any advice welcome…?

Why did you break up in the first place? Is anything actually progressing or is it really FWB anyway but he’s dating others and using the excuse he’s still considering getting back together with you, or are you truly concentrating on reconnecting with mutual effort to repair the problems that led to the first breakup? If it’s a situationship and nothing is being repaired, and after a few months you still aren’t sure where you stand in this new situation and are in limbo, that sounds like a waste of your time to me. Doesn’t matter about the other woman, she’s not the problem if he’s low effort and not escalating to get back together with you after dating you again for months. That’s his choice around commitment and he’d probably be doing it whether she was in the picture or not.

There’s a reason situationships happen, and they tend to be because one partner is non-committal and may have problems with intimacy and the other partner doesn’t have healthy boundaries and tries to wait them out in hopes something will eventually change. But why should they change? Someone who wants to hang out in a situationship does it because it’s comfortable for them and what they can give, they don’t want to do the hard work of really vulnerably connecting (or reconnecting and repairing). And you don’t fall into a situationship, you choose it. Date reality, not potential, and decide if the way this person is now makes you happy, even if they never change (because they probably won’t).

we met in august of 2020. we dated and became official pretty soon, but i was sick with mono and also not doing a great job of communicating things, and he broke up citing we weren’t as close as we should have been by then. we took a couple months not talking to each other and i met up again to return some things and have lunch. we hit it off and things have been a lot better, we have spent all of our free moments together. i know he isn’t dating others. i know it has been better this time around, but i also didn’t mind taking things slow due to us breaking up the first time. i should also note this other woman is moving, so this might be the last time he sees her, which is why he says he has to go. i wasn’t have any problems at all with how things were going until this happened, because i felt triggered by what happened the first time…but we broke up the first time, so maybe it isn’t fair to drag the past into it. ugh. oh well. i dont think there are any easy answers. just going to try to be open and communicate and where we land on it.

It sounds like you do not have healthy boundaries as you came over to his house. That’s a bit crazy and you must have been driving drunk- so irresponsible of you. He doesn’t sound interested in a relationship- he’s enjoying being single and doing what he wants and you are accepting this by seeing him on these terms that doesn’t make you happy. You need to decide it’s over- that is the healthy boundary to set.

also, i don’t drink to get drunk very often – that’s the most i’ve drank in YEARS – and when i do i rarely drive.

‘thanks for the judginess.’
Do you want advice or just someone to brush your hair & sing kum-ba-ya…

thank you. sadly, he wants to end this because of my emotional neediness this week and i am mortified and beating myself up for it.

i completely overreacted and ruined something that was otherwise…just fine! everything was great, and then my brain went into a freakout about nothing.

i asked if he could take some time to think it over first. i tried to explain that this isn’t my normal behavior and that i’m very good at regulating my emotions. i didn’t think he need to do anything differently re: soothing me. my only real worry was whether she was a threat, and she wasn’t, you are right, he laughed that right off and explained everything in a way that made more sense. so i messed everything up over nothing! hooray for me.

i have an update but the forum is not letting me post it

if anyone wants to help me with part 2, this is where we are now:

he says he has been thinking about how our thing is unsustainable because he is still new in town and i’m his only social interaction (esp now that his friend is leaving) and he is worried it’s going to be unhealthy / a co-dependent relationship. he mentioned maybe this wasn’t final, but that he needed to get to know more people and then maybe come back. i kind of was like, “wait, do you mean see if anything better is out there? lol and then if it isn’t, come back?” and he was like “oh s***, that sounds terrible when you put it that way, so never mind.”

i said well, are you in a hurry to move on? if not, and you thought things were okay between us and the main problem was that you still don’t have any social support system, why don’t you just take some time to focus on you and we will agree to reconnect at a later date, instead of leaving it open ended? i get that may seem like i’m just waiting around for a maybe, but in my head i’m thinking it’s healthy to give someone space.

i then said why don’t you at least take some time to think about this instead of coming to a unilateral decision based on what is in your own head about this? i feel like you think something about me that isn’t true and are basing this on something about me that isn’t true, and he knows isn’t true (after knowing me for about six-eight months, i have never ever acted like this before, and i wasn’t even that bad, even when drunk i was very kind and apologetic about being a bother, lol). so he agreed to that, and we are going to revisit it.

i paid a relationship coach on relationshiphero to help me and she was very very very good (this isn’t an ad, and for all i know i got lucky with this one person, i can’t vouch for the rest) and it was worth the money. because even if this thing doesn’t work out, i want to learn and grow from it and be better at relationships and communication.

the funny thing is her main takeaway was: she is concerned i have a FAR better communication skill set than him and that’s the problem. she also said i’m a “securely attached” person based on my conversation, but a securely attached person around an avoidant person can become more anxious. it blew my mind. i think she’s right.

anyway, any thoughts welcome. tune in for an update.

I don’t see why his wanting to make more friends/social contacts means he can’t date you? That sounds like a total cop out. If he wanted a relationship with you, he could absolutely date you while making other friends (by taking a class, volunteering, whatever). To me it sounds like he wants to see what else is out there and maybe come back to you if he can’t find someone better. Is that really what you want to be, his backup girl?

Listen to Maddie. She gives fantastic advice.

right, i get what you are saying about it being a cop out, but i think the reason is because he works all the time and only has weekends free, and i end up being with him all weekend.

for him to really get out there and meet people, he needs the time and space to do that.

also, he wouldn’t have made this decision (it was just something he was thinking about) if i hadn’t FREAKED OUT this past week. i am certain that is what pushed it over from a “maybe i need to make sure this doesn’t become codependent” thought to a “oh, we should break up” thought.

so i am telling him, nix the second thought because i promise i am not ever going to freak out again, and i am willing to support him if he wants to meet other people as long as he doesn’t date other people, and we reconnect after he feels he has his own friends.

If that coach truly thought you have a secure style and he has an avoidant one, you’re swinging anxious as a result to the point you believe you’re acting out of character, he doesn’t have good communication skills, and you’ve already broken up / almost broken up twice in 6-8 months, I’d drop this like it’s hot for your own sanity. I still stand by everything I said about the work you can do for yourself to find better relationships in the future. Why do you want to stick around for all this drama in such a short time if you’re secure? Good, healthy relationships make you feel comfortable and bring out the best in you, they don’t make you twist around in a pretzel and second-guess where you stand. Nor do they require you to spend all this time and effort negotiating to give him space because he only has one friend and can’t make more because it’s so hard to do when he’s in a relationship (which, btw, he’s not, since you said it’s still a situationship… and yet that’s still too much for him to have time to socialize??).

This is so messy. As I’d said before, not everything was great, doubly so if he’s actually avoidant. Start digging deeper. You can probably talk him into coming back, but the push-pull you’re feeling won’t be over. You’re ignoring a lot to keep this situationship going. Choosing to stay in this situation and choosing to try to make it work after 1.5 breakups will continue to trigger your anxiety because you and he have totally different longer-term intimacy needs. Maybe it’s because you’ve never dated someone avoidant before, but it’ll all be lessons to learn. As long as you’re going in with your eyes open and not with rose-colored glasses.

This guy has made it clear he’s not as emotionally invested as you are, though. That’s what we’re trying to say. He wants to break up with you, so he can make friends — whatever that means, I still think he can make friends while being in a relationship. If it means spending a bit less time together, then fine– but he should be afraid you’ll meet someone else and he could lose you, if you split up. A guy who valued the woman he was with would feel that way. He doesn’t seem too concerned about what may happen if you two break up, even temporarily.

It’s your choice if you want to continue dealing with this up-and-down, of course. People here are just telling it as we see it.