SatyaSitamanas
New member
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2025
- Messages
- 28
Hello fellow Zevists, I have a history of pushing people beyond their comfort zones and it's caused a huge issue for my partner and I. Sometimes I don't understand that's what I am doing at the time I'm doing it because I see it as having logical discourse, questioning flaws in logic, being accurate with reasoning. I enjoy these kinds of conversations because I personally like being told what I am doing wrong or how I can do something differently to get better results, I like when people are direct with me and offer support or solutions. Sometimes it will sting my ego initially, but I face it, work through it and ultimately am better off for being told. I would rather know than not know. I never want to be a static person incapable of advancing. I want to be perfect for myself and my partner, as much as I can and I can't do that without feedback.
What I fail to see is that not everyone operates this way. Everyone has their own window of tolerance, how their nervous system reacts to being aroused (flight, fight, freeze, fawn), and how their attachment styles (secure/avoidant/anxious etc) handle the stimuli. Not everyone will react/respond to something how I will, which is coming from a place of insecure attachment (anxious style, sometimes avoidant), so I chase. I've pretty much chosen all avoidant men as partners. I am not unaware, but I'm not able to fully read the signs and decode people until after I have become attached to them, and I don't question this while I am dating because the oxytocin feels so good. Why would anything bad happen?? I like to think I can "save" people from their own self-destruction, but how can I really when it's never about how hard I try or how long I wait? Its really about them being ready when they are ready. I can push people to look in the mirror, but I can't make them open their eyes, I can tell them my armchair analysis, but I can't make them listen or believe. I can use all my energy thinking about solutions, but if someone isn't ready, it doesn't matter what I do... this will only cause problems.
I learned today that if someone doesn't know how to swim, you can't throw them in a pool and expect them to swim and get out safely. If you want someone to learn to swim, you first take them to the water and have them touch it with their hands, get feedback. Next session they may put their feet in the water, next session they go in more or at their own pace, and progressively make tiny steps of progress so they don't freak out and runaway. I learned this is called titration, slow and steady over time. I like the process for myself as well, but I was lacking so much compassion and empathy for my partners that I essentially threw them into the deep end and expected them to survive. I didn't do progessive and supportive. I did what was satisfying to me in that moment because I wanted my needs met, which is very very selfish. I did not realize until an intense journaling session last week, that that is what I was doing to my partner and have done over and over again in past relationships. I want to break this pattern in myself, demanding, controlling, impatience.
Due to my behaviors, some aware and some automatic (autopilot), I have traumatized my partner and myself. I believe he is in shutdown mode (I haven't heard anything from him in a week which is highly unusual and never happened before) and my nervous system has been freaking out and reacted by chasing again. From the research I've done, that only pushes him away further. I am doing my best to stop any correspondence, but its been very very difficult as someone dealing with anxious attachment issues: longing to repair but being met with nothing. I am trying not to take his avoidance personal (even though I believe its my behaviors and incessant pestering about certain issues that caused the rift), and see his withdrawal from the relationship as his nervous system being extremely overwhelmed and not equipped to handle so much stimulation, so doing the thing it knows how to do to regulate itself: withdraw and try to regulate. Call if Self-Preservation.
I am trying to see not contacting him as the same thing for me: Self-Preservation. I have relied on my partners so much as my source of self esteem and self worth, so this feels like the first time I've ever had to accept that I do need to be my own best friend and have way more compassion for my partner if I ever want to be in a happy and healthy relationship. I can't keep relying on my partner to be my everything, entertain me, show me my worth, be my personal therapist, a "yes man" who always agrees with me or does everything I say, a companion who lives their life according to my life. That's just not possible nor is it healthy. I don't know where that idea came from (perhaps Disney movies), but just like Disney movies, its just not real!
I write this because I want to expose myself to my contribution to why we are where we are. I do not know if I will ever talk to him again or if he could ever see me as a safe space again. But I'm learning its something I will have to learn to deal with and be stronger in my compassion, empathy, self-love, and awareness of meeting people where they're at and not pushing people to be where I think they should be. That concept evaded me for so long. "Meeting someone where they're at. (Why can't they meet me where I am??)" How misguided I was. And this lesson is a hard lesson, but one I desperately needed in order to advance myself. For the longest time my heart chakra was very clunky when I did the chakra spinning, hardly spinning at all and constantly getting stuck. The color was hard to see too. After I had my deep journaling discovery session last week, it has been spinning easily like the rest and glowing a bright saturated green
It pains me so much that it had to happen this way, I never wanted to hurt him or him get caught in the crossfire of my own becoming. I just hope he knows he is and was always lovable, and I hope his nervous system is able to get regulated and not feel like he is at risk of being thrown in the deep end of the pool. I didn't know what I didn't know and I'm sorry.
