[mmaria]

Hello April,

I am writing to you as I am very confused. I am 29 years old and I have started dating a guy 8 months ago. He is 3 years older than me, a very decent person, he is also smart and gentle. He has the qualities that I tend to look for in a long-term partnership. There are things about him that I don’t like as much. He doesn’t express his feelings often. I know that most men can be like that but I am used to different types of guys so this is disturbing me occasionally. I think he is also afraid of getting his heart broken and of letting people down, which makes him hold back sometimes. I know he likes me a lot, that he cares and all that. At the beginning i wasn’t very attracted to him but after a few dates I felt much closer. He is someone I like to get to know better, spend my time with, and care for. I have been in love before, crazy love that doesn’t usually last. That’s not this type of relationship. Rather, it reminds me of the beginning of the relationship I had with my ex with whom I stayed for 7 years. During the time we are dating we lost someone in my family, a few months ago. It was sudden and a huge shock and we are still trying to come to terms with it and readjust. I have changed a lot as you may understand and still going through a grief stage. I thought this would mean the end of this story but surprisingly he stayed, he helped a lot, he offered to listen and care and understood me like few people have. My time with him remains very nice, as well as our sexual life etc although I am not at my very best, I feel sad sometimes and I am also afraid of being a burden – he is very encouraging and supportive.
His support has meant a lot to me yet I am afraid I so vulnerable that I am now feeling insecure about being rejected and being on my own – before what happened in my life I wasn’t like that at all, I always hated relationships that are based on the fear of being alone. I am so afraid of becoming clingy and needy after what happened, and I am also afraid of staying in a relationship I am not evaluating sufficiently because of the grief. I find i am not expressing myself a lot – I don’t say what bothers me, what I find problematic between us and all that. I think I have become very afraid of losing the comfort. Last four days he has been texting irregularly and very neutrally and I have an intuition that he is distancing himself and that he will break up as soon as we meet. Of course others may think that it’s all in my head because I have these fears of rejection but I am pretty much convinced. I don’t even dare call him these last days because of fear of rejection, which is completely ridiculous I know. I am spending the last days terrified that he may have become essential for me and that I will be devastated if he breaks up now – how problematic is that. By the way, my friends that know the details about our relationship and communication think I am giving mixed signals in my effort not to be needy and clingy (they say I do the same with all my close people after my loss) and that I should simply express my needs and feelings more to him. I hope you can see that I am really not using the man here to get over the loss – it’s my vulnerability that confuses me. Do you think it’s possible for this to work while I am going through this major change in my life? Should I maybe let him go and aim to get into a new relationship when I feel better and more confident? I am honestly really confused. I thought you may have previously helped people dealing with grief and relationships so thought I’d ask.

Maria

[Clara]

Your fear is dictating your life right now, and that’s not good. You’re behaving in ways that keep your fear alive, which is creating complications in your communication. But what you’re not figuring is that he may want to break up with you because it’s just not a good match. Either way, if you want a relationship to work out, and you think it’s heading for a break up, you can either try to be a better girlfriend or you can accept what comes and understand that rejection is part of relationships and it guides you away from inappropriate matches and towards good ones.

As for the grief you’re experiencing, some people use death or difficult situations in a family to hole up and go into a cave while others reach out and connect. It’s a good way to get to know each other better because often you don’t understand how a man is going to react to your grief or a death in your side of the family until many years into a relationship. In a way, this is an opportunity to see how you both react. Because it’s a new relationship, you have to find a balance between taking care of your needs to grieve and the needs of a relationship to stay alive. I’m not sure how long after the death it is for you or how close you were to the family member who died, but striking that balance is important.

I do think you can conduct a very successful relationship with real life events like birth and death happening. So don’t break up because there’s a death in the family and then reconnect when you’re over the grief. That’s not realistic, and it’s not how life works.

I hope that helps. Let me know how things go, and please follow me @AskAprilcom on Twitter and on Facebook at this link: [url][/url]

[mmaria]

Thanks April. Your words make perfect sense. I actually know you are right – it is possible to break up because we are not a good match, it’s just that I wish that things could stay still while I am grieving and I could deal with them better later. But I know that’s not possible and obviously it’s not fair to others. I have actually been a very good girlfriend and tried to remain cheerful, motivated and attractive even after what happened – I did my best anyway. By the way, it was my mother that passed away and it has just been 2 and a half months. I would not feel so vulnerable has it been someone less close to me.

[Clara]

I’m very sorry about your loss. Knowing that it was someone as close to you as your mother who passed, is different than some other family member. My guess, knowing what you’ve now told me, is that you’re projecting some of your grief and desire to hold on to your mother, onto this guy. It’s hard to have a break up on the heels of a significant loss — like the death of your mother. It feels like the scab on the wound, which is barely dry, is being torn open again.

Take a breath and try not to control things. Ultimately, you can’t. Knowing that helps you accept what happens.

[Member]

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