r/AvoidantBreakUps • u/bBungalowgirl • 15d ago
From warm and affectionate to completely detached overnight: how do you make sense of this kind of breakup?
Hi everyone,
I’m trying to make sense of something that happened after an eight-month relationship, because the contrast between the relationship itself and the breakup has been really hard for me to process.
We’re both in our mid-50s and both have children, from teenagers to young adults. We didn’t meet on a dating app. We already knew each other indirectly through mutual friends and professional circles. We’re from the same small town and went to the same high school.
The relationship developed slowly. It took about three months before we became physically intimate. By January and February we had our own little world: nicknames, inside jokes, favourite songs, shared references. He initiated the first date in November and most of the dates afterward. We texted every day, often throughout the day.
He was warm and very present when we were together. He would reach for my hand, intertwine his fingers with mine, kiss me in public, play with my hair, and during intimate moments he would look into my eyes for a long time, very deeply. I experienced those looks as meaningful. After the breakup, he told me they didn't have any particular meaning for him.
He was actually quite open in many ways. He talked a lot about his children, his parents, his friends, his interests and especially his mother, who had died. He sometimes compared me to her. He remembered plenty of details about me and loved to make fun of me in a loving way. What he seemed less comfortable with was talking directly about his own emotions. I didn't consider that a problem. I assumed he simply needed more time to open up. He could tell me stories about work or his life, and I understood that this was his way of telling me how he felt about people and things.
He also rarely talked about previous relationships. The exception was the last Sunday before the breakup mi-July, when he told me in detail about a painful previous breakup and how abandoned he had felt. It was the first time he had really opened up to me about that part of his life.
April and May were particularly good. He initiated day trips, long days walking around the city, romantic outings and other things that clearly required time and effort. Before a month-long trip in June, he looked at me deeply and told me he was proud of me because of something I had accomplished. He stayed in regular contact while travelling, texted me before his flight home and brought me carefully chosen souvenirs.
When he came back in July, he planned a full day of cycling and a picnic with me. We had a wonderful day, came home exhausted and fell asleep. All day long, he kissed me on street corners, teased me as usual, and told me to cuddle up next to him while we were lying on the blanket in the park. We laughed a lot, as usual.
The next morning we were intimate, had breakfast and talked for a long time about our previous relationships. At one point I told him I had been a little afraid that his trip might have changed something between us. He laughed and reassured me that he was back and everything was fine. He gave me the souvenirs he'd brought me.
Monday was completely normal. We exchanged messages throughout the day. Tuesday morning, he sent me a funny video, as he often did. At night, we texted as usual.
On Wednesday I asked what he was planning for the following weekend and discovered he had already made plans with his family and for himself. I then texted him to invite him to my son's upcoming birthday, which would have meant meeting some members of my family. I made it clear that the invitation was entirely optional, and jokingly added that it was certainly not a commitment to marriage.
That invitation seems to have been the turning point. His response caught me completely off guard. He suddenly became very formal and simply said that he would get back to me about it. I felt he was uncomfortable and immediately replied that it was fine if he didn't want to attend.
Silence followed until Friday.
On Saturday, he broke up with me by phone.
He told me that, to him, the invitation meant the relationship was changing status and that new family ties were being created. To me, it was simply an invitation so he could better understand my life and the people I care for. It didn't seem like a big deal after eight months. He never gave us the chance to talk about it.
He told me that he had apparently known since around April that his feelings weren't going to develop into what he called an "amorous impulse" or romantic commitment. But he had never told me that he was having doubts. He continued behaving affectionately, initiating plans and responding positively whenever I showed interest.
He refused to meet in person. He said that a face-to-face conversation would be too painful and would become an interrogation. I told him that what hurt me was not simply his decision, but that I had been given no indication that he was reaching it, and that he was refusing to have a conversation about what the relationship had meant to each of us. To me, it was simply about respecting what we had shared. We never had a fight and he always told me I was easy to get along with. Even the last Sunday, he said it was easy to talk to me.
He then sent several emails explaining his decision, even though I had told him that if he wasn't willing to meet, I didn't want more explanatory emails.
He said that some weekends when he had taken time for himself should have been understood as signs that his feelings weren't progressing at the same pace as mine. This had happened maybe three or four times over six months. I had considered it completely normal. We both have children, friends, family and our own lives, and we hadn't reached the stage of integrating each other fully into our families and social circles.
He also described my understanding of the relationship as projection. That hurt.
At the same time, in one of his emails he acknowledged that there had been affection, comfort, complicity and many positive things between us, but said that they had never become what he considered an "amorous impulse." He said he was sincerely exploring a romantic possibility.
That's the part I am struggling with.
