Hey y’all did you know that just because you had a shitty childhood doesn’t mean you have to guilt trip and project your trauma and insecurities on other people? So when someone posts a funny video with their dad or talks about a nice gift their mother gave to them maybe instead of saying “wow imagine having parents that love you” or “haha my mom gave me nothing for Christmas after I turned 8” you can scroll past the video without being bitter and miserable.

People shouldn’t be your enemy for just having nice things. If they’re being spoiled, ungrateful brats that’s far different but someone being happy about something nice that happened within their family or a gift/experience they got? Yea, no one needs to know that you weren’t fortunate enough for that. Read the room. It’s not always about you and your trauma. And before you come at me, my life of far from perfect. I’m one of you.

yandere-cutie:

I have rejection sensitive dysphoria with my ADHD, and a crippling fear of abandonment from also having bpd.

My partner says I’m not enough and he wants to sleep with other people. He never expressed anything other than complete joy with only me the last year (he admits hiding what he wanted was wrong).

I know that works for some people and I’m totally fine with it for them. It doesn’t work for me. I don’t think it’ll work for him. I’ll lose him saying yes or if I deny it to him. Nothing is the same anymore and the deposit I’ve been struggling to save so we can live together no longer matters. If our sex is dull, I guess living with me would bore the shit out of him.

I’m not really okay at all. Everything feels like a lie and I’m disgusting.

Sorry for not really posting.

Never wish them pain. That’s not who you are. If they caused you pain, they must have pain inside. Wish them healing. That’s what they need.

Najwa Zebian

@/christophermcgeownwriting on instagram

furiousgoldfish:

who else naively thought their parents would acknowledge something is wrong if you spent days locked in your room, doing hunger strikes, openly said you’re suicidal or refused to speak to anyone… our child selves were really out there crying desperately for help in any way available and our parents couldn’t care less

Me: Has abandonment issues

Everyone I grow to care for: ✌

Anon wrote:Hello. (19/F) ENTP looking for advice (more like closure). I dated a (19/M) INFJ and we went out on ab 3 dates. We met online and initially met up with very platonic intentions. The first time we hung out we talked for about 6hrs straight and I hadn’t really been interested in him but there was chemistry there and he seemed very gentle and interesting. While talking he would compliment me on my appearance and tell me how comfortable I made him and I took it as being friendly.

A month or so passes of just texting and continuing to date other people and I realized that he had qualities that I liked and I hadn’t met another person like him so I confessed feelings for him. This is something never do. In the confession I explained that it had been hard for me to keep my feeling bottled up and I apologized if he had been receiving mixed signals from me. But surprisingly I was met with about 5 mins of audio messages talking about how much he liked me too and he just wanted me in his life regardless of what I was but he would like a relationship.

So after that we planned to go to a comic book store we had about 3 dates which would consist of going to a comic book store or just his house to watch some movies. While at his house I met his mom and she was very warm and welcoming. He doesn’t often bring girls back and spends a lot of time alone so I assume she was happy about this.

A conversation that we had that had stuck with me is when I asked him about his fears. His answer was that he feared me disappearing because I meant a lot to him. His answer meant a lot to me because I dealt with a lot of abandonment issues and he and I also felt with getting ghosted which is one of the ways we bonded. During one of the other discussions discussions with him we talked about his past of lying to the people he got romantically involved with about who he was. Ultimately he a wasn’t his true self and that led to things ending badly when those girls realized it. After, he communicated that he had been authentic with me and feels comfortable to be himself.

Things went well after that. However, conversation ended up losing substance and became us just telling each other how we missed the other and asking for our days were. There nothing ultimately wrong with that but I value deeper conversation and is not seeing each other made things feel a bit dull. Along with this I began to find things I disliked about him such as not wanting to drive 38 minutes to see me after not seeing each other for a week, his submissive personality, and I really disliked how he left his job without any notice (which he had done 1 time prior). So, I had discussed my worries about our relationship since our dynamic was so new to me. I made sure to be more gentle because he’s a bit turbulent and I apparently lack empathy.

