Our letter this week comes from, Vicki, who's wondering if the man she feels a special connection with in their on-again, off-again relationship, will ever be ready for a real, committed relationship.
Here's her story:
Hi Jane,
I love your programs and I am really relating to some of the stuff you say. I particularly relate to Sue's letter.
I have had an on/off relationship with a guy for just over 15 months.
I am 51 and have sorted my life out, he is 53 and hasn't.
He has not sorted out all the baggage from his marriage - i.e. not divorced, just now selling the home because he is having financial trouble.
The trouble comes from being depressed or bi-polar or chronic fatigue that led to a truck load of self-esteem issues and to top it off he has 2 young girls (4 and 10) as well as 2 older boys.
So his life is hard.
He was married for 20 years and VERY unhappy for 15 of them but wouldn't leave for the kids.
He contacted me and we dated for a few months but barely saw each other - distance and the kids and he's always tired (see above), after 2 months he broke up with me saying he just wasn't feeling it.
That was easy - I just let go.
He came back 2 weeks later saying he couldn't stop thinking about me and please can we try again.
We go another 4 months out of this at which time I fell in love. There were always ups and downs where he would disappear for a few days to "think about what he wants" and I would always give him the space.
After 4 months he left again - telling me very clearly he didn't love me and he was being unfair to me so I needed to go find someone that can give me what I need and want.
9 weeks later he was back confessing the lightning bolt hitting him and that I am the only person for him, haven't felt like this for such a long time and telling me he wants to spend the rest of his life with me.
We had a few good weeks then I could see the cycle coming. I sat with him and had the discussion and again he said he couldn't tell me he loved me and that he was sorry he could not control the rollercoaster in his head, so I left.
3 weeks later we were back together.
We got 5 months or so that time and he opened his life to me all except for his ex-wife, but he was still up and down and I could feel him struggle at times.
I know you have said if it takes too long to explain your relationship then walk away.
The time we were together was really good and we really connected, it was when we were apart that he drifted.
We agreed that if it didn't work out the last time, he would not chase me again and he would let me go.
We have often talked about this connection where we cannot seem to let each other go. I at 51 and 2 marriages, I agree this is different.
The day before he left we were talking about Christmas plans (he's been avoiding meeting my family) and he was saying that he didn’t see it any other way than "US".
He used to touch his heart and tell me that was my home - but always struggled with "I love you" unless he was asking me to come back.
It's been nearly 3 months after he told me it was all one-sided and if he was honest with himself he doesn't feel about me like I feel about him.
He left me 2 weeks after I was diagnosed with breast cancer telling me he would be an arsehole if he left now. (It's stage 1, was cut out and I am all good - so was not serious for me - but maybe was for him - both his parents died of cancer).
I kept telling him there are other issues like depression and not having "closed the doors” and "he was not ready for a relationship" - he agreed to all of it.
He kept saying he knew he wasn't ready but didn't want to let me go because when he was, he wanted it to be me that was there.
After we broke up this time - he has fixed his house (which was falling apart due to lack of interest.) It was their family home and she trashed it so he had no interest in it and it was making him bitter.
He agreed on our 2nd run that he needed to sell it, get divorced and get his time share with the kids sorted (we had them every weekend) otherwise we were going to go round in circles - he did nothing and we repeated the pattern.
So his house is on the market and will be sold by the end of February.
I don't know whether he will come back again, we have no contact. I will not contact him as I am better than that to chase someone who has left me.
All my friends say he will never change and would be angry if I took him back - and as I don't understand his head - I am not sure if he will come back anyway.
It's not about not wanting to be on my own, I have done that for a long time. It's about something that I truly feel is a special connection.
Unbiased and professional, I would like to ask your opinion on the situation.
I am aware there are mental and physical health issues at play here - and my past and empathy would mean I am up for the challenge, but the "I don't love you" kills me and I can't keep doing the break up and get back together as just after I start to heal he comes back, so the break ups devastate me.
Is he just "Not ready", will he be ready - for me? or do you think he will move on now.... part of me knows he feels guilty for continually hurting me.
Should I run, or if he comes back - should I set some guidelines out for what he needs to do (like counseling) before we try again?
Everyone on my side gives me biased opinion and all his friends tell him to "let me go" because he is not ready and he'll find someone else when he is. So he listens and then can’t let go. None of them are us, and he doesn't share with his friends so they don't really know what's going on.