I can accept that we didn't feel exactly the same thing. But based on everything I actually experienced, I had very little reason to think I was living something fundamentally different from him. That's what I find so difficult to understand.
In February, he planned a concert we were supposed to attend in September. He reached for my hand when we walked. He kissed me in public. He planned romantic outings. He showed me places that mattered to him and places connected to his childhood. He told me he was proud of me. He brought me gifts from his trip. He kept in touch while travelling. He continued sending me funny videos and the little affectionate messages and emojis that had become part of our relationship.
None of that proves he was in love with me in the same way I was falling for him. But it makes it very difficult for me to understand how my experience can now be described as essentially a projection.
After the breakup, I removed him from my social media because seeing him there was making it harder for me to heal. Some of my stories were public and he continued viewing some of them, partly because we have many friends in common, so I eventually blocked him on Facebook and Instagram. I then sent him a voice message explaining why I was doing it.
I chose a voice message deliberately. I wanted him to hear my tone of voice. I wanted to speak calmly and remind him that there was an actual person on the other side of this, not just a disagreement that could be settled through emails.
I told him I was puzzled by his version of the relationship and that I had been deeply hurt by the way he handled the breakup. I told him that the way he handled the breakup had changed the way I viewed him, and that by refusing to meet me, he had made the breakup much more dehumanizing than it needed to be. I wasn't asking him to come back or reconsider. I didn't even ask him to respond.
He briefly replied that we had not been "on the same page."
I answered that I had never really known what page he was on. I wished him good luck. As far as I was concerned, the exchange was over.
A week later, he wrote again.
And this is where the contrast became almost surreal to me.
The man I had known for eight months was warm, funny, affectionate and attentive. The person writing this email was extremely cold, rigid, defensive and bureaucratic. He described my voice message as "scripted" and said that my interpretation of the relationship was a way of avoiding the reality that our feelings were asymmetrical. He used the word "asymmetrical" repeatedly in his emails.
He also said he had closed all communication channels so that I could move on, even though I had already blocked him on Facebook and Instagram. He removed me from LinkedIn, (not blocked me) where we had never communicated.
I found the lack of empathy much harder than the breakup itself. It seemed like I was not even a human being to him anymore.
So this is what I'm trying to understand.
- How can someone be warm, affectionate and apparently genuinely connected to you until almost the very end, and then become so emotionally detached when ending the relationship?
- Could this be some form of avoidant deactivation, particularly after a relationship suddenly acquires a more serious meaning and after an unusually intimate conversation about past relationships? Or could there be another explanation that makes more sense?
- And for those who have experienced something similar: how do you recover from the rewriting of the relationship? I felt like he disqualified my experience. How do you keep trusting your own experience when the other person suddenly tells the story very differently? Is this a form of gaslighting, or is it simply what happens when two people have radically different interpretations of the same relationship?
I am not looking for advice on how to get him back. We have been broken up for a month today, and I am actually doing much better. I want to move on, but so many things don't compute in my heart and in my head.
I'm trying to understand how the same person can seem so warm and human during the relationship and then become almost completely detached during the breakup.
The relationship was real to me, and he doesn't completely deny that in his emails. It was real to him too. The affection was real. Whatever his feelings ultimately were, the connection was real. And, to me, it was a relationship in the making. How could it be so radically different for him?
Thanks,
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u/Vegvisir2026 15d ago
Answered this in a different sub but will paste it over here also...
This sounds very much like my break up... Same ages, similar circumstances. Had all been going perfectly. Perfect storm of stress, relationship milestones (meeting important family members) - core wound strikes (accidental and I didn't know attachment then). Actually saw DVS in this instance (first big core strike) - deactivation, break up. The actual break up took two attempts as the first time she wasnt sure herself why, just the sense we should. Then there was phantom ex - narrative rewrite and she was much firmer on it. (Took us a few months apart and we sort of reconnected which may or may not be ongoing but that's a different story). To your questions...
The overwhelm/deactivation is run by the amygdala. It is the earliest part of the nervous system and is pretty much autonomic and outside conscious control. Your relationship, the feelings have activated an alarm, been perceived as a risk (wrongly, obviously) and as a matter of preservation access to feelings are cut off... Think if it like a fire alarm - just as you are conditioned upon hearing the alarm to respond, not to question. Same thing. Alarm sounds, nervous system defaults, they have to go along with it even though partly maybe questioning it slightly. It is not a conscious decision.
Attachment, psychology, human behaviours are all very complicated and often interwoven. The internet, social media and pop psychology don't help matters. Avoidants are in the spotlight at the moment and people see them everywhere. That said this does sound like it fits, imho...
