u/Suspicious-Bet-4950

So my ex recently has been doing some weird stuff. Mind you he was very avoidant, this has been a year no contact, it ended with him being “confused” blah.

I’ve been noticing strange behavior lately, such as random accounts (that are him because I can tell by phone number) or his sister or a friend of his sending me a request on Instagram (mind you never got to meet them), me going to an activity at church (we have friends in common) and him assisting the next classes when he was the most lukewarm person ever, whenever I say something there he immediately speaks up too and tries to contradict what I said, going to a supermarket close to home and being on places he knows I’m going to bump him into when he lives far away, stuff like that.

Is this common in avoidants? What’s the goal or am I imagining stuff?

There seemed to be a recurring theme where other women were somehow always present in the relationship, even when there was no actual intention to pursue them or a concrete third party.

He would make jokes like:
“There are other women who want me.”
“If you don’t give me enough attention, the other girls will come and get me.”

He even said he liked the idea of me getting into arguments with some of his female friends or an ex because he liked things being “intense.”

He talked about jealousy and said that if someone becomes too jealous or controlling, it can push him toward him chasing someone else. “If something becomes too stressful I may look for an affective alternative”

He also tended to talk about past women in terms of what they lacked compared to what he wanted: one was too jealous, another expected too much, another was attractive but didn’t have enough ambition, etc.
And then there was something that really made me think there was a bigger pattern.

He once said that if a relationship became too stressful, he could eventually look for an “alternative romantic connection.”

That wording really stuck with me.
Because why is the alternative always another person?
Why not:

“If this relationship is making me miserable, I’ll take some time alone and figure out what I actually want.”
Instead, the imagined solution seemed to be another romantic or emotional connection.

And apparently, after previous breakups, he tended to get involved with other women fairly quickly rather than spending a significant amount of time alone processing the breakup.

So I’m wondering whether this is actually a recognizable pattern. Almost like:

relationship becomes stressful → other women become psychologically salient → “maybe there’s another option” → relationship ends or becomes unbearable → connect with someone else → temporary relief → repeat.

My ex and I had a real relationship. He explicitly asked me to be his partner, I said yes, he called me his partner/girlfriend, talked about “our relationship,” and his friends and family knew about me. It wasn’t a situationship.

Long story short for reference, he later denied that we’d formally been together, which caused a huge rupture. I tried to work through it, and when I asked for a timeout, he sent me loving paragraphs every day until I eventually forgave him. Then, bizarrely, he became icy cold, started talking as if I was some stranger and asked me for advice about flirting with other women.

When I cited him to break up with him he “had a panic attack” and cried in such a hysterical way, begged for an extra day to “decide” (lol I agreed) but the next day he became completely detached, talking to me almost like a casual acquaintance. When I asked to cut communication, he protested at first, but then accepted and said he had no clarity and didn’t want to regret being with me and that’s why he couldn’t give me a clean yes to continue (mind you I was the one having a SHIT TON of patience with his tantrums, sarcasms, jealousy scenes, sulking in my graduation, arguments fabricated by him, cheating…)

What hurts is that I may never get the apology or understanding I feel I deserved. He may never realize how much his actions affected me, and there may never be any “karma.”

How do you make peace with that? How do you accept that someone can hurt you, walk away relatively peacefully, and never fully understand what they did
while still choosing to move forward yourself? It’s lik I can’t have peace until he understands or has some kind of “karma” and that keeps me stuck.

I seriously can’t reconcile the man who once said wanted to “be my pilar”, wanted only me, was “all his and he was all mine”, and “never be afraid of telling me how you feel baby, we can always work out everything” blah blah at the end of the relationship he literally denied having asked me to be his gf when he did a whole fuss to do it, and at the end asked me for advice how to seduce other women.

It’s like my mind cannot make both match. Avoidants TRULY deactivate this brutally or is this narcissism?

He was selfish, manipulative af and put in basically 0 effort, lied pathologically, moved the goalposts, backtracked on commitment, was sarcastic, avoided hard convos and looked for validation all the time.

But in my (wounded?) head I feel that when he finds his dream girl or a girl he likes more he will suddenly be perfect, give in effort, won’t DARVO or give her all the love he didn’t give me and genuinely commit. Like a “he’s not that into you” sort of thing.

How do I work though this?

Nada, salí con bastantes traumas de una relación tóxica. Al final todo terminó como el orto y el desentendiéndose, etc. No hubo cierre en pocas palabras.