Thank you everyone for reading. Much love and many blessings to you all. Hail Zeus!
What I fail to see is that not everyone operates this way. Everyone has their own window of tolerance, how their nervous system reacts to being aroused (flight, fight, freeze, fawn), and how their attachment styles (secure/avoidant/anxious etc) handle the stimuli. Not everyone will react/respond to something how I will, which is coming from a place of insecure attachment (anxious style, sometimes avoidant), so I chase. I've pretty much chosen all avoidant men as partners. I am not unaware, but I'm not able to fully read the signs and decode people until after I have become attached to them, and I don't question this while I am dating because the oxytocin feels so good. Why would anything bad happen?? I like to think I can "save" people from their own self-destruction, but how can I really when it's never about how hard I try or how long I wait? Its really about them being ready when they are ready. I can push people to look in the mirror, but I can't make them open their eyes, I can tell them my armchair analysis, but I can't make them listen or believe. I can use all my energy thinking about solutions, but if someone isn't ready, it doesn't matter what I do... this will only cause problems.
I learned today that if someone doesn't know how to swim, you can't throw them in a pool and expect them to swim and get out safely. If you want someone to learn to swim, you first take them to the water and have them touch it with their hands, get feedback. Next session they may put their feet in the water, next session they go in more or at their own pace, and progressively make tiny steps of progress so they don't freak out and runaway. I learned this is called titration, slow and steady over time. I like the process for myself as well, but I was lacking so much compassion and empathy for my partners that I essentially threw them into the deep end and expected them to survive. I didn't do progessive and supportive. I did what was satisfying to me in that moment because I wanted my needs met, which is very very selfish. I did not realize until an intense journaling session last week, that that is what I was doing to my partner and have done over and over again in past relationships. I want to break this pattern in myself, demanding, controlling, impatience.
Due to my behaviors, some aware and some automatic (autopilot), I have traumatized my partner and myself. I believe he is in shutdown mode (I haven't heard anything from him in a week which is highly unusual and never happened before) and my nervous system has been freaking out and reacted by chasing again. From the research I've done, that only pushes him away further. I am doing my best to stop any correspondence, but its been very very difficult as someone dealing with anxious attachment issues: longing to repair but being met with nothing. I am trying not to take his avoidance personal (even though I believe its my behaviors and incessant pestering about certain issues that caused the rift), and see his withdrawal from the relationship as his nervous system being extremely overwhelmed and not equipped to handle so much stimulation, so doing the thing it knows how to do to regulate itself: withdraw and try to regulate. Call if Self-Preservation.
I am trying to see not contacting him as the same thing for me: Self-Preservation. I have relied on my partners so much as my source of self esteem and self worth, so this feels like the first time I've ever had to accept that I do need to be my own best friend and have way more compassion for my partner if I ever want to be in a happy and healthy relationship. I can't keep relying on my partner to be my everything, entertain me, show me my worth, be my personal therapist, a "yes man" who always agrees with me or does everything I say, a companion who lives their life according to my life. That's just not possible nor is it healthy. I don't know where that idea came from (perhaps Disney movies), but just like Disney movies, its just not real!
I write this because I want to expose myself to my contribution to why we are where we are. I do not know if I will ever talk to him again or if he could ever see me as a safe space again. But I'm learning its something I will have to learn to deal with and be stronger in my compassion, empathy, self-love, and awareness of meeting people where they're at and not pushing people to be where I think they should be. That concept evaded me for so long. "Meeting someone where they're at. (Why can't they meet me where I am??)" How misguided I was. And this lesson is a hard lesson, but one I desperately needed in order to advance myself. For the longest time my heart chakra was very clunky when I did the chakra spinning, hardly spinning at all and constantly getting stuck. The color was hard to see too. After I had my deep journaling discovery session last week, it has been spinning easily like the rest and glowing a bright saturated green
It pains me so much that it had to happen this way, I never wanted to hurt him or him get caught in the crossfire of my own becoming. I just hope he knows he is and was always lovable, and I hope his nervous system is able to get regulated and not feel like he is at risk of being thrown in the deep end of the pool. I didn't know what I didn't know and I'm sorry.Thank you everyone for reading. Much love and many blessings to you all. Hail Zeus!
