Hi Jim, I haven’t forgotten about you. The situation with my sister is very bad.

I hope you’re well. Keep up the good work with overcoming your vices. I’m proud of you for working on yourself.

Hi LiS,

these findings about avoidant people are interesting to me, not because current LO is avoidant ( I think), but because they explain a lot of behavior from past LOs. I even got explanations exactly like that from some of them, I just didn’t believe them fully because I‘m so different.
They make sense in a twisted way. Still, nothing is set in stone and maybe she could be convinced to send a tiny signal.
Or you cannot bear it anymore at some point and will end it.
Or time and circumstances have to step in some years down the road when she might leave for another job.

The question is, do you want to carry on like that for two years. This is a real question, not to push you to end it.
I have this fear of waking up some day and realizing having wasted years on the wrong things. (The most common thing I hear is not having spent enough time with children as long as they were still living at home.) I don’t want you to wake up and think you wasted so much precious time on suffering because she did her predictable avoidant thing.
But maybe you get just that bit more out of it than you suffer and that will carry you through until something from the outside cuts in.

Sorry to sound a bit bleak.
Usually I believe in loving people and connections between people as one of the most important thing in life. But sometimes I suddenly doubt it and ask myself if we do it all only to get something for ourselves out of it, if I imagine for example the special connection to LO and he doesn’t spend a minute thinking of me or missing me, he just needs something validating from time to time and also an anchor to this town while he hasn’t decided if he stays or not.

And me, that I just got into this habit of limerence because of mood regulation etc and it attached itself randomly on LO so I get my usual amount of rumination and mood regulation out of it, and nothing has got anything to do with the persons or real love.

Ok, deep down I know it’s not true, maybe a bit of it, but not the whole sarcastic thing- we do care for each other, but there might have sat this limerent anxiety on top of it that has more to do with each person themselves than caring for the other.
I can only speak for myself of course, but since you said that you‘ve had LEs in the past, maybe there‘s also something about it that hasn’t got anything to do with loving your LO and all with yourself.
And that we should solve this instead of indulging in our LEs.

Mila, thanks for starting a new comment down here, definitely much easier!

I’ve spent a lot of time recently reading about the psychology behind avoidant deactivation, stonewalling, ghosting, things like that. Probably the most interesting thing I found on the internet were some Reddit posts where people with avoidant attachment styles answered questions about what they think and how they feel when they ghost someone out of their lives.

Of course everyone’s response was a little different, but a common theme tended to be something like this:

Stage 1 – simple avoidance. Partners have an argument or a conflict or feel guilty about something, and it’s easier to avoid the other person than to confront it head on, because that’s really uncomfortable to an avoidant. At this point the avoidant doesn’t intend to ghost their partner forever- they’re just procrastinating a difficult conversation. “I’m having a rough day already, I’ll wait and talk to them tomorrow”… and suddenly a lot of tomorrows have piled up without talking.

Stage 2 – at this point it’s clear to both partners that there’s been a rupture in the relationship. Most of the avoidants reported being acutely aware of how much pain they were causing their partner and felt absolutely terrible about it. But for the avoidant, the knowledge that they were causing such pain to their partner led to deep feelings of shame which further paralyzed them and made it even more difficult to reach out and re-establish contact.

Stage 3 – the avoidant rationalizes it to themselves by telling themself things like “surely they’re over me by now”, “they’ve probably forgotten all about me and moved on”, “they never could have really loved me because I’m fundamentally not lovable” and “they’re actually better off without me in their life, I’m such a flawed person that they’ll be happier without me”.

Unfortunately I can easily imagine my LO passing through all of these stages with me someday… in fact I think she already has in the past when she’s disappeared for a month or two at a time only to later reappear. It’s actually a really painful thing for both people involved and one of those tragedies in human relationships where both people love and care for each other deeply but find themselves suffering alone on opposite sides of a widening chasm that neither can find a way to cross.

Anyway, odds are that this past week of silence won’t be the final ending, although it could be. And if it isn’t, then the next time could be, or the next time, or the next time. It’s a pretty horrible state to be in! I think there are two things for me to focus on… one is to try to really insist that she and I work on our communication skills to try to understand each other better and avoid misunderstandings and relationship breakdowns as much as possible. And the second is to always remind myself that I was fine (kind of) before I met her, and I’ll be fine (at least kind of) after she does eventually leave me. And that as painful as the eventual end will be (and oh lord I know it’s going to hurt so bad) it will also bring with it peace and clarity and a return to a more normal life.

Scrolling got too much for me, I open a new post.

„It could very well be a neurologically ingrained limerent habit to get anxious.“
I agree that anxiety is a main feature of limerence as I define it for myself. And that maybe we train it on us ourselves during limerent episodes.
It will always find a way to creep in.

