I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my perception of what is happening in my life. I don’t know if it’s a universal human experience, but I think that a lot of us experience life as story. Story imitates life, and so it’s a framework that makes our lives understandable and infuses them with meaning. I think most of the the time the mapping is sort of natural and intuitive. We observe what is happening and it gets mapped onto a story that we understand, and everything resolves rather nicely.

Less frequently, something takes us by surprise. And it’s not JUST unexpected, it’s jarring. A “plot twist” in the story might be a slight surprise, but it still makes sense – it’s consistent with the story we were telling ourselves, it just maybe wasn’t the most obvious telling. But what if you think you’re living one story, but it turns out that you’re actually living another? That’s something else altogether, and it’s extremely jarring, because you have this sudden realization of: “OH. That’s not what’s happening here at all. How did I get that so wrong?”

These past few weeks, I thought I was living one story, but it turned out I was living another. It all sort of came to ahead last weekend/the beginning of this week. It was disorienting, and a bit painful, but in the last few days I’ve been learning a LOT about both myself and other people.

Since this is public and I’m not sure who will read it, I’m going to be vague enough about details that anyone who might would know who the other person involved in is wouldn’t be able to simply know. If you’re here, you probably know who I am, and I’m quite OK with my part of this being known, but I’m not trying to expose anything about another person, I just want to reflect on my part of the experience. So some bits of information about her as I understand her are necessary, but identifiable information will be withheld.

Not too long ago I had an interaction with a woman that felt like a moment of connection. She was previously known to me, though I didn’t know her well. Now, I cannot know how the moment felt to her, but on my side it felt beautiful and deep. She opened up and so did I. That moment endeared her to me, and it felt significant.

Following that, we began to keep in touch through text messages. Suffice to say, we do not live within the immediate proximity of each other. I hoped that maybe it would progress into something, but I couldn’t tell for sure, then one evening after a playful and maybe mildly flirtatious text, she called. That was the next moment that felt significant. Perhaps this will turn into something. That I think is when the story that I’d already begun to tell myself began to solidify in my mind: This was was the story of how when I wasn’t looking for it, I had found the right person for me. Up until this point, it had felt like it was flowing pretty easily, maybe not as quickly as I’d prefer, but it was long distance, after all.

There were more messages, there were a couple more calls, some voice memos, etc. Things were starting to feel a bit ambiguous. On calls felt good and engaged. Replies to messages were nearly always prompt, but, engagement was often low, and threads often died fairly quickly. The ambiguity started to get to me and I wanted clarity, but I also didn’t want to push too hard and break whatever was happening. I preferred to continue to suffer in ambiguity if it meant I felt more assured of an eventual preferred outcome.

I decided the best way for clarity without coming on too strong was to plan a trip to where she lives, let her know I’d be there, and to invite her to come meet up while I would be there if she was free. I thought that surely, with the frequency of contact I was keeping with her that even though I was framing it in a low pressure way she would have to be able to tell I was interested in exploring things with her, and so when she agreed without hesitation I considered that a good sign. The trip was on, and I was going to get clarity – and I was pretty hopeful that clarity would be at least on the positive side of neutral.

The trip started off well, she was pretty communicative in messages and seemed excited as I was on my way there. After spending a bit of the morning on my own after my arrival, we met up for lunch and then did an activity I had planned on – something I actually did want to do but likely would not have gone up there to do if not for wanting to see her – and then generally did a lot of walking around before we were near to her place and it seemed like she might be wanting to call it. It had been an enjoyable day, but it hadn’t leaned romantic at all in the way I had hoped it might – perhaps the answer in itself, but I wasn’t ready to accept that yet. And in any case, it didn’t tell me NO interest, it only told me there wasn’t positive interest. So, I managed to convince her to hang out a bit longer and have a drink. We talked for a long while, but the content of the conversation seemed to be saying “no interest”. As disappointed as it made me, I kind of accepted it at least for that moment in time.

The next day we met up again for awhile and by the time I left between that day and thinking back on our earlier interactions I just really started to think that the way she acted FELT like she was interested but that something was holding her back. I guess I should say that part of the conversation the preceding night had been her talking about a belief that to her mind for a relationship to have potential romantic success she needs to have the feeling of love IMMEDIATELY, like an instant spark. And so this started to make sense to me, she does have some interest, but the spark wasn’t big enough and she has this internal rule that says no so she’s holding herself back. I didn’t want to end the trip on an awkward note and so since I was out of time I just decided to wait until I was back home to just be up front about it and take the risk.

