The heartbreak of being collateral damage in someone else's journey

I (female, early 30) met a guy (mid 30) on a dating app and when out with him for three months. I'm not exaggerating when I said those 3 months of my life were some of the happiest moments of my life. He was a man with an extremely complicated past. He grew up in a very volatile and violent enviroment and while being a teenager and a younger man he self soothed with acohol, drugs, and sex. He was also impulsive and had a lot of repressed anger because of other traumatic experiences I won't mention here. Moreover, he had been in long term relationships were the other person had either anger issues or was emotionally controlling. I learned all about this and more very early on in our relationship. He said he wanted to be fully transparent about his past and that he had improved his life significantly since then, and I believed him because the person I met had his life together: good relationship with parents and family, a great circle of friends, a good and stable job and plans to buy a house.

We moved fast and emotionally attached to each other very early on. We spent weekends together and had midweek dates. We talked about the future often. He told me when he met me he was recently out of a long term relationship that had ended amicably, but was plagued with anger issues from her part and just them not being compatible anymore. That didn't bother me, but now I do wished I would have taken things slow. But I was so enamoured, and so was he. I used to believe we were the definition of "whirlwind romance" but looking back I know understand he attached to me from a wound he still had. The trauma from his past relationships, the way he grew up and his past mistakes made him desperate to prove to himself that he was a good person, and that he could make others happy. When we met me, he put me on a pedestal. We was so eager to please me and make me happy. He used to say things like "you make things so easy" "your existence makes me happy "you are the best surprise of my year" "I want to keep you in my life" "you will love my family and they will love you". He would send me soppy text while out with his friends. He would tell me how his ex wouldn't hold his hand in public and how much he liked that was not afraid of PDA. He would cook for me, take me to my favourite places. He spend my birthday with me (I rarely celebrate my birthday) because he insisted I needed to celebrate myself. You get it. I quickly found myself falling in love, and enthusiastic about the future of our relationship. I was also so proud of him, and how he has managed to make such a good life for himself after all the hardships he went through.

The one day, some devastating news regarding his professional life made him go silent on me for days. I told him I understood it has a hard time for him and I decided to give him space. I would check on him once a day, with just one text. One day, I went over to his house and dropped a care package and a card. Eventually, adter 10 days, the silence started to make me extremely anxious, and I texted him saying I understood that he was struggling, but I needed some reassurance that we were ok. I had told him before about my anxious attachment and how my father's abandonment had made me somebody who needed reassurance, and he promised I could always ask him for what I needed and that he would always be honest with me.

It wasn't until I sent him this text that he finally responded. And the only way I can describe the message he sent me is one that you would send an excellent employee who's possition had suddenly become redundant. He basically "fired me" and wished me well. He told me time and space wouldn't make a difference, that he had too much going on with work, school and family and that when he met me he was just dipping his toes back into the dating world, and although we've had "many wonderful experiences together" (his words, not mine) he wasn't ready to keep going down the path we were taking (aka, a very serious relationship. note: we had been exclusive for a while). This is just the summary of a long message that I don't remember word by word because I think my body was protecting me by just scanning through it. To say that I was blindsided and heartbroken is an understatement. This is the kind of message you send to somebody that you have been casually dating for a few weeks. But this man had shared with me so many vulnerable secrets of his life, he had with actions and words showed me how much he wanted to be with me and, in his words, how he had "strong vested interests" in our relationship. Then suddenly, after one (albeit difficult) setback, he discarded me. He slammed a door in my face.

I told him he had broked my heart. I listed all the things that he had done for me and things that he had said to me that completely contradicted his argument of "I was just dipping my toe back into dating." I told him I hoped he would learn how to be more careful with his words, since the things he said to me MEANT something. I didn't wish him well. I told him he would keep all those wonderful memories for himself, that I didn't wanted them. Deleted his number, blocked him on social and have been NC ever since (and intend to keep things that way)

Of course, I'm left with a million questions. I got to know the man pretty well, so I do have some theories that I believe might be accurate. I believe he attached to me from wounds he still needed to heal and thought that I could fix him. Before I met him, I had been in therapy for three years working on myself. I'm still working on a lot of things, but I know how to communicate, express my needs and I'm not afraid of showing affection. I believe he saw all of that and was infatuated, trauma dumped on me, attached to me very fast and tried to start over with a clean slate. And I massively underestimated the level of trauma he had been carrying for decades and the effects destructive behavious and impulsive choices leave on someone. I also over estimated his resilience and his capacity to self regulate. So, when things got hard, he couldn't deal with the emotional demands of our relationship and discarded me. I'm not justifying his actions and I still believe they were unfair, especially because of how incredibly close we were. The heartbreak has been devastating. I've lost weight in the past two weeks since we broke up. I' struggling at my job. I'm crying every day and I'm back into therapy to regulate my emotions. It's devastating.

Long story short, and the biggest lesson I got from this relationship: people can help you on your self discovery journey, but as adults it is our responsibility to fix ourselfs. This man, who I loved even after just being togetehr for three months, saw a life line and thought: this woman can fix me. She's warm and understanding and she cares. And when things got hard, when something out of his control happened, all the wounds he had been ignoring and all the impulsivity came back, he couldn't cope and slammed the door in my face instead of showing up. Relationships require doing hard work and he realized that he wasn't either willing or interested enough in putting that work.

Of course, this is all just speculation and maybe he just wanted to sleep with someone else, go back to his days of self soothing with sex and alcohol and drugs, who knows. Maybe I'm overthinking it. But the explanation that I give myself, and what is helping me move forward is knowing that this is not a reflection of my self worth, that i showed up with my heart open, that I gave it my best, that the beautiful feelings I developed during the relationship belong to me, not him, and that at the end of the day I was possibly just collateral damage in someone else's journey.

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