Brief, intense relationship, now they are resurfacing

Like I kind of suspected would happen, I started giving a little bit of background and wrote the whole thing out.

A few months ago, around the end of July, I moved back to my hometown in Ontario from the west coast of Canada. Just beforehand, I had messaged some people on a dating website. One of them responded after I had moved away. They were a non-binary person in a non-monogamous relationship. I began talking to them noncommittally, looking for validation and attention. I was already flirting with someone in my hometown who was 'diagnosed and former BPD', and we hooked up a couple times, but she quickly found someone a couple weeks after I arrived in the area. I bought 'Walking on Eggshells' because of this experience.

Feeling hard done by, I vented to my online friend. We struck up a friendship: they worked in a high-conflict helping job nights, and I have chronic insomnia, so often we would chat late into the night when I couldn't sleep. I talked them through a few crises - which they assured me were temporary and said "I am not the kind of person who has a dramatic life" - and we grew closer and started flirting.

Despite having just moved across the country, things got more intense and I made plans to visit them, and we had a pretty great few days. I still remember it fondly (they welcomed me with flowers, which I still find really sweet.) Afterwards, we were thoroughly infatuated with each other, and they started to talk about the terrible things their current partner had done. Eventually they started fantasizing to me about being together romantically - perhaps even monogamously, which would be a big step. I was very flattered, and I had been pretty sure that I would be single for a long time, so I bought in.

Meanwhile, the long-distance part of the relationship seemed to grow inconvenient for them. They kept having crises, roughly one every weekend when they no longer had work to distract them. They would call me at times I had told them I had plans, like in the middle of a movie with friends. We started to have fights, and the conversations were always meandering and fragmented. My sleep got worse.

Initially I had promised to visit once every six weeks - this was in a long-distance relationship book I had read, and seemed like good advice - but they pressured me to visit once a month. I rationalized it at the time, but it was a big drain on my finances and took away from my working life. I am self employed, but even then it takes a lot out of you to be flying every month. I started to get slowly isolated from my friends and I felt I was falling behind with work. I noticed this was happening, but didn't do anything about it until later.

The next month I visited again, which was a surprise due to some longing my partner had expressed about my not being able to go to a party that their other partner was throwing. It also mostly went well. On the bad side, they had been fighting with their primary partner. On the other hand, my partner told me that they loved me. As I'd confessed to them, this was something I had never heard in my previous long-term relationship, so I responded in kind. On this visit, I met their primary partner, who made a bad impression, and I connected his habits with those of my dysfunctional family. That said, he seemed vulnerable and insecure, which drew sympathy from me - here was someone who was outwardly confident but privately worried about losing his partner. Ultimately I related to him, even if I didn't like him that much. (In hindsight I wonder how much about myself I was projecting onto him.) He threw a party, where we were both involved with our mutual partner.

I went home. They broke up, partially because of me being involved, and my partner called me (again while I was at the movies with friends) sobbing and saying they thought they were going to be attacked or possibly killed by their ex. I was deeply panicked by this and spent hours on the phone with them that night, but they kept saying how they wished I was there and finally went to stay with a close friend. Not long after they wanted to try being monogamous. I bought some books about communication skills and reread Walking On Eggshells.

Despite all that, things still continued to break down - I tried my best to be supportive and temper my expectations, but by this point I was already deeply hurt from various commitments being broken. I visited again, and half-proposed in an attempt to express my dedication, but they lashed out at me directly afterwards, and then apologized after I came back from a short walk. I had the sense of captaining a sinking ship, but the relationships I had seen modeled for me were based around self-sacrifice, so I hung on while trying to establish and enforce boundaries. They were trampled repeatedly.

When I got back from the visit, I continued seeking perspective from friends, some of whom are mental health professionals. Not too long afterwards my partner's weekend crisis extended the whole week, and at the low part they broke up with me, saying that they didn't feel they could be as good a partner as I was.

We stayed friends, but their behaviour started to get more extreme. Finally, when they were telling me about possibly getting into sex work with an odd edge to their voice, I had to go NC for a couple months. It was hurting me to talk to them. I worked on myself in the meantime. Just under 2 months later (I had initially said 'no contact for a couple of months') they got back in touch with me, and we resumed very occasional friendly texting.

In the 4 months since the breakup, I've gone back to therapy and continued reading self-help. I'm starting a self-guided DBT workbook tomorrow, and I have the support of friends. I've had another FWB situation develop, and they are very supportive also. I've kept exercising and being social - in general, I think things are going pretty well. But I'm still lonely. I think I probably would be lonely even if I was in the best relationship ever, for various developmental reasons.

I've continued deepening my understanding of myself, and I feel considerably more self-aware and mindful. I'm starting to fix problems with my life that I've always had and didn't know how to tackle. But I am still living with my family, who could never be called affectionate, and I am isolated in their home. I have good friends, but nobody I feel comfortable going to with my problems. My family is not available for that.

Last week, my ex-partner drunk called me (after asking if I was okay with it) and told me about their life. I told them a little bit about mine. They had some minor drama and had been in therapy on top of taking a big positive step in their life. Keeping WoE in mind, I recognized how welcome a distraction this was from my life, and that I am still powerfully attracted to them, and that I welcomed the attention from someone who I still see as very attractive (which makes me feel better about myself, etc. etc.) At the end of the conversation they playfully said, "nonlinear, are you flirting?" and I truthfully told them that I had no idea if I was or wasn't. I'm still working on that emotional competence.

Today they asked if we could flirt in sexually explicit ways, and after some check-in with myself I agreed. I felt that I could serve some needs by doing so - getting attention this way instead of, say, going to a strip bar just to feel touched by someone else, which used to be a regular thing for me - and it felt good to have them want me again. Also, I appreciated that they asked before just barging in, which they had done a couple times before. It was fun for an hour or so. Of course, soon their attention wandered, and I felt ignored - but at least this time I was mindful enough to find a distraction and started doing laundry that needed to be done.

In a very literal sense, I'm not sure how I feel about agreeing to sext with them. On the one hand, I understand more about myself than I used to, so I can recognize how this is probably falling back into bad habits. On the other hand, I would rather do this than blow a bunch of money on strippers or developing crushes on friends that are unlikely to return my feelings, both of which I've done recently. On the third hand, I do feel that I've dealt with this better than I did the last go-around, but I am still feeling very vulnerable and uncertain. I think this is probably not a great way to serve my needs, and that it should be possible to do so in a healthy way. I'm just not sure what that looks like or how to go about finding it. In a sense my whole life has been dysfunctional in one way or another, and I'm starting to despair a little at ever climbing out of that pit.

I thought I had detached, and yet here I am again.



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