„ I do suspect that when our relationship finally does end, it’ll end with her just disappearing without a word – she’ll just stop talking to me and won’t ever explain it and she’ll just be gone from my life forever.“
You think she could be that cruel? Either she has to think you are a superhuman being that cannot be hurt because you are the caring one in this relationship, or she has to be selfish to behave that way. She is accountable for her behavior towards you, however secret this relationship may be.
I do hope she wouldn’t be that immature.
I guess it would be more like that: she vanishes and after a while you get an explaining message with apologies but without any means to reply or contact her.
Sound bleak, but on the other hand, there are not many options open. A tearful personal goodbye is a danger of rash things happening, mind changing, whatever.
I actually feel for you. I‘m not sure I could stand this without freaking out. But maybe it’s the one thing that could get you to end things and finally have a single happy life instead of a painful double?

I’m ruminating at the moment about what would happen if LO decides to stay.
I think we are so different in some things that it would clash if we stay so close. He’s got these traits that exasperate me sometimes and would annoy me if I had to bother with them too often. The other way round, he for sure doesn’t like everything about my behavior either.
Like IMHO said, it’s bound to be like that if you stay too close to anyone, be it family or friends.
At the moment we are carried by low contact in person and by this anxiety of loss.
We rely a bit too much on each other for validation, if we go on like this when he stays here, it’ll mean some disappointment and trouble, I’m almost sure of that, especially if we stay limerent, meaning that we expect things from the other person to make us feel good.
But most probably I won’t have to deal with that.

@Mila: It could very well be a neurologically ingrained limerent habit to get anxious. In the few moments he finds me alone now and then, LO makes gestures that show it’s reciprocated….Then the rest of the time we’re not alone and the mask goes up. It’s like I don’t see the forest for the trees, because the anxiety and rumination come back. It drives me crazy! It’s like I don’t trust my own instincts or impressions. It doesn’t seem to matter so much if we know if the LE is reciprocated or not. If we are certain, then we worry a lack of response means the LO has changed their mind. If there are SO’s, then we should expect–even hope–they would change their mind eventually, but our hearts don’t work that way.

Hi Mila!

I think you and I have the two opposite sides of the coin. You have relative stability and constancy, but lack the emotional intensity that you crave. I get moments of pretty intense emotional connection, but that inevitably comes at the expense of stability. We both crave what we lack, but I think that we don’t want to give up what we have either. We both want a relationship with our LOs that has intense emotional connection that continues at the same level day after day, but we still don’t want it to threaten our relationships with our SOs. But in reality, it’s probably pretty close to impossible to have all of those things – an extramarital relationship that was emotionally intense on a consistent basis would almost certainly progress to a full-blown affair that would destroy our marriages.

In my case, I know that I tend to get frustrated with my LO and her silent spells, but I also recognize that these are probably a necessary feature of our relationship to bring things down a few levels whenever the heat starts rising too high. The alternative would be for us to avoid letting the temperature rise so high that she feels the need to withdraw, but we just can’t seem to be able to do that. And if I’m being honest, I probably have to own the bulk of the responsibility for that – I just can’t seem to be satisfied with a casual/superficial relationship with her and I always find myself doing things that increase the closeness and intensity, and then her feelings get way too strong so she feels no choice but to hide for awhile.

I’ve often wondered why she can’t just send me a quick message saying something like “sorry, I need to take a break for a bit, can we check in next Wednesday?” That would help me a lot, and doesn’t seem like it would be too hard for her. But that’s assuming she’s in a calm and rationale state during those withdrawals and that she’s making a conscious decision to withdraw. I know that’s not actually the case – she’s told me that during those times, she just gets so overwhelmed with feelings that she just shuts down – she’s aware she’s doing it, she knows it hurts me, but she just can’t do anything different until the fear response part of her brain calms down and she’s able to control her feelings again.

I do always have a feeling that she does decide sometimes that she needs to end our relationship for good, and tells herself that she’s going to go NC and stick with it, and she doesn’t have the ability to tell me that so she just goes all avoidant. And then after some period of time, she loses her resolve or starts missing me too much or whatever and then she gets back in touch. I do suspect that when our relationship finally does end, it’ll end with her just disappearing without a word – she’ll just stop talking to me and won’t ever explain it and she’ll just be gone from my life forever. Maybe that’s just my anxiety talking or maybe it’s not, but it’s just always felt to me like that’s how it’s going to go down eventually.

*push it in that direction

Hi Imho, hi LiS,

Imho is always perceptive, but I must say that in my case she needn’t be because any blind person would see it from 10 kilometer ‘s distance 🙈
It’s a feature of limerence, this „does he still like me and in which way“. When I‘ve mastered this, I‘ll have mastered this LE, I‘d say.
And because my LO is a steady, loyal man, he doesn’t cause me anxiety at the moment. He never played games or needed time off. But that creates another problem- he seems to be content with the status quo, with very frequent but harmless texts, with friendship that’s a bit too much for a normal one, meaningful glances thrown in here and there, but never talking about it. And my limerent mind strays to something more, wanting at least to talk about the unsaid etc., it felt at times a bit like being on a just-not-quite-fulfilling diet.
It’s different from LiS- he‘s got the talking , the certainty that she loves him more than a casual friend etc, but he hasn’t got the relationship in the open and he hasn’t got the stability of an open friendship which means she can withdraw without him really being able to call her out on it.

