180man Update

[180Man]

What were the behaviors you were engaging in that became unattractive?

She had major career changes immediately ahead of her, including a move to Hawaii. I had major career changes ahead of me with a lot of uncertainty. She is not a great communicator, so rather than tell me we were going to work things out, I had what I perceived to be uncertainty from her and I went into a spiral worrying about stuff that I have no control over. Worrying about careers, worrying about long-distance, worrying about losing someone great, worrying about repeating the same process that led to my divorce. I finally did get certainty from her, but only after I told her I felt like she didn't care about the future. She was extremely upset that I would think she didn't, told me her actions proved that she did, and she assumed we would just figure it out. After that argument, I don't think she really forgave me. She cooled slowly and started to shut down on me over the next month or so until she found an excuse to break up: "I think you need more communication than I'm able to give and I feel broken and better off alone."

I think she's scared. She conjured up the worst case scenario in her head and then assumed that's where we were headed. No attempt to work on it with me, she just quit. I waited a week and a half, thought long and hard about what happened. Wrote her a letter, told her how much she meant to me, told her I realized where I had gone wrong, pointed out all of the mistakes I made, owned it, and told her how I would fix it going forward. She sat on it for a couple days and then texted me saying it was a good letter, I made some good points, but she thought I took too much ownership of some issues and that she stood by the breakup. I decided this back and forth was stupid, I showed up at her door with the intent to passionately tell her how much she meant to me. She softened at different moments, but ultimately her guard was up and her mind was not to be changed.

I saw her at work the following week a couple times. We talked about work, made jokes, things were nice. Saw her the week after that, she stayed at a work function with me to play volleyball, then walked back down the beach with me to our cars. We talked then too, not about anything serious, but about weekend plans, her sister, my dog, that sort of stuff.

Couple days later I decide to send her a very friendly invitation to hang out once in a while before she moves. I was very clear there would be no awkwardness, no expectations, just hanging out now and then. Clearly I crossed some sort of boundary for her because she never replied and now refuses to even look at me at work.

She's an extreme introvert, so even though I see confliction within her, I think she would prefer to pretend it never happened and hope it all goes away. I don't know how to reach her at this point, anything I do will just look like desperation. I'm not desperate, I'm not texting and calling her all the time. I'm actually pretty happy with myself about how well I've handled it -- at least the parts she has seen. When I'm home by myself I feel like dirt, but at least I have not come across as clingy. So...I've decided to ignore her for now. Give it a month and see how I feel about it. You can't force someone to want to be with you. And if she can't communicate with me, how is that going to work? If the divorce taught me anything, it taught me to work more on communication. This girl has not been through anything like that, so I don't think she has ever really been forced to self-examine and rebuild to the level that perhaps a lot of people like us have. Not to say that everyone who gets divorced is magically a great communicator, not by any means, but for those people who put the work in on themselves, they should come out with at least some new and improved tools.

So, I'm sad...we had a great thing...but I've been through much worse. The situation is confusing at best. We still haven't given eachother keys and stuff back. We are still friends on social media. I'm not sure what to do about any of that. At the end of the day, if she comes around, great. If not, I'll find someone who wants to put in the effort.