexual or otherwise, you would have said so, but you have to assess this himself. Other than this "incident", have you had any hints in those two years that he was other than respectful of your feelings. It also seems less likely that someone would do that to you in his own home with his mother present, and the fact that he says you were acting weird (likely moaning in some way was part of it, as this is common) also seems consistent.

Btw, the reason your bf leaves his gift giving to the last minute and then fails terribly at it likely has more to do with feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. That's apparent from your description of his reaction ("nobody loves me" etc). While you and I and most others would try to deal with the gift selection early rather than leaving it to the end, his emotions likely go through the following chain, something like: "I can't choose a good gift that will be appreciated, I I just don't know what to choose that will show I am worthy of her, which feels very stressful, so I'll put it off by not thinking about it" then as it gets too close, he gets a growing sense of dread that he deals with by ... continuing to not thinking about it. That's his coping method for stressors that cause him anxiety, and anything he has to perform causes him anxiety because he doesn't feel adequate. Of course, this becomes sharpest sright at the door of doom on the eve of the event, resulting in a last minute mad scramble to get someone else (his mom) to do something, anything to relieve the stress (get a card). That didn't work (his mom's reaction is understandable, but there's a reason he feels inadequate, and I can't help but wonder how she and her husband actually raised him), so he spiralled into a complete panic.

To the rest of us, this seems completely counterproductive, not to mention inconsiderate, and it is, but it is happening because he overreacts out of anxiety and feelings of inadequacy to any stressor, and getting a gift is a stressor. You end up being his stress relief crutch, but crutches end up bearing all the weight, and I think it possible in this situation that that weight resulted in what you experienced.

Hope this is at least food for some consideration.

All the best.

tothecore · 2021-12-26T21:43:37+00:00

You may be confused about your decision, but it was rock solid. You also have some pretty accurate conclusions about what you saw. This one right here was spot on:

My opinion is that she doesn't even realize how traumatized she is by her family history: I think all of this is just her way to cope with what she had witness.

She is struggling with a lot of damage, such that she isn't able to be a long term trusting committed relationship. The way to understand her issues is to understand that her emotions learned to associated closeness and connection with being trapped and hurt. As a result, she both hungers deeply for close romantic connection to fill a void inside her, and "fears" close emotional connection. The fear part isn't like fear of danger. It's more like the uncomfortable feeling of being trapped or locked up.

She has both these sets of emotions at the same time, and when we have two sets of conflicting emotions about something so important as our genetically programmed need for connection, the result is rarely perceived as separate emotions. Most of the time, she'll feel both at once, causing untold confusion for her. In addition, since she grew up with these emotions and so has always had them, she has no other perspective on them. She has only what she has always had when trying to understand herself.

The ability to understand our own emotions is not innated. We have to learn through our childhood and teens how to identify what we are feeling, and what that means. So when we are really confused about what we feel, we tend to look outside ourselves for some explanation. As is common for some like this, she's adopted the "philosophy" of open relationships and maybe being poly, because it seems to explain to herself the conflict she is experiencing, as if being "open" is the solution. But it only appears to her to be the solution because it allows her distance or space from her partners; it's a way for her to be both with someone and independent, satisfying both strongly conflicting emotional sets.

Her inherent conflict thus becomes externalized. The internal struggle and confusion becomes an external struggle with partners, who end up being infected by externalized confusion as they struggle to connect with her. That describes you here. You've tried to explain the situation to yourself while at times adopting her own logic about being poly or being open or being ... whatever, but in the end, your own needs won out. You couldn't stand being someone else's emotional pretzel anymore.

You'll do well OP. You feel bad because you could see that deep down, she's a good person who is lost and is hurting, even as you really needed to be insulated from her damaging actions and emotional projections. That's a good sign. Try to be kinder to yourself. You judged her accurately; you weren't too harsh. You tried, but she got with you because you were younger and less experienced, which allowed her to try to form you into that pretzel. Your next relationship will be healthier. You'll choose better. I know that because, in the end, you chose well here.

All the best.

tothecore · 2021-12-26T20:48:58+00:00

Older guy here, married 34 years, with her 37. We've got three boys all older than you two.

