Could he change his mind?

[Tonia2]

I might be reading too much into things. Probably more wishful thinking to be honest. Broke up with my bf of 2 years on Thursday. We had a similar break about 6 months ago, as he wasn’t sure of his commitment. He is now saying that he has been dithering for the last 6 months (I let him move back in with me, but this was always a temporary measure).

He is 37 divorced, I am 26 and quite needy. I brought back article on commitment phobia, and he took it to heart and said that the line that ‘commitment phobes are often too scared to be in a relationship, but also too scared to leave one’ struck a chord. The conversation escalated and we ended up breaking up. He says he still loves/ finds me attractive, but he doesn’t think it is enough. He says that I never made anything hard enough for him and basically gave it to him on a plate, but that he thinks I am a wonderful girl etc.

Since then he has been in constant contact, saying that distance is the only thing that will produce clarity, and that he misses me intensely. I initiated no contact earlier today and it really hurts, but he accepted it. He is a very honourable, kind, nice bloke, and I am sure that he was very comfortable with our situation but is now trying to do the right thing. We were very tactile right until the end, and I know he has a lot of affection for me. Do you think these are his own issues? He will acknowledge that day to day we had an awesome time together and seemed made for each other, but he felt something was missing. Bear in mind that he had become subsumed in my life/ friends/ living in parents flat. Do you think he will reflect on things during NC (it will be at least 2 weeks) and maybe see the reality of our situation, or is this unusual? Our discussion seemed to gather its own momentum, and he claims he didn’t really plan it, although he had been uncomfortable for a while.

Earlier that evening he had been talking about taking me out for dinner the following evening as he was going away etc. very confused and would like to know if I am being unrealistic (he told me that he had regrets at the moment, but would only know in time if they were genuine) or do they come back? He knows that if he were to come back it would have to be full on commitment (eg. Marriage) Would really appreciate advice

[Tonia2]

my resolve is weakening for NC - is it going to help achieve my aim? for him to see what an idiot he is being??

Him to me in response to the one below:
hi gorgeous girl,

sorry couldnt reply earlier but needs must at work and the one thing that is
keeping me sane right now is work. sometimes it feels like the only anchor i
have - how sad is that coming from a contractor? i am finding concentration
quite hard though

just in case you are wondering what i wrote back to your brother here is a bit..

"She is such a sweet loving and trusting person that it feels almost as if I
am betraying her. I think its especially hard for her that there was no big
bust up, but more of a general feeling on my part that things were drifting
and I felt that one of us had to take a positive step for both our sakes."

i hear also that you were in touch with XX as i got an email from pete.
amongst other nice things about you he said in his email that he really
liked you and found you to be quite a deep person - which believe me is
praise coming from pete. i think he must be my XX.

as i said earlier, although it makes me sad, I will of course observe your
wishes and drop contact (is the odd email or text ok?). i probably think it
is the right thing to do - but I will miss you desperately. perhaps i do
need to sample a dose of loneliness to realise what i am missing - i do hope
so sweetheart. i do yearn stability but most of all clarity in my
relationships and envy people who never really question if they are happy or
not. the 24th sounds good but as you say we can review that nearer the time
- whatever you want to do is fine by me - i just feel awful about this and
want desperately for your broken heart to mend. it will my darling but i am
sure that means nothing to you right now.

please try to forgive me for the hurt i am causing you. i do hope one day
we can laugh together again.


Me to him:
Hi

This is incredibly hard for me, but I think I need to cease contact with you for the time being. I am full of conflicting emotions - of course I want to speak to you, but I also want to hold you and sadly you are the wrong person to be comforting me, as you said, at the moment. I am bewildered and hurt by this whole situation, and need some time to lick my wounds and get on with my life. I just don't think I can do that while I am in touch with you all the time.

It totally breaks my heart, as I love you very very much. As I said this morning, you have been my confidante, best friend, lover and like family to me these last few years. You have helped me so much in my journey to become a healthy, confident, happy (coffee drinking) individual and I will always be grateful for that. I will also always be hopeful that if you have some time apart from me you might reappraise the situation and realize that we are great together - you are right, we can't go back to how we were, but I had always hoped that once we were out of the intense situation in the flat, you would be a bit happier and would welcome me into your life properly. It has been pretty painful trying to drive the relationship forward, and I am sure that in time I will feel relieved that I don't have to any more. I know that you can have a tendency to shut down and not think about things that are hard, and I would ask that you don't do that and that you do think about our situation and what you want from it in the future, although I can't promise anything.

