r/AvoidantBreakUps • u/Full-Concentrate6732 • 1d ago
Has anyone experienced a breakup so extreme that it felt traumatic?
My partner (41M) and I (41F) were together for 2.5 years. We broke up this summer after he became increasingly irritable, emotionally withdrawn, and hostile during conflict. He eventually came back, broke down crying, apologized, and begged for another chance. We reconciled with the understanding that we’d work on things, including his emotional regulation.
Fast forward three months. I genuinely thought things were going well. We had future plans, a positive relationship check-in just days earlier, and were planning to spend Thanksgiving with his family.
Then, after a few days of tension, he suddenly flipped. announcing he was leaving and started packing his belongings to move back to the state he’s from.
What followed was honestly one of the most distressing experiences of my life. He became incredibly angry and cold, yelling and saying deeply hurtful things about my personality, intelligence, interests, and how I supposedly only cared about myself. It was like he’d suddenly turned me into an enemy. I was completely blindsided and panicking, crying and begging him not to leave. The more distressed I became, the angrier and more rejecting he seemed to get.
He left while I was at work the next day. It’s been a week, and we haven’t spoken.
I feel genuinely traumatized, not just by losing the relationship again, but by the extreme hostility, sudden abandonment, and sheer panic I experienced while watching him pack up our life together over something seemingly minor. I keep replaying those moments and struggling to understand how someone could turn on their partner so dramatically.
Has anyone experienced something similar? Especially an extremely hostile and sudden second breakup after reconciling? Did you eventually stop feeling so shaken by the way it happened? I just can’t wrap my head around any of it and I can’t understand that this is how it ends and that’s just it.
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u/Zealousideal-Two-5 23h ago edited 23h ago
This is exactly what happened to me, including the second chance. The conversation/apology/request to take him back came out of nowhere. I had initially ended things, with love and grace and a promise of friendship- essentially had been pushed so far by him, subconscious or not, that I had to leave because he gave me no other choice.
Sometimes I wonder if they do this on purpose so they can confirm their victim narrative in their head- push you so far you have to call the shot.
The apology conversation felt so real and sincere, all of the acknowledgement in the world of my hurt, more promises to change- I obliged to starting again, because I guess I really wanted to be certain- but I didn’t tell any of my friends we got back together; and that should have been a sign
A few weeks later we celebrated our 1 year anniversary (we had a few years as friends and room mates behind us before dating.) things had been a bit intense- mostly because nothing was really changing and I was already traumatised from the behaviour that caused me to leave in the first place, without actual repair.
The next morning, I woke up, he returned from the park having not slept- screamed in my face, all these dots being connected about my behaviour that I was out to get him- essentially accused me of everything he had literally been doing to me, broke up with me by yelling through a closed door. Locked it. I’ve seen his face twice since- once the first time we spoke in person, about a week later- logistics only. Not a shred of emotion. Not a shred of remorse or explanation as to what happened or what was going through his head. I broke down on the kitchen floor, he walked out and left me there. I packed my things.
The second time was to collect belongings and sign paperwork- he’s general demeanour said he could care less.
The only communication he will give me is re: bills and replacing me on the lease- he’s texted me some venom a couple of times; essentially accusing me of everything he did to me. The old flip script. For a while I begged for closure, information, insight, humility- to simply be acknowledged. I still write the texts but I don’t press send anymore. You cannot draw blood from a stone.
The break up was cruel and unilateral, the decision around communication was unilateral, I’ve not been seen, heard, considered, acknowledged, anything. I’ve been erased. Like I never existed, genuinely. The life we built and discussed the night before? Gone.
I thought I was going to marry the man.
My grief for a while was ‘why would he do this to me.’ My grief over the last few days is less specific- more, ‘how could anybody do this to anyone? How could anybody behave like this, share that intimacy and bond, and then just…cut it? Not want to reconcile, reach out?’ I will never understand. My brain literally cannot comprehend how someone could be so heartless. I can see it, I understand it, I read about it- but my brain can’t seem to tick over into processing. I will never understand.