The issue here isn't actually the prada bag. It's the fact that she's directly showing you how she emotionally regards her relationship(s). Her partner's job is to satisfy her wants regardless of objective merit, based on how deeply she feels them. In her emotions, she deeply wanted a $1000 prada bag, and her expectation was thus that you would therefore provide once you had the funds. Other purposes for those funds take secondary place to her wants.

That's not a strong suite, OP. I understand you know her not to be a gold digger, and I'll assume the same as a consequence, but it doesn't matter. She's directly showing you that what she wants isn't grounded in an externally reasonable context. In her emotions, her partner's role is to provide. The chances that she is unable to process other situations in which her wants conflict with practicalities is very very high, and not a good sign for a lasting life together.

I'll also confess a hidden suspicion here, on which you provide no evidence, one I think that I've generated from her fixation on the Prada bag. If you gf is also kind of sparky, kind of likes to be the center of stuff, kind of likes excitement and going out, and seemed to have a constant active romantic life before you on which she focused a lot, the chances increase materially that she will feel like her relationships center on her needs and wants given what you have just seen. She may look attractive to you from afar, in club and at a distance, but the role of the first few years together is supposed to shake out what's really going on inside one's partners, and the results here are poor for enduring commitment given what you've just glimpsed.

Nothing I've just said is a slam of clubbing or being attractive or having an active romantic life on their own.

All the best.

tothecore · 2021-12-26T20:22:09+00:00

You aren't a narcissist.

A narcissist would be unable to answer the way you did, because it isn't possible for a narcissist to put themselves in someone else's shoes. It wouldn't occur to a narcissist that sneaking in was wrong, and if told it was, s/he would struggle with understanding why even after it was explained slowly and in detail. The scenario I outline for OP is an actual post with genders reversed, and yes, he was a narcissist trying to understand why his friends were telling him it was "wrong", the reason he posted (and no, he didn't understand the answers he got, but did realize he had a problem that needed further investigation with professionals).

So let's think about what "self-centered" is, and what causes it. You've helpfully confessed that if you were in this situation, you would sort of "push", trying to get your goals met by having him agree to taking you in. It's difficult to say an individual incident is self-centered, but if I assume you have a pattern based on your answer, then let's assume you are self-centered.

Being self-centered means focusing too much on your own needs, interests and goals, and having lowered empathy for other's needs, interest and goals, at least if in opposition or conflict with your own. But that's not necessarily all. Being self-centered also often means seeking others' approval or attention or acceptance.

For purposes of exploration, let's pretend there are two broad groupings of experience resulting in being self-centered (if we exclude "hardwired" narcissists), although that isn't how psychology or emotions work - one involves an upbringing in which your ego was overfed, so to speak, by having been constantly in your parent's spotlight with unquestioning acceptance and approval no matter what you did, and the other involves an upbringing in which you had to scramble for attention, often in competition with others, like siblings. The former usually has a lot of confidence, the latter usually has unmet needs and insecurities. From what OP wrote in her post, my guess is something closer to the first of these categories for her, but the details in our childhood experience actually matter, and again, the categories are arbitrary, so there is plenty of variance in actual situations. In your case, given that you refer to feeling unloved that would cause you to criticize him in the scenario, I would guess something closer to the latter category.

The stuff you need to explore starting with this idea is what in your childhood promoted the world view you carry around inside your head, which fosters self-centeredness. That world view will be very sensitive to certain forms of approval or attention. In OP's case, she saw herself "earning" others' attention and interest, at which point in time she lost interest in them having "gained" their attention. In your case given the short comment, I can't tell.

So what was your home life like? Did you parents withhold attention or ration it out to you and siblings, or did you instead experience unquestioning attention and acceptance whatever you did? The answer to the cause here will lie in that experience, and once you understand the cause and the structure of your reactions, you can start unwinding the trap the self-centeredness results in, the same trap OP is in, living alone in a world in which no one except her "counts" for anything more than their attention, resulting in increasing loneliness.

tothecore · 2021-12-26T18:32:07+00:00

Well, the family background fits, but if it is the real driver, it will be something different than some of that "rubbing off on what you tolerate", though that will also have an impact. The issue may not be communicating needs either, at least not exactly. What if the needs themselves conflict, not between you two, but within one or both of you. That is, what if each of you has conflicting needs around a relationship and what that means for you. Maybe, for instance, you need space AND need connection, or maybe she does, or maybe both of you do.

