How to Handle His Absence Without Losing Your Mind

You are suffering from abandonment terror. It is clear that you are no stranger to being let down. You said, yourself, that you are used to being hurt and living with hope. This statement tells me that you have been let down (rejected or disappointed) by others in the past. You know that if lovers have let you down, there is a good chance that this pattern goes all the way back to your childhood.

See my advice archives under repetition compulsion and unfinished business and you will understand that we all choose partners who recreate the traumas we suffered in childhood. We recreate partly because all humans gravitate to familiar experiences (including partners who are similiar to our parents) and partly because we are hoping to replay our childhood dramas and 'fix' what went wrong way back when. I explain again and again that these recreations rarely yield the 'fix' that we seek precisely because we have chosen partners who are limited or damaged in the exact same ways that our parents were and are, meaning that they cannot give us any better treatment than our parents did. You need to figure out who let you down when you were a kid (mom, dad or both).

You need to see if you have chosen lovers who have continued this pattern of disappointment. If you have, then that would explain why you are braced for being dumped or disappointed again. In order to protect yourself from his dropping you, you are already pulling back and pulling away. At this point, you need to seriously evaluate this guy you are involved with. Is he like your parents and all your previous partners? Is he going to let you down too?

I worry that he may and here's why. He made a one-sided decision to enroll in a school that 's far away from you. When someone wants to be in a relationship, he/she doesn't make any decisions that will have an impact on the partner without discussing the options with the partner first. It sounds like he made the decision to go without talking with you. No wonder you feel devastated and doubtful as to his level of committment. In the worst case, he may actually be another abandoner out to disappoint you again; or he may just be unschooled in the way to behave in a relationship. We need to find out which.

To find out, confront him on how he made his decision. Explain that if he wants to be with you, he needs to include you in his plans and choose an option that works for both of you, not just for him. If he understands this point, and makes a point of considering and including in all decisions from here on out, you should feel more secure with him and less terrified of losing him at every turn. The point is, in order for you to feel more secure with him, including in his absence, he needs to change how he makes decisions.

If he doesn't get this point and isn't willing to learn and grow in this area, then you may be finding out before it's too late that he is another person who will let you down. If you realize that he is, in fact, another in a long line of heartbreakers, then read all the articles in my Advice Archives. If you still feel compelled to choose men who let you down, enter therapy and work on breaking free. You don't need to spend the rest of your life choosing partners who drop or disappoint you. A good therapist can help you stop this cycle dead in its tracks.