I hope you can shed some insight into this difficult situation for me. Then again - maybe this time after 11 weeks, he is really gone and I just have to move on.
Appreciate any advice.
Regards
-Vicki
My response:
Dear Vicki,
Unbiased and professional, my bottom-line advice to you here is don’t proceed any further with him unless you are up for a thankless, no-guarantee outcome of holding this guy’s hand while you teach him how to be in a real relationship, how to treat a real woman who knows her own worth and won’t be reduced to anger or frustration or “trashing” a house because she feels so helpless to do anything to make things different.
Yes, I understand all about special connections and I absolutely hear you when you say this isn’t the basic scenario where you hear me saying to walk away if it takes this long to explain your relationship.
And yes, there’s been progress made when you held him to a firm boundary of getting his house on the market. You didn’t say whether he also followed through on getting the divorce and his time with his kids figured out, but if you hold him to these with your own firm boundaries, you may also have some success there.
But the part you’re stuck on – the lack of an “I love you” with any regularity - is something that obviously carries some weight with you in making this decision.
I don’t see that as being the primary issue here – many men I’ve known and worked with have grown up never hearing I love you so they are not nearly as verbal about it as we’d like them to be, but if they show with their actions and their behavior - especially tender behaviours - that they do indeed love you, I wouldn’t let this be the central issue in deciding where to go from here.
What IS my central issue with him, are these patterns of behaviour that occur with enough consistency for you to believe this is who he is.
He runs after you get too close. And too close doesn’t take very much closeness to be too much for him.
He tells you to find someone who can give you what he can’t – again showing that he’s well aware of what he doesn’t have in him to give and doesn’t have confidence in himself that he’s ever going to be able to change that even at the risk of losing you.
Always concerning are that the people who know him best – his friends – are telling him to let you go because they know he’s not ready, regardless of whether they understand your special connection or not.
Oh Vicki, I could talk for days on end about those special connections we feel that mean nothing in terms of real relationships and commitments and everything else we want them to turn into. Those connections mean we’ve found someone with so much potential – but whether that same person can EVER live up to that potential is an entirely different thing.
Yes, they feel like everything, but unless you’re up for this particular type of hand-holding that includes the recurring pattern of heartbreak and despair after what will feel like those exciting few steps forward with him only to find it’s all too much for him and he’s backing off again, this isn’t a relationship I’d wish on anyone!
The inevitable irreparable damage to your own self-esteem gives me pause here, to tell you - and every woman reading this convincing herself she’s still the exception - to tread very carefully here before you find yourself in exactly this type of situation.
I’ve seen and known many men like him.
Does he become ready? Do circumstances befall him that suddenly or over enough time, make him become ready?
I’ve heard from the women who love these men from all over the world. I’ve talked to them, consoled them, walked through this with them with men and scenarios so close to this one, you’d think they were twins.
And what I’ve overwhelmingly learned is that despite the risk of losing women just like you, despite the inevitable wake-up calls that eventually occur in their lives that might make us believe they were finally ready to do the work to lighten the load of walking through this life alone, they don’t change.
Maybe a very small percentage do because they do agree to get help to address the root of their relationship issues – something finally gets through, or we change enough within ourselves so that we can hold them to our boundaries, or we become strong enough in who we are to not take their behaviors so personally. Or maybe it's that we learn to detach from our own feelings enough about what we’re experiencing by making a conscious choice that the trade-off of what we do get from someone like this is somehow worth the rest of what we go through and we do the mental gymnastics to to justify our choice.
But what might you lose of yourself in this process? And why? Is this man worth all this work that you willingly would choose to go this route?
These are the questions only you can answer, Vicki, but I do know that pretending we can do or be something that we actually can’t does far more to harm ourselves than anything that kind of connection can give us if we’re honest with our deepest selves.
The “Why him?” is the answer I find the most telling because it reveals far more about us – and where our own work lies to overcome ever being with someone like this again – than it does about him.
If he does move on to someone else, don't worry, it won't be with anyone like you.
He may try someone else, believing from his own programming it's all about finding the right woman and everything magically falls into place, but at some point, when that conviction falls apart with evidence to the contrary again, he'll find himself once again face to face with the only one who can fix this for him - himself.
