Talk about Autumn - Dating, Trauma and Inbetweens

*Disclaimer: People I talk about in my blog are being pseudomized to protect their privacy. That may include gender and pronouns too, therefore, in such cases the pronouns they/them are used to keep someone´s gender unknown to the reader and doesn´t necessarily mean the person being described is trans or nonbinary. The person being talked about may be, but unless it´s important for readers to understand the situation, such information will not be included in the entry. I hope this will be accepted as a matter of protecting people´s identities and privacy. No one will be ever be willingly misgendered in my posts or on my blog in general and hateful comments won´t be tolerated.*

I actually wanted to write down all the things I liked about the latest person I used to date, since I wanted to be able to pinpoint it and maybe tell them once we get to speak soon. Right now I don´t know how to even do that though. I´m sitting at my desk, listening to the playlist I made for/ about them and I got a lot of things in my head, but none of them are about what I specifically like about this person. Instead I´m feeling scared about actually talking to them again after our period of figuring stuff out on our own. I was never someone who believed on `breaks´in relationships, honestly it just never made much sense to me, I never saw it work out for anyone and the saying of `distance makes the heart grow fonder!´never seemed to ring much true for me either. Not because I don´t miss people or think some time apart to think isn´t a good idea, but mostly because in the past so far, I tend to be the person who misses the other while the other doesn´t even reach out anymore. I don´t usually `fight´for people, instead I give up or in and end up heartbroken. The only time I remember saying I wanted to fight for people was then used against me when I realized how the those people actually lied to me, manipulated and gaslit me. Both of the guys who did this to me in the past where hugely gaslighting me, telling me how I was doing them wrong and going back on my word because I realized I was being manipulated or tricked by them both and therefore tried to end the relationship. After those experiences I ran after the people who ghosted me and idealized them in my head, because after all, they only ghosted me and I thought if only I knew why I could fix that part of me and they would come back and treat me nicely again. I still struggle with that, but it´s much better than it used to be.

However, when my most recent date (let´s call them "Autumn" for simplicity) broke things off with me after 3 months of exclusive dating going well and only told me they `just didn´t have any feelings for me´as the reason, I felt like the floor underneath me gave in. After crying to my roomie and after that venting to another friend on call for hours, I decided I couldn´t do it to just let Autumn have their trip to their home city without any explanation beforehand. I didn´t know about the trip before since they told me in the call they broke things off with me, that they would take the train to their home city the next day to suprise celebrate a friend´s birthday. It was all really spontaneous and because I was in shock during that call I gave into my first impulse response of people pleasing and told them it was fine, we could talk things out after they´d be back. But the more I got my ability to talk back after the initial shock, the more I talked to my friend on the phone about my feelings and realized I couldn´t do it. I couldn´t bend myself over, stay silent about my feelings and be confused and overthinking the entire weekend and start of the next week.  So the same night Autumn had broken up with me I sent them a message at 3.30 am (when me and my friend were about to end the call) telling them I needed to talk before they left and  I couldn´t reach them for the next five days. I went to bed thinking I would probably not get an answer soon and that worst case scenario, I would text autumn again or just try calling them if they wouldn´t answer. Obviously I didn´t just fall asleep like that and instead read some silly little webtoons on my phone to get my mind off of such thoughts until I was tired enough to just knock out for the rest of the night. You can probably imagine my surprise when I actually got an answer from Autumn short past 4 am saying we can do that and asking about what time would work for me. I answered and we agreed to talk while they were on the way to the train station after their work the next day/same day. I spent that day calling my mom and talking to her about the situation and writing down what questions I had in my mind about the sudden break up.  I didn´t want to forget one or lose track of my thought process from the night before. Mostly my questions boiled down to "Why did you break things off so suddenly?" though. 

The call itself went on for 3 and a half hours. Autumn said they didn´t expect it to go on for so long and while they had told me after about 1 and a half hours that they started having trouble keeping up the conversation, they still stayed on the line with me. I got a lot of questions answered, explained why I asked certain things, explained my thought process(es) when asked for it and at the end, both of us were exhausted, but Autumn certainly was to a much higher extent. I knew such a call would take a lot out of them, especially under the circumstances of being awake since 4 am (hence their answer in the middle of the night), having had work all day and then having such an emotionally draining call on public transport, train platforms and the train itself. I did tell them how much I appreciated the effort. I know there was a lot of effortput into this from their side and a lot of discomfort and trying their best to search for whatever answers they were able to give me. Some questions I didn´t get to ask or decided against it for the time being since I didn´t want to make them think or talk about it at that time, like how they had told me at the start of us dating that they were scared of commitment as well as being abandoned and whether that had something to do with the break up. By the way, at this point I think it´s only fair to mention I´m using words like "break up" to make things easier to understand. Me and Autumn were exclusively dating, but we weren´t yet in an official relationship.  Anyways, the call gave me a lot of information I didn´t have before and also suprisingly for me, gave me explanations to certain behaviors I had noticed and observed in Autumn while we were dating. 