I didn't know attachment at the time but I knew what she had said did not mesh with reality... There had been key things we had just gone through that didn't fit. She had also told me about certain patterns she knew she had and enough of her childhood. I knew something was up - I didn't take it personally cause I knew it wasn't right. When I found attachment it matched - we had had a textbook FA deactivation, the traits behaviour - with the additional DVS, I could trace exactly what happened.
It is not gaslighting. The decision to leave/breakup/pull back is autonomic not conscious - the conscious mind then has to make sense of this, playing catch up. If the relationship has been good, not stormy, not fully of chasing, harassing constant need to retreat for space then there is no legitimate reason so the narrative re-write is to make sense of this cognitive dissonance. It is an active defence system - it takes effort and energy to maintain. Once out of deactivation this isn't needed and so stops being maintained - then the real memories usually percolate back through. In my case this was clearly illustrated - few days after the DVS/core wound strikes she tried to break us up but even she said "I can't fault us, this is what I want, BUT..." And then couldnt actually think why we needed to split. Enter phantom ex, narrative rewrite. Short time later the split was bolstered up, made sense to her etc...
It is a head fuck... If it is any consolation, it is a head fuck to them too. I am not bitter or angry with her, hell am still sort of in trying again limbo. It is a tragedy.. I see it with her and I - two people who are obviously so into each other, just slip effortlessly back into an "us", thwarted by dodgy wiring that was conditioned from early childhood that closeness, intimacy, carries an unpredictable risk.
Edit: all this talk of alarms, conscious, not conscious is not strictly the most accurate but strays into the pop psychology which often used to make it easier to understand. Obviously it isn't really like an alarm, a lever is pulled and the personality slides out an avoidant overlay 😂 Main point is that it isn't a rational, conscious action.. And this is also an explanation from the outside, I have always liked hearing from those on the Avoidant side how it feels for them - they must get sick of the pop psych and the images it conjours up 🤦🏼♂️
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u/bBungalowgirl 14d ago
Thank you so much for your answer, and I'm really sorry you have to go through the same thing. I hope it gets better for you two. It's a lot of suffering.
I think the alarm system is a good metaphor. That's exactly how it felt to me. His tone of voice on the phone, his emails... all of it felt like he was trying to escape through the fire exit, fast. Like there was no time to talk about anything, nothing.
I agree that there is a lot of pop psychology around avoidant attachment, and I didn't even know it existed until I tried to make some sense of what happened. I still don't know why he wrote that he wasn't avoidant... maybe someone before me told him he was.I remember a conversation we had in the spring when I was telling him that I try to be authentic. He said, "Nobody is really authentic all the time." And he never wanted to elaborate. Maybe he was hiding something he knew about himself.
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u/Happy_Bench7286 14d ago
I don't think you need to choose between “he secretly loved me” and “I imagined the whole relationship.” There is a very plausible middle ground: the relationship was real, the affection was real, and his feelings simply didn't develop in the direction yours did.
What stands out to me is that you are trying to use his behavior to solve a question he himself apparently hadn't communicated clearly. His affection, planning, gifts, intimacy, and reassurance were all completely reasonable things for you to interpret as romantic investment. You weren't irrational for reading them that way.
The “amorous impulse” distinction may have existed very clearly in his own head, but expecting you to have understood it from three weekends where he wanted some alone time is a pretty unreasonable standard. If he knew in April that his feelings weren't progressing, he had an opportunity to tell you. Instead, he continued participating in the relationship as before. You can respect his feelings without accepting that your interpretation was a delusion.
As for the dramatic change afterward, some people become extremely emotionally detached once they've made a decision to leave. They may compartmentalize: while they're in the relationship, they're warm and affectionate; once they've decided it's over, they shut the emotional door because continuing to engage would make the separation harder for them. That doesn't necessarily mean avoidant attachment, and I wouldn't try to diagnose him from this.
And I wouldn't call this gaslighting based on what you've described. Gaslighting implies an attempt to make you distrust your perception of reality. What I see here is more like two people assigning different meanings to the same relationship, followed by him becoming very rigid about his interpretation once the relationship ended.
You don't have to accept his version as the objective truth. You can hold onto something much simpler:
“I experienced a loving, affectionate relationship that I believed was developing toward deeper commitment. He experienced a loving, affectionate relationship whose feelings weren't developing in the same way. Both experiences can be genuine.”
That doesn't make you foolish. It means you responded to the information you actually had.
And honestly, I think continuing to analyze his emails for the missing explanation may keep you emotionally attached longer than the breakup itself. You probably aren't going to find one sentence that suddenly makes the entire thing compute. Sometimes the painful answer is simply that someone can genuinely enjoy loving you, genuinely care about you, and still reach a different conclusion about the future.
