High/Low 9.5.08

Ok.. you haven't heard from me in a while... lots of stuff has happened lately.. good AND bad.. and well... this posting makes me feel a LOT better.. Here I am... blaming myself.. doubting myself.. what I like to call feeling in the "crazy zone"... wondering if he misses me.. etc.. BLEH! Well this is just another confirmation that I made the right (rational) decision..for my future well being... Weirdly doesn't change the fact that I still feel twinges of sadness from time to time.. I feel like I gave my all, feel a little cheated.. and wished he wasn't emotionally unavailable.. heh..but I knew from day one that he was unavailable... thought I would be different.. yada yada.. I could break him of this.. etc.. BULLSHIT! So yea.. this helps... and thought I'd post so you know where my brain is of late.

Side note: Everything happens exactly as it should.. And I am blessed by the fact that I BELIEVE that with all my heart and soul!!! It's an amazing feeling to be SO happy on one end and still trying to process melancholy and dissapointed feelings on the other.

Thanks for posting this.. it really helped. whew.

Reader Question: What does an emotionally unavailable man do when a relationship ends?
August 27, 2008 by NML

A Chicago reader asks: “I am wondering how the emotionally unavailable man is after a relationship, how he talks to himself, or if he’s happy, etc. Not for HIM, but just to make myself feel better.”

Interesting question. I’d ask why do you care but we all do what we need to do in order to get by. If you want me to tell you that he’s sitting at home pining for you, wondering what you’re doing, analysing your relationship history, blaming himself, checking his phone messages, or obsessing about you, you’re about to be sorely disappointed. To assume that he is losing his mind over the ‘loss’ of you is to assume that you’re with a normal, connected man.

For a start, Mr Unavailable doesn’t like endings and in actual fact, depending on how your relationship history has played out, is likely to disrespect the ‘ending’ or any boundaries that you have put forth.So, you say “I don’t ever want to see your bloody face again or hear from you. I want you to leave me alone and stop calling me” will translate to “She says that but I know if I give it a day/week/fortnight/month/ etc that she’ll be desperate to hear from me. She’s just mad because I won’t give her what she wants but she needs to accept that this is all I can give and go with the flow.”

The likelihood is that Mr Unavailable will believe that he has lost you or is in serious danger of losing you when:

1) A greater period of time has passed than your previous break-up/break.

2) You’ve got really medieval on his ass and something makes him believe that it may be different this time.

With the former, it will appear that he has accepted it until that supposed in-built radar has him creepy creeping round you just when you’ve started to move on.

With the latter, he’ll badger the crap out of you for attention and affirmation that you still give a monkey’s about him, make promises he can’t keep, and then disappoint the crap out of you and revert to previous behaviours anyway.

When a relationship with Mr Unavailable ends he tends to:

1) Pretend that it’s not over and in his mind he’s giving you space to come around to his way of thinking.
2) Look for a new ego stroke.
3) Ignore you till YOU start chasing him.
4) Starts the ‘let’s be friends’ BS so that he can worm his way back into his life.
5) Calls up the previous Fallback Girl (you know there’s always more than one).
6) Bury himself in work or the lads because he didn’t need the deadweight of a relationship anyway.
7) Blame you.

How does he talk to himself? Who knows and who cares? The reality is that someone who is very disconnected from their own behaviour isn’t exactly going to turn around and take stock of their lives. He’ll blame you, his ex, his mother, the cat, the dog, his kids, the tree at the back of the garden but unless he’s having some longstanding bouts of clarity, any glimmers into the real him will be shortlived. So he may think tonight “Ah…Michael, you’ve been a bit of a prick in this relationship. She deserved better” but by tomorrow morning, he’s thinking “Michael, you’re better off without her. She wanted too much from you. She was too flipping needy and you don’t need that. You’ve done nothing wrong and to be fair, this was never supposed to be a long term thing.”

Is he happy? In some respects yes, and in many other respects no. That’s like me asking women who habitually engage with Mr Unavailable’s (Fallback Girls) whether they’re happy. Something not too great is going on within to be emotionally unavailable in the first place. He’ll be happy that he has no-one expecting too much of him. He’ll be happy to have you off his back. He’ll be happy to be a bachelor again. But is he happy? He’s disconnected emotionally so happiness, true happiness is a long way off for him.

But as always, what I would stress is that to care what the frick this man is doing is to care too much. Whatever brain power he does expend on his relationship with you, the reality is that it will be a miniscule fraction of the brain power you’re expending. Your ability to move on and be happy has to be separate from him. It can’t be based on the scale of his misery because this is like trying to extract some sort of emotional validation or payment after the demise of the relationship and the reality is that you’ll be in for a long wait if you’re relying on him to give you some misery coins. You would do better to focus on yourself and deal with your own issues of why you were with him - you’ll get far more reward for your efforts.
~~~~~
A response then says:

Because HE had a different relationship with you in his mind that YOU had with him in YOUR mind, he pretty much chalks it off and moves on.

He doesn’t dwell, feel remorseful, guilty, analyze his behavior or yours, or look at his actions/take responsibility for them and decide he will change HIS part of what went wrong so that his next realtionship will be healthier.

He is still the same person that played games, lied, cheated, manipulated, blew hot and cold, abandoned you without a word, did the yo-yo thing with your heart, begged for time and left you hanging for months waiting, broke promises, whatever…

So, he is done. Much like finishing a meal. Maybe good while it lasted, maybe bad. Burp. Now time to watch sports on tv, or go hang out with the guys, or wow did you see that hot chick walk by ?

He has the attention span of a flea for YOUR angst. In fact, less than that.He will think about what HE has going on in his life - his job, his kids (if he has them), his hobbies, his car maintenance. Whatever isn’t very emotional or requiring any deep reflection. Unless it’s self-pity.

So the guy rationalizes whatever didn’t work as your fault because it’s his easiest escape exit. And then goes in pursuit of the next woman who doens’t know anything about him and will be vulnerable to his b.s., and games because she doesn’t know the pattern of his behavior. (HOLY SHIT!!!) Taking responsibility and making changes aren’t in a EUM’s modis operandii. How he treats the next woman is how he treated the woman before you, regardless of the sad sack, one-sided, b.s. story you were told.. And how he treated you too.

He moves on. Now it’s your turn. Becasue any time spent grieivng over him, wishing it could be different, hating all men, being in a rage - all of it is keeping you stuck, still spending time thinking about him — when now is the time that could be spent instead by you doing things for you.

That hour or week or month you spent brooding or crying or furious about the injustice of it all ? That’s a chunk of your life that you can’t get back that you could have spent being happy.
So go - be busy, find a hobby you love and immerse yourself in it, spend time with your friends or make some new ones, really shine at work, pamper yourself in all the little ways you can think of that you like, manicure, pedicure, rock concert, maybe a vacation somewhere you’ve always wanted to go and visit and explore - focus on you.

You are what matters. Avoid thinking about him - it’s just a distraction from looking inside at your own stuff. Practice what you preach. Look inside and do the work you need to do on learning to have healthy boundaries and self esteem.Learn to love and believe in you own sefl and self-worth so that you don’t care what a guy who made you cry more than once thinks about you.

Is that not the most amazing thing you've ever read?
Is that not EXACTLY what I've been dealing with? The "crazies" in my head?
UH... YES.
God Bless the person who wrote this. Thank You.