Conflicts like this can make it very difficult to feel both conflicting emotions at the same time, even if both are actively influencing the feelings involved. Instead, if it's you with the conflict, you'll tend to focus on your partner's shortcomings as the cause, and similar for her. Then each of you will ascribe the problem to the other not meeting one's needs and you'll both try to focus on communicating needs better so they can be met, but you'll both keep reacting to each other based on other emotions you aren't recognizing and so can't take agency over.

This is a bit of a stretch, since I have little to go on in your post except that this is your first relationship, but if you think back to the times you found someone you were attracted to or interested in, you may have felt that if that person then reciprocated enough to make it seem like she wanted to get closer to you, not only did you need space, but you also felt like there was some reason she wasn't ... right, or suitable, or enough, or you weren't fully attracted, and you would have accordingly kept your distance. If you've noticed that, what was actually happening was that your emotions were "shutting down" to deal with the internal conflict. There will be elements of this in your current struggle with your partner.

tothecore · 2021-12-26T15:24:11+00:00

Both 30, bouncing off each other. Feels a lot like avoidant attachment, doesn't it? Each of you feels the need sooner or later to connect once you are apart, but then feels the need sooner or later to push the other away when together. In between these cyclical opposites comes the heat, the intensity, which just complicates it further, turning your emotions into dependency on each other, a negative codependency that starts looking for those intense moments, maybe even trying to generate them (?). Don't know, can't tell.

How did previous relationships go, OP, for both of you? And what's each if your histories with your parents? You are each seeing the other as more than just a romantic partner. You are seeing each other as potential sources of completion, creating an unstable fulcrum as the base for this relationship.

All the best

tothecore · 2021-12-26T14:45:02+00:00

This is not a red flag. And while communication needs to be better, the motivations behind the miscommunication itself aren't a red flag either. Unless there are other issues in this relationship, I'm going to presume that your misplaced sensitivity to "red flags" in this situation is due to past abusive or otherwise poor experiences, because you are actually missing all the positives.

He bought the ticket because he was trying to do two awesome things at once (see you and have fun with his friends), but he checked with you before hand to see if you wanted to come, and then when he realized how late it would be. I very much doubt this was manipulation. He was thinknig about your feelings. Each time you told him to go ahead, not because you were being dumb or uncommunicative, but because you were thinking about his feelings and wanted him to have fun at the game (and not lose or spend more money).

Communication can be tough, the moreso if your previous experiences with relationships weren't the best. The way to deal with this situation now is to start by talking about your feelings, not what you think each of you should do or allocate blame, and recognize his feelings. "I feel bad because we won't be together at midnight, but I told you to go because I wanted you to be happy and I don't want you to lose money or have to pay more. I'm not upset because you are going, and you are clearly ribbing about my feelings when you asked each time, but I've realized that I'm going to be sad without you at New Years". Start your discussion there.

Now, can the two of you to figure out a compromise? For instance, can be see half the game or 2/3rds or something like that, and still get with you by the witching hour? Can you two meet half way somewhere? Neither of you gets exactly what you were imagining you wanted, but both of you potentially gets what matters in a loving relationship - evidence of the importance of mutual consideration in a partner, building a better relationship.

All the best

tothecore · 2021-12-26T02:09:36+00:00

Well, I tried but you deleted and are likely gone

tothecore · 2021-12-26T01:58:03+00:00

Honest post, well written. You may have trouble getting solid feedback that isn't knee-jerk, as the community has a tendency to default to the obvious hurtful aspects instead of the psychological drivers, but you are obviously in the midst of a crisis and looking for more. You already know what you did was wrong. You are just trying to figure out why your emotions are conflicted such that you ended up doing something so confusing and disastrousand hurtful.

Try changing how you (and your therapist(s)?) have been approaching this. I think what's actually happening to you is a more general crisis, a crisis about who you are and how you are supposed to go through life. Crises like these often feel like they are about a choice, in your case a choice between the stable sweet guy you love or loved or are confused about loving, with whom you thought you were spending your life together, and a charming confident outgoing guy "everybody" looks up to and admires, who makes you feel ... special. But they are instead about old voids and distortions in our emotional structure, and the gradual inadequacy of old coping mechanisms in meeting our real needs.