I hope this helps you, Vicki.
You’re a truly beautiful soul with a heart so full of empathy and compassion that you deserve nothing less than someone who’s actually capable of giving something back to you – not just this one-sided version of love so many of us confuse with what it means to be in love and come to accept as true love.
And I’m so glad your cancer was treatable and you’re all clear now. If I can help you further, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Love,
Jane
What about you? Does something in Vicki’s story resonate with you? Share with her what you want to say in the comments below.
Dear Liz and everyone who shared their heart, time and energy,
Thank you. What Liz wrote speaks directly to what I am going through. We are high value, have lovely lives and though it would be nice to share all the good in our lives that we have worked to create we must accept that "hurt people hurt people" and we do not want to hurt anyone including ourselves.
With gratitude, I send to all of you the peace that you have sent my way.
dlw
OMG!! Did you read, or re-read your own letter? If your best GF or a daughter, was reeling and dealing with a time waste like this, what would you say to her? Time to get really OBJECTIVE, and ask yourself what on earth are you getting FROM this? Take your power back, deal with your own codependent issues, and figure out how to be happy, being single! You are wasting time...life energy... on trying to "rescue" some pup who is just going to run off and tip over more trash cans! You get no points for effort, no prize for martyrdom. Basing your wasted efforts on the possibility of "potential", is worse than a gambling addiction! By now, what you see is what you're going to get! Are you looking for a partner? Or another prodigal kid to raise? Do you need to be "needed"? Are you okay with just being USED, as his next soft place to land? Take back your POWER!!
Vicky,
So happy that you have beaten cancer with your treatment. This is an event to help you realize how precious life is and how we need to use every moment to the fullest and surround ourselves with positive energy and people who make us feel good.
Is that what this man is offering you- feeling good? You sound like a caring, loving person. He left at time you needed him most, would you have done that- I'd say no.
You have some great advice here- hard as it is to face the disappointment of realizing that the person you really believed was here for you really isn't. I say take the advice here and put him behind you - permanently. Once you make that break you'll be ready for the right person to step in and really be there for you when you need him, not just when he needs you.
Stay well and focus on you.
I am so sorry you have had to go through this ! I felt like I was writing this myself ....
Schedule a call with Jane !
Yes. A person with this kind of pattern is damaged. "Hurt people hurt people.". That "connection"feels compelling because maybe we don't have anything else but the constant highs and lows, getting excited by thinking "maybe this time it will work out" only to have those hopes dashed once again are too much. Maybe at 11 weeks he is gone or you can stay occupied with what's in your life that you can stay out of this hurtful and soul sucking pattern. Glad you had success with your treatment.
Vicki,
Give yourself the gift of blocking his number, deleting it from your phone and cutting all ties with this man. You’ll thank yourself once you finish mourning him for the umpteenth time, and are no longer carrying all of his weight in an ebb-and-flow relationship that you can’t change anymore than you can change the ocean’s tide.
I met a man a little over a year ago who, at first didn’t want anything serious - he was still bitter from an ugly divorce and was never going to get serious again. We had an extremely strong, deeply intimate connection and he found himself wanting to get serious much to his surprise. I was the first woman since his divorce to meet his daughter, his family, his ex. I felt special. He eventually gave me a key to his place, we started making plans to live together...and then he “needed space” and just disappeared.
Three months later I reached out and he said he’d just been thinking about me and was amazed by my timing. He said he’d gotten scared by how fast things were moving..and then didn’t know how to tell me or what to do, so he ran. We slowly got back together and he said he wanted it all, a life together, everything we’d been working on before. He promised to never run again. He did tell me he loved me, but not nearly as often as I would have liked, and said he just had an easier time showing me than saying the words. I noticed (had been aware all along, actually) that he drank a lot. I’d brought it up a few times. I grew up in an alcoholic household, had dated an addict, this wasn’t new to me. He acknowledged that he needed to address it but said he had to do it on his own timetable. Then he disappeared again, with the “I need a little space, I’m not running” caveat....then told me four or five days later that he’s an alcoholic, he messes up every relationship he’s in, that he needed help, didn’t know what to do.
