UnlearningSilence.blog

This piece is unlike my other essays because it is not one essay but two. The first explores a question I have carried for years: when intimacy makes me want to escape, am I recognising that I need to leave, or am I asking for enough room to breathe without losing myself? The second contains the answer I have reached only recently.

Perhaps I should also thank the partner in that particular relationship. He gave me such an exhaustive opportunity to examine the question in practice that the answer eventually became impossible to avoid. His contribution was not one I would have chosen, but it was undeniably clarifying. Reaching that answer required enormous work, both internal and external. I had to examine my history, my attachment patterns, the responses of my nervous system and the reality of what was happening around me. I had to learn the difference between taking responsibility and accepting blame, between fear and evidence, and between the difficulty of intimacy and the danger of a particular relationship. At times, the work was painful. It was also, without question, worth every hour and every difficult truth it required me to face.

THE QUESTION: DO I NEED TO LEAVE OR DO I JUST NEED SPACE?

There is a particular moment in some relationships when love begins to feel like captivity. Nothing obvious may have happened. The relationship may have begun beautifully. She wanted closeness; perhaps she had wanted it for years. Yet once the bond becomes real, once she has someone precious to lose, something changes. She begins to fear losing the person she loves, perhaps because losing her father early in childhood taught her how suddenly love can disappear. At the same time, intimacy awakens an opposite fear: that in holding on to another person, she might lose herself.

She feels squashed. Small. Irritable. Suspicious. She cannot breathe properly inside the relationship. She starts a fight or withdraws. She becomes certain that she must leave.

Then she does, and the relief is enormous. Her body settles. Her mind clears. She has herself back.

But after enough distance, she misses him. The tenderness returns. So do the good memories. She wonders whether she destroyed something valuable simply because she could not tolerate being loved. Yet her return may not arise from longing alone. He may be pursuing her relentlessly through calls, messages, promises, apologies or appearances, refusing to let the separation become quiet enough to hold. Once her fear has subsided and her love has become accessible again, she may find herself unable to resist that pursuit, or she may simply no longer want to resist it. The door she was trying to keep closed is being pressed from both sides, by his persistence and by her own returning hope.

She goes back. Intimacy returns. So does the panic.

What is happening? One possible explanation is an adult attachment pattern commonly called fearful avoidant, sometimes discussed in relation to disorganised attachment. She wants intimacy, but intimacy activates fear. Closeness means love, but it may also mean dependence, disappointment, control or the loss of self.

Her attachment system pulls in opposite directions. One part says, Come closer, while another says, Get away from me. Neither feeling is necessarily false. They may be different states of the same nervous system.

When intimacy feels dangerous, she scans for threats. A delayed reply acquires meaning. A change in tone feels ominous. Criticism lands like rejection. The urge to argue, flee or shut down may be an attempt to escape intolerable activation rather than the person himself.

Once she leaves, the immediate threat disappears. Autonomy returns. Her nervous system quietens. With danger no longer dominating her attention, love becomes accessible again.

The cycle is brutally efficient. The pattern moves from closeness to activation, then to scanning for threats, overwhelm and escape. Relief follows, then longing. If that longing is met by relentless pursuit, return can begin to feel almost inevitable.

Understanding this matters. It allows her to take responsibility without calling herself incapable of love. She may not fear intimacy itself. She may fear what intimacy has historically required her to surrender.

But attachment language has a danger of its own. It can make a woman distrust her perception precisely when she should be listening to it.

Not every alarm is a false alarm. Sometimes she is afraid because the past has entered the room. Sometimes she is afraid because the person standing in the room is lying.

For someone raised around inconsistency, the distance between words and actions may carry unusual emotional weight. If love once came mixed with fear, or if the adults around her could not be relied upon to mean what they said, dishonesty and insincerity may not feel like ordinary human flaws. They may register in her nervous system as danger.

The comparison is imperfect, but dishonesty can affect her almost as peanuts affect a person with a severe nut allergy. The substance may appear small or harmless to somebody else, yet her system recognises it as a threat and reacts rapidly and intensely. She cannot reason herself out of the reaction while she is still being exposed to the thing that triggers it. This does not mean every suspicion is correct, but it does mean that honesty is not a minor preference for her. It is part of the emotional environment she needs in order to feel safe.

That sensitivity is a vulnerability. It may also be accurate perception.

