Be Wary of the Mind. It Tries to Fool You.

My mind tries to take me places that I really don’t’ want to go, places that I know I shouldn’t go.  It doesn’t give up easily.  Whether it likes it or not, I am winning.

It has been nearly 3 months since I last saw or spoke to my avoidant girlfriend.  This is the one that I have split up with on 4 different occasions in the last 2 years, with several months typically in between each reunion.  The last split occurred after she again accused me of seeing someone else (multiple someone’s actually).  No, I wasn’t and, in fact, I didn’t want to be with anyone else.  Regardless, that was the last straw for me, I took her home, and we haven’t seen each other since.

With that said, I believe (but I have no proof) that she was projecting, i.e. she is the one that was actually seeing someone else.  I believe that because she had accused me on 5 separate occasions within a few week period that I was seeing someone else, and she had never done that before.  Additionally, a couple of weeks after taking her home that last time, in a moment of weakness I had sent her an email taking responsibility for some different errors on my part, along with expressing some things I thought she might do differently to improve the relationship.  It was a very heartfelt and long (page and a half) expression.  What I got in return was a short paragraph telling me that I was wrong on every count and that there was no way forward (after being together for nearly 8 months during this stint).  I never replied to it.  There was no remorse, no sadness, no regret on her part.  It was a very insensitive way to end a relationship.  Then again, she never really put much into the relationship anyway (just read some of my earlier posts on the avoidant girlfriend for answers to why I say that).

Given her quick and dirty response, and knowing that she doesn’t like to be alone, combined with the fact that we are going on 3 months with no contact, I have concluded in my mind at least that she has indeed gotten involved with someone else.  To further substantiate my conclusion, she did the same exact thing on one of our earlier breakups, and then lied to me about it when we subsequently got back together.

Regardless, my mind has been working overtime to remind me of what I no longer have.  Not only is it telling me the avoidant girlfriend is no longer around, it is trying to get me to miss my narcissistic ex-wife and she has been gone for 4.5 years.  BTW – I did walk past my narcissistic ex on a sidewalk just last week (at work), barely inches apart coming face to face, and it was as if we had never met.  I looked at her at the last second and she was staring straight ahead.  It has been that way ever since I went no contact on her a few years ago.  How dare I do that?  Her response was to do the same.  It doesn’t matter, but it feels very strange to have been that close to someone for so long and now to not even acknowledge one another.

I believe that both of the last two relationships that I have had (the narcissist and the avoidant) were such strong personalities (though wildly different) that I have a hard time not having a never ending supply of things to remember.  Of course, the pleasant memories are the ones that bubble to the surface, and there were plenty of those with both (and especially the narcissist).  My mind tries desperately to get me to reach out, saying to me “C’mon, was it really that bad?  Remember all those fun things, and the touch and the passion and the…”.  Sometimes, I want to agree and ask myself “why not, how bad can it be?”.  I know the answer to that.

Luckily, I have grown a bit over the last few years, grown to understand about co-dependence and narcissism and avoidant attachment styles.  I am able to make the right (although difficult) decision to do nothing, to continue to patiently wait for the right person to enter my life.  My mind doesn’t stop trying though.  It is an addiction being with these kinds of women that I know are wrong for me.  I am doing my best to break the addiction.  So far, even with the recent and overbearing thoughts, I haven’t come close to reaching out.  In fact, I have done pretty good at convincing myself that if my avoidant ex reaches out, which I believe she will, I am in a pretty good place to tell her that she gave me up for the last time.

Why do I believe she will reach out again?  She has EVERY single time we have broken up, typically after she has dated someone else and I have become “the one that got away”, the idealized boyfriend the others can’t seem to measure up to.  A few months after our first breakup, she actually sent me a text telling me to “never change”, that I was “perfect”, and that she was “unintentionally being cruel to me”.  Let that sink in for a moment as one can create a lot of questions out of that one profession of truth.  Hey, I guess I’ve got that going for me, being “perfect”.  I just need to find a “normal” person that will feel that way about me.

This will be the 6th year that I have gone through the holidays without a “significant other”.  I’m not panicked by it like I once was, but I don’t want to get used to it either. I have to continue to control my mind, to reign it back in when it starts thinking stupid thoughts, egging me on to repeat mistakes from the past, knowing full well how it would turn out.  I absolutely take pride in realizing how much I have learned, being able to make the “right” decisions versus letting my emotions rule me.  I won’t be alone forever.  I’m “perfect”, remember?

A Little Different Take on the Avoidant Ex-Girlfriend

I love it when something finally comes together.  Just such a thing occurred for me this morning. An epiphany essentially, and better than that, a bit of relief.  Let me explain.

It has been 6 weeks since I was last with my avoidant ex-girlfriend.  The last time we were together was pretty unpleasant (as I have indicated in earlier posts), and her final email to me (3 weeks ago) was just as unpleasant, essentially putting everything bad about the relationship on me.  No, I never did reply to it (and I feel pretty dang good about that!).

