I'd love to know where you are now with your processing of what happened, if you are communicating with your guy and how you're handling it. Of course, only if you'd like to share!
Hi heartandwhole... .thank you for welcoming me. It actually felt kinda weird to have posted after all this time reading the boards behind the scenes. I read your reply this morning before work and decided over the day to write my story on here - after all that's what led me to so much understanding so maybe it'll help someone else – (after note – it is really long sorry).
I met my guy 18mths ago on online dating. We texted heaps, emailed and spoke on the phone for a few weeks before meeting in person. There was definitely spark before even meeting and then when we did meet we got on like a house on fire. We went for hinterland drives and laughed heaps. There was so much we seemed to have in common - similar music taste, same age, grew up in towns on the same coast by the beach, liking healthy foods and keeping fit, similar sense of humour... .we seemed to have the same morals and wants in life. It was so great at first those few months of getting to know each other. Our chemistry was intense... He was the only person I'd ever been able to fall asleep in the arms of. I just felt so comfortable and natural, self assured and beautiful. I fell for him pretty quickly. He wanted me to be his girlfriend after about 6wks and I was a little taken aback given guys usual hesitation to commit but stoked cos I was really in to him.
The first time anything out of the ordinary happened was early on in the piece... I was at gym on a Sunday and going to stay at his that day/night. He had a go at me for exercising on a Sunday... which didn't make sense to me. Neither of us are religious and Sunday was just another day. We spoke on the phone and he got really annoyed and hung up on me saying don't bother coming over. I went outside of the gym and called him back. I did end up seeing him that night but that was the first of many red flags which I didn't piece together properly till recently.
We broke up suddenly one day when he ended things by text. I was in shock. I thought we were great... I insisted on seeing him in person as text wasn't going to cut it for me. He works in emergency services (his job he has said is such an important thing he has in his life and he’s always loved it – never not wanted to go to work ever except once he met me, then it was so hard leaving me in bed and getting up to leave for work) and I met him at the end of his shift at his place. I remember him letting me in then walking to the balcony for a cigarette and I looked at him smiling (maybe just hoping for a smile back, I don't know why I smiled... .maybe I was nervous?) and he looked at me with this distant, grey look in his eyes and asked "why are you smiling?" After many tears and disbelief and sorrys on his behalf I left.
To cut a long story short, this started what I now see as the recycling process. Why didn't I just walk away for good? Well I did date other guys and tried to let go but I just didn't meet anyone like him - also, the main reason was that he had gone through a divorce 4yrs earlier with his wife of 13yrs (school girlfriend - she cheated with her married boss - I know this is true as I met his family) and then his mum had passed from cancer - so I always thought that this stuff was about trust issues and grief. I felt like he needed someone to show him he could count on them and trust them again after losing the most important female figures in his life in close succession. It was some time therefore before I realised a pattern emerging. We'd break apart, then initiate contact and have the most amazing texts and chats and get back together. The cycle happened at a faster rate though... .at first he distanced after a month of seeing each other then by the end it would only take a few days and he'd shut down. When he shut down he'd go silent. The worst sentencing of all. So hurtful and so incredibly hard to take. I only ever turned up to his place unannounced a few times and each time I'd see that the few personal belongings of mine were still there, nothing was hidden and I didn't ever feel like there was another girl on the scene. I trusted him the whole time. But still it just didn’t make sense to me. My family and friends made a mockery of him and said I was totally delusional - he was just using me when he felt like it. But what they didn't see was how perfect it was when I was with him and how sensitive he was. Nothing made sense though... .he said he'd had counselling in the past, he’d stopped and then that he was getting more, he said he still cried over his mum and that he didn't know that he could ever love another after his wife and was amazed when he fell harder for me than anyone.
Things for him got worse when he said that he couldn't see me any more as I gave him the highest highs he'd ever felt and the lowest lows. He said I knew exactly what to say to cut him to his core - but that he didn't think that was my intention - it was just what he felt. He told me that his psychologist told him that it was important he let me know none of it was my fault.
Why didn't I just walk away? I tried over and over but I just kept going back. Every time it sounded like he'd made so much improvement and I didn't realise that it was more than grief. Then more things started to happen. I noticed that he attached strongly to girls who were in relationships already - I think it's cos they were seen as 'safe' - he could spend time and communicate with them on a surface level without being threatened by anything further - they could give him nurturing without getting too close. He said things that didn't make sense also - like he said recently he didn't go to a music festival as he didn't want to see me there with another guy? I never had tickets (last year I did for the same festival and went) and 'what other guy?'. His time frame also proved to be of concern to me. We'd stop being in contact for a few weeks and when contact would start again (we've both initiated at times) he'd ask how I'd been as though it'd been 6mths since seeing him, not 2wks. In my mind I'd think 'huh?' but as had become a usual in this whole experience I kind of swept it aside.
Just recently he told me that he has seen a therapist the entire time we've known each other and that he told me at times he'd stopped as he didn't want me asking questions. He said he has loved me the whole time and has come to realise he doesn't love/like himself and needs to find himself - he's even linked songs to how he feels - he says I deserve so much more than he can give me and that he doesn't want me to wait for him to find himself as he needs to go on his healing journey alone and doesn't even know if he'll ever find himself or be okay. This simply cuts me to my core... it's so hard to see someone you love hurt so much be so lost when you yourself have put in the effort in life to get to a place where you choose happiness and try to always ground yourself after painful experiences. I feel like the whole process has made people close to me cringe and I've felt alienated as they simply don't see the beautiful side when they just see the repercussion of me when I'm hurt, when I'm copping silence for weeks on end. I've done a lot of self reflection as to why I'm repeatedly putting myself through this and as mentioned above, I'm only just now really started piecing together the whole relationship - now that I've discovered this site especially. I guess I thought it was grief and that it would pass and maybe it is... .but more and more stories he mentioned are coming back to me and forming a bigger picture.
I guess for me now I just have to try to accept that I am a trigger for him. That the moment he gets really emotionally close to me he flicks a switch and shuts me out entirely - so so painful for me to experience.
An analogy he recently used is that we are like magnates who attract so strongly but then he feels like, as magnates do, something happens inside of him and he is repelled from me - that when this happens he feels like he drops and just shatters.
So beautiful and so sad. But I am okay. Just need to try to accept and be happy with my life and try to accept not having him be a part of it.