Can you keep XX date free for the time being, as I would like to revisit how I am feeling then, and see if we can make a fun night of it? I hope that isn't asking too much. If you have reconsidered anything, then I am, of course, always ready to talk. I hope you are OK in the meantime. You really do deserve to be happy. By the way, I am away at the weekend, and XX has gone, so you can get anything you want any time. I won't be back until Monday.

With all my love

[cycletease]

Ugh, you are breaking my heart! You poor thing!!!

Your situation is very complex, as you are both mature adults tackling tough relationship issues. Your guy sounds like he has a lot of good qualities and I can see why you care so much for him. He also has some serious issues that he needs to work out. HE HAS TO DO THIS ALONE. Strengthen your resolve, you have to continue N/C.

People have these issues often, he isn't the only one. The best medicine that I know of for commitment phobia is a straight dose of losing the woman.

The comment that "you make things too easy" is important, here. You are a sure thing for him. He doesn't have to try for you. You are no longer a challenge. Time to change that. YOU MUST MAKE HIM WORK TO GET YOU BACK. This guy has to stare down losing you in the face on your terms in order to realize his own feelings.

Let's talk about the fickle heart. For some reason one person can see the sun rise and set in another person, while someone else won't see it at all. And along with that, the heart can jump back and forth on the subject of a single person. Take the numerous cases of the guys who dump their girls then 6 months later get on here wanting them back, realizing that they had made a huge mistake.

From my post to Nester:
"She needs to feel what it is like to actually lose you. She needs to face the consequences of actually breaking up with you and what that means...that she will no longer have you in her life. She needs to have a chance to regret that choice and she never will if you are always around. This brings us to the cake and eat it too law. If she can have her freedom, do whatever she wants and come back to you at any time she is very unlikely to come back."

I think this situation applies to you as well. Your guy needs to work out his anxiety and he is right, a solid dose of loneliness will be good therapy. Your email to him was a good start, but it also gave him terms that were in his court. He shouldn't get the right to just change his mind and you will jump to accomodate. You have needs that aren't being addressed and you should not compromise. When he is ready to meet your terms then you can talk.

I suspect that he will respect you more when you do this...especially because you won't be making things easier on him. If you are laying down like a doormat and not putting yourself and your needs as a priority then how can he ever see you as one?

I don't think that you should lie about your feelings. You should tell him that you love him and wish that you could have made things work. You see now that you cannot fix his issues and that you are no longer willing to sacrifice your own feelings. Tell him that you enjoyed the time you spent together and hope that he will one day find happiness, but that you are not second place and if he can't sort out his feelings that you are not going to sit around wringing your hands in hopes that he picks you.

Then, as you know, you will have a private breakdown, cry yourself dry, pick yourself up and go do some living. When he discovers that you are having a fabulous life and he can't just call whenever he feels like it, he will be tripping over himself to get you back and make things up to you. BUT you cannot let him back to start. You need to push him away and tell him that he has hurt you and that you are not willing to be hurt like that again. Let him know that you are calling the terms and you will be number one.

My suggestion is to have NO CONTACT (no emails, no messaging, no cards, no calls, NONE) until your specified date. Then tell him all of this since you have had time to do some inward reflection. Then give it a few weeks after that before receiving any of his calls. Make sure that when you set the extreme no contact on your next meeting that he knows clearly that you love him and wanted things to work but that you are ending this so that you won't be hurt anymore. This way he will know that the weeks of no contact are not because you don't care but because of his issues. (and you won't have to talk yourself into contact because you are afraid he thinks you are not interested).

His forwarding you emails about you is very unfair. It seems like he is trying to keep you hooked at the same time that he is pushing you away. You don't need to hear how much he loves you at the same time he is telling you that he doesn't want to be with you. He is breaking some rules here, not right.

I know this is hard but this is your best hope of a future with this guy. You don't want him to resign himself to a life with you, you want him to be begging for a chance to spend his life with you. Some subtle changes in your attitude can make this happen. You need to be firm, you need to stay strong and you need to be the priority right now.