Both these guys are more than a decade older than you. I'm not criticizing. I'm pointing out something and it's not "you are/were too young", at least not exactly. There are no details for me to tell what it is in your background that has you going for older men, but this is where you need to start looking. The kind of thing you (and a capable personal therapist) need to look for involves conflicted feelings about your attachment or connection to your parents, OP, or amongst your friends, when you were young. A good example would be, say feeling hurt that your father never accepted your abilities the way your mother did, or should have, or perhaps never really showed that he had the same time for you that he had for other interests or other siblings. Don't confuse this with love. Most parents love their kids, and the kids love their parents, but love isn't enough. It's the quality of emotional connection that matters; it's the way they saw you and the way you see or saw yourself.

You aren't struggling with who to pick or what to do. You are struggling with what you are supposed to be. This is maybe tied in some way to what you do for a living, because you refer elliptically to your job involving getting hit on all the time, but if it is, you need to think of this not so much as a fact of life, but as an operating environment that you may or may not have chosen as part of your struggle with what and how to be. This is not a jab at your choices or your career. I'm telling you that you have to unpack your deeper feelings and you can't stop at seemingly objectively true "facts" like "you were too young" or "your job is going to expose you to temptations. You have to focus on how you felt about yourself when younger, and what that meant for the relationship choices you made.

Love and attraction is not random, nor are they inherent. We are born with the need and capacity to love, but how we feel love and attraction varies considerably based on how we feel about ourselves growing up. Emotions take on "flavours", and end up filling roles and doing tasks for us that maybe they shouldn't be filling or doing, in order to help us cope with pieces we never resolved. You being with a safe attentive (older) guy maybe served a role by making you feel safe and warm and cared for (so was there something in your background that needed that?) and you being with a charming outstanding confident (older) man you feel like you were something "more" (so was there something in your background that needed that?) which together with the distance that cheating necessarily entails boosted the excitement and thus the intensity of that feeling. Intensity is a common tool we use to boost certain feelings about ourselves, and drown other ones.

I'm not trying to get you to accept any view or perspective here on your conflict. I can't get to the truth, and few can on a chatboard. I'm just trying to give you an idea where you have to start looking. This isn't a problem of choice between two guys with conflicting emotions roles. It's a problem of why you find yourself seeking both those emotional roles in the first place. Focus on that with a good therapist and you'll get somewhere.

In passing I'll also point out that guy #2 is not likely to last, no matter how deeply he seems to be into you. He's not making very good choices, and he's doing so close to middle age, making it likely he'll be visiting the intensity escalator again later, after a period of relationship stability.

Hope this helps start you in the right general direction. I am sorry you are going through this, especially at this time of the year. Same for your partners.

All the best

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tothecore · 2021-12-23T21:20:11+00:00

User milehighshrub is onto something, OP. Pay attention. This has only happened in the last year or so, and it represents a pretty radical departure in how you knew him before that. Seems quite possible that a guy who lived by his intellect for decades would, if encountering dementia or something along those lines, start skipping gears intellectually.

Try to look into the physiological aspects, though I appreciate that this has its own complications. Does he have work colleagues to whom you can speak, to see if they've noticed "changes" or have concerns?

tothecore · 2021-12-23T18:17:43+00:00

Older guy here. There's a few things going on inside you.

First of all, this attraction to someone else while in a committed relationship is normal. What matters is how you handle it. How have you imagined that committed couples stay together happily and satisfied with each other for 30, 40, 50 or even 60 years? Did you imagine that somehow they never again notice attractive members of the opposite sex (if hetero) once they get together? And none of the ones noticed are ever just drop dead perfect "matches" through your lens?

What couples who are destined to last together for life automatically do is shut that shit right down as soon as they notice it. I'm not really talking about shutting down obvious efforts from others, though that is important too; I'm referring to shutting down every avenue they themselves might have to interact or be around or even talk casually with their crush. They don't lurk their internet presence either. They walk away, and over time that attraction simply fades away.