If a partner repeatedly says one thing and does another, she cannot simply decide to trust him. An apology may soothe her for an evening. A beautiful explanation may restore hope. But trust is not built from eloquence. It is built from repeated experiences in which words and actions agree.

This also means that her nervous system is capable of learning something new. With a partner whose words and actions remain aligned, not for a week but consistently over time, vigilance may gradually become unnecessary. Trust would not arrive because she had forced herself to suppress doubt. It would grow because reality had become dependable. The right partner could not erase her history, but he would not keep reenacting the conditions that made her afraid.

She can learn to regulate herself. She can pause before reacting, distinguish observation from interpretation and tolerate the ordinary uncertainty of loving another person. What she cannot do is regulate her way out of someone else’s unreliability.

The question is therefore not simply: Is this my attachment system, or is this relationship unsafe? It may be both.

Her history may amplify her reaction without inventing its cause. A smoke alarm can be sensitive and there can still be a fire.

So what should she do when something inside her is screaming, Leave? In a fundamentally safe relationship, the feeling should be neither obeyed blindly nor dismissed contemptuously. It should be examined.

What exactly will I be relieved to escape? Is it this person, or the vulnerability of needing anyone?

Do I need to leave the relationship, ask for the relationship to change, take some space, or allow an activated nervous system to settle before deciding? When overwhelmed, those four experiences can feel identical. They are not.

She can ask what actually happened, what she observed and what she inferred. She can consider whether his words and actions are aligned, whether a boundary has been crossed, and whether she is afraid of losing herself or is actually being required to abandon herself. Most revealingly, she can notice whether he responds to her discomfort with curiosity and accountability, or with punishment and reversal.

The last question matters. A safe partner does not have to be perfect. He does need to be honest enough that reality remains shared. He can give her space without withdrawing love, hear a boundary without treating it as betrayal and survive disagreement without turning it into catastrophe. He does not prevent her from leaving; he helps create a relationship she does not have to escape in order to feel free.

That kind of steadiness can change the experience of intimacy. Not because another person can heal her wounds for her, but because closeness no longer keeps reopening them.

And she has work to do too. She must learn to ask for space before manufacturing an ending. She must resist turning fear into accusation. She must remain herself inside love rather than disappearing into it and then blaming love for the disappearance. She must learn that dependence is not imprisonment, vulnerability is not weakness and disagreement is not abandonment.

Personal responsibility, however, does not require her to betray herself. If the relationship involves coercion, surveillance, intimidation, restraint, violence, repeated deception or punishment for asserting autonomy, she does not need perfect regulation before protecting herself. Those behaviours are evidence. Attachment theory must not become a sophisticated way of explaining away abuse.

She can have attachment wounds and still deserve honesty. She can be sensitive to inconsistency and still be right that someone is inconsistent.

She can struggle with intimacy and still recognise when someone is making intimacy unsafe. Perhaps the final question is not, Why can’t I stay? It is: What kind of relationship allows me to stay without abandoning myself? The answer will not be a relationship without vulnerability. No meaningful love can offer that. It will be one in which vulnerability is not exploited; where freedom does not have to be negotiated, independence is not treated as betrayal, boundaries are respected and both people take responsibility for their wounds.

Attachment style matters, but compatibility matters too. Regardless of whether she is secure, anxious, avoidant or fearful avoidant, a relationship built on deception would eventually ask her to mistrust either him or herself. For her, whose nervous system is especially responsive to insincerity, the cost would be felt sooner and more intensely. That does not make her the cause of the incompatibility. It reveals it.

Sometimes the urge to leave is an old defence against being loved. Sometimes it is the clearest part of you recognising danger.

Wisdom lies in learning the difference. And sometimes the answer becomes clearer when you notice that your fear is not being produced by intimacy alone. It is being repeatedly manufactured through comparison, ambiguity and competition.

Sometimes there is a third person in the room, even when she is not physically there. That is the triangle. And that is where the next essay begins.

THE ANSWER: GIRL, LEAVE THE TRIANGLE!

This is not an essay about men. Most men do not behave this way. Noticing attractive people is not abuse. Having friends of another sex is not abuse. Receiving attention, or even enjoying admiration, is not abuse.

Triangulation is different. It is the repeated introduction of a third person into a relationship to create insecurity, comparison, competition or leverage. It can happen between people of any sex or gender. The pronouns belong to this story. The behaviour is the subject.

