CygnusX1

You're absolutely right. He was already over that edge and that's why he allowed things to change between us. I'm not going to go taking responsibility for scaring him when I did nothing wrong. Asking for a status update on your relationship, especially after "I love you" has been exchanged, is not wrong. I'm not going to shoulder the burden of his phobia.

We never got too deep into the issues he'd had in past relationships. His longest lasted four years. My longest lasted thirteen. I was always open with him about the issues I noticed in past relationships, including disclosing the areas in which I'd faltered. He never opened up about what went wrong in his. And seeing how gaslit I felt when he tried to tell me what love is (when I know damn well what love is) was truly telling. I'm likely one in a series, not one in a million. I just hope he eventually wakes up to losing good women and decides to change instead of keeping the better ones at arm's length.

This is incredibly true and insightful, and something I've learned from my own experience which is quite similar to Bubble's. I do think that grief can become a barrier, but I think it can also be a catalyst that brings about a reaction to underlying issues that lay dormant. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that if he's not ready and willing to give to a relationship for any reason, and you are, then it's clear you're in two different places. It's okay to ask for some clarity as to what you're being patient for when you're partner is grieving and asking for space. I believe that if they love you, they'll be able to tell you that your efforts won't be in vain. If that question cannot be answered, then perhaps it's best to let them go.

Rae, if my ex's dad weren't still with us, I'd think you and I dated the same person. It's disheartening, and in some cases, damaging to one's self esteem to be on the receiving end of an "I love you" that carries with it no responsibility to the recipient. It can make us feel like we don't matter enough to be considered a person of value. Like we're not important enough for someone to put in the work that's required in love. The hard part of moving on, not allowing for second chances, and getting over the pain of lost love, is knowing that at any moment, they may decide to love bomb you. When he and I first decided to put an end to things, I was desperately clinging to the idea that we may reconcile. Now I'm dreading him broaching the subject after he feels "like himself" again, because I'm afraid of how I might react. I just need to be strong, continue to write, continue with my therapy, and find my own worth through overcoming my own grief.

I think he's absolutely commitment phobic. Because in hindsight, I realize that he was pushing me to arm's length before my trip to come see him, and I attributed it to stress or his need for alone time not being fully met (even though he did explicitly tell me that the adjustments I'd made for him were enough). The moment things became more real was the moment he began to push me away, and then my trip and the exchange of "I love you" (which he said first) were the nails in the coffin. During that trip, he'd introduced me to his family. And he called me his "friend" when introducing me to his sister. I'd asked him about it later, trying to get a handle on where we were and what we were doing, and he insisted that he wasn't quite ready to define things. And that hurt, but I let it slide, and let him know that I'd already made the decision in my head and was willing to wait for him to be ready. And now I know that my simple act of asking what we were was enough to push him over the edge. He'd continue to say "I love you" until the day everything ended, even going so far as to say that he always will after things came to a close. But I don't think he understands what love is. His definition comes from a place of ego love, not soul love. If he'd truly wanted a future with me, he'd have been willing to accommodate me while I accommodated him. He rarely if ever acknowledged the pain I am in over dealing with this delayed, complicated grief. I'm not going to say that there's some kind of hierarchy to grieving, because I know that losing a pet can be incredibly devastating. But it's as if he never really put much effort into letting me know that he sees my pain. I lost two parents in the course of a year and never had a chance to grieve either of them, and he made me feel so alone, as if the insurmountable sadness I'm experiencing was somehow less important than his, or that he couldn't be bothered to help me get through it. Love is about meeting your partner where they are. And letting go, I've realized, sometimes means leaving them where they are too. He insists he wants to be friends, and I agreed to that. I've made the mistake of trying to "defend" myself, telling him that I did try to accommodate him and that I feel slighted that he never gave me the chance by speaking up about what was bothering him. I apologized for not having enough insight to trust my intuition and for inadvertently putting pressure on him. His responses have been short. And I've decided not to initiate conversation moving forward. If he wants to be friends, fine, but I'm not going to give any more than he's willing to in terms of ANY interaction, because I did that throughout the whole of our relationship and I'm tired. I'm angry today, because he's made me feel disposable. And you DON'T do that to someone you say you love. I hope it's okay that I share this here, but as part of my healing process, I've decided to start writing again. I wrote a piece on love, because it felt important for me to sort of "itemize" what it means, almost as a way to remind myself to never again settle for someone so emotionally avoidant: I love you?

Thank you for the kind words and for agreeing that I need to protect myself. I know that on some level, perhaps his grief served to amplify the feelings he’d already had with regards to pressure to make a commitment. But in my mind, you don’t say you love someone if you’re not committed to them. That’s not how I define it. I meant it when I said I loved him. To me, it was my way of saying “I am committed to you. I want a future with you. I want you to feel that my heart is a shelter for yours. I want you to be confident that in times when your needs supersede mine, I will do whatever is in my power to meet them.” Yes, I left while he was still grieving. Perhaps I wasn’t patient enough. But he made it clear that the grief didn’t cause the distance, instead it served to make his need for it even more pronounced. Shortly before his loss, he said he believed we make a good team. He said he was excited for the future, for us, and for whatever arrangements might be on the horizon to close the gap of so many miles between us. In my opinion, you don’t say those things to someone to whom you’re not committed. He said that he’s had long-distance relationships in the past that ended in pain, and that’s part of why he ended up hesitating now. But first off, I shouldn’t be punished for how his past relationships went wrong, and though he acknowledged that, it still doesn’t change the fact that he allowed it to sabotage us. And this was another thing he never communicated to me until last night when the end became quite real. Communication is part of loving someone. *Actively* loving someone. And the fact that he couldn’t communicate with me speaks worlds. I won’t say that he saw his grief as an “out” from our relationship, but I do think it provided him with an escape route from addressing the issues he saw with us head-on. It wasn’t until I asked him point-blank what my expectations should be that this all came to light. Too little, too late.