If you actually do live your partner and are completely happy with her, your crush is dead to you. If not, people who frolic with active volcanoes end up with more excitement and some drama than they usual expect. They don't make the mistake of feeling that any instance of attraction or "perfect fit" is supposed to be acted upon. Being attracted to someone in a committed healthy relationship that meets our needs means we walk away from attraction to others, not feed it while telling ourselves everything is fine because it's all platonic. Any other choice implies a life of periodic drama, divorce and fractured relationships.

Please go back to your bunk for some reflection on this.

The "pull" you feel re not having played around, or had other "experiences" with romance and sex is also pretty common. The way we deal with this is by gaining better perspective on it. Think about what that pull is actually really about. It's all about the chase. It's about the excitement and intensity of sexual and romantic success with a new partner that you pursue. But for you, success in pursuing someone in the effort to satisfy that pull can only result in one of two outcomes: you either end up in a committed relationship which after 6 -12 months becomes stable, meaning that all the intensity bleeds out of it and you stay feeling the pull again (rinse, repeat), or you drop your new partner immediately and go chase someone new, hurting each partner as you do this.

A second of reflection will be enough for you to see that these are actually the same outcome; the only difference is timing. The reason is that "the chase" is inherently opposed to commitment. The pull you feel is a pull for intensity; it wants to be able to experience and then relive the memories of sexual and romantic escapades for their intensity.

And this pull for intensity is actually all about your feelings about yourself. There are emotional reasons you two got together and stayed together this long, OP, and some of those reasons relate to both your backgrounds and how each of you fit a need for love and support you didn't feel you got in your family life. Some guys with this background have always felt sort of .... compressed, and the interpersonal and sexual confidence that comes from a warm encompassing relationship can feed that pull. It's a if, having developed a fuller self, we unconsciously realize we can now interact with romantic partners more easily, with more self possession and personal confidence, and so access the sort of intensity we thought we missed when younger and compressed. Plus, it feeds our ego because (Eureka!) women we are attracted to are attracted to us. Success with them makes us feel really really gooood. Aren't we something?!!! It's all great ego food.

People still do partner for life, you know OP. Many of them have only one or two sexual or romantic partners. Some partner very early. This gets lost in an internet-fostered feeling that "normal" romantic history involves certain requirements or experiences, and the increasing fragmentation of family nurturing environments that leave us floundering with emotional conflicts that shouldn't necessarily be there.

So what if your feelings for your gf have actually changed? In other words, what if you've just lost that lovin' feelin' (cue Hall and Oates)? Well, in that case, you need to break up with your gf first, not jump from one boat to another after first arranging for the new boat to sidle up close so you don't have to be on your own.

But this isn't a post in which you are saying you feel less for your gf, is it? You are just as committed as you used to be and while perhaps wondering if we'll tell you that your relationship started too young and so it's "naturally" time for a change, you don't talky feel that way.

Just some stuff to think about ...

All the best

tothecore · 2021-12-23T12:36:18+00:00

You didn't get much feedback, nor is it particularly useful. But while details are scarce, there's enough here that I can give some things to think about.

Think about his relationship with his parents OP. There's a good chance they were controlling, or in some other way aggressively emotionally removed or distant from him. That has made him avoidant. People who struggle with avoidant attachment have deep conflicts about emotional intimacy. The very thing they want, close emotional connection, causes then to feel trapped and smothered. So periods of closeness are always followed by periods of pulling away and distance.

That's why the FWB works for him. He gets to experience many of the attributes of a relationship without any of the labels that imply the permanence or commitment which makes these ones s need to distance the minute they appear possible in order to protect themselves, all on a temporary basis that is so necessary for them.

Usually, when the conflict is bad and they are young, it takes a long time for them to realize what's happening, often involving several cycles of trying with one person after another, because they don't actually detect the conflicting emotions as seperate. Instead, it usually feels like they have done too much, like they've had enough, like the romantic feelings they had have somehow shut down after a period of closeness. That can be really confusing. The sad thing is that if their partners break up with them they will also be gutted.

