BOOK EXCERPT: Why I prefer someone who’s “too much” to too little
I had a partner who, when we started dating, I thought was securely attached. They didn’t express any needs, so I thought that they didn’t have any. It eventually turned out that this was a facade. As our relationship progressed, I realized that they were very avoidant. They never expressed their needs to me not because they didn’t have any, but because they didn’t know how to. They could only have their needs met when they aligned with mine. And that’s how our relationship was built. Because they were avoidant and didn’t offer me much, I had to be the one who made asks in the relationship, and they sometimes commented that they’d benefit from that too, because in reality they also had that need but didn’t express it. So the onus was constantly on me to express my needs, to be vulnerable, to build the relationship.
The first conversation about our relationship they ever had with me was when, one day, they wanted to break up with me. They told me that I wasn’t meeting their needs and that we were incompatible. I pulled them back and told them that I’d try to meet their needs if they expressed them. Retrospectively, I think I should’ve let go, because from that moment, I became anxious about what they’re not telling me, and constantly wondered when they’d want to break up with me next.
Even their communication style was avoidant. When I would text them, they’d take a really long time—sometimes weeks—to respond to me. I talked to them about it more than once, trying to understand why they took so long to respond, and they’d tell me that they were worried they were bothering me. I assured them that they weren’t, that I was the one who initiated contact and really wanted to talk to them. They’d tell me they’d do better, which they would for a few days before going back to the beginning of the same cycle. If they had any communication needs that they could’ve expressed to me to make them feel more secure, I would’ve tried to meet them, but they never said anything to me besides that they’d do better next time.
By the end of our relationship…
This is an excerpt of an essay in my book, At the Intersection of the Margins.