Help with Avoidant Poly
Writing this as a sort of “AITA” because please tell me if I am out of line with how I am feeling.
AITA for canceling a weekend with my long-term partner after years of feeling emotionally neglected, and now feeling devastated that he seems to have withdrawn?
I (42F) have been in a long-term non-monogamous relationship with a man (43M) for about 3.5 years. We both have other partners/anchors. We are part of the same niche creative/performance community and our relationship started there. We have a deep emotional and physical connection, but our communication styles and emotional needs have always been very different.
To be fair to him: he is not a cruel person. He is reliable in many practical ways, kind in day-to-day interactions, intelligent, generous with hobbies/interests, and emotionally steady compared to me. He also has a tendency to avoid or shut down around difficult emotional conversations, especially if he feels criticized or overwhelmed.
I am much more emotionally expressive and attachment-oriented. I need reassurance, emotional closeness, collaborative repair after conflict, affection, and proactive communication. Over the years, I increasingly started feeling like I had to minimize my needs in order to preserve the relationship and avoid “heavy conversations.”
This has become especially painful because our relationship used to have a lot more physical and emotional intimacy and ritual around it. For almost three years, twice a month, every time he drove into the city to visit me, he would call me during the drive because he was lonely and wanted company. The car ride talks were one of the most consistent ones we maintained throughout. We would spend entire evenings together at community events cuddling, talking, reconnecting, then go on to have a nice weekend together, and feeling like a unit. We have spoken pretty much every day since we met except for a few short instances of “needing space,” which were always communicated ahead of time.
Over time those rituals and that emotional and physical closeness slowly started disappearing.
At the same time, he continued building connections with newer women in the community. I agreed to non-monogamy and never expected exclusivity, but I started feeling increasingly emotionally and physically abandoned while watching him offer excitement, attention, flirtation, and intimacy to newer connections that I no longer felt from him consistently myself.
I can also admit that over time I became reactive to witnessing him being so attentive to other partners even if the connection was tenuous or platonic, that I did have emotional reactions (crying, sulking, stress response), and I understand that over time that had led him to feel stressed about sharing the space - but all the rituals I asked him to help us both were rejected as controlling for example: routine check ins, boomerangs, verbal reassurance. It was all kind of framed as me being controlling of him because he was “spending the weekend with me anyway” so why was I upset that he was attentive to someone else for a few hours?”
He didn’t seem to understand that it hurt to see him holding hands with someone and cuddling when that’s not something he would offer me in the same space.
I offered to step away from the community space so he could pursue connections without the “pressure” of worrying if I’ll get upset with him for it. I realize this is me grossly over-functioning in the relationship.
Outside the shared space I also many times tried to address the lose of closeness and intimacy and was rebuffed often - eventually yes I did get pushy and emotional about it and he admitted it made him not want to be intimate or close to feel like he was “on trial” and overwhelmed. To be clear I do “angry cry” a lot but I do not believe my harsh hurt words fell into the abusive or toxic sphere - the worst I’ve called him is “kind of a jerk,” and “selfish”. He also rarely admitted that he was the one to withdraw intimacy without real cause or explanation in the first place - eventually he would admit to me he had mental health struggles or family stress at home, but a lot of the time his behaviour simply went unexplained - guys he stopped saying my name for like six months at one point. I have just felt so alone and like the only one that cared to acknowledge the changes and growing distance between us.
One recent example: we had talked multiple times over the years about someday taking a trip together related to our shared interests. We last spoke about a shared trip two weeks ago! Just this week he told me he booked that exact kind of trip solo and later told me he was nervous because it would be his first time traveling alone in almost 20 years. It was almost as if he was underscoring going by himself… when I had offered to travel with him many times in the past - something he seemed to want as well in the past, but not this time. So, that absolutely crushed me because it felt like I had been erased from a shared dream we had actively discussed together.
A month ago, he made plans to come into the city Friday night to spend time with a newer connection at our shared community space and then stay at my apartment afterward for the rest of the weekend. I tried to talk to him about it two weeks ago because I was already feeling anxious and emotionally unsafe about the setup. The conversation didn’t really go anywhere because he said he wanted a lighter conversation at the time and later admitted difficult conversations can take away his excitement about seeing me.
He never offered me a time or solution for how to have “heavy” conversations.
That comment really broke something in me emotionally because I realized I had spent a long time trying to phrase things “correctly” and suppress difficult feelings so I wouldn’t ruin closeness or create tension. But eventually things would still bubble over because the underlying issues were never actually resolved. At the end of the day it didn’t matter if I brought things up and asked for reassurance or repair or if I tried to stay positive, the relationship closeness continued to decline with only the most minimal improvements - to give you an example he stopped kissing me consistently maybe 2 years ago. So we went down to like one kiss a month unless I initiated it, but the last time we hung out he kissed me like four or five times.
So maybe it’s “emotional girl math” but a few kisses while so lovely and so welcome don’t exactly erase months of neglect. In the moment I was happy it happened and told him so but in the big picture I was still feeling like that was such a tiny step up a steep steep hill.
But he would see my complaint about “not enough kissing” and say he just kissed me last time he was here so why am I still complaining?
That’s what I have to deal with balancing - showing appreciation for the small steps and the effort he DOES show me while not erasing the larger picture of long term decline and neglect. The deficit of kisses can’t be erased by one nice weekend of kisses. Right?
So here we are!
Yesterday (Thursday morning) I realized I could not emotionally handle the weekend as planned and canceled.
I felt in my heart that I would be waiting all of Friday night for him to come home - he never volunteered what his plans were and what time he might be back, so feeling anxious and rejected about the recent trip and with no recourse for reassurance or support from him after he told me heavy conversations were a turn-off, I kind of became scared of getting upset, crying and “ruining the weekend,” when he eventually came home.
Folks, I was spiralling because after so many years of being told I am controlling and manipulative when I wanted clarity and clear plans and expectations when sharing time and space with other partners, that I felt genuinely afraid to even ask him “what time are you coming home on Friday after your meet up with [new partner]?”
I didn’t admit that to him.
Instead, I told him I felt overwhelmed, afraid to have needs, and exhausted from trying to stay positive all the time. He engaged in the conversation somewhat and asked a few clarifying questions, but after that… almost nothing.
No goodnight. No good morning. No “I’m processing.” No reassurance. No discussion about what the weekend plan now even is.
Meanwhile he still appears to have gone ahead with his plans to meet the other woman tonight. Omitting our usual long drive call, giving me just nothing at all.
I feel devastated because I have never canceled a weekend before in three years. He has canceled on me before because of relationship tension or emotional issues and I never froze him out afterward. But now that I finally hit my own breaking point, I feel completely alone.
Part of me is furious and wants to burn the entire relationship down publicly because I feel like I have spent years overfunctioning emotionally for someone who fundamentally cannot tolerate reasonable relational discomfort long enough to actually repair anything. Another part of me still desperately wants him to call me, hug me, tell me he loves me, and come home tonight.
I honestly don’t know anymore whether I’m dealing with an emotionally avoidant but caring person who is overwhelmed, or someone who has been slowly emotionally abandoning me for years while I kept trying harder and harder to save the relationship - and failing obviously many times.
AITA for feeling super hurt by this silence after canceling the weekend and feeling like this relationship has become emotionally unsustainable for me?