After the discussion he communicated how much I mean to him how I bring him peace so I felt better about the relationship. So a few days pass and we finally have a free day to meet up and I planned on talking to him about our relationship. He asked if he could get me early that day so we could hang out longer because we tend to hang out late at night. I agreed but asked to be picked up a bit later than the time he suggested because I wasn’t in the best mood. I also asked if his mom was home to avoid the feigned warm interaction since I wasn’t feeling my best. He told me she was but that was fine with me.

A few hours pass and it’s about ab hour before I am supposed to get picked up and I received no text back so I text asking if he wants a rain check. My messages go through as SMS which was odd because we both have iPhones so I check Instagram. He ended up blocking me from both of his accounts. I had no warning and was (still am) incredibly confused. So I wait a few hours and send a long text from another number asking if I had done something wrong and if he was ok. I did end up receiving a text but it was only two sentences saying “I’m really sorry. You did nothing wrong. I just want to be alone rn”. That was the last time I received a response from him.

——————–

As you mentioned, “ghosting” is very cruel because it is basically a form of abandonment. You are left to guess, wonder, and ruminate on what happened, so it’s very difficult to get any closure. It is especially painful when you believe that a real bond was formed and you trusted that the bond would protect you from abandonment.

As time passes, you’ll eventually realize that you only have one choice, which is to move on, because the other person clearly has. It’s a painful form of closure because it’s forced upon you. However, where this situation gets confusing is that you don’t truly know whether he has moved on.

A healthy relationship must have a sense of equality, in terms of both parties giving and taking in equal measure. You both have to be willing to give the other person the benefit of the doubt, to work through difficult situations together, and to be forgiving of each other’s foibles. You are now in a situation where the relationship is wildly unequal because he is unresponsive. The most rational decision is to cut your losses and move on. However, it’s hard to do that if you still secretly believe that the relationship should be salvaged.

He knows abandonment is awful, so it must be something big that he’s dealing with in order to take such a drastic measure. You can try to empathize with his problems, be understanding of his weaknesses, give him space when he requests it, and have patience to wait as he works things out by himself. This is the “giving” part of the relationship.

However, you also have to put in place some limits and boundaries to protect your own well-being and tend to your own needs and desires, in order to maintain your sense of equality in the relationship. Put a concrete limit on how much time, effort, or initiative you’re willing to put out. In other words, be giving, but within reason.

Decide at what point it becomes no longer worth it for you to keep trying and, at that point, decide to close the situation yourself and move on, instead of waiting indefinitely for a response. For example, put the ball in his court for a set period of time, and if he doesn’t show up within that parameter, take your ball and find someone else to play with.

As you said, you were starting to get bored with the relationship anyway and/or his problems might quickly lead to a breakup anyway. You never can tell these things ahead of time, but this may be a blessing in disguise, though things didn’t end in an ideal way. If you take that perspective, it will be easier to move on. Closure is in your hands. As soon as you decide it’s no longer what you want and you want something else, the situation comes to a close.

 Part 1

Reaction Junkie leaned in close, his mouth against my ear, and started speaking in a low voice. He told me that over time, he will make me increasingly dependent on him. He will become the person I rely on for support. My social life will go through him. Our finances will be entangled, with him as the only one able to access the money. I’ll be living in his house. As he painted this picture, I realized how close this was to our actual situation. I spend a lot of time with him, the group of friends I have now mostly grew out of knowing him, and we’re planning to move in together once he buys a house. The future he was describing sounded extreme, perhaps, but not entirely unrealistic. It also wasn’t all that upsetting.

Then he continued. He told me that, after making me entirely dependent on him, emotionally, socially, physically, and financially, he will slowly withdraw from me. At first, he will just seem more distracted than usual when we’re together or having a conversation. Then he’ll start focusing more of his time and attention on other people, other partners. He’ll make time for them, but not for me. Initially, I’ll try to write it off, tell myself that I’m being irrational. I’ll think, “I must be imagining things. He wouldn’t just do that.” I’ll tell myself that, but his fade out will continue. And I’ll continue trying to pretend that it isn’t.

First, a text I send won’t get a response. I’ll try to ignore it, to counter that negative self-talk about him drifting away. Then, a whole weekend will go by without response. Even though we planned to spend time together. With this I’ll be so hurt that I’ll finally say something to him about it. He’ll apologize so profusely and sincerely, so genuinely, that I’ll believe him. But it will keep happening. He’ll keep fading out, giving me less and less, and I’ll keep trying to write it off, calling him out, and buying his apologies.

