I’ve been dating this guy for 8 months, the first 4 were great. When things started to go bad between us, he claimed he needed space because there were situations/demons he was fighting, and it wasn’t fair to drag me in. However, we kept spending time together, texting, etc., just not as frequently.
He constantly tells me he is difficult, crazy and/or complicated. He says we want different things (I want to get married and have kids one day, he doesn’t want to do that again), and when he says that, I calmly tell him that I will walk away. But then he freaks out and says he can’t lose me, he doesn’t want anyone else to have me, why can’t we take our relationship one day at a time (he’s the one who constantly looks into the future, not me), I’m giving up on him, etc. He says I can see other people, but then tells me he doesn’t want me to. He is a total contradiction.
I do love him, and I would like it to work, but is he playing me? And is he crazy enough that I should run screaming, or is this something I can salvage if I’M crazy enough to try?
Here’s the problem at its core: He believes that he is thoroughly unlovable.
In his mind, he is probably constantly tortured by the thought that he is unlovable, that no woman could really love him and that if he believes that someone loves him then he’ll be taken advantage of or hurt.
This is how he feels about himself, he is constantly wrestling with his own inner demons. Since he is struggling with himself in this way, it’s very hard for him to even relate to you at all since he can’t get free from himself (or, rather, his fears and negative beliefs about himself).
Instead of having a relationship with you, he is struggling in a relationship with himself.
As a result, he wants to constantly test you to see if you really love him. Not because he wants to manipulate you or toy with you, but because he is so afraid and so defeated that he really can’t believe a good woman would love him.
He gives you those “outs” to see if you’ll take them. It’s not that he wants you to leave him, it’s that he wants reassurance that you want to stay, even if he gives you every invitation and opportunity to leave him. His thinking is that if you stay, then it will mean that you really do love him and then he will finally be at peace.
There’s a problem with this though. When you show him love… he’ll push you away because he believes he’s so unlovable, so defective, so inherently flawed that the only way a woman would like him would be if she’s even more messed up than he is.
In other words, if he doesn’t think you love him, then it supports his belief that he’s unlovable. And if he does somehow believe that you love him, he’ll believe that you’re somehow flawed or broken in some way because, once again, he truly believes that nobody could love him. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
The best thing that you can do is let him be. You (by yourself) won’t be able to fix him. You (by yourself) won’t be able to love him enough to fill his void unless he comes around and starts working on repairing that void himself. Only he can change himself. Only he can start loving himself and believing that he can be loved.
Until he changes, your relationship to him will be at the mercy of his torturous, self-destructive beliefs.
He didn’t choose this for himself. He doesn’t want to be this way. But only he himself can change and make things right within himself.
So you’re not crazy… you just love someone who believes they can’t be loved.
I wish both of you good luck.
Hope it helps,
eric charles
Written by Eric Charles