This morning, I actually woke up in a bit of a panic, knowing that I was once again alone and had the rest of the weekend to continue being alone.  I leapt out of bed rather than laying there wallowing in my loss, and all of a sudden my thoughts started changing.  I asked myself specifically what it was that I was panicked over, what I was missing, and the answer was very interesting.

It seems to me that when we are in the throes of a relationship, the goal is to make it better, to make it last, to care for the other person and have them care for us.  It seems that having such a lofty goal is where things went off the rails in my relationship.  Interestingly, the fact that she was avoidant didn’t really matter and, in fact, helped me to get to the place that I needed to get to.  Confused yet?  If it wasn’t that she had an avoidant attachment personality and that I had an anxious attachment personality (that I am working on) that caused things to proceed down a bad path, then what was it?

Answer – it was all of the other things that we simply didn’t see eye to eye on, that we had gaping differences about, that I didn’t see because my eyes were basically shut!  When I really thought about things, I came up with so many reasons that we shouldn’t have been together, so many differences in who we were and what was important to us as both individuals and as a couple.  These are really important things that make or break a relatioship and that I chose to overlook including:

1. Selfishness/Kindness/Greediness.  I have talked over and over in previous posts how in 2+ years, she never paid for a thing, but there was so much more to it.  I never saw her share anything with a stranger, never saw her provide to a charity, never saw her be truly kind to anyone, even her own kids.  She was not a generous person, i.e. ensuring her needs were met always came first.  I ignored it.  In fact, I supported her weakness in all of these areas by ensuring they were taken care of for her, with me making up the difference in her lack.  Her beauty, sadly, could not hide her selfishness.
2. Bitterness.  She was a very bitter person.  While she rarely spoke about her ex-husband, when she did, it was full of hate and bitterness, almost scary.  Nothing wrong in their marriage was ever her fault, and he was just a horrible, distant (ironic, eh?) person.  The dislike in her voice was crystal clear, and brutal.
3. Addiction.  She couldn’t be without her vape.  Even when we would go on trips that included air travel, she would bring a mini-vape that she would sneak out of her purse and use while we were in the air.  She did the same thing in restaurants and bars, even though it is illegal in our state.  She was never without it.  And don’t ever try to tell her that it might be unhealthy.  I only initiated that discussion once.
4. God.  I am a believer, she is not.  In fact, in parallel with her bitterness, speaking about God, or Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit would be met with anger, dislike, and all of the reasons that He had done her wrong.  Again, I learned to avoid the subject.  This one is actually THE most important of our differences as it would have caused many more problems as time progressed.  I believe HE is the one that closed the door on this relationship because I was too weak and scared to do it myself (even knowing that I should).
5. Romance.  She expected EVERYTHING to be about her.  She wanted (expected) flowers, loving emails and texts, her car door opened for her, my phone screensaver to be her, photos of her in my house, looking her in the eye and telling her that I loved her… it was a one way street.  She did not go out of her way to make me feel special or desired.  None of the things that I did was ever reciprocated.  In fact, it seemed as though her goal was to keep me at arms length, craving her attention, wanting more, like a drug dealer taunting an addict.  To be blunt, the only thing she ever complemented me on was my penis.  Talk about feeling a bit cheap.  I guess I had that going for me.

I realize what I have stated is a fairly ugly picture and, yes, she certainly did have some positive qualities.  I need to qualify that statement, as her positive qualities would appear and disappear at will.  I never really knew for sure who I was going to get.  I also understand that we are all broken, every one of us.  We are imperfect and needy creatures, myself included.  What I failed to recognize however is that in my own neediness, I was willing to accept things that most other people probably would not have accepted.  That she was physically beautiful, available to do things (and we did share several interests, especially lake/water related activities) AND willing to do them with me, that was all that I expected.  Sadly, that wasn’t all that I needed (or wanted).

It is humbling to realize just how shallow I was being.  She was gorgeous, she was available, and I had time.  On the surface, those are great.  But there is so much more to us, and to a relationship, than what is on the surface.  It is uncomfortable to look at things realistically, to identify where I had no barriers, or where barriers were just mowed down, and to admit that was just wrong and was not going to work in the long run.

I will overtly and strongly admit, I DO miss the relationship.  Going from always busy to basically an open schedule (and for 6 straight weeks) does tend to get ones attention, to ensuring that I am overwhelmingly aware of just how empty I allow and have allowed myself to be when there isn’t a significant other in my life.  Sadly, for the most part, I do not miss her.  That is a very sobering thing for me to admit, because I really, really WANT to miss her.

Looking at the list of not so pleasant differences identified above, it makes it brutally clear to me just how much I overlooked, just how much I changed my own behavior, my own needs, how much I accepted mediocrity to ensure her needs and desires were met.  That’s not a relationship.  I need to keep working on me as I am clearly not where I need to be.  She will also need to work on her.  It is time to stop trying to change her and accept that is not something that I can ever do.  I can only better myself.