I tried to help him get help. Like I said, this wasn’t a new situation to me, and my empathetic nature made me want to help him get on the right track. He kept promising to go to a meeting but then getting drunk the next day (because he physically couldn’t stop drinking without getting extremely ill) and not going. I broke up with him, telling him I had to let him do whatever he was going to do, I couldn’t make him get help. He went into an inpatient detox/rehab program, got out and started AA and was (still is) doing amazingly well.
He reached out after a while, wanting to be friends because we had such a strong connection. Of course we wound up getting physical and he said he wanted to be with me, but couldn’t jump back into it, needed to focus on his sobriety. I didn’t want to interfere with his recovery so I hung back, gave him space, and he kept reaching out. We slowly got back together and were eventually making plans for the future again. I stopped drinking - I didn’t miss it and had no problem with living a sober life.
Get this, Vicki...I have bipolar disorder and fibromyalgia (chronic fatigue) and struggle with those things every day, but I still had the emotional availability for this man! So when you really want to be with someone, even big challenges like that won’t stop you.
I’m now reeling from our third breakup, which happened a couple days after Christmas. He said he loves me, but can’t be in a relationship, needs to stay focused on his sobriety. And I know early recovery is hard enough solo let alone trying to be everything you need to be in a relationship. I told myself I’d remain in his life as a friend and give him space and after he got some more sober time under his belt he’d see me for the amazing woman I am, who is always there for him, and he’d come back.
And he did stay in touch...but with days in between texts, and half-made plans to get together with no follow-through and no explanation.
I finally came to understand that if I stay in this man’s life we’ll always have “the connection”, and that’s a real thing, but he’s also always going to have some reason he can’t be all in with me. And I’ve shown him all along that I’ll let him do that, which means I’ve been steadily losing value in his eyes because I’m letting him treat me like this, therefore I must not be a very high-value woman.
I’ve decided that, while his reason this time is totally valid, and lots of sober people go on to be in solid relationships (my daughter’s fiancé is sober, and she met him early in his third attempt at getting that way..but he has something in his life he can’t bear to lose - HER, and he handles his issues), but some people, addicts, bipolar, chronic fatigue, wounded from a bad childhood, whatEVER will just never be “ready”. And you’re too valuable to have to deal with his push-pull, which will go on for the foreseeable future, trust me, because he knows you’ll let him (and if you don’t let him, he’ll leave).
There are plenty of men out there who are either unbroken or have FIXED THEIR ISSUES by now (I’ll be 50 in July...we all should have our sh*t relatively together by now, right?) who will love you, have no problem telling you that as well as showing you that. Lose this guy’s contact info, block his number and delete it. Mourn the whole thing one last time and then signal to the universe that you’re ready for the man who meets at least 98% of the data points on your mental (or make a physical one and put it someplace you can see it) perfect partner checklist.
You’ll stop being sad that he hasn’t called you, because he can’t call you, you’ve blocked him, you won’t be expecting him to and getting disappointed. If he shows up at your door, don’t open it. You’re holding space for someone who can and will give you everything you need. The strong connection will come along with all of those other things, and won’t be the only thing you have.
Hold out for better than this, it’s out there!!
~Kim-in-Recovery
Oh my gosh~ this is exactly what I needed to see right now. As I am on the off-again side of the switch at this point, I think maybe I can finally walk away from 3 yrs of the exact same thing. This guy has a great soft heart, but due to a crappy childhood of abandonment issues, and more, I see this guy has a rough outside persona, and will never commit. Not to me, not to anyone really. It's sad, but I don't really see him making the effort to change. It's a way of life for him now.....I'm printing this to read during weak moments.
53 and still doesn’t have his life together? He’s broken up with you countless times including two weeks after a breast cancer diagnosis? He has told you numerous times he doesn’t love you the way you love him, he’s not ready for a relationship, it’s all one-sided with you doing all the work. His words. Believe him!! Why are you wasting your precious time with this person?
Remove yourself from this situation and pretend it’s one of your friends dating this man. What would you tell your friend to do?
Why are you wondering if he will come back? You should be thanking your lucky stars he left. He did you a favor. I would block him and go no-contact. It will be hard at first but you will get over him and in time wonder why the heck you ever wasted your time on this crazy rollercoaster of a man. Be with your friends and family. I’m 45 (and single) As I am getting older, one thing I have learned is time is precious and to not waste it on the wrong people. This guy is the wrong person. Please stay strong and move on.