One I want to mention here is how Autumn has an interesting habit of sometimes saying things in a way that only excludes one specific thing, but doesn´t clarify one other thing specifically. I´ll give an example in a minute, but basically, instead of clarifying one thing that they are asked about, they would instead explain by excluding other factors or things that were not the case. As an example, here´s the situation in the train ride call when I actually asked Autumn about this behavior: Autumn told me "I don´t feel uncomfortable with you" instead of e.g. "I feel comfortable with you". Now, I did tell them that when they tell me "I don´t feel uncomfortable with you" I understand that as them feeling at least a certain level of comfort when they are with me and that I understand that level of comfort as a spectrum reaching from "a little comfortable" all the way to "absolutely comfortable". I then told them that I would understand both the sentences "I don´t feel uncomfortable with you" and "I feel comfortable with you" to mean they feel a certain level of being comfortable around me and that I noticed this habit of them expressing themselves that way sometimes. Today I can add that from what I can remember, they tend to do that when the topic of conversation is an emotional one and/ or about commitments. Autumn explained to me that they knew they were doing that and that they started doing it because in the past someone very close to them used to turn their words against them and bring things they said back up, but twisting their words against them. So nowadays they tend to exclude just one specific thing/situation when talking to someone so that people can´t twist their words against them as easily, because after all if someone tried to do that, Autumn only ever said " (A) is not the case" and not that therefore "(B) is what is happening". I know it may sound like Autumn has manipulative tendencies if you´re just reading this, but from what I got so far, I never experienced anything of the sorts from them. I therefore didn´t mind it when they used such language with me, after all, I apparently understood their intentions correctly either way (I did ask them during the call to clarify for me whether I understood some situations correctly and those I asked about they said I did). I think one reason why this behavior is something I wanted to mention is because 1) it shows that Autumn has their issues and traumas too and 2) it made me wonder about them even more and regret I only asked about such behaviors now that Autumn had already broken up with me. Why did I only now felt like I should ask about such things? Why do we only now have this talk about our relationship with each other and not before? And what else will I not get to know about them in the future, now that things are over? 

Around the third month of us dating was when I had grown fell so comfortable and safe with and around Autumn, that I set my sights on committing to a serious, long term relationship with them. I had planned to talk to them about this in August, thinking it would give them a little extra time with me before possibly entering a committed romantic relationship. Same time I truly started to fall for Autumn not despite of their flaws and issues, but regardless of them. I fell for them in all their beauty and imperfections, their wit, their emotional intelligence, their weirdness and their character. I knew that I was scared of being abandoned and ending up as just "a friend" or "nice fuck", but all the time we were dating I fought those thoughts and the anxiety, especially since there was seemingly no reason why things would go badly. You can probably see why I felt so shocked and confused about them breaking up with me. 

Of course, the more I write about it here the more my doubts about not having been a good or loving enough partner to them come back in my mind. I would probably have long lost myself in such believes if it was not for that very call we had on their train ride two weeks ago. 

As I said, my biggest question was what happened that they didn´t want to be with me, even though I thought we were doing well. I had about a hundred guesses of what could have caused this, lots of them including those nasty thoughts of not being good enough or having fucked up somehow. So I asked whether I should have behaved differently in certain situations, whether they felt unappreciated or were missing something in the relationship. None of that was the case. 

Autumn told me they simply felt like they missed that last spark that would have made a long term relationship between us possible. 

I have thought about that very explanation they gave me a lot since that talk. Of course it is the simplest answer there is and such a thing is a very common reason people break up or don´t date each other any further. But yet it feels off to me. Of course I will accept their decision in the end, I wouldn´t ever want to force them into anything. Yet I can´t help but think and wonder whether they truly don´t have romantic feelings for me and can´t place them as such. I don´t mean this as a way of taking away or doubting Autumn´s agency. It´s just that with all the things they told me, I find it hard to accept that as the ultimate truth of the situation considering all the other things they told me and the way they behaved. 