The story often begins before the relationship does. He tells her about the women who hurt him. His exes were jealous, unstable, unfaithful, controlling or impossible to please. He is the wounded man, repeatedly misunderstood. She listens. She sees his vulnerability and believes she understands him in a way the others did not.

Then she becomes his partner. Eventually, she discovers that this was not merely how he spoke about his exes. It is how he speaks about women once they become close to him.

The former confidante becomes the difficult girlfriend. Another woman now hears the story she once heard about those who came before her. The women change. His position remains stable. This is the architecture of the triangle.

One woman is told that another wants him. Another is told that his partner is jealous or controlling. His partner is shown messages, photographs or evidence of how much the other woman misses him. Everyone receives a different piece of the story. He remains in the middle: desired, misunderstood and apparently innocent. This usually stems from a deep seated insecurity, often an insecurity that is too painful for him to face. The women may never meet. In fact, he would not want them to. They are nevertheless placed in competition.

Eventually, his partner starts comparing herself. Is the other woman prettier? Easier? Less demanding? More interesting? She is no longer simply trying to understand the person she loves. She finds herself trying to win a competition she never agreed to enter. This becomes even more corrosive when he occasionally undermines her with comments about her appearance, personality, professionalism, achievements, or even her competence as a mother.

The paradox is that her reaction becomes evidence against her. She is told, You’re jealous. You’re insecure. You’re controlling. You don’t trust me. But what came first: irrational suspicion, or repeated reasons to doubt what she was being told? That distinction matters, because anxiety can arise from old wounds. Surely. But it can also be produced inside a relationship through secrecy, inconsistency and deception.

The same reversal happens with rules. He tells her which men she may speak to, which friendships are inappropriate or what behaviour counts as disloyal. She complies to preserve the relationship. He later breaks the same rules and insists that she created them. He creates the rule, follows it when convenient, resents it, breaks it and blames her for the rule. This is more than hypocrisy. It is a reversal of responsibility.

He behaves in ways that make her insecure. And this is crucial as it enables him to hide his own insecurity and retain control over her. She asks questions. He calls her suspicious. She becomes anxious. He points to her anxiety as proof that she is the problem. And yet, when she leaves, he pursues her relentlessly.

Even a confident woman can become unrecognisable to herself in this arrangement. She begins as someone who values freedom and would never dream of checking a phone. She ends up vigilant, obsessive and preoccupied because the details continually contradict the larger story. She has to constantly remind herself who she is and what her principles are, because within such a relationship dynamic her sense of self starts to evaporate.

She asks, What happened to me? Part of the answer may belong to her. Perhaps intimacy activates old fears. Perhaps dishonesty and insincerity are particularly powerful triggers for her nervous system. What looks minor to somebody else may affect her as an allergen affects a highly sensitive body. The intensity of the response does not prove that every conclusion she reaches is correct, but neither does it make the trigger imaginary. Perhaps she becomes reactive, suspicious or desperate to escape. She should understand those patterns. She should take responsibility for what she says and does.

But her vulnerability did not create the triangle. A smoke alarm can be sensitive and there can still be a fire. A deceptive partner is not a safe partner for anybody who is expected to trust him. For a woman whose nervous system is intensely activated by dishonesty and insincerity, he is especially incompatible.

An abusive or manipulative partner can use a genuine vulnerability as an alibi for his own conduct: You always do this. You cannot sustain a relationship. This is your attachment problem. You are a coward for walking away. She may then use the same language against herself: I am only triggered. I must learn to trust. I must stop overthinking.

Meanwhile, he continues lying. She cannot regulate her way out of someone else’s unreliability. She cannot manufacture trust where words and actions repeatedly diverge. Her responsibility is to distinguish fear from evidence, not to use her wounds to deny evidence.

Had she been securely attached, the relationship might have looked different for a while. She might have questioned herself less, reacted less intensely or left sooner. But secure attachment would not transform deception into honesty, triangulation into intimacy or control into love. Her attachment style may shape her response to the relationship. It cannot make the relationship sound.

Words and actions aligned consistently over time could allow trust to regrow. That possibility depends, however, on the other person wanting congruence more than he wants control. If triangulation, manipulation and deception are not occasional failures but the methods through which he creates closeness, secures attention or maintains power, there is no attachment style she could acquire that would make him the right partner. The problem is not that she has failed to become safe enough for the relationship. The relationship is organised around keeping her unsafe.