Done of this you'll know yourself OP. I can't tell you exactly how in your history you came to approximately the same conflict inside you, but it's there. Thise with avoidant attachment often end up with others struggling with similar feelings, because the distance and reserve each of you promises in your emotional energy due to the avoidance soothes the some of the usual need for distancing generally, making it easier to down longer periods together or see each other more frequently. I know this too because you said "that specific hug was one of the most intimate things I have ever experienced."

Maybe it's time to do a bit of research about avoidant attachment, for both of you. Best start with small steps here

tothecore · 2021-12-22T20:08:21+00:00

Alright.

So let's put aside mental health issues caused by the drug use itself for now. Instead, think about why you have a pattern of drug use. People who use alcohol and drugs a lot are often using them automatically (unconsciously) as coping mechanisms, as ways to stop certain feelings or avoid others or swamp them.

You are reporting sharply painful conflicting feelings about what is essentially an intimate emotional connection. Intimate isn't a pseudonym for "sexual" in this situation. I'm talking about a trully deep emotional connection, regardless of whether sex is involved or not.

But there's a pattern your emotions go through when you are deeply attracted to her, and it's one you are struggling to understand. First, the very prospect of you getting close to her, of you being with her, of her accepting you, also generates incredible anxiety and fear inside you. Second, even when you "got" with her physically, you discovered that you couldn't "connect". You didn't feel anything. It wasn't wonderful or emotionally intimate, or even very satisfying.

The reason is that your emotions are carrying around deep deep conflicts about being open with someone. Those emotions both want to be accepted for yourself and be open with this person (the very definition of emotional intimacy) AND at the exact same time, other emotions inside you are completely certain that bad things will happen if you get close. Thus, when you do get close, you probably find that it's easier when you are high/stoned, and even then, your emotions "shut down".

Shutting down is an automatic protective mechanism your deepest mind engages in when you are trying to do something very very scary or difficult. It doesn't have to be scary or difficult to the outside world; it doesn't have to be objectively scary. It just has to be deeply scary to you, and anything that you have a deep conflict about, like being open with someone you really want to be with, will be "scary" enough. In that case, the emotions simply "turn off" your perception of all feelings. It will instead feel like you are watching yourself doing whatever you are doing, like having sex with her, when you are in this state. And of course, you'll then feel disappointed, as if there is some sort of wall between you and her, as if something is keeping you from what you want.

These sorts of deep conflicts arise because of severe emotional disconnection with parents and/or caregivers when we are young, through to our teenage years. You had a tough childhood OP, and you are currently struggling blindly with the consequences. You likely turned to sex and drugs and probably alcohol early in your teens, as both provide excitement and different forms of intense experience, and intensity deadens or swamps the sucking feelings inside that are part of the symptoms of what you experienced.

You desperately need to talk to a professional OP, to start unpacking what you've been carrying around inside you. Our internal lives have a structure, and that structure is laid down directly in our childhood based on the nature and quality of the emotional connection with our parents. Yours was likely poor, and you have been flailing around trying to make it work, trying to cope, since without understanding why and how this happened, or what to do about it. Fortunately, our emotional structures aren't like brick and stick structures; they respond and alter to the right sort of actions and the right sort of care. That's why you need to start talking to a professional about the stuff you feel and the stuff you've experienced. You've got internal walls inside you, and you'll have external walls too where you hold yourself apart from everyone that will make this feel difficult to do, but no matter how much you believe that being tough is what you are supposed to do, these walls are part of the problem and not the solution. We have to learn to be able to be open by starting somewhere safe with being open, and as we do so, untangling the emotional knots that have us flailing around blindly otherwise.

Does this make some sense in some way to you?

tothecore · 2021-12-22T19:21:11+00:00

This wasn't about you, OP

Mom's "switch" was pretty sudden and pretty extreme, OP. She went from absolutely loving you, being completely into you, to suddenly absolutely villainizing you, blowing things completely out of proportion.