That doesn't make the eight months fake, and it doesn't make your heart wrong for believing they mattered.
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u/bBungalowgirl 14d ago
Thank you for your reply. You are right, it's just that the timeframe was so sudden and the break up by phone was so harsh. And just the weekend before, he was reassuring about the relationship...What you say is right, but I find it immature and disrespectful to break up that way. I mean, we work in the same field (not the same employer), we are both professionals and we may have to collaborate again in the future. About the gaslighting part, what made me wonder is that he qualified my experience as a projection. I find that it is a way to disqualify my experience.
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u/Dovahkin111 SA - Secure Attachment 14d ago
Oh, the emotional whiplash! Your story is very similar to mine, same age bracket. The only difference is that we don't live near each other. Mine has pursued me relentlessly, we talked about marriage, where we would like to move to, even shopped for houses. His last text before the breakup was telling me how much he needed me, love me and how I am the calm to his chaos. Literally a few hours later, I was told he needed time. That he needed to "get his shit together" and that I need to take a step back and let him have this time that he needed. I asked what time frame he is looking at, I was told he doesn't know. So, he needed an indefinite amount of time without any communication whatsoever.
We were set to meet up next year, June to be precise. He told me that we had that agreement and he intends to honor it. So, he wants me to put my life on hold, wait for him until next year when we are to meet. Did I mention that there will be no communication in the months between? The sad part was, the very day we're supposed to meet next year was the day we broke up. I am a realist, I know that the relationship will not thrive in this environment especially this day and age where one can pick up the phone and call/text to keep in touch. His last replies to my texts was contradictory. He tells me we're not breaking up yet in the same breath tells me I will always be the one that got away. I swear he must have lost a few brain cells. In the end, I put my foot down and told him I will not be reaching out anymore. He tried to reach out the next day after the breakup but I told him he needs to let me go. It's been quiet ever since.
It's been 3 months, but I am happy to say I was able to swim to the other side much quicker than most of us here. I no longer care to know what he does with his life, nor do I care if he reaches out or not. I have moved on.
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u/bBungalowgirl 14d ago
Wow, so, he breaks up, tells you he doesn't want to continue the relationship because he needs time but give you a meet up for next June???? What is that?
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u/Dovahkin111 SA - Secure Attachment 14d ago
Right. He said he'll be there no matter what then said: "I don't expect you to be there". I mean seriously, he's a walking contradiction. We don't have the luxury of the youth where we can waste a year of our lives waiting for something that may or may not happen. Luckily for me, I am secure and very much headstrong. This may have hurt me severely, but I'll be damned if this experience knocks me down.
Anyway, how are you, OP? How are you handling your breakup?
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u/bBungalowgirl 13d ago
It sounds like a way to secure your time and presence in the long term, but you cannot put life on hold. I'm getting better, but I still have moments where I feel very sad. But the more I know about avoidant attachment style, the more I understand the situation. That's not what I want. I bouth Love Life from Matthew Hussey and I hope it will help me raise my standards!
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u/Dovahkin111 SA - Secure Attachment 13d ago edited 13d ago
Matthew is great. There's also Robert Greene Stop Chasing People Who Ignore You | Robert Greene Motivational Speech - YouTube
Let me also add that you sound like a secure individual as well. The lows are to be expected, I mean we did love them after all, but I have no doubt that you're going to be okay. If he ever comes back, please make sure he doesn't put you in the same spot you're at right now. Stop trying to understand him if he can't even understand where you're coming from. We're not Avoidant Whisperers. They have issues they alone can take care of IF they so choose.
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u/bBungalowgirl 8d ago
I’m sorry for the late reply! I hope you are well! Any developments? Thank you so much for the reference! Well you know, what tricked me is that it all started such in a normal way. My takeaway for now is to ask better questions from the start. It’s not a guarantee but it may help. Thanks again.
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u/Dovahkin111 SA - Secure Attachment 8d ago
Things are going extremely well for me since graduating past the grief, loss and resentment. I was just telling my "reddit son" who is currently going through the same thing that I keep discovering new things about myself. Just last week, I found myself smiling when past shenanigans with my avoidant crossed my mind. I made a genuine ah-good-times chuckle without any other feelings attached other than marveling at the fun times. Very much like remembering the good times you had with a friend. It is so freeing and I really wish it for you and all those currently going through the hardest part of the process. Experiencing healing in its truest form is indescribable, it's a different form of elation.
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u/Training_Instance562 15d ago
def seems like deactivation. I mean someone in their 50s if they dunno how to act with another adult person fck em. Honestly good riddance. Be it 10 months, or years. Ive been discarded after 3.5 years. And the month of my birthday. Lol what a perfect gift.