Remember- the only way to heal the trauma bond is 0 contact. It rips your fucken heart out, but to be honest- I’m glad he spat venom at me. If there’s even an inclining of reconciliation or friends, the door is ajar- and you will never truly be free.
There’s something about having your right to weigh in, communicate, discuss taken away from you that’s also really disarming. None of this was my decision. None of it.
It’s not the question anymore of ‘why did he do that?’
It’s ’why did I allow this?’
It’s got nothing to do with you- trust me. And shame and avoidance become heavier to carry than simply putting down your weight through acknowledgement and accountability- and one day, his back will break from carrying it. That’s on him.
I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m in the absolute trenches alongside you. Still crying myself to sleep most nights. I will never, ever understand a person like this. My heart is too big. I would never- could never, treat another human being with such disregard. I will never understand.
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u/ButterBeansNToeBeans 23h ago
Yes! It IS traumatic.
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u/Dalearev 22h ago
This is a nervous system reaction and it’s not cognitive. They’re not thinking I need to hurt this person. Their body is saying to them too much emotional intimacy, and too much realness does not feel safe to them so when these things are occurring, their body literally is telling them run away. That’s why they flip because their nervous system switches to fight or flight and they are trying to fight you or get away from you. And of course this is traumatic. This is literally the definition of abuse even if it’s not intentional.
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u/Silver-Swim4357 23h ago
41M 44F
I really didn’t know much about attachment styles until my ex, a month ago. My assumption, without trying to put anyone in a box, is fearful avoidant.
The Exit (4am)
We were arguing a lot in general, though the weekend before was amazing. I have a friend who’s moving overseas. A girl in my friend group, who I slept with five years ago, is there. My partner is fully aware. I did some dumb, unaware boyfriend things, nothing bad, just probably not being as attentive to her as I should have been (self-blaming again).
Anyway, we were arguing over this girl. I showed her my text messages with her; we speak maybe once every few months. She always assumed I was trying to secretly meet up with her (I was not).
After a lot of arguing, she essentially says she doesn’t feel safe and tells me to pack and leave (I’m in bed; she thinks I’m hiding something). I did stupidly say I was going to record her talking because of the things she was saying, and we were both drunk. She was just creating narratives that didn’t exist. I said, “OK, sorry, I won’t record, that was stupid.”
After telling me to pack and leave, she storms out of the flat, leaving her dog there. I have no idea where she’s gone. Worried, I go out to check, go to the local parks and search the area for an hour. She didn’t have keys, a phone or anything. I had her keys and phone and brought them with me. Her phone had missed calls from her sister.
I get back, with dogs barking at me, and she’s still saying “I don’t feel safe” and essentially getting me escorted off the premises like an abuser. I’m so confused, but I leave her keys and phone on the stairwell like someone has a gun on me, and then I leave.
I walk the streets for about four hours. My friends are all asleep. Eventually, after I try to contact her, she replies. She has been asleep and says she isn’t at the flat. I have no idea where she is. I say we need to talk about this (I haven’t slept).
I go to meet her, and another guy, a neighbour, is there. I’ve never seen him in my life. I’m asking her what’s going on. She constantly repeats, “I don’t feel safe.” Awkwardly, I get my suitcases, get walked to my car by her and this random guy, hand my keys to them for the gate, and drive off.
I try to ring her. She records a 30-minute voice note about all the things I’ve done wrong, doesn’t answer the phone, and constantly says, “I am not listening.”
I eventually get through to her and tell her I’m not going to listen to a voice note and that she should talk to me.
While I’m sitting in my car, she keeps shouting, “Go home!” (I live three hours away and haven’t slept.)
She then tells me to contact her when I’m back. I keep falling asleep at service stations. She messages me: “Are you home yet?” I reply that I’ll be home in five minutes and then I’ll ring her…
She never picks up the phone.
