i’m gay and he and i are both in our early 20s. hes addicted to gaming and barely wanted to talk to me. he got mad and “didn’t wanna talk to me every day or 24/7” but then he said he was sorry for saying that.

i recently broke up with him and i kind of miss him because in retrospect, our relationship may have actually been healthy. sure, we didn’t have the same interests and such, and he wanted me to pay attention to his but rarely did to mine, but what if he was actually a really good boyfriend?

he did say he never loved me when we broke up, but he could have just been mad. he even apologized but i blocked him. i’m trying to get over him but i do wonder if he was actually a great guy and not just a great friend, but a great boyfriend too. we get mad sometimes, after all. all of us.

and i didn’t text him 24/7 like he said nor every day but he would be playing games or leaving me on read anyway and barely speaking. once he said I could speak to him every day, I did, and he barely talked to me and said he didn’t know what to talk about.

but he always had a good word for everyone, still does considering we just broke up :)

please, i’m going through a tough time so no criticism/attacking against me or anyone, i’m not in the mood or ready for it yet, i just need comfort.

  • snek_boi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    Hey. I hope you’re alright. I wrote a response to another thread, but I couldn’t post on it. I hope it’s alright if I post my response here. I hope it helps!

    Good relationships have availability, responsiveness, and engagement. Why? The bottom of it all is whether someone will be there for us, whether someone will hold us.

    You’d think that this means that someone needs to respond immediately to our text messages, but that is not necessarily true. Different people have different sensitivities. For example, some people have more sore spots than others.

    What are sore spots? They are painful memories or thoughts of being rejected. They are wounds that we carry with us. Sometimes, when we are close to someone, our wounds are touched, and that can hurt. When our sore spots are activated, some people start demanding in all sorts of ways, yelling or being passive-aggressive. Others withdraw, staying quiet or sulking. Ideally, we can slowly heal our wounds by letting our partners see them and take care of them. This is very vulnerable, and it requires care.

    When our wounds heal, we can re-calibrate our emotions. We no longer feel fear of rejection. We no longer demand or withdraw. We can hold each other tightly. We can feel very securely attached to our partner. We can spend a whole day without messaging and we still feel connected. Heck, our partner could go on a business trip, not message us, and we’d still feel safe.

    Of course, wounds can sometimes open up again. We are vulnerable creatures. And that’s alright. As long as we know how to heal wounds, we are ultimately safe.

    So, to answer your question your question, I’d say most healthy relationships don’t really leave partners on “read”. However, different people have different sensitivities, and what ultimately matters is whether we feel securely attached with our partners.

    If you’re curious about this way of thinking and the research behind it, check out Sue Johnson’s Hold me tight.