To clue you in a little more and explain why I´m thinking this way: Autumn and I met first when they were still in a relationship (about 2 or 2 and a half years ago) and even though their relationship was on it´s last breath, at the time we met as friends and agreed that´s it. Admittedly just like today, already back then I thought Autumn was stunning, but we had just met and beyond admitting to myself that Autumn was attractive, I never made a move on her at that time or would have considered a romantic relationship between us. I may have fucked up some times in my life, but I am not a homewrecker. We texted back then and met twice, but lost the contact. In the time when me and Autumn were out of contact with each other (about a year and a half), they got broken up with in a terrible way, got a new flat for themselves (since they lived with their ex and obviously wanted to move out) and then dated around. In April of this year they texted me on instagram and we ended up dating. During our phone call, Autumn had told me how they made the conscious decision to date me exclusively. We had talked about this from the start, but back then they had told me in their before mentioned excluding way that they were dating me exclusively. The call was also when they told me that I was the first person they had dated exclusively ever since their last long term relationship (mentioned above). So not only did I not know until then that Autumn only dated in an open an uncommitted manner before we started dating each other, but also it was during that call when I found out that the longest period they dated one person before was also 3 months. That also answered the question I had only asked myself so far, whether Autumn maybe just felt like 3 months wasn´t much time in dating, since for me it was the longest I had been dating one Person, let alone do so in a healthy manner. I may talk about my past dating in another post, but basically my friends describe it as my type being "emotionally unavailable". Apart from that Autumn had told me multiple times while we were dating that they felt comfortable with me, the opened up more and more and showed me sides to them that they told me they were glad I was accepting and enjoying, especially since lots ofothers apparently didn´t. I noticed how they would "warn" me about their behavior as they grew more comfortable with me, things like "Oh this is just how I am when I feel safe with someone, you´ll have to live with that haha". It was moments when they followed talk about feeling genuinely happy at the time with such "warnings" about them just behaving this way when they feel comfortable and safe with someone. None of those behaviors were bad things by the way, mostly Autumn was just more silly with me, laughed more, made *naughty* jokes or openly behaved in a way that I guess can be seen as cringe. On the last day trip we did together they had told me (since I asked), that they gave those warnings because they did have people in their past who had told them they didn´t like such behavior of theirs. I can´t say that surprised me, but hearing it from them with their voice in a sigh, sounding somewhat sad and defeated, I felt bad for them. Bad as in knowing the feeling they were talking about, bad as in wanting to fly into a rage about another way people have mistreated this lovely person in the past and bad as in wanting to hug them or somehow give them a reassuring touch, but not wanting to impose myself on Autumn, especially not in public. Back then I tried to reassure them like I used to, by telling them just because I don´t laugh doesn´t mean I´m bothered by them or their behavior and that I would tell them if I did have a problem with them. I still struggle being my unmasked self, especially in public, and it shows. I don´t want to be perceived as too loud or too much, but I honestly was never bothered by Autumn´s behavior, quite the opposite, I am so happy they opened up with me like that and I loved to see those sides of them. Still do. 

Autumn also had issues talking about their feelings and setting boundaries. They categorize their feelings as positive, neutral and negative. I don´t even think their issue is as much being unable to name their emotions, as it is that they seemingly have a hard time admitting those feelings to others as well as themselves. I knew from the start that Autumn has their walls up when it comes to dating and I knew they needed time, care, reassurance and a certain bit of space and freedom to even be able to possibly let me behind those walls. I was and I am okay with that. After all, Autumn is special to me and for the first time ever I want to to fight for someone, fight for a romantic relationship to be possible and most of all, fight knowing I will get hurt sometimes, I will find struggles between me and Autumn I never would guess, but I want to be there regardless. Who would give up a person who is so loving and sweet, so beautiful and kind and who can ease my mind more than anyone ever could? I have little hope for them to change their mind and mean it, but I at least want to be honest with my feelings. I will accept whatever decision they make in the end and I hope they will be not just happy but happier in the future. I tried giving them freedom and encouraged them to do things they were excited about as much as I could. For example they had the chance to go to a huge music festival a week before it took place and when they were offered an invitation to go with friends I wanted them to go and have fun. They got the message with the invite as we hung out and had just made plans for the weekend the festival took place at. Autumn asked me whether it would be fine with me if they go there instead of sticking to our freshly made plans and asked a few more times if it really was okay with me. They had so much fun at the festival and told me so much about it after, showed me videos and all that jazz. If only I could explain the warm and happy feeling I had when they told me all about it to you. They seemed so bright to me in moments like this that it still makes my heart beat a bit faster and my eyes watery. 