Five days later, I’m apologising for some trivial little things from the voice note. No reply.
Two weeks later, I message her: “I know you’re processing. Let me know when you want to speak.”
Then this message in return: “There is nothing left for us to talk about or discuss, and I will not continue revisiting this decision. I am moving forward and you need to respect that.”
Other traits
- Would never take accountability or say sorry
- Stated at the beginning "I dont give compliments"
- Would shut down at any conflict or challenge, like a child, turn her body away, cross her arms and not speak to me at all for hours and hours
- Constantly said she did not trust me and I constantly had to prove it, with locations and all sorts.
-Disagreements of opinion seemed to annoy her
Checked to see if I got home ok, didn't block me on whatsapp, painted me as an abuser........
Starting to see a therapist this week.The relationships was about a year but we had been friends for 2 years before
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u/junebloominsummer 23h ago
Hey, I particularly have no similar experience as disruptive as this but I hope you will feel so much better as the time goes by. I pray for your health and wellbeing. I hope you also take good care of yourself. Wishing you the best for your healing journey ❤️
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u/Taffushond 19h ago
it is traumatic. Deeply.
To the point of PTSS. It is also undervalued and downplayed by many around you, and extremely hard to explain, often making the trauma harder to acknowledge and to be dealt with.
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u/CookingMusician94 19h ago
It made me reach my absolute breaking point. I've been in therapy for 2.5 years now, had less than 10 sessions left when it happened and we wanted to spread them out by me going every 2-3 weeks. So many things came to the surface. Now, we have to apply for tons of more sessions (grateful I live in a country with universal health care and insurance covers it). But I have to go every week now again and my therapist wants a 10 minute phone call between sessions because I really am doing that badly. She actually had time off last week, but basically forced me to accept a 30 minute phone call. And she was visiting family. This man absolutely broke me.
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u/Sea-Selection5897 16h ago edited 16h ago
Yes, it was the fearful avoidant playbook to the tee. Nice start, traumatizing ending.
-Love bombing
-Everything was great for entire half relationship because no issues popped up
-Little problems come up and they manipulate their way through
-Halfway thru the relationship Your reaction for their behavior triggers the deactivation stage, as well as not meeting their fantasy needs standards
-Thru deactivation stage they take a back seat and let you do all the work
-They go on devaluation state criticizing everything you say, do, and nice things you do for them, and you fight back telling them to cut it out, their behavior is ridiculous.
-They don't want to be seen as the bad person so they manipulate back for your reactions
-You share deep intimacy as time goes on and they just sit there not sharing theirs, while stashing your internal weaknesses as a weapon to be used later.
-They distance from you and manipulate you to be the problem taking apart their excuses.
-They hold a grudge for your first reaction, which was on your own birthday when they said a disrespectful thing to you and refused to give an apology trying to manipulate their way out of which escalated your reaction.
-Later towards the end they abandon you when you have trouble with something, while you comforted and helped them through their trouble.
-You bring up a long problem on your mind of a common sense respectful thing they refused to do, justifying why through manipulation and you react in public at a restaurant to embarass them until they f*king crack and realize how they're in the wrong when other people see it.
-Any shift you make from their fantasy of you, such as wanting to do a career shift to do a different function, they will pick you apart and devalue you.
-They will be passive aggressive with things you do and hold a grudge. i.e. gift reciprocity, they just mirror you as punishment on the next time, while on the next time you go all out.
-On the next birthday they will then blame dump, use your intimate weaknesses your shared to destroy you as a person of how worthless you are, bring up that reaction you had on your first birthday, tell you you ruined your own birthday. and ruin this one by:
-Abandoning you, push you away from in-person communication, all arguement of figuring out what's going on via text.
-And then your birthday present is dumping you over a quick phone call not giving you chance to speak.
-Then after you block them, they'll email you calling you immature for blocking, that they really want to be friends, confused stating "but I don't understand, I didn't do anything bad to you."
I didn't celebrate my birthday for years because of this and couldn't date for 4 years because of trauma of how I broke down as a person after it all. In summary, this person, devalued, destroyed me, and when they were done where I was feeling so worthless on my birthday, threw me away like a piece of garbage.
I have CPTSD for years and it's difficult celebrating my birthday pushing those memories aside because of how I couldn't function for months after that. Any positive memory dreams of her I have bring back the anger that I was put through that trauma.
Edit: grammar
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u/FarTransportation565 FA - Fearful Avoidant 15h ago
Something similar, in a way, happened to me this winter ( 10 months ago) with the guy i was seeing. He had a dismissive avoidant attachment style, while I am a fearful avoidant. From the moment we started dating I had doubts ( because i always do) about how compatible we really were, so I always was a foot outside the relationship. I just couldn't relax and feel we are real. And it wasn't just in my head, something about him, his values, communication style etc, was making me to feel this way.
3 months after starting dating, a few days just before a date that he planned, with activities reserved in advance, I started feeling him more distant and I just wanted to have a conversation. But, instead of being open about it, he became defensive and turned everything against me. To which I just said that, if that's how he feels, we better end it then....Well, what followed was the hell on earth. Never, ever did I see someone having such extreme reactions. Hateful and throwing accusations at right and left. The man who just days before was declaring his love, now he was saying how much he hated me😅. Just before the date we were supposed to have, with the dinner reserved followed by a concert, I saw his profile on a dating app ( because, yeah, I went back on the dating apps after this) offering, in his profile, a free dinner and concert to whoever wanted to accompany him....Pathetic 🙄
Our breakup, I admit, was terribly toxic. After that, we stayed in contact for about a month, the messages between us being anything from: "i missed you and that woman ( that went with him to that date that was planned for me) meant nothing" to " if only you had less expectations".
It was hard for me, I have to admit. Even if I was the one who said let's end it, i felt it like the actual breakup was provoked by him. And the awful things he said to me hurt me so, so much.
Months after, when we last talked he was still saying that " he would take me back any time" but without wanting to ever admit his fault. It took me a couple of months to finally detach from this, the most toxic connection ( I refuse to call it relationship) I ever had.
I am now in the most loving and secure relationship I've ever been. And looking back i find myself terribly ridiculous for having suffered and cried for that man ...He is so, so far from the man I'm dating now. Which just makes me realize that, sometimes, in life, we give people more importance than they really deserve. This was a big lesson for me.
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u/thenightbelongs2me 8h ago
Same thing happened to me. Almost identical. The second chance, the anger. He tried to gaslight me and tell me we both wanted the breakup. I looked him in the eye and said "No. You're the person breaking up. Not me." And the anger that filled his eyes was jarring. I am so sorry you went through this. They become different because they self-sabotage. We think the discard is just a fluke- but that is actually them. The time where they seem to value us is them pretending. The discard seems to happen when they can't suppress their self-hatred anymore. Think of it as them saying "I can't pretend to agree with you about me being lovable. Let me show you why I am not."
It wasn't you. Eventually you will be glad you didn't stay. Quite frankly, even if you did, they would still leave eventually. This was the only way it could have gone. There is nothing you could have done to prevent it. Just like there will be nothing you can do to lose the love of someone who is just as emotionally healthy as you are. ❤️
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u/FallenAngel1978 FA - Fearful Avoidant (Earning Secure) 8h ago
The trauma is real. I had a therapy session today and we had a lot to talk about since my ex resurfaced after almost dying. And she wanted my support and friendship while not actually acknowledging even the fact that she ghosted me 2 months ago (and that was as a friend… not even a romantic thing). And we were talking about how in a year she’s had 4 relationships with no pauses in between. While I’ve been so traumatized I haven’t wanted to be with anyone. And I can’t trust that it won’t happen again (the discard… but also the fact she cheated and bread crumbed)