Boyfriend says he can't be in a relationship *trigger*

My boyfriend of 1.5 years has avoidant personality. He told me he can't be in a relationship. He says he can't handle it and needs to be alone. He has said this before, but I could always coax him back quite easily. Now I can't. He isn't responding to my texts or emails, or only rarely.

The first bad sign was a month ago when we had a disagreement and he broke things off and didn't contact me for two weeks. I finally contacted him and we sort of got back together, but he was reticent.

Now I fear he's leaving me for good, but it's hard to know for sure because the nature of our relationship is that it has involved short-term break-ups before due to his psychological issues.

What I want to know is whether it's typical for people with this disorder to withdraw for periods of time and then come back again (and if so how long the periods of withdrawal might last), or if his ignoring my emails means it's really over forever. It's so hard to believe he could lose his feeling for me (he's being really cold to me now) because we've been very much in love.

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

How does he respond going by the past breakups, who makes the first move to rekindle?

It's common for people with avpd to test others to see if they can be trusted. Maybe this is a test. But I think you should just take him at his word when he says he can't be in a relationship.

I guess it's been mostly me, but he's always said he wanted to see me when I did it, even though he said it might not be good for us.

On the other hand, there have been times when I've broken up with him, in which case he's been the one to contact me.

One reason why it's so hard to know what he really wants is that he says doesn't want things but only responds to what others want. His psychologist says he does want but that he can only be in touch with that for fleeting amounts of time. For example, on June 15 (just over a month ago) he told me he wanted to be with me forever.

Although we have a hard time when we're apart because he doesn't like to communicate by phone and because written communication leads to misunderstandings, when we're together our time has always been so special. I mean, we can't even go to a cafe without sitting on the same side of the table to be close to each other, and this has not been just a physical thing.

Hi, I think I can sorta relate to your boyfriend here.

Don't take these assumptions as fact, but from my experiences, this seems likely to me. I have, however, never been in an actual relationship, I am just going off of how I act in potential relationships and trying to predict how that behavior may carry over.

It seems to me that he is deeply conflicted on the stage of if it is "right" for the two of you to be in a relationship. I think he really does like/love you. I would take the confession that he wants to be with you forever as the truth.

However, I think he is having a hard time with rather he is worth you. He probably has very low self-esteem, and that is being combined with the fact that he likes you so much which creates a conflict of "I am so horrible, but she is so amazing. She deserves something better than me, and she is delusional for staying with me." He may be fully aware that you like him as much as he likes you, but he may not trust that your decision of of sound judgement.

It is almost a dissociation of the feeling of loving someone, and the feeling of jelousy. If he is like me, his anger and jealousy may be partially repressed(or maybe lacking, I don't really know which), and so he is not directly feeling the jealousy as a "I need her her to want me", but as a "I want her to be well", but the conflict is created in that "I am not good for her". To me it creates the situation of "I want her to be in the best situation that she could possibly be in. However, my being with her is bad for her, so I should prevent it. But by interacting so positively with her when she likes me, I am making her like me more and leading her on. So I cannot interact with her, or else the outcome for her will be negative. The best situation would be that she does not like me." Yet, he still does like you. There is a part of him that wants to be with you, but your perceived benefit of being without him overrides his desire to be with you. It probably seems strange to others that you would like someone and thus conclude that they should not like you, but it is a result of this kind of thinking.

I don't really know if this is helpful at all, or if it accurately applies to him, but all I can say is that I hope everything works out for both of you. There need to be a way for him to raise his self-esteem, but I don't really know how he could go about that, it is not simple.

I suspect that you will get back together. I suspect that he will become lonely, and he will think about you, and worry about you making worse decisions without him, and that he does indeed need to be with you for the best to happen, but it is a difficult cycle filled with a lot of internal conflict for him. I hope you both can break out of the cycle and have him assured that he is the best for you.

Thanks so much for your input, brainslug. What you say may well be true, I'm not sure. But I do know that he sees me better than him. Sometimes when he's with me he looks at me and shakes as if he's so enamored, as if he's with a movie star or something. (I mean, I have been compared to Jodie Foster many times, but I'm also about to turn 50, so it's hard to believe I can be so goddess-like, even though he has in fact told me I am a "goddess" to him.)

