Some useful diversion tactics:
- babysit for a friend
- help a friend - move, clean, shop, just converse (not about guys!), visit a park
- List out the maintenance due on your car, for the next year.
- Plan out when you will buy your next car. List the feature you need; assume $5 gas.
- Do laundry. Mend clothes. Turn the mattresses and box springs.
- Get a pattern, sew a Halloween costume. By hand?
- Guy-flick movie marathon. Watch 12 movies in the next week. Each has to have John Wayne, Steven Siegal, or Kurt Russell, and either a Navy ship, at least five horses, show the inside of a police station, or a desert or mountain. Maybe Jimmy Stewart, too, or Kelsey Grammer. Nothing more ‘girly’ than Mulan.
- Imagine you are stranded on an island, or the electricity utility failed for a month and you have to bunch up with 10 neighbors. List out the 4 skills you think would be most useful. Go to the library, and look up a couple of them, and read up.

Focus on your daily routine; get plenty of rest, drink *lots* of water, re-think each meal, to eat a nicely balanced diet. Avoid stimulants like caffeine and nicotine - yes, put that tin of Skoal chewing tobacco away! Take a 20-30 minute walk at least once a day, either alone or with friends. Sometimes annoyance can be a reflection of stress as well as events. Deliberately de-stressing improves health, improves the spirits, and often the attitude. Focusing on de-stressing distracts you from being annoyed at .. oh, whatever.

Blessed be!

I totally agree with Ashley that it is him and not you. The book by Bryn C. Collins, “EMOTIONAL UNAVAILABILITY: RECOGNIZING IT, UNDERSTANDING IT, AND AVOIDING ITS TRAP” makes the same point — YOU DIDN’T BREAK HIM. YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE TO FIX HIM. Ashley is also right about letting go. It is extremely hard, Lizzie, and I do understand — I’m going through that right now and it’s been excruciatingly painful for me so I can definitely empathize with you. There’s a great class that I’m taking at my new church and we are looking at relationship problems, etc. in the context of asking the right questions and not overlooking the red flags. I’ve been there myself with my friend Lisa and overlooked the red flags — I got hurt when she pushed away years ago (RED FLAG), then she pulled me back in, then she pushed me away again (RED FLAG), now it appears that she’s trying to pull me back in. The question is based on the verse from Proverbs 28:23 — “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he walks in wisdom will be delivered” and is framed as follows: Based on (1) your past experiences, (2) your current circumstances, and (3) your future hopes and dreams, what is the wise thing to do? if you EUM hurt you and frustrated you in the past because of his emotional unavailability, there is a great possibility that it will happen again and get worse in the future. As Dr. Phil McGraw says — THE BEST PREDICTOR OF FUTURE BEHAVIOR IS PAST BEHAVIOR. He left you in the past, he will leave you again in the future. I learned the hard way with my friend Lisa, she disappeared on me after helping me with some medical issues (she works at a major hospital) and then showed up again as my “long lost friend” (her words), and then after getting reconnected again this past December, she pulled away again (the “too busy” excuse, etc.). And while she had been abandoned in her life (divorced parents, her ex, etc.), she abandons and hurts me. It’s not going to get better in either of our cases, unfortunately, but we can learn to minimize the problem by dealing with our pain, grieving our losses, accepting reality, and realizing that we deserve better. In other words, we must give up the false hope and illusions that the emotionally unavailable person will one day respect and love us. The emotionally unavailable person acts out of their own hurts and focuses on their own hurts (self-focused, self-centered, selfish, etc.) that they lