Fear of Abandonment = abandoned leading abandoned?
by Hailie
(San Diego)
My ex-husband was both physically and verbally abusive. He often used the excuse that I wasn't in "love" with him for his anger towards me. I had accidentally slipped one night and told him that I married him because my mother had guilted me into it because I had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, and that I was working on trying to love him as more than just friends. Eventually the abuse was becoming mortally dangerous while I was six months pregnant with our second child. I finally had to sum up the courage to leave him and never looked back.
Well, after that experience I was never interested in dating or developing another relationship. Kept my concentration on raising my two boys, school, and work.
Well telling your self that you don't want a man in your life and shutting your self off is easier said than done. When I started working again 2 years ago, I was going through an ugly divorce for a little over two years.In that time I began to develop an interest for my boss(1 1/2 years). We flirted and talked for seven months and then started dating four months ago.
It has been so emotionally draining! I love him very much but we never really get started! the moment the relationship inches passed dating, and occasionally sleeping together he withdraws from me. And it hurts so badly, I don't know what to do. I know he deals with abandonment issues.
From what he has told me, his mother was a minor character in his life, and he was constantly in and out of foster care when she couldn't afford to keep his siblings and him and his ex-wife was pretty much the same, in-and-out. But from what a close friend had told me, was that the ex-wife had a tendency to be mentally abusive, and she knew how to press his buttons about his abandonment issues.
It's been a fight trying to make him see that I don't have those same characteristics.That I love him for who he is no matter his age, weight, etc... But he's broken up with me so many time, that when I think it's over and leave him alone, he doesn't chase me and call me to apologize, instead he reacts at work. He begins to flirt with other women in front of me and watches for a response. He is open and friendly with others and cold and distant with me. At first I thought that it was just in my own head, until a co-worker commented on his sudden change of attitude.
He starts becoming loving with me and wants to start up a relationship again when he sees other men flirt with me or ask me out. And the moment we get together for a couple of weeks it starts all over again.
Because of the nature of our relationship, we have had to keep it secret but recently it has been coming to a head in the office, to the point that even though there has had to be cutbacks he decided to let me go earlier than planned. I already have a new position lined up long before the cutbacks, but it still hurts that this is were it has come to.
When i speak to our friend, she assures me that he still cares but is trying to work through his issues and our thirty year age difference. That it takes patience to deal with someone dealing with abandonment issues and that I have to sit down and evaluate if this is something I can truly handle. Well, this is why I came to your site. I didn't know what it exactly meant to have abandonment issues, but as I read through various posting I realized I maybe dealing with some of these issues myself and that's why I'm working so hard to making him see that I do love him.
At this point I don't know what to say or do, we haven't spoken or communicated in almost three weeks. The last communication I had with him I e-mailed him "I couldn't stand to be around him anymore and wanted to finish my last week of work at home" I went onto tell him how much I loved him and how much his behavior has hurt me, but I know that was the only line he saw. I've had to go into the office a couple of times but now he just avoids me. It breaks my heart but he crossed a line and started questioning my work and ethics when I put so much more into the projects than I was paid for all because I was in love with him, and he couldn't handle me being around anymore.
It feel like something that could of been so special just died. We have all the ingredients to make a good relationship but he then catches himself and throws in those "what if's" and then runs away. I'm right for letting this go? there isn't any reason to approach him anymore on the subject, right? I don't want him to feel like another person has just given up on him, after all my professions of love and fighting. I just don't know how to get passed his barricade?
