I knew it was just a vacation…
30 hours to the next separation.
We live in different continents so after this vacation things are bound to take a different turn when we leave.
I know how this is gonna go way too well, I have lived through it several times.
Option A:
- Tomorrow we cry as we leave
- For two weeks he misses me like crazy
- Week 3 he’s over it
Option B:
- Tomorrow we cry as we leave
- For two weeks he misses me like crazy
- I manage not to go crazy when he pushes me away week 3 by pretending I’m actually cool with a life of not planning and not mentioning seeing each other soon
- We see each other again and possibly loose it on the next detachment cycle.
Is it worth hoping once again for an option C?
I’m feeling a little bit Bridget Jones at the moment but — wrong movie for the moment.
I was doing so well…
…until it hit me that it was going to be over in two days.
I thought I was so cool, so on top of things, so connected to myself, until anxiety came knocking at my door.
It was soon going to be over.
I was soon going to have to reset my life alone.
There is no going around it, I will need to rebalance alone.
I don’t want to be alone anymore. Especially not when I actually HAVE someone I love.
I want to be with someone who says ‘don’t worry, I will fly out with you’. Or ‘come with me’.
I need reassurance, I need plans, I need next steps, I need a window on the future, even if that future never actually comes to life.
I need to be able to hope.
Aren’t the feeling of safety and unconditional love the best parts about being in a relationship? Maybe they are just an illusion, I know, but I kind of like to think it’s possible anyways…sometimes you just need to believe.
For lack of better options, I activated ‘Self-Sabotage Mode’, otherwise known as ‘How To Loose Your Avoidant in 24h’
Like any respectable anxious person in the presence of uncertainty would do, I opted for messing things up before they mess themselves up naturally.
After all, why wait?
Having watched every romcom out there, I knew where to begin.
In case you also want to preemptively end your relationship, here is a quick guide on how to do it (it only takes 24–48 hours):
- STEP 1: Bring up the past at the most inconvenient time. Right when there are only two nights left together and they have explicitly asked NOT to bring up the past, take it all out, bring up everything that had gone wrong in your relationship. Personally, I managed to do it in a funny way so I didn’t get sacked as an ex girlfriend right away. He managed to survive this somehow, but I was not willing to give up so quickly…
- STEP 2: Activate silent treatment when the other person is at their best. Right when you notice your partner has put their fourth gear on, that one gear you had never seen before, dose off into complete shutdown mode. Not a smile, no returning physical contact, don’t look for kisses. When they ask, don’t answer just shake your head to signal everything is okay but show, deep in your eyes, the amount of pain you’re in. In the meantime torture yourself mentally — ask your internal video editor to play the ‘all the ways in which you will suffer after this vacation’, possible the ‘worst of’ edits comprising all of the previous breakup edition plus a few new un-lived ideas. This will guarantee you look like an abandoned pet and ensure to make them feel like the worst human in the world. Since your avoidant already feels not being good enough this should trigger even their deepest rooted fears.
- STEP 3: Ruin their romantic surprise by talking about every way in which they cannot give you the future you deserve. This is the final step, my friends. If you want to, you can also add in the part where you insist on defining exactly how this relationship will play out in order for the two of you to be together when you’re 90 years old. Talk about your dreams to get married, to have kids, to be with someone truly, deeply. Really support them in envisioning how they will be completely unable to jump shit. Help them, feeling trapped.
At this point, any respectable avoidant will want to run for the hills.
Mine did.
I believe the part of me doing this was actually trying to save me. It was trying to save me from going through everything all over again, the love, the fun, the dreams, the let down, the disappointment and the inevitable separation depression and breakup anxiety.
I actually appreciate this part of me. I thank this part of me. I hear you my darling, you are there for me, I appreciate the effort. I am trying to let you f-this up so hard, but the other part is stronger than me and I am not sure I can resist it…
How to fix your stupid mistake and keep your avoidant in place until the next abandonment cycle
This is typically where the other part of you, the one who DOES NOT want to be alone even if this person is completely wrong for you, will step in trying desperately to un-do the damage.
In my case it came in right after I left the table out of nerves.
You should be THANKING ME for coming to get you for the 47th time rather than telling me we can’t plan anything in life and that you’re not sure you’re quite ready yet. THANKING ME.
I heard my self say before I stormed off to the bathroom to regain control of my nerves.
All of a sudden my chest began to hurt. I felt completely destroyed, sad, anxious. I could not loose him.
I felt like I already had. I did absolutely everything I know he hates. As he began saying how maybe it was best to end things something came out of his mouth I had never heard him say before: that b
We both cooled off.
Instead of hurting each other more, we stopped to listen to each other, each still immersed in our own fears, with our own demons to tame, with our own stories to merge.
He asked me not to put him in a box. Avoidant, what does that even mean?
He asked me to listen to his experiences, to his past, to have curiosity, to respect his path of self development. His background is different and my trying to find answers in his behaviors in psychology felt like a reductive solution to him.
I understood.
I had shared over the course of the previous 24 hours what I was thinking and feeling. I felt heard.
Maybe we found each other in a new land: the land of the unwritten
It could be that this is all in my head, that in fact we are in the same place where we have always hung out, the magic world of A&A where there is so much love and so little possibility to help that love come to life.
It could also be that in this island we were discovering together we had decided we wouldn’t walk back and forth on the main path anymore, that it was time to take a little romantic side street that could lead us to a new square, to a hill, to the beach or potentially back exactly where we started.
We had the option to stay put. We chose otherwise.
We chose to give each other a chance.
I could feel we were both scared, scared to get hurt and to hurt the other, scared to stay stuck in the same place and scared to adventure somewhere new that could result in a big waste of time and energy.
We were both scared for our hearts.
Mine was hurting so much already just at the prospect of loosing him I knew that, with a few more precautions than the ones I held on to the past 47 times, I needed to just stand by his side and face the little unpaved road we had spotted. We both knew it was time to give up the direction we were pointing to and discover a path only him and I could walk.
I brought our ‘love fern’ with us and took the first step.
Maybe I could start by changing the title, maybe it could become:
How I Tried To Loose My Guy In 24 Hours, And Ended Up Closer Than We Ever Were.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
From The Good Men Project on Medium
 |
 |
 |
 |
***
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—–
Photo credit: Samuel Rodriguez on Unsplash
