A couple months ago I caught my partner in a lie. It changed everything.

Well, not everything.. but all those little cracks in our relationship suddenly felt like chasms. I don’t see him the way I did before that day. I’m disgusted by how he justified it. It scared me how trivial he thought my feelings are. I’m having trouble mustering up the same hope for us that existed before this event.

My experience with long term relationships is a slow fizzle or death, this isn’t my first rodeo. I have a type: emotionally avoidant. These men show up strong, representing all the things I’m actively seeking in a partner: openness, effort, kindness.

At some point, that slowly shifts and bit by bit they pull away. It happens so slowly, I question if it’s real or my imagination. But little by little the “I love you”s, the thoughtful gestures, the long open conversations fizzle and change to indifference and annoyance. The “whatever you need” changes to “you ask for too much”.

What was once a healthy balance changes to codependence. I give until I bleed, begging for the closeness I wonder if I imagined. And they take until they see me as a shell, a doormat, a weight. I let go of my boundaries, and they dance on the ruins.

The first time this happened to me I believed it was totally my fault. That I had somehow manifested the change and that I was deserving of scraps of affection. I now understand I’m not deserving, but abandoning myself leads others to abandon me too. Anxiety breeds avoidance. Again and again.

This time, I didn’t abandon myself. I told him how his actions made me feel. I told him what I needed. I needed him to take responsibility for himself and his actions. I needed him to stop blaming me as a justification for acting poorly. I needed him to get help.

To his credit, he’s done part of that. He’s dipping his toe in individual therapy. I understand better than most how hard taking that first step is. I also understand how difficult it is to keep showing up when you start digging into your own pain, the pain that causes you to hurt others and yourself. I understand it doesn’t mean that you will look the way you envisioned when you get to the other side… and I also know that it’s not a straight line to get there. It takes more time than you think and the bad never totally goes away, you just get better at not letting it drive the bus.

He still hasn’t given me a sincere apology. He hasn’t validated my experience. But, in a way, taking those first steps is taking some responsibility.

So here I sit in purgatory. I’m doing my best to try and meet my own needs while he focuses on himself, but I find myself frustrated. I don’t want to be in a relationship which makes me feel like a burden. I want to be with someone as excited to be with me as I am to be with them. I have no illusions that even healthier relationships take work, but I’m also tried of being with men that I doubt even like me.

So here I wait, working on my exit strategy. Trying to maintain some small hope that we will be able to bridge the chasms between us… not sure that I believe that they can be bridged.