Our letter this week comes from one of our beautiful readers L. As you'll see, she's confused and upset and just wants her boyfriend back the way used to be - and is wondering if it might really be because of her that he's acting the way he is.
Here's her letter and what I had to say...
Hi Jane,
I’ve been with my boyfriend for 6 months. The first four months were fantastic. We saw each other whenever we could (both have jobs and children), messaged constantly all day and talked about the future.
A couple of months ago he started to become more distant, taking longer to reply, not instigating meeting up so much etc.
Just before we met, he had a really traumatic experience and was very low...I think meeting me was a distraction and his friends and family all said he was back to his normal self. Unfortunately, he’s now feeling very low again...possibly even more than before.
He also has a lot of stress and it’s completely understandable that he feels the way he does. He is getting help.
My problem is that him pulling away has affected my anxiety and I feel needy and stressed every day that I’m the problem and he doesn’t want to be with me.
He has never said this.
He says he wants to be with me and still wants the future we talk about. But the not replying to my messages and cancelling on me is taking over my life. I want to chill out about it but don’t know how.
I recently said to him that we need to spend more time together and he agreed. He’s planning on staying at mine more often in the future.
I don’t want to push him away. I want to support him through this difficult time. But I need to stop stressing. Should I back out? I keep questioning whether his low mood is an excuse and he just wants out. He messages every day still and we haven’t gone a day without contact since we met.
Confused and upset and just want my boyfriend back. But is it me?
How do I play this so that I don’t push him away? He doesn’t seem to see that there is a problem with our relationship, just with how he’s feeling.
Thank you for any advice
-L
My Response:
Oh L, the first 4 months are always fantastic!
The problem is, someone who behaves like this is always going to tap into your anxiety, no matter who you are, no matter how much you’ve dealt with your own issues and triggers, being with someone who goes back and forth ALWAYS taps back into that place that personalizes it and says it must be you. And that's because that's the only response our programming has ever given us.
We think it's always us!
In fact, that's exactly why we have so much anxiety in the first place. If it didn't feel so personal by design, we would actively be able to have the conversations we need to be having instead of retreating within to find reasons to blame ourselves first.
I'll go further and say this is also why we attract men who behave like this with us - they don't have to look within at themselves as long as we're so quick to take all the responsiblity on ourselves and take their issues on us as our own as well!
So how do you get to the point where you can look at what's going on here objectively when it feels the way it does? Well, I would encourage you to start by determining where your own boundaries are.
What are you willing to accept? What behaviors are you not willing to accept? Where are your red lines that can’t be crossed?
Where does your being there for him start causing problems because you're not being there for yourself? Where does you being there for his stuff and his issues start to come at the expense of your own needs?
Where does this become you choosing him over you?
You can’t chill out when someone isn’t replying to your messages and keeps canceling on you. And you’re not supposed to be able to!
This is your warning system in place. Your anxiety is telling you there’s something to look at here. You need to find out if this is just your anxiety talking or something actually here that’s giving you reason to feel anxious and stressed.
One of the ways to lessen your anxiety and also get the information you need from him to find out where you want to go from here, is to tell him specifically what you need from him and see if he can meet you there. To use your example, instead of saying something as general as "We need to spend more time together", tell him what you specifically need from him.
As in "I don't feel like I'm a priority to you when you don't reply to my messages and when you cancel our plans. If you can't answer me right away or if you don't know what your schedule might be, would you be willing to give me a short reply so I know you got my messages and will get back to me later? And if you don't know your schedule yet, can you communicate that to me instead and let me know when you think you will know, instead of signing up for something you can't commit to? That would feel so much better to me."
See how different that feels?
Communication like this takes you from feeling like you're on the begging end - or at least the less powerful end - to being an equal with him. And based on his response, you're going to find out here soon enough by both his words and his actions to back those words up - whether an equal relationship between two people on the same page is what he's looking for, too.
What I'm sensing you're feeling here more than anything else is an imbalance of power. The whole relationship feels so out of your control.
He's setting the pace. He's deciding when you can see him and when you can't and cancels on you. He's in the driver's seat choosing when to reply or not to reply. And whether this is all because he's going through something big that he isn't sharing with you because he can't see how you could possibly understand, or because he's just realized how serious this has gotten and he's not ready for it yet, the response it's eliciting in you is the same.
You feel anxious. You feel out of control. You feel powerless to do much of anything at all to change this if you want to continue seeing him. And of course you do!
Throw out the old scripts that you've probably only subconsciously been following and remember that this is about you and this guy right now in your life, not about anyone else and certainly not about some hypothetical couple.
Yes, there are things all relationships have in common and some stereotypically similar behaviors in couples that you're seeing here. But he's his own unique person and so are you.
You both bring two individuals to this relationship complete with your own idiosyncrisies and things that some people are going to love about you and some people aren't. The most important thing you can do right now is look at who he is and who you are.
Consistent actions over time is the hallmark of how you know who you’ve got – or who you don’t.
Relationships are about two people coming together because there’s enough of same pageness compatibility to make it work. There’s enough of wanting the same thing, enough of reciprocal being there for each other. And there's enough communication that happens both ways to ensure that reciprocity.
Is his low mood an excuse? It could be, but what’s most noticeable about this low place he returns to from time to time, is that he’s not able to include you in the process.
That he shuts you out instead of bringing you in for support.
It sounds like you’ve let him know you want to be there for him, so if he knows this, why isn’t he letting you in? If it’s shame – which is usually a part of almost all men’s issues by the way - it's going to be tough for him to let you in when his programming says he has to face this alone or risk coming off as being weak.
It’s when these men acknowledge where they’ve come from and how they’ve been programmed to be that we actually see an inner strength in them that makes us think more of them, not less.
But of course, this is the opposite of their programming.
It sounds like 1) he’s afraid (I’d include embarrassed and ashamed in here as well), 2) he’s not great at communicating his needs, and 3) he’s leaving the relationship up to you.
He doesn’t want to address the relationship and that it might be having problems, only that he’s having his own personal issues.
This deflection only reinforces that he has limited ability to take responsibility for his own role as it affects you and the relationship and instead only looks at what he’s personally going through. It does beg the question of how the two of you are going to deal with other real issues that come up in the relationship if he’s not able to deal with this one.
The bottome line, L, is that while you may trigger someone to react or respond in a certain way because of how that trigger affects him, it is never about you personally.
Give yourself a timeframe.
How much longer do you need to allow yourself to collect more information so you can have a clearer picture of who this guy really is? How much more time can you take feeling like this if nothing changes even after you communicate what you need from him? What will show you that he's able to do what you've asked him?
Answer those questions, and it will become clear where you go from here.
I hope this helps.
Love,
Jane
It's your turn. Been here before? Lived to tell your story? Share your thoughts and advice for L in the comments below.
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