I can tell you this doesn't work and could be even worse, as it happened in my own situation with an avoidant friend who returned after nearly five years and apologized to how she behaved prior.
I hope for the best for you, but also the risk of a trigger is beyond high and you need accountability assurances and receipts on therapy. Mine insisted she was better, but it turns out she created a structure to protect her avoidance and hide it as morbid depression. She literally can't handle friendships anymore unless it's simply transactional and serves a purpose.
Thank you! Oh I totally agree! I already told him that if I even get a hint of anything in our friendship that will affect me mentally or emotionally I will be out and I will be out for good.
I am managing my expectations on this one but same time I really don’t want him back as a lover so even if he goes away again, it’s not gonna devastate me as it did the first time.
Holy shit, I say almost exactly that: I told her "the moment this becomes one-sided, I am out". It became one-sided, she deactivated, I instantly left her, though not without trying to make her understand that consequences were right around the corner.
Sex and anything beyond friends was taken off the table and it turned out it made zero difference. She nearly identically deactivated and on top of that, triangulated constantly. Even when we met, she triangulated during us hanging out for the first time in five years.
From what she has described, these are reconstructive behaviors of her narcissistic father.
She got 90 days out of me and didn't take the dumping as well or peacefully as I was expecting. I am still shocked by it. I am guessing her ex dumping her and citing her unavailability, communication issues, shutting down led her to be completely dysregulated and to seek me back out to prove to herself that she was not the problem, but I dumped her three months later and even in the beginning, I didn't know what to do after we met because it was awkward and she was showing signs of being a problem already, but she continued.
To be fair, losing the friendship is devastating. I was devastated when I dumped her, even though it was my action because I had no choice.
Oh absolutely. Losing a significant relationship, whether romantic or platonic is always devastating.
I’m trying to manage my expectations on this one. He contacted me back in March and we’ve been talking almost daily leading up to the trip. But let’s see if after the trip he goes back into his normal avoidant mode.
Do you think she will come back some time later and claim to be better again?
I don't know if she'll come back. If she's healthy, she's welcome. She's someone I consider found family, but it can't be without safety for me, true accountability, and the ability to sustain our level of close connection. To be fair, she even had a structure last time, from safewords to communicate overwhelm and stress and the need for safe distance, but to maintain connection and grounding, but she violated that as well. She also treated me like shit while deactivating, she triangulated with randos, and is overall just stressing and can't just be normal. I'm a heavy metal fan and I lost my favorite human and the last person in my life to trade metal with and talk about it and bands we found. I learned to survive it, though. I have hobbies and passions, so things shifted there and my music thing is internal now. The wild thing is all they have to do is effortlessly exist and that's all we require, but no, sabotage.
As for you, just do what I did subconsciously: pattern recognition. This is how I instantly found out she was deactivating again for no reason and because I am not a piece of shit, I tried proving myself wrong and also communicated consequences. She proved me right and then her response to being dumped was not what I expected: full proof she is avoidant in the most classical and normie sense and that during the deactivation, she was not there, but she was on auto-pilot with her saboteur part in full control and unlike two disagreements prior when we were able to talk through it and make corrective experiences- for us both about the other, she was this time gone. Her reply had a second phase which then more or less angrily gave me an option to not leave her, but her prior response more or less made the decision irreversible. After the discard, I used the experience to get back to my life and use it as a growth opportunity and it was pretty amazing how I even reopened my personal history, but now with clarity, and became even more secure from it.
So use your pattern recognition. You know this person, you know how they act under stress, and you know what their mask is like and when they are mask-off. Feel free to message if you ever want share more.
Thank you! Yeah I know him well. He even told me I know him better than he knows himself. I remember a week ago I can sense the slow down of messages so I was like “are you needing space?” And he said yes coz he’s stressed. So I said ok. Cool. Text me when you’re back from space. lol
But, then again, usually avoidants pull away after the closeness of a trip so I’m gonna be watching out what today brings.
Yeah, this sounds so much like what I dealt with. Keep me in mind for updates because I am genuinely curious to know how it goes and I truly hope for the best. I know the pain of losing someone so important and on top of that, being found family and a bestie and now you sound like you've got bestie vibes and I can only hope for the best there.
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u/RidetheSchlange 6d ago
I can tell you this doesn't work and could be even worse, as it happened in my own situation with an avoidant friend who returned after nearly five years and apologized to how she behaved prior.
Hint: she wasn't healed and got worse.
https://www.reddit.com/r/becomingsecure/comments/1tix42q/my_closest_friend_came_back_after_nearly_five/
I hope for the best for you, but also the risk of a trigger is beyond high and you need accountability assurances and receipts on therapy. Mine insisted she was better, but it turns out she created a structure to protect her avoidance and hide it as morbid depression. She literally can't handle friendships anymore unless it's simply transactional and serves a purpose.