I let a full day of rest in between just to let things breathe and because I was also kind of exhausted after the trip, and I sent a message saying how I felt. It was something I pondered over the wording of for awhile because it felt like it mattered. Unfortunately, the response I got felt dismissive, and essentially informed me that a lot of guys misread her. She didn’t directly say that I did, but, that was the implication. The other thing was, the reply came fast… like, just a few minutes after I sent it, and probably less than a minute from the time she saw it. It was clearly reactive and not thoughtful. Needless to say, both of those things hurt. I sent one message back hoping to prompt her to reply with more thought, but again I got a fast reactive reply.

I spent the rest of that day feeling pretty raw. I was really frustrated with her for being dismissive of my message, in which I had tried to succinctly tell her my experience of the preceding weeks and that I’d like to see how things developed, and for just kind of being flippant in her response, it made me feel like I didn’t matter to her at all, like, even as a friend. The next day was a little better, and then the next I found myself starting to read about Attachment Theory and making discoveries about both myself and her and why things happened like they did. As I started to understand her my irritation and frustration at her turned into empathy, because I don’t think the way she responded was really a choice that she made, it was an innate self-protection strategy. And the ways that what I could have done things but didn’t earlier in the story to try to get clarity weren’t not done because I chose not to do them, but because of my own innate self-protection strategy.

It’s still very new to me, but Attachment Theory is really interesting and revelatory to me of both my own self and other people. Like as I think through times in the past where people behaved in ways that were confusing to me I can see which attachment style they operate out of. The main ones are Secure (something like 50% of people), Anxious-Preoccupied (something like 20% of people, including me), and Avoidant (Something like 25% of people, including her). Secure attachment is essentially healthy attachment, the others aren’t pathological, but essentially are behavioral strategies to protect the person in the process of attachment. They are generally learned early in life, often in regard to relationships with parents, but there are other factors as well. Anxious-Preoccupied and Avoidant attachment styles serve a purpose when they are learned, but then when they are no longer needed they essentially start to do the wrong job really well and cause you strife. Then, in particular a Anxious-Preoccupied paired with an Avoidant gets into a push-pull dynamic that can be like the Anxious-Preoccupied person’s kryptonite. The Avoidant thrives in ambiguity, the Anxious person can’t stand it and starts to over-invest thinking it will bring clarity, and the Avoidant distances themselves from anything resembling obligation.

But, keep in mind, both the Anxious and the Avoidant WANT connection, but Anxious people obsess over it to the point they cause it harm and Avoidant people are wanting to avoid dependence and obligation, so if things start to deepen they create distance. Anxious Attachers are attachment-maximizers and Avoidant Attachers are attachment-minimizers. That dynamic explains why I felt connection – connection was there. But whereas I wanted to maximize it and push it forward, she wanted to minimize it and keep it contained. Unfortunately for myself in this instance, her innate attachment strategy is warmth and depth to create a moment of connection without structure for continuity. I respond to the warmth, depth, and intensity with an assumption that it is building a structure for continuity, and that mismatch is where things went awry. She could go deep, but she couldn’t stay. And I wanted her to stay.

This attachment framework has also been helping me sort out some past misfires, and sort of recognize things I’ve considered off interactions with friends, etc for what they are, which are basically just attachment strategies and coping mechanisms related to them. It’s also really helpful to understand that the way that I react to things isn’t super crazy and bizarre, but in fact a lot of people out there react the exact same way. And also that when people act in ways that seem strange to me that maybe it doesn’t mean some bad thing like I might assume, but just that they are acting in a manner that’s consistent with a lot of OTHER people, who don’t act in the way that I do.

Perhaps most importantly, I have a couple action items I can work on. First is to work on growth. Now that I recognize anxious attachment in myself, I can work on learning to change it toward secure attachment. The anxious tendencies actually make me kind of miserable and don’t serve me, so it’s (past) time to train myself out of them. And the second is, in the meantime, watch out for avoidants and DON’T let myself get drawn in by them – because that just creates misery for me. After some growth, I might be able to deal with them, but for now, those people just aren’t for me.