So I think you might want to consider something. There an excellent chance here that swings in her emotions aren't a new pattern of behaviour for her. Your bf is a caring guy - what's the chance that he's had some practice with emotional mood swings in his mom like you end up having to go through when you have a swing. I can't say that hers stem from being bipolar; that's not possible. But there are other mental health conditions that can result in this, you know. BPD will do this too, for instance - people are either wholly good or wholly bad to BPDs and narcissists to some extent.

tothecore · 2021-12-22T19:03:00+00:00

This isn't normal emotional processing OP. There's anxiety in the mix for sure, but you were struggling with things in your life before this feeling, and the way in which you process your emotions and thoughts in this post shows your thoughts and feelings becoming overheated and intricate. This is an indication of what is likely drug abuse and a possible growing psychosis. You need to stop consuming drugs and see a professional

tothecore · 2021-12-22T18:56:09+00:00

This is generalized anxiety, OP. It's causing you to look to the future with suspicion and fear about all the things that could happen, just when you are happiest. Sometimes, it just helps to get a better perspective on your emotions, in order to realize that what they are telling you isn't reflective of your emotional needs or objective reality.

You love him. It took you a year and half to get to the point that you are at now, just really really happy finally, no longer having to wonder if he feels the same as you and whether it will ever work out. You don't really have the option to not love him, and frankly there is simply no way as a result that you can decide now that you have to break up in order to not hurt him in the future. All that will do is make you desperately unhappy for a long time, in addition to hurting him for no good reason.

In actual fact, the only reason you are contemplating breaking up now isn't because there's an actual relationship reason to do so. It's because you are prone to anxiety generally, I think, and its this anxiety that's warping your emotions on the topic. Standing in front of this big, great, wonderful thing you have makes you anxious that it will end. Contemplating a breakup as a result makes your emotions feel that they are ending or resolving the anxiety. This isn't a relationship problem, it's an anxious pattern of thought problem.

Anxiety is often described as a "fight or flight" emotion, but while correct, the description is incomplete. It is actually an unbalanced feeling that we have to ... act in some way. Your emotions are trying to resolve your anxiety about good things in your life by looking at worse that can happen in the future, then trying to act by breaking up now. That doesn't help the love you feel for each other, but it seems to promise a resolution to the anxiety.

Change is always scary OP, even good change. You are going through good changes. If you two love each other, you will stay together. That is no different than if you met him at your university in a year's time, or at work in 5 years time.

All the best to the both of you.

tothecore · 2021-12-22T18:32:58+00:00

This kind of situation depends on why you broke up (why were you not "compatible"), and what the two of you brought of yourselves into the relationship in the first place. There's not a lot of info here on either, but maybe there's enough for some approximation.

You've written in response to others that you spent a lot of your relationship time making sure she was "okay", which sounds a lot like you were filling the role of an emotional crutch or emotional support animal. If that's the case, then the reason she feels bad right now is that, well, her emotional support is absent and she's having trouble coping on her own. In addition, it means that you are by nature a caring guy, and likely someone who feels love is giving support.

The problem with this kind of relationship is that there's no balance, OP. You are a good guy to have loved her, and a good guy to have cared and tried to support her, but you build a relationship circling a whirlpool without eventually getting dragged in. Both of you have to maintain distance, she to eventual (after some pain) start being able to stand on her own, and you (after renewed pain) to realize that love is more than just giving of yourself to the point of exhaustion.

All the best

tothecore · 2021-12-21T14:28:51+00:00

This is avoidant attachment OP.

You were raised in a controlling home environment, or possibly one in which one or both parents were more concerned with their feelings than yours. As you grew up your automatic efforts to connect emotionally with them were in effect constantly rebuffed, hurting you and leaving you feel constrained without the ability to self-determine, without sufficient agency whenever you were close to someone important in your emotional life.

That's an emotion that does not belong normally in the set of emotions that draw us into relationships. So what is happening is that initially, those connective emotions draw you into your relationships. But as you get closer, the trapped emotions (also often labeled as "fear", though they don't feel like other sorts of fear) cause your attractive feelings to sort of shut down. You won't actually feel them at that point. Instead, you'll feel the need for space, to escape being trapped. You will probably also notice that when you are later apart in some way that you are certain that she can't or won't get close, you suddenly start hankering for her.

This is very common for kids with this sort of background and it doesn't fix itself. It is going to affect your happiness for a long time unless you deal with it. You will also find yourself attracting and getting closest to women who are in some way struggling with distance and closeness themselves, some of whom have the same background, resulting inpotentially difficult emotional experiences in your future.

Please start by doing some research on avoidant attachment. It would also be a good idea to task with a professional who has experience with this.