Also, for some fun watch the movie Anger Management with Adam Sandler.

[cycletease]

Sorry, guys...I think that was my longest reply to date!

[Tonia2]

Thank you thank you thank you, cycletease. I so appreciate the time you took - therapy for free! Annoyingly, he texted me about some practical issues last night (that I am sure he could have done without me telling him about) so i had to text him back and feel that i have slightly lost the power. Again, it seems to me that it was just about him not quite being able to deal with the consequences of his actions (IE no contact.)

He is a lovely, cool man and i miss him so much. It makes all the tactics described above quite difficult to employ, but i am trying my best, and i am getting on with life. i have a great close circle of supportive friends. it is good to know that all is not lost, but all advice i read says that once they decide to go they are gone - is this not always the case?

Do you think his sweet words to me are motivated by guilt, nostalgia or regret?

[Tonia2]

God it is a leap of faith though, isn't it. Breaking contact - even pushing away, someone who has said that they are ambivolent towards you... It doesn't make any sense - logic says that they would become even more ambivolent towards you, but I guess I have to trust what other people's experiences have proven (I was never intending to break N/C before we go to that gig together anyway though).

HOw often does this strategy work? So many conflicting messages, like that book 'He just isn't that into you.' Whats to say that they are wrong - surely if he wanted to be with me, he would be with me, or are even dumb ass men not that simple?

[Tonia2]

One more quick one... (sorry for the stream of consciousness).

Is it a better tactic (and lets not lie, this is all about strategy!) to have N/C continually, or would it not be better for example in my situation, to maintain N/C until our scheduled date and then come back into his life on my terms, being fun and not dwelling too much on the relationship, but hanging out until you can engineer a situation where he can't resist you.

advice appreciated.

[cycletease]

One more quick one... (sorry for the stream of consciousness).

Not exactly stream of conciousness, I do see punctation and sentence structure!!!

[cycletease]

No contact is always going to be hard because all of the reasons that you love the person in the first place are still present. Especially since it wasn't you who wanted the split and as such you have no control over the situation it makes it doubly hard to not be able to contact them in some way.

I would say that in your situation your guy probably really loves you and is a good guy...and is still an emotional wreck. He is afraid to be in love with you for some reason, perhaps relating to his divorce or perhaps his divorce relates to this. The whys are irrelevant at this point since you have to get him wanting the relationship before you can even begin on his issues.

Yes, you are right, it is all about strategy. The heart is a complex thing on women and men and sometimes it clouds it's owner's thinking. My guess is that your guy may eventually come to the conclusion that you're the one on his own, sadly that could be 5 years from now when you have totally moved on. I believe that there are things on your part that you can do to make him come to this realization earlier.

That is why the no contact. It takes things from his terms to yours, it empowers you, it takes away some of his control and it makes him see what flight feels like. I think the shock of loss is good as a kick starter.

I am not sure how often this works, I don't think we could really get statistically significant figures on this. It doesn't really matter since it is about the only course of action that offers any hope at all.

You could take the dreadful route and call him and work it out...and I bet he would come back. And for the next 6 months he would be looking for the door. Don't set yourself up like this. I feel you are working on your last chance with this guy so you have to do it right. Let's think of this like a military assault! If we can't get this guy brought around then its done.

So we have to manipulate his emotions a bit to make him realize how he truly feels. This brings us a to a rule: one wants what it cannot have. As complex as we are, we are still very simple. When something is taken away we start to study all of the interesting things about it that we took for granted before.

In your situation I believe "took for granted" is an important thing to consider. Because you are so giving to him he has become accustomed to this treatment. You do make things easy on him and as a result he has forgotten what the struggle is like. I think that you probably have a good self-esteem, but your willingness to accomodate anything that he dishes out is a problem. The fact that you are ok all this time with him not being willing to commit teaches him that it is ok...and (subconciously) that you are not worth the commitment.

It is time to come back like gang busters. You are going to be you, but new and improved and empowered. No longer is it ok for him to not see your value, no longer will you accept a wishy washy guy who vasilates on committment, what a bore! You deserve better, can get better and you will not waste your time on someone who doesn't see it.