Cuestión que ya pasó un año y me está costando banda salir adelante. Laburo, estoy bien pero hay una tristeza de fondo que no me saco con nada, una angustia fuerte, enojo random y ganas de solo romper contacto 0 para putearlo, sentirte estafada y a la vez que lo extrañás, siento que quedé estancada en el año pasado y me pone tensa que pasa el tiempo y no salgo de ahí.

No puedo ni siquiera tener interés en otra persona y tengo momentos random de ansiedad y de aún pensar en eso y llorar, nostalgia. Como si somáticamente eso se quedó ahi

Qué tipo de terapia recomiendan hacer? La verdad no quiero ir con una psicoanalista que me tenga 15 años sin resolver nada. Me encantaría poder superar todo esto gradualmente.

Nothing, just that. Been on dates. It’s been almost a year my ex and I broke up, the whole story is in my post history.

Can’t fully connect with anyone. I carry this ghost loyalty to my ex who was trash towards me. I can’t let go of the memories and the injustice, the unsaid words. I can’t spend a day not thinking about them and how unfair it is that he hasn’t faced any kind of karma. And trying to “make him understand what he did” is like talking to a wall, a circular conversation that goes anywhere because he rarely admits fault to anything basically.

Sometimes I find myself thinking about him on the gym, with friends, doing whatever. My head cannot reconcile that the person who was so loving, affectionate, adoring was also the cold asshole who cut me off coldly and went for new women super fast.

At the same time I cannot date without this skepticism or just end up cancelling the date altogether even if they are awesome, it’s like I have 0 interest on them even if in another moment of my life things would have been different.

I fear never being able to move on. It’s been a year, and a part of me is still waiting for something from him that may never arrive.

I was with my ex for a year. He asked me to be his girlfriend at a restaurant, his friends/family knew about me, we celebrated anniversaries, had pictures, etc. He called me his girlfriend/partner and talked about “our relationship.” He explicitly called me “his partner”.

But the relationship had issues. whenever I brought up any issue that was bothering me, he would react really badly, become defensive, rude, say I was “draining” him, that we were always having serious conversations, that he wanted peace, etc. He also sometimes distorted my words implying I said things I didn’t.

No matter how sweet I was he would label me as harsh, even id I tried talking with a baby voice. The more I tried to talk things through, the worse his reaction seemed to get, and I often ended up apologizing for “hurting and offending him” which was crazy. Whenever I tried having a remotely serious convo he’d get all tense and he’d ghost me for a day or hours.

He also said things like:
“You don’t let me be myself.”
“With you I have to think about what I say.”

He made sarcastic comments about things I’d done months earlier, mocking me, joking about him going after other women, or other women chasing him, and when I reacted, the focus often became my reaction rather than what had triggered it, saying things like “I’m your partner and you have to respect me” or that “he was just joking”.

One day I talked about a very short trip to Europe I planned doing before I met him. I even thought about his thesis and how I would go when he was going to be busy doing it. He sulked and asked me if he could do the same. I said that would bother me since I wanted us to spend more time together and that I planned doing that before I met him. He sulked and kept insisting the problem was I didn’t allow him to do the same I was doing.

He also seemed very resistant to compromise, saying things like:

“Do I really have to give up that much for this relationship?”

Then one day when we were having a serious conversation, he suddenly said:

“You never actually said yes to being my partner. We never had a formal conversation”.

I was completely blindsided. I asked for space, and he begged me not to leave, cried, sent huge messages, said he loved me, said it was a mistake, that that didn’t reflect what he felt and wished he could erase that moment because we had been doing so well and he regretted tarnishing the moment where he asked me to be his gf, blah

I eventually forgave him. But everything went downhill, he started being all cold and reclutant to talk about what happened and asked me to “leave it behind”, that “he didn’t know why he did it” and asking me stuff like “what are you going to do for your birthday?” as if I was some distant acquintance.

And then, shortly after I forgave him, he literally asked me how to flirt with girls on Instagram while calling me his girlfriend in the same conversation. 💀
I ended it. He cried and asked for one more day, saying “how did we get to this point?”. I gave it to him as I was sooo blind.

He ended up breaking up with me the next day (lol I was the one who initiated the breakup the day before wtf!!!) saying he had no clarity, that he didn’t want to regret staying with me or saying no and wanting to come back and that he had no resentment towards me. (Dude YOU hurt me???)

The aftermath was awful and my anxiety/panic became extreme. Two days later he was on Tinder.

What confuses me is that I genuinely don’t think he never cared. He called me his partner, talked about our relationship, wanted to build things together, cried during the breakup, said he loved me, and seemed devastated that we’d reached that point.

