After One Wonderful Year, He Suddenly Changed

Our letter this week comes from Abi, who had a feeling something was off and went on to find out she was right. Sound familiar? I have a feeling most of you can relate.

Here's her story:

Hi Jane, I’ve recently gone through a breakup. He was my first ever boyfriend and the first time I’ve ever felt loved. We were dating for almost a year until he suddenly changed - as if a switch just turned in his head.

This happened the day they announced lockdown in England and I went through six weeks of no communication from him unless I instigated the conversation. As the weeks went on his behaviour started to change which started to hurt me more and made me think as to why he was doing this.

I had an inkling that he was going to break up with me but I thought I was just being paranoid.

It was in the sixth week that things started to really get bad, and his behaviour just didn’t seem like him - aggressive and always getting angry with me. I decided to go see him to stop this pain I was in, and that’s when he told me that he didn’t love me anymore, he didn’t feel the same way like he did at the start and that he’d been thinking about it a couple weeks before lockdown began.

It just makes me think why did he continue to show love and affection when he started doubting the love he felt for me? Why during these six weeks apart when he did want to talk on the phone or by text say and do things that were affectionate and loving?

Although those things were rare, they were still present which made me have hope and never gave up on him.

There is so much more I want to say to you because reading your articles has really comforted me during this break up and helped speed the process of moving on and letting go. I have read so many of them that it made me want to write to you to ask what your opinion is on my situation and what advice you could give to me?

I would really appreciate it and it would help immensely.

-Abi, a girl mending a broken heart.

My response:

I'm so sorry, Abi. I'm sure you had such high hopes for this relationship.

What I want to say to you more than anything else,  is that you're going to encounter guys like this who act like they love you, who give you every reason to believe they mean what they say until they discover their own truth; they aren't who they thought they were. They can't do what they thought they could. And as much as they try to attribute the reason to you to avoid the real truth, it's not you. It's them. You can't make this about you.

But, we always do.

That's always what we come back to because it gives us some semblance of control over what's happened when all we feel is a complete lack of control over the relationship, over him, and over anything to do with the two of you.

When it doesn't make sense, what you need to remember is that it doesn't make sense to him either.

He's not the guy with all the answers. He's not so perfect after all. He's actually very human. He does what he does because it simply feels like the thing to do - whether or not it makes any sense to you.

Men start to feel more and more pressure as a relationship goes on over time, and by the time you're around the one year mark, they know full well more of a commitment is going to be expected of them. The question is what he does with the pressure.

They feel this even if you say nothing; if nothing else, they feel it in the obvious markers of a relationship's timeline. The one year mark is a big one, and they know it.

This is the point where the doubts come in. This is where he questions whether he's up for more, whether he's able to give you more and where things start getting serious for him.

If he's not up for it, if it feels like too much pressure to him - even if you're not directly putting this pressure on him, he starts to question all of it.

This is the make it or break it time, and it can happen anytime when there's a milestone to be encountered, but especially when something significant is going on that just adds more stress to what feels like to him an already stressful situation.

Like a lockdown.

I suspect in your case, when he realized the seriousness of staying at home with your girlfriend or wife or family or whoever people were staying at home with, it made him realize just how real your relationship was becoming and he imagined himself being in that very real relationship with you and realized he wasn't up for that kind of commitment.

The reference to not feeling like he did in the beginning shows a man's level of maturity, Abi. And it looks like he didn't pass that test.

A real man, a mature man knows that fantasies are for movies and fairytales and aren't real at all. That a real relationship isn't based on feeling like we did in the beginning - which can never be fully replicated and maintained - but is about moving on to a deeper place where reality replaces fantasy.

That's the place where you choose to be with someone because they have so many qualities you adore and because you see how compatible you are in terms of values, morals, and ethics. It's where you look at whether you're on the same page and if you want the same things.

That's the glue that holds any relationship together for the long term.

If he's short-sighted and can't see past the idea of you, the image of you he had in this first year (and mostly in the beginning), you're not going to be able to compete with that, because that's not reality.

That's not how real relationships really work.

We grow, we become closer, we share more of ourselves, and in that process we become less of a mystery and more of a real woman. A woman with imperfections and shortcomings and real life qualities who will never be able to compete with the feelings and energy of the beginning where she wasn't yet known, where she was only just beginning to be seen, and where you were both in a state of attraction and romance and euphoria that induced such feelings and energy simply because it was fresh and new and exciting.

Because it was the beginning.

It's not on you, it's not on him.

It's simply a reality that some men aren't emotionally well-equipped enough to move past this beginning phase into the deeper phase without finding this pressure to be too much or this feeling of something being wrong because it doesn't match their programming of what they've been conditioned to believe about love and relationships and women and those fantastical beginnings.

My advice to you, Abi, is to find your peace in accepting what is right now.

Accepting what he's telling you as his truth of where he's at. Don't try to convince him to change his mind. It never helps.

But what does, is first allowing yourself to feel all your feelings, to grieve your loss, to be with yourself instead of running away. What helps is finding your way through to the other side of the heartbreak and pain by focusing on getting up each day, finding some semblance of a routine for yourself that involves much self-care, self-nourishment, taking especially good care of yourself and beginning the road ahead.

The road back to the woman you were before you met him, when you had a life outside of him.

You're still a beautiful, shining soul who's going to find your way to someone tailor-made for you someday soon.

Don't focus on him and fantasy scenarios about him. Instead, focus on you, on doing little things for yourself each day and make a place to begin creating a life as full and beautiful and full of love in all kinds of other ways besides where he used to be.

Then you'll once again realize that your worth, your value, your ability to shine and be seen isn't dependent on what any other human being thinks of you or does with you, but about what you think of and do with yourself.

One of these days, he's going to dim in comparison to everything you've gained through this. But right now isn't the time to jump ahead.

It's a time to be right where you are with yourself, and take one step at a time, one day at a time, to put one foot in front of the other and will yourself to make it yet another day where you shine your light on the world. Even if it seems like there's no one else there right now.

Another day where just being you makes the world a better place, and where you remind yourself that you don't want anyone who isn't ready for everything you are, who isn't on the same page as you.

Abi, the most heartbreaking letters I get are from women who've spent years and years with men who decided early on they didn't want reality, and these women obliged them by making themselves into the fantasy these men wanted to appease them while giving up their own selves. They find their way to me here years later, wondering who they might have been, what they might have done, and why, oh why, they didn't see this sooner or why he didn't just let them go?

But that's not your story. You're free.

You're free to go, to be, to become what you really want to be. You don't have to please someone who's stuck on a beginning that never becomes anything more in his own mind. You don't have to keep chasing after someone who's never going to be fully yours because he longs for that beginning that's only real in his own mind.

You're free.

Ask any woman who's still stuck in something that went so wrong who's still in it for all her own reasons that don't matter as much as they used to. She'll tell you what she values more than being with someone who she never quite knows if he's hers but knows all too well she's his; being free.

I hope this helps.

Love,

Jane

Do you have anything you want to say to Abi? Share with her your perspective or advice or words of kindness and encouragement (we all need more of that right now!) in the comments below.