Day 6 Breakup experience

When I was 34 I broke up with my partner and I feel sad about it. We had a seven year relationship and we were engaged the last year. I did the engagement in bad faith which is probably the worst thing I've done but I have some sympathy for myself because I just felt like I had no resources. It was a desperate way to gain time and I kept thinking that my health would resolve itself soon. That I'd be able to get out of it without too much harm being done.
The actual breakup was very difficult for me to do. I tried and my heart would race too much for me to talk. It's a bit strange but I had the same experience when I tried to ask out my first girlfriend. I just hate the way you can let out a few words and suddenly everything can change. It makes life seem too flimsy and like not much held things together in the first place. I know that I wanted things to change but I just felt much more should be involved. And I think that in other relationships probably much more is involved including fights, reunions, etc. But I didn't have the strength to really do too much of that stuff.
Although we did go to couples therapy for over a year. I did try as well as I could. I feel like my whole life has been trying but with minimal reward.
Sexually we had been in a bad place. We'd had sex a bit less than monthly for most of the relationship and none at all that last year. Again I can't begin to figure out where the problem was. I know that I desired sex more than her but some of that was just my image of what I wanted. Actually having sex was difficult for me because of my TMS. And because of that I'm sure it lessened the experience for her. The TMS also shut many of my emotions down so that would have made it harder to connect with me. All I know is that it wasn't working. I don't know what we could have done differently.
I haven't been in touch with her for the past couple of years and my guess is that she doesn't have positive feelings about me. Not that she thinks I'm a bad person but that I wasted years of her life. My first girlfriend said that to me when we were breaking up and that was after only a bit over a year. I hate that people's summary of me can make me so meaningless.

 

I'd have gotten out of there a lot sooner than you did, Luke. Do you think your TMS goodist traits made you try to stay the course too long? Like beating a dead horse? What's that Monte Python skit about the parrot: The parrot you bought at my pet store isn't dead, it's only sleeping!

But you don't say explicitly how your breakup aggravated your TMS symptoms? How were the highs and lows of your engagement synchronized with your various TMS symptoms, or were they? I noticed that getting obsessive-compulsive about a relationship certainly had a major impact on my TMS relapse in 2007-2008. But I was getting obsessive about everything I was doing right then about the time of my existential 60th B-day. Makes me wonder whether it was the relationship or my own existential crisis that triggered the whole business.

 

There are so many ways that I can frame what happened and no answers with any of them. I could look at it and say that I was too goodist and that led to me not saying that my needs weren't being met. Or I could say that I was too fearful of being rejected and that's why I didn't speak up. Or I could say that the fear and the goodist traits are the same.

I don't know that the breakup aggravated the symptoms. The symptoms were so severe and chronic that I think was mostly separated from my emotions. It's only now that I've made some progress that I'm getting more separation of emotions and physical symptoms. I recently had some real stress around my housing situation and for a few days felt a huge amount of panic. I'm trying to see that as progress...

 

Quite possibly. But it does sound like you carried a pre-existing emotional burden into the relationship. The TMS was already there before you opened the door and went in. But what do I know? Not very much!

 

Definitely, I had TMS (and emotional burdens) before the relationship started.

 

I realize I had TMS at the time of my so-called "herniated disk" way back in 2001-2002 that started not coincidentally about 6 months after my mother died. I'd been taking care of her with dementia for 5 years and no doubt repressing my emotional life the whole time 100%. Good and perfect. However, what triggered my relapse in 2007 was a big break up at the same time I'd been working 24-hours a day on a book, no doubt seeking the same kind of approval I'd always received from my late mom. IOWs: The underlying TMS condition had been present all along, even though I was asymptomatic much of the time. Getting emotionally worked up c. 2007 just "triggered" it again. But I think that's the secret: paying attention to your deep emotional needs, the ones that aren't being me, the ones left over from your childhood, like dependency and a need for approval and acceptance. I think it's like Eric Watson implies in his blog: You have to start thinking again as a child or adolescent does in order to find out what's really bugging you emotionally. See: http://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/The_Path_To_Freedom:_The_How-Tos_and_Why-Nots,_by_Eric_Watson

 

I think I'm paying attention to some deep-seated fears that I have- although it's mainly fears in the present. I don't know to what degree I need approval and acceptance right now. I think I'm getting a decent amount from a couple of people in my life- certainly more than I've had in the past. I would prefer if they'd be willing to offer me safety- since I was always told I was on my own when I was younger. I'm trying to tell myself that I'm safe but it's tough.

 

Yes, Luke, TMS symptoms do seem to appear at those moments in life when you've become emotionally vulnerable. I think that's what Dr Zafirides means by existential anxiety. If you were solid, the body wouldn't have to say, "No!"