Patterns are more useful than diagnoses. Does he accept responsibility? Apply the same standards to himself? Respect a boundary? Stop when she says no? Allow her an independent life? Allow the relationship to end? Or does every woman eventually become jealous, unstable, controlling or obsessed while he remains blameless?

At some point, the question stops being, Why are all these women so difficult? It becomes: What happens to women when they become close to him?

His friends may sincerely believe he is a good man. Perhaps he is good to them. They know the man who is charming at dinner, loyal in friendship or respected at work. They have not necessarily dated him, lived with him or tried to leave him.

A public reputation and a private relationship are different sources of evidence. She does not need to conduct a public trial. She does not have to persuade his friends that she is sane, expose every lie or contact the other women. They may not know they are part of the arrangement. They may have been told that he is single, trapped, unhappy or misunderstood. They are not necessarily her enemies. They are certainly not the solution.

The triangle does not depend on one woman being more desirable than another. It depends on the person at its centre benefiting from the uncertainty between them.

The solution is not to win. It is to stop participating.

If the pattern also includes surveillance, intimidation, restraint, violence, threats or unwanted pursuit after separation, this is no longer merely a damaging relational dynamic. It is abuse. Taking someone’s phone, preventing her from leaving, physically restraining her or using violence to retain control cannot be explained away as an attachment problem.

Afterwards, responsibility may again be reversed. He says, I did not do it. You imagined it. You started it. You made me angry. An apology without responsibility is not accountability. I am sorry, but you caused it is not ownership. Explanation may provide context. It does not transfer responsibility.

Nor should pursuit after separation be mistaken for change. Calls, new email addresses, messages, promises, appearances and declarations of love may feel like proof of devotion. They prove only that he wants access. Someone can desperately want access to a person without becoming capable of treating that person well.

The woman cannot heal him. She cannot compensate for everyone who supposedly hurt him. She cannot surrender enough freedom to cure his insecurity or love him into accountability. She can understand his childhood, fears and wounds without volunteering to be harmed by them. Psychological explanation is not moral exemption.

She can also acknowledge her own contribution. Perhaps she became reactive. Perhaps she said things she regrets. Perhaps her attachment wounds intensified some conflicts. She can take responsibility for her part without taking responsibility for his.

That distinction is freedom. She can work on herself without staying in a relationship that continually undermines her. She can have attachment wounds and still deserve honesty. She can struggle with intimacy and still recognise when somebody is making intimacy unsafe.

She can love him and still leave. The question is not whether she can become a woman capable of tolerating anything. It is whether this relationship permits her to remain herself: neither investigator nor competitor, caretaker nor prisoner, witness nor therapist. If his way of relating requires her confusion, competition or submission, the answer to the first essay has already been given. She does not merely need space. She needs to leave the structure that keeps creating the need to escape.

She does not need to prove that she is the most desirable woman in the triangle. She does not need to defeat the other woman, become infinitely forgiving or demonstrate that she understands him better than everyone else. The way out is simpler. Stop competing and stop decoding. Stop confusing his need for you with his ability to value you. Stop mistaking pursuit for proof of change, and stop trying to heal what you did not break.

The triangle loses its power when you step outside it. You are no longer proving your loyalty, defending your sanity or waiting to be chosen correctly. You are simply looking at the arrangement clearly and deciding that it will no longer be your life.

You do not want love obtained through competition, displacement, or the humiliation of another woman. After all, you were once that “other woman”, the one who listened to, and believed, his stories about the women who had supposedly treated him badly, women he described as insane, disloyal, or both.

You want, and deserve, to be chosen because a man recognises your worth, not because you outperformed several other candidates or tolerated the audition the longest. A relationship that requires you to even consider these things, is not love, it is manipulation.

So, when you realise you are in a triangle, don’t wait to see how it ends. Leave. You deserve a love that chooses you without requiring another woman to lose.

And when you find yourself wondering whether his beautiful words meant that he loved you, remember this: it wasn’t love. It was simply a convincing imitation of it.

What is love? I do not know completely. I am still learning. But I know what love is not. Love is not control or double standards. It is not deception, gaslighting, humiliation, coercion, or emotional and physical violence. It is not magnificent words unsupported by ordinary actions. Whatever love may feel like, it cannot require me to surrender my freedom, dignity, safety or trust in my own reality. If I must abandon myself to preserve it, it is not the love I have been waiting for.