As Reaction Junkie spoke, telling me about my future, I started settling into a headspace where I opened myself up to what he was saying. I was ready to believe it, to accept what he was telling me as a real prediction of the path our relationship might take. I drew on memories of how it felt when people from my past faded out. That cold and lonely feeling in my chest, the hopelessness, that weird numbness in my fingertips I get during a really emotional cry, the desperate attempts to reconnect, to figure out what I did wrong, to bring them back to me.

I dredged up those feelings and linked them with Reaction Junkie’s words. It wasn’t hard. His description of slowly withdrawing and distancing himself hit home, and hit home hard. That’s a very real fear of mine. It’s happened in my relationships before, and I’ve been on both sides of it, really. You second-guess yourself, wondering if you’re just imagining it, just being irrational. You try to counter that negative self-talk, even while knowing deep down that it isn’t just your imagination, that it really is happening. The worst part is, you want to point out to the person that it’s happening, want to ask them about it, but you’re afraid of pushing them away. So you just sit and worry and wait, trying to hold the hurt in and ignore it. But you can’t. And it eats you up.

So, I opened myself up to what Reaction Junkie was saying, letting his words sink in and feel real. He told me that the slow withdrawal of attention, time, and affection will continue,getting worse and worse until, one day, he’ll be gone. I’ll frantically call him, email him, text him, anything to try to contact him. Finally, he’ll respond that he’s gone. He caught a cheap flight to start his round the the world trip. I’ll be stunned that he didn’t even bother to say goodbye or let me know what was going on, but I’m so far in by this point that I’ll just write it off again.

Reaction Junkie told me that as he travels, he be in contact less and less often. He said that he won’t respond because he’ll be busy “fucking some Polynesian chick.” In fact, he won’t even be able to be in contact because he’ll be somewhere without Internet access. It won’t matter to him because he won’t be prioritizing talking to me. He told me that “[his] blog will be less and less about [him and me] and more and more about the fun [he’s] having with other people.” I’ll feel rejected and abandoned and ignored. I’ll be incredibly hurt. And there won’t be a thing I can do about it. Hearing Reaction Junkie talk about fading away from me during his travels hit another real fear, and I curled up against him as he spoke, shaking a little.

He continued talking. By this point, I’ll be entirely dependent on him, including financially dependent. I’ll focus in on this, trying to take solace in the fact that he’s still taking care of me. Then, one day, something will slip. Maybe a mortgage payment, maybe a car payment. Something serious. I’ll send him a bunch of increasingly panicked emails and texts. When he finally responds, he’ll say, “I’ll take care of it, babe. Why are you getting so upset? Don’t you trust me?” What will I even be able to say to that? I won’t have a choice but to trust him. I’ll go on this way for a while, part of me telling me that it isn’t right, that I should get out, but by then I won’t be able to. As Reaction Junkie told me, “I’ll be your entire support system.” He’ll have isolated me from my friends and family. There won’t be anyone to turn to. I won’t have anyone else except him.

Reaction Junkie predicted that as more payments get missed, as he contacts me less and less, I’ll start going down hill. My physical and mental health will deteriorate. I’ll constantly worry about becoming destitute. I’ll lose my job, not that it will matter, since all of my paychecks will be going straight to his account. Eventually, once I’m as low as I think I can get, he’ll prove me wrong. He’ll send me a two word message, “We’re done.”

I gasped in dismay when he told me that, and Reaction Junkie held me tighter and continued whispering my future into my ear. When I receive that message, I’ll finally lose myself to panic. I won’t have anyone to ask for help or any way to get money. Finally, it will all be too much and I’ll kill myself. But not before writing a long, raging suicide note, blaming him for everything, cursing his name. Not content to tell me that I’ll commit suicide, Reaction Junkie added insult to injury “I won’t read it. Someone will probably send it to me, but I’ll see who it’s from and throw it in the trash.” He just won’t care. He’ll go on with his life. As told me, “You’ll be dead and I’ll be happy.”