I tried to encourage Autumn to set boundaries, that including boundaries with me. It´s the reason I didn´t text them yet, I agreed to give them time to settle in and think for another week after they came back home from the old home city. And my excitement over an article I found and wanted to share or my want for talking to them is sure not worth breaking their boundaries with me. They even offered me to text or if I really felt the need for it call again while they were in their home town those 5 days, but I know they people please and overstep their boundaries often enough, I don´t want to be another person who does that to them. 

On that note there´s more that made me wonder about Autumn´s feelings for me. I know they had a hard time with the topics of our train talk and usually, when they started having trouble keeping up a conversation and actively listen, they would ask to end the talk (and I would comply with that wish). Yet this 3 and a half hour conversation they didn´t even ask for it. They did tell me when they started to struggle but still pushed through. And yes, I do feel bad for it since I made them push through by not offering up to end the call. Yet through it all, it´s not like Autumn is the person to stay on the phone if they really don´t want to. They told me how they would hang up a conversation if they felt mistreated/ treated rudely or unfairly. I wasn´t rude to them of course and I am surprised myself how insanely calm I was during that talk. That´s not to pad myself on the back here, I actually pointed out to Autumn that I was this calm not because I wasn´t sad or hurt but because I needed to distance myself from those raw emotions so I could talk to them and ask my questions. I didn´t want them to think I didn´t feel or care for them breaking up with me, but I spoke the way I did because I didn´t want them to feel even worse than they already did. I don´t want to hide that I knew then as I know now that Autumn was in a very vulnerable state towards the end of our call. They had been told by their best friend the day before that breaking up with me via text message was asshole-ish and even though they didn´t do that, they told me they still felt like an asshole. The way I felt my heart tearing apart at it´s seams when they told me this. The person I appreciated so much, the person who no matter how confused, sad or angry I had been with before I started to talk to them on the phone again feeling this way because of me. 

Autumn has very low self esteem, they told me that and I know it. I never ever wanted to be a part of the reason they thought lowly about themselves even for a minute. I didn´t call to make them regret their choice or make them feel bad, I called because I wanted answers and I didn´t want to back down without an explanation. I started the call telling them how I don´t want to hurt them and how my goal was to get answers, clarify and try to understand. I told them I don´t mean to emotionally manipulate them. Another reason why I knew it was important to give them the time away from me without contact and with time to think, it was needed for them to have the chance of sticking to their decision. I know they might have moved away from me even more during this time apart and that scares me. But I´d rather have them push me away than manipulate them. Is it manipulation to tell the person you dated how you felt about them, how you adored them after a break up? Maybe it is, but I didn´t want to hide my feelings from them, I was already vulnerable I thought, I might as well tell them honestly.  I wanted them to know how they were seen and adored even if they wouldn´t believe me. For context, after Autumn had told me how the felt like an asshole, they had stopped and said they shouldn´t say more since it would sound like an accusation towards me. I told them that for me it´s fine if they went on, I wouldn´t feel attacked by an accusation or anything of the sorts. After all, had they told me something I was to blame for, I would need to accept the blame for it, that´s only fair. That being said, they did go on then and tell me how bad they felt from words of self pity and curses to accusatory tones, but all I thought as I listened was how I just didn´t want them to feel that way and especially not end the call and start of their trip with those feelings. So when they were done letting it out, I asked if I could tell them something positive and they agreed. I didn´t believe I would change a thing about their mood since I knew when they were this down, there was hardly any coming through. I more so hoped that they would be left with the knowledge of someone liking them for themselves and seeing a bright future for them once they would have calmed down. Knowledge of being valued that they could keep as a keepsake. I had written them a letter fro their birthday the week before saying a lot of what I told them in that moment in the call, so I was aware of my view and feelings anyways. I would have told them anyways, despite being scared of my vulnerability. And to my surprise and confusion after I was done basically confessing my feelings to Autumn they thanked me and after a little silence said that in that moment I had made them question whether they had made the right decision (breaking up with me). I didn´t even think I could reach them or make them feel any better in that moment, but there they were on the phone telling me this. 

By the way they didn´t know about the letter before, I only told them after telling them about my view of them on the phone (I didn´t have the chance to give them the letter before and it was supposed to be a surprise fro their birthday). I actually sent that letter off today, we agreed on that. I don´t know if Autumn will read it, but I asked for their permission to send it to them since I didn´t want to hold onto it. It was a present for them after all and they get to decide whether they read it or now. Autumn couldn´t tell me at the time how they would react when the letter arrived (as in whether they would immediately read it, read it later or not at all). But they explicitly told me not to send it while they were in their hometown because it would get damaged between other sendings in their mailbox and they didn´t want that (that reason also surprised me, I thought it would be something like them not wanting something possible uncomfortable waiting in their mailbox when they returned home, but no). 