I’m very glad when you comment from the outside, Imho, because I think LiS and me tend to get mired in the details of our relationship to LOs and to lose the big picture of what it does to our lives.
I know, we both are to be scolded because we‘ve got this certainty that other limerents crave for. But it just proves the hell of limerence: never happy with what you‘ve got, always wanting more.

LiS, maybe it’s also a „habit“, something neurologically ingrained now, that bad feelings start when she withdraws? You made the circle so many times, it’s bound to have left programmed pathways in your brain.
But I agree that it surely is be painful. And I don’t really understand why she cannot send you (like you say) a tiny terse text to tell you what’sgoing on. She could even pre-formulate and just send it because it seems to be the same pattern every time.
Of course it could also be that she’son a vicious circle of her own,that every time she goes silent she’s decided to end the relationship („this time for real“) And that’s why she cannot write about when she’ll be able to talk again or that everything is still fundamentally ok?
And every time she cannot end it and returns to you?
But actually I‘m quite sure you wrote that that’s not the case, she would have told you so.

My LO asked if we meet on Tuesday, he‘ll be round the corner and could come by. My knee-jerk reaction was to think that my SO will be home and that I‘d prefer it to see LO alone. Proves that I’m not quite in just-friends terrain. I‘ll tell SO about it, could be he says that he’s busy here, and then we would go to a café, but I really have to abstain from trying to push it in that reaction. I tell myself that in a normal friendship it would be nice to have them together. But then actually, when I think of it, if it would be one of my female friends, I still would prefer a one on one because the talking is much more personal and intense than when there is any partner with us.
So what is normal?
Well, I’ll leave it to SO if he‘s got time and wants to see LO.

“yet I detect that you are a both a bit trying to still decipher why is LO doing this or that or not or whatever.”

IMHO you are very perceptive! I actually have learned a lot this week… Today is day 7 of NC after a period of lots of warmth, and even though she explicitly told me all those things recently about why I shouldn’t feel bad when she withdraws and cuts off contact, it turns out that it still feels really bad! The ruminations have changed – instead of ruminating about whether she still cares about me at all, I find myself ruminating about whether this is the end and if she’s decided for good that our relationship is wrong and she’s resolved to permanently go NC. Which probably isn’t true, although it could be, but logically I know it probably isn’t.

But the interesting thing is that despite the change in content of my ruminations and my better understanding of what’s probably going on in her mind right now, the bad feeling is pretty much the same as any other time she cut off contact in the past. It doesn’t feel any better at all! I guess maybe it’s not the uncertainty about her intentions that’s so hurtful, it’s the act of cutting contact itself that’s painful.

I mean, let’s say I slap my kid from time to time (I don’t!!). One day my kid tells me it hurts when I slap them, so I tell them that it shouldn’t hurt because I don’t do it to punish them, I do it because I have really good feelings about them, so they shouldn’t feel bad when I slap them. And then I slap them again, and guess what, it hurts! Because it’s the act of being slapped that hurts, regardless of the intention behind it. Similarly, I think that it’s the act of receiving the silent treatment that hurts, regardless of the feeling and intention behind it.

Anyway, that’s been my observation about my feelings this week, which was honestly not totally what I was expecting to feel. What I take from it is that these periods of abrupt no-contact are really just not ok regardless of the reason behind them, and I need to address it with her and we either need to agree to keep working on it together. Or, if she feels that there’s truly nothing wrong with it and she doesn’t see any reason to stop doing it, then I need to face a hard decision about whether or not I’d actually want to continue in this relationship with her if there’s little chance for things to improve and become more stable.

But of course, I can’t even have that conversation with her until she’s willing to engage with me again, so it’ll have to wait. And then of course when she goes back to being all warm and friendly again, it’ll be tempting for me to not bring it up to avoid ruining the period of good feelings, but I really need to. Hopefully she’ll at least agree that it’s not acceptable behavior in any relationship and will agree to work on it – I’m fine with her needing space for however long she wants, but I just need a little more communication when she takes space. I’d be doing so much better right now if she could just spend one minute texting me to reassure me that everything’s fundamentally ok, that she just needs space for awhile, and maybe give me some sort of estimate for how much time she needs and when we might talk again. That would be fine and I could live with that. But complete silence where texts just go completely ignored and I have absolutely no idea how long it’s going to go on just doesn’t seem like acceptable behavior in any relationship and I really need to stop accepting it.