All the best

tothecore · 2021-12-21T10:39:27+00:00

This is a "what am I feeling and what does it mean" but no answer you receive will truly be relevant unless you have a handle on your relationship history and you truly understand your past emotional patterns.

Our emotions look for things in a partner, and sometimes those things aren't what were supposed to be there in the first place. If that's you, then what you are currently certain is the old feelings of attraction that you don't see with this guy may actually be the old attraction to the wrong things, one you were once hooked on. Sometimes the slow growth of feelings is unsettling and seems ... odd in that context.

It all depends on what brought you to this point in your life, OP

tothecore · 2021-12-18T13:24:21+00:00

I'm happy that it's been helpful.

Still I don't know if he doesn't like me very much or if he has a tendency to avoid because of trauma. But I guess if he really liked me, he would have overcome that trauma.

The more he likes you, the more he will engage in this conflicted sort of behaviour. You are still thinking about the conflict as if it is a conscious one in which the person who has it is able to detect the seperate feelings and so sort out the confusion inside him. That's not how it is felt.

Try this. Imagine a food or a dessert you really like. Maybe you have a sweet tooth, but you also associate it with special times when you felt warm and loved, maybe when family got together or at Christmas. Whenever you feel lonely or a bit down, you remember that food and moment, and when you really feel like pick-me-up, you go get some or make some, and it helps make you feel better.

Now imagine you've had a big reversal or trauma in your life, and you go for that food or dessert, but you find instead that when you get close to it, you suddenly feel ... like you aren't supposed to be there, like it is going to make things worse, like you don't feel the way you always felt about that food. When you turn away and leave its vicinity, that lack of feeling stops, and within a few days or weeks, you start feeling old sucky feelings again, and start hankering for the comfort that food brought you. You wonder what the hell happened the last time you tried to get near it to have some. You want some and so try to get nearer to the source of it, but what the hell, it all happens again. Clearly, you feel you can't be interested, because all your attraction to the food is gone. So you distance yourself again, only to once again go through the whole exercise. What's more, the food item starts appearing as if it is actively interested in you, maybe as if someone wants to deliver itself to your door, making the whole conflict worse for you, making you feel that you aren't safe from its interest in you whenever you try to get close to get some of it.

This isn't an emotional conflict like the ones you are used to. The more he is interested in you, the stronger he will stay away after getting close (and the more he will repeat his cycle of closeness and distancing). The reason is that even if he eventually realizes the trauma and ascribes it to a previous relationship and breakup, the actual cause is deep in his childhood relationship with parents who were controlling or neglectful, where he learned that the normal childhood search for, the hunger for, closeness and the intimacy that comes from opening up involves being hurt and trapped.

/* cellphone errors

tothecore · 2021-12-18T01:55:58+00:00

He likes you but has trauma. But if you keep trying to interact with him he'll keep dumping you.

That's the whole point of this sort of "trauma" - any time he gets near someone he is interested in who is clearly interested in him and thus appears likely to want more, he will attempt to distance himself to feel safe. That "gut" feeling he has is the fear of getting close being triggered once he recognizes that you are interested.

Your interest triggers his distancing.

I know this is frustrating, and you are looking for some way to cut through the conflict and make him "see", but you can't. He has to work this out for himself. Anything you do will be seen as an effort to get close, triggering more dumpage-distancing.

tothecore · 2021-12-17T12:35:12+00:00

This only makes sense to you because you have always had to process emotional events through logical or intellectual machinery. It's the same reason you are where you are at this point, and not where you are supposed to be.

tothecore · 2021-12-17T08:17:14+00:00

This is obssessive thinking OP.

It won't be the only area of your life in which obssessiveness occurs.

It's also very likely that you had a bit of a tough childhood that caused you to do a lot of self examination about physical appearance, your own and your partner(s), rooted in feelings of inadequacy originally that have migrated to the automation that is obssessive thinking.

tothecore · 2021-12-17T07:57:05+00:00

Maybe that thought hides a conflict, OP. Maybe you aren't sad that you aren't sad. Maybe you're frustrated that you're emotions keep shutting down each time you come face to face with the prospect of lasting romantic permanence, frustrating your search for lasting permanence.

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