All I can say is that I doubted Autumn didn´t have romantic feelings for me because I can rationalize away a few small things, but all of those? They said on the phone: nothing was missing as we were dating (beyond the mentioned last spark they broke hings off over), I behaved correctly in terms of being there and giving space, they enjoyed our physical intimacy, they still had the urge to spend time with me and spent days with me that were harder for them than others (example was their birthday we couldn´t spend together due to my health at the time). I never heard anything about them not being attracted to me based on my looks or sexually either and they never behaved in a way that would suggest that. They only once got scared during the dating when they thought I saw us as already being in a committed relationship (we cleared that up during the call too), which isn´t suprising for someone with commitment issues. They said sure there were small things for sure, but clarified they couldn´t even come up with any at the time and none of those would have been a reason for them not to enter a relationship with me. There was no one new and no one I already knew about they wanted to date instead. They felt bad meeting new people on a friendly base even though I never said anything about that bothering me or even hinted towards it (because why tf would I keep the person I date from developing a possible network of support apart from me?). I knew they were in an outgoing phase and I of course noticed when about 2 or 3 week before breaking up with me, they slowly slipped into a more distant phase. I wasn´t worried about things ending since they had told me about how they have outgoing phases and how those are followed by self-isolating ones. I was admittedly worried about them feeling bad and distancing and self-isolating themselves from me and others, but who wouldn´t be? I think it´s suspicious how when that self-isolation phase started is when they said they started to think about our relationship and later came to the conclusion of needing to break nup with me, apparently strengthened in that pursuit by the two days before they broke up with me, where the only thing out of the norm was I didn´t text them after having literally told them how I would like to see them again after I was turned down by them twice over the weekend. (They did turn me down bc they felt bad and had no energy to leave the house, I wasn´t able to go to their place either bc I was on new meds and therefore not allowed to drive. They told me the same thing that weekend as they did in the call and I do believe them about that having nothing to do with me or wanting to avoid me). From what I got told by them and the connections I was able to make because of that I also know that since they got broken up with in a traumatizing way, on top of barely having had any stability or healthy relationships to look up to while growing up, I also assume they simply never knew how stability felt in a (romantic) relationship. Autumn said that their relationships and dating usually start with a high for them, possibly stay on that high a little longer or shorter and then usually turn neutral or negative. With us, it was the high and then evened out into a neutral before they eventually decided they lacked the last spark of romantic feelings for me. There´s more details but I think I must have made it at least a little clearer why I have my doubts.

My friends lovingly labeled me as a fool when they found out that Autumn had told me at the very start they were scared of commitment and being abandoned and even more so when I looked to them for advice and company after the train ride call. I can´t blame my friends here, I admit these are red flags, but I´d rather be a brave and honest fool trying to talk to them again tomorrow or the next days, rather than just run away and close myself up like i used to do in the past. I will admit that I feel frustration about this situation, but at the end of the day, I wanna talk about this with Autumn and see where we go from there. If that´s parted ways, I´ll be fine too eventually. However I wonder if Autumn maybe just doesn´t really know stability, if they are scared of committing because they could be left and whether they self-sabotage and break things off before it can get too serious because of fear. I have enough things they said on my mind, past situations they told me about that give me reason to think so. And ironically I don´t think they´ll be less scared of being with me if I do end up right somehow. Being with someone who is able to analyze and see through you is probably scary as shit. I just wish we could talk this out and that Autumn would be brave enough to try and be with me again (if they want to). After all, they did ask me to reach out to them and text them if they don´t do it. They said they made me too scared or worried to reach out. I guess they meant worried/ scared about me having changed my mind and/ or being mad at them. Either way, careful as it was, I´m glad they were brave enough to ask something of me and I will hold true to my word of texting them, even if it scares me too. I guess one of us has to be making the first step, even if we both fear rejection. As for me, I know that all that can happen is that they break it off entirely or after we try again and while it will hurt me, I´ll be able to get through it and for me it would be worth trying a second time. And I guess this whole situation made think and figure some things out as well. I´ll update on the situation after me and Autumn talked or I reached out and have the result of that to be more broad.

Love, Rox ♥

(unedited)