But right now we're pretty much broken up. He professes angrily his "right" to live a life of "loneliness and isolation." He says it's the "less painful" way for him to live. Something has clearly triggered a tightening grip on his certainty of that, even though I don't think he was always so certain and up till recently he has wanted me too much to let go.

Of the many texts between us today, during which he refused to see me, one of them said the following: "I appreciate your intent to help me but nobody can help me now. I'm unable to have any contact or relationship with anyone now. Contact with people is very difficult for me, and for every satisfaction I get a pound of pain. Even this written contact with you triggers inner turmoil that I can't afford. Even without contact with people it's difficult for me to survive. It is much more difficult if I do contact people.

It's odd how he seems to refer to me as just any other relationship, as if I haven't been his girlfriend for a year and a half. It's even harder to understand how someone who has such a hard time interacting with people could have found me and pursued me a year and a half ago with such fervor and determination to win me over.

I think you need to let go of this man and move on. Unless you are a drama-junkie the bottom line is that the relationship is unfair to you. Although I hate to bring it up, maybe his feelings have changed and he doesn't have the guts to just tell you that outright.

Well, you have to remember that internal conflict is the theme with us. It is really impossible to read him fully in moments like this.

I really wish I could help you both more. It is quite possible that his feelings have changed, but you are right, he contradicts himself in his actions... I don't know. You really shouldn't worry yourself about which actions represent his true feelings, or what his true feelings are. I, and I think most of us that behave this way, obsessively cover our emotions as a defense mechanism. You can't be sure which is correct, if he is covering something, he will be absolutely sure that it is undetectable.

You should consider moving on. Maybe you shouldn't move on too quickly. Don't go and get serious with another guy tomorrow or something, but do try to go ahead and start getting over him.

The greatest realization about avoidance that I have had is based around these situations. At one time, I thought that me avoiding was best for everyone, but in the last 6 months, I have come to realize that avoidant behavior is not harmless at all. It hurts people, as evidenced by my experience, and stories like this.

I am sorry that you have to experience this situation. Don't take it personally or like you failed him. It was situation, and maybe things will get better, but maybe not. His mind has a potential to be a very dark place, and I assure you, regardless of how he now feels about you, he would not want that to have a negative effect on you.

Maybe alone is the best way for him to live. If he is around 50 years old, he has far more experience than I do. If it is not, then you have to trust that he will realize it, and that it is out of anyone's control, even his.

Best wishes to both of you.

If his feelings have changed about me, they have changed suddenly.

It's so easy for people to tell me to move on, but I've suffered so much loss in my life already. I was widowed at 38, I was in a relationship for four years (2002-2006) in France that failed because of a guy's custody case (included in that were 3 failed IVF attempts, so I am childless, not by choice), then another 4-month relationship in California in 2010, and now this one with this man whom I love as much as I loved my husband who died. It's extremely hard to meet men at my age, even less so those who are intelligent, analytically minded, conversant, and loving, like my R has been this past year and a half. I thought we would be together forever, and I just can't take anymore grief... I can't face it, so I don't want anymore men. I just want my life and my misery to be over.

Here is the last text I wrote to him last night (and probably the last correspondence I'll have unless he has a miraculous change of heart):

"You say it’s a less painful way to live [i.e., being in isolation]. I guess you feel this way now; but I’m not sure you’ve always felt this way and it seems like something has triggered a tightening grip on you certainty of that. I wish you’d given your therapist more of a chance and not worried that I contributed funds to the early sessions. Somehow I always believed our love would survive forever. The feeling has been too strong to believe otherwise, the preciousness of the experience in your company too magical to deny. I hope you won’t forget the good between us. It’s hard to imagine how I’ll suppress the memories of all the special times we’ve shared (at cafes, sitting on the same side of the booth, confiding in each another, your smile, the feeling of your caress), or the time I wanted to spend with you in Yosemite for my birthday this month. I miss you. Goodbye, my love."

And does he express any remorse for telling me in June he wanted to be with me forever and then ripping that joy away from me just over a month later? Does he express any remorse for my lost year and a half when he knew always that I wanted a committed relationship? Does he care about my loss and sadness in this?