Kayc, thank you for your words. And thank you for always being such a rational voice on this forum. I’ve been perusing it for a bit and you always have amazing insights. Things are pretty much officially done with him now. His interpretation of what it means to love someone is quite different from mine, and it’s evident that he doesn’t see “love” as a verb, rather as a self-serving feeling that doesn’t actually entail any responsibility to the person it’s being said to. And that’s not good enough for me. “I love how you make me feel...” is not the same as saying “I am taking responsibility for making sure that your needs are addressed and you feel seen and understood and safe, and I am committed to you.” He’d said that even before his grief, he’d felt like things were moving too quickly, and I called him out for never having said anything and making me feel like we might have actually been on the same page all along. He apologized for not knowing how to articulate it until it was too late. But it’s beyond that. If you feel something is wrong, you communicate that something feels off, and you allow the chance to figure it out and work through it. You don’t just continue business as usual. Love is not just a set of feelings and emotions. It’s a commitment to communicate with the other and meet them where they are. Anyway, I’m incredibly sad, but mostly because I’m missing the early stages of things when he and I felt connected. I don’t think I miss him for who he is to me now. He said things to me before his loss that made me believe we were headed in one direction, but it’s clear that his grief wasn’t the only barrier that befell us. There were fundamental issues that never had the chance to be addressed because he decided not to communicate. I told him that if he feels in the future that he wants to try again, that we can cross that bridge if we come to it. But I’m not going to hold out hope. I deleted my entire text conversation with him. All 8,400 messages. Every message that professed love, every message that talked about his excitement for the future (which I call into question after he’s now told me that he felt pressured to “define” things and that we were moving too fast and blah blah blah). I don’t want to erase him, but I don’t want to have something to look back on and trick myself into longing for. Even having good memories of him feels painful right now.

A bit of background: My boyfriend and I were long-distance partners, and we've only been together for about six months. During that time, I've been dealing with my own case of delayed grief after having lost my mother and stepfather in 2018, eight months apart from each other. Throughout the entirety of our relationship, he was always incredibly supportive, and we both felt very visible to and understood by each other. I drove out to meet him for the first time last month and we spent an incredible week together, and we said we love each other (he said it first). However, within a couple days of my return home, his very beloved cat fell ill and passed away. It was quite sudden. And as a result, he drew inward, preferring to stick only to texts rather than calls and Facetime, which we had been doing every other day prior to my visit, and they were of great importance to me because they helped me to feel connected to him while coping with the physical distance. He kept asking me to be patient, and it was hard for me to understand why it seemed like he was suddenly beginning to shut me out. Over the course of the past couple weeks, I'd made missteps along the way, asking for reassurance that we'd go back to how we were, etc. I recently asked him to clarify what he was requesting I remain patient for, since it had been three weeks since we'd had any kind of real conversation or felt connected to each other the way we used to. After some digging, it was made clear that while he's grieving, he's feeling very lost and it's hard for him to know what he wants, therefore cannot set any expectations for himself outside of a simple desire to heal. I told him that if he felt he needed to step back entirely from our relationship, that I had to accept that, and he said that's what he needs. He'd previously said he didn't want that, but now he does (which is also hard for me to understand). I told him I'd stop contacting him, and that I hoped I'd hear from him and hoped that this wasn't the end. He said he loves me, and he hopes for the same. The thing is, it's hard for me to fully grasp why he'd want to leave, especially since I'm dealing with my own seemingly insurmountable grief, feeling lost myself, and couldn't imagine pushing away someone I love. The day before this all came crashing down, he'd sent me a photo of the wooden urn in which his cat's ashes have been laid to rest. It was shockingly similar to a box I'd had for 20 years or so that I used for my rock/crystal/sea glass collection. I asked if he wanted my keepsake box as something in which he could display some mementos - collar, toys, etc. - with the urn, and he said he would like it. I sent it off, and it's set to arrive today. If I don't hear from him upon receipt of it, I feel like that'll be an indication that this is the end. Because it was something I sent with love and care, and he knows it, and to receive no acknowledgment of it would be painful for me. I'm sorry for the word vomit. I'm just scared that I've lost him forever, and that was not what I wanted when I told him it was okay for him to step back and that I'd leave him alone. Even though he says he loves me, it's hard to reconcile that with him not wanting me as part of his life, and though I know this is still fresh and raw, I wish I could just breathe and say "move on", rather than building up hope in my heart and then crying my eyes out when it suddenly turns into a void. I'd rather accept it, feel it, and eventually give myself closure, rather than oscillate between sorrow and hope, but I am struggling to do so because I can't know if he still thinks of me as a potential part of his future. I need some advice. Do I continue to hold out hope that he'll reach out to me and attempt to start things back up again? Is it stupid to do so, and should I just accept that this probably is the end even though he says he loves me?