You don't have to be a different person, you just need to shore yourself up a bit. You are giving because you love him, but because you love him you need to be less giving. This guy (like mine) needs firm boundaries and needs to be made to give back to the relationship.

An interesting note from my own relationship that might give you something to ponder. I told my guy that I felt that the more I gave to him the less he respected me. He replied that the more I gave the less he respected himself.

As givers we feel that the best medicine and treatment for our loved ones is to give of ourselves in every way. I am still working this one out, but I do know that people also need to have firm boundaries to be happy. Also, if you never allow them to give to you then there can never be equiy and you are depriving them of the joy you get from giving. Something to consider.

In regards to your questions about no contact. I would say it is a bad idea right now. I say set the date, no contact until then. By then he'll be really wanting to see you. Then tell him that you are not willing to compromise and that you won't be a person that someone settles on. Tell him you love him but you are not will to compromise yourself for him anymore. Then CONTINUE WITH NO CONTACT until he is in a frenzy to see you. Then you can see him on your terms but be upfront and tell him that you won't start things back up to have them be the same. That you will be starting a new relationship from this point forward.

I have a good feeling about this. I like your guy so far and think that he really does love you. I would look at this situation as a positive instead of a negative. Now you get a chance at a fresh start and the real ability to fix problems in your relationship. My boyfriend and I are doing better than we have in years right now. He is attentive and thoughtful, dying to see me. Setting new terms for our relationship has made us both much happier. I think it might do the same for you.

Please let me know how it goes. Also, you are welcome to PM me anytime if you want to talk about more specific things...

I'll be thinking about you!

[Tonia2]

An interesting note from my own relationship that might give you something to ponder. I told my guy that I felt that the more I gave to him the less he respected me. He replied that the more I gave the less he respected himself.

Thanks again for the help... This is really interesting, as he behaved really badly towards me over Christmas - very out of character, and he has since said that he despised himself for it and was totally ashamed, but I guess it is the 'kick the dog when he is down' philosophy. I was allowing him to treat me like that and he was hating himself for it - no one is proud about kicking a dog.

I will definitely keep you updated on this one - I am meeting him on 24th, and after the heartbreak diet, am planning to look pretty hot, stay centered and be a bit distant. I do not want him to see how vulnerable I am. Hopefully won't be playing games, but want to be quite self-contained and NOT break down. We will see where we go from there. Sadly he is not the spontaneous type who is going to be outside my flat bearing a ring for me on Valentine's day!

I am really glad that (Cycletease) things are going well in your relationship. Strangely though I think that you can have all the externals in place (I have a great network of friends and am ostensibly quite independent) but I suppose my neediness was still quite obvious. Thanks again for all the advice.

[Tonia2]

There has been no further contact. I know that is what I asked for, but this isn't really a good sign, is it? Particularly for Valentine's day? I am sick of this limbo. How long does it take before they crack, if they are going to?

[Tonia2]

A mutual friend of ours has just forwarded me his email to her of Friday:

hi

firstly , thanks for being such a mate to XXX this past week. she
seems to have taken all of this quite hard and not being able to comfort her
myself (obviously), i'd like to say thanks to you for making the effort to
do so when i know how much your commute is taking out of you. i know she
really values your friendship.

I hope you dont think too badly of me for all of this. If it means anything
I am feeling pretty gutted myself. The guilt, the indecision and the
re-alignment of life is quite tricky. perhaps the timing could have been
better i dont know - but sometimes thats just the nature of relationships.

anyway i hope it doesnt spoil too much the fact that we had a great weekend
together and i'd like to think that we could remain in touch. i attach some
(pretty poor resolution - sorry its the best my phone camera can manage)
highlights of that weekend.

To me, this is pretty arrogant. All his feelings (guilt, indecision etc...) are about him, and nothing to do with grief or loss or how he felt about me. Am I entitled to feel angry? am i overreacting? This doesn't sound too good for our future really, does it?

[pol32x]

Well, he does show and express empathy for your feelings. That counts for something. But this email was not intended for your eyes. Just because he didn't mention grief and loss doesn't mean he didn't feel any. It doesn't sound arrogant to me but it also doesn't sound very promising for your relationship either at this point. But I could be wrong.

[Gigabitch]

Stop resurrecting dead threads, pol32x. This one is several years old. Please read them all, but don't bump them.