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During the course of my last relationship my ex withdrew from me many times, going farther away each time until she left me altogether. One of the primary coping mechanisms I used during the withdrawals was to write her letters about what I was experiencing. I never gave them to her. When we would reconcile, usually days after the fights, I didn't want to say anything more to her about our issues because she did not respond well to anything that could be construed as "criticism." So I collected a bunch of these letters and now I am reading them. I am posting below a letter I wrote early in our relationship. It's amazing how quickly the push/pull dynamic had started and how much I knew about its trajectory. Apparently I liked something about how it felt in the beginning.

"Something I want to talk about sometime…

I have a fantasy of you as a child, playing with a yoyo. Me. You reel me in very close, catch me in the warmth and strength of your hand, and you smile. Then you suddenly drop me. I fall away from you, and down. When I feel you on the other end of the string the sudden change of direction adds excitement. Excitement supported by the expectation that you will pull me back to you on the return swing. I like both the closeness and the separation, the connection sustained by the string between us. But the drops go so far down sometimes, increasingly it seems, the string slackens and you are no longer on the other end of it. Fear sets in that you will not pick me back up. You will walk away, leaving me there on the ground. Or maybe you will spin me out to the farthest point of the orbit of our connection, then cut the string.

I wonder at these times whether you have simply turned off your emotional connection to me. I wonder if I will ever see you again, or if I do, will you be emotionally responsive to me, even in a negative way? Or will it be as if we had never known each other? Less than that, even. I struggle with what to say to you, what not to say. In the early hours of the morning I decided that if you don't email me by this afternoon I will call you. I would tell you that I get the message, you are not okay and you don't want to talk to me. I would tell you that I love you and am worried about you, no matter what you might feel towards me. I really want to ask, "Why"? "

That's a very potent letter, all the more powerful for its use of metaphor.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

Lifewriter

Hi Achaya

Really interesting post


I've found journaling my feelings incredibly helpful


I think for me the drama of the high and lows heightened my feelings. I was drawn to the intensity because it was a way of escaping my own painful feeling and it filled up an empty space.


When I look back at my relationship now I realise that I was searching for something that my ex was never able to give me. It wasn't  her fault that I just chose to focus on something else, my relationship, another person rather than look at myself and learn to meet my own needs in the way that I only I could.

I also realise I was drawn to the relationship because it felt familiar  :light:

Reforming