So I’m wondering: does this sound like avoidant attachment, emotional immaturity or wtf?

Tbh as title says, even though he lied left and right, manipulated, gaslighted and avoided constantly serious conversations by telling me “these talks drain me” and becoming aggresive whenever I brought up something serious…part of me fears he’ll be good to a girl he likes more.

It’s like a part of me thinks he was mean to me because maybe he didn’t like me enough and he’ll be different to the love of his life, even though rationally I know it’s not the case. Someone else feels the same?

Chicas entiendo que está bueno desahogarse y buscar una validación de saber si terminar o no con un gil.

Pero a veces veo posts que tiran tipo

“Pasó inserte la cosa más irrespetuosa y chota que existe con mi novio. Tiene 15 chongas en paralelo, me faja y no labura hace 10 años, lo mantengo yo. Me ama? Lo dejo?”

No hace falta que alguien te falte el respeto 10 veces para dejarlo. Ya en el momento que la persona te está DEMOSTRANDO con acciones y palabras de mierda que no te quiere, lo tenés q dejar. Los tipos no aprenden porque los retes, te enojes, etc. Entiendo el apego emocional pero todo tiene un límite.

no es tan complicado ser fiel, no seguir minas, ser medianamente coherente, laburar (o buscar laburo), hablarte con amor, pensar en vos antes de hablar o actuar

Si alguien te trae más estres y momentos de mrd que paz, dejalo. No importa que “pero tiene momentos” o “hace 15 años me regaló la rosa de Leo Mattioli 🥹”, lo que importa es que te demuestra hoy y a diario, no en picos emocionales random donde le da miedo a que te vayas con otro o se le pare o le agarre culpa

No digo que una relación no tenga roces, momentos difíciles, dificultades personales, bla. Me refiero a cuando el otro empieza a tener acciones chotas y la cosa no cambia. Te está robando tiempo, energía y amor que se lo podrías estar dando a algo o a alguien que posta se lo merezca

Tengo amigos y flia hombres que se desviven por las minas que aman y ni en pedo pensarían en hacer boludeces porque valoran a quien tienen al lado. No piensen que no se pueden encontrar en el camino a alguien así

Nada, se los digo para que nos empoderemos un poco y no dejemos que un pajero nos maneje las emociones 🤍

Bueno nada, me viene pasando que desde una relación muy tóxica que tuve el año pasado donde no podía plantear cosas sin que se generaran discusiones explosivas o la ley del hielo, (él me terminó cagando y hablando cosas bastante nefastas de mi a mis espaldas pero eso es otro mambo, la verdad que el sujeto me lastimó muchísimo) vengo teniendo formas disfuncionales de enfrentarme al mundo

Me doy cuenta que no puedo sostener conversaciones difíciles o desacuerdos sin huir o necesitar espacios. Es como que no me lo puedo bancar emocionalmente y me supera, prefiero fingir demencia de lo que ocurre porque un simple enfrentamiento me trae mucha verguenza

A su vez me pasa que no puedo profundizar en amistades o gente nueva que conozco, pongo distancia o no quiero que me conozcan del todo, me siento muy incómoda si empieza a haber confianza

Con tipos nuevos pateo salidas, cancelo a último minuto o me doy cuenta que no estoy presente del todo ni en el momento, como que si avanza bien siento la necesidad de cortarlo o buscar otra persona y que la cosa no pase de coqueteo superficial porque ni siquiera quiero sexo, una vez iba a verme con uno y quedé como congelada, sin querer lo dejé plantado pero no se ni porqué, no podía ni rechazarlo, muy raro realmente, pero no por algo de el si no porque yo estaba freezeada de verdad

Si estoy en un grupo mucho tiempo siento la necesidad de buscar otro grupo y cosas así, como que no puedo permanecer en un lugar mucho tiempo o incluso en silencio conmigo misma mucho tiempo

Les ha pasado? Como lo solucionan?

9 months later and I’m still stuck. To be honest, I never had the opportunity to tell him all his truths in his face and how he made me feel because I was so dissociated and blind at the end. I ended up just “accepting” the breakup “peacefully” and that “nobody was to blame” when he devalued, cheated on me, denied the relationship, etc etc

But I still have this ache in my heart that I would like to idk, it sounds immature but a part of me wants some sort of karma, revenge or just having a chance to talk and tell him to f off.

Also the ache of feeling he might give his everything to other girl and get all the loyalty and attention I begged because she might have some magical better whatever gives me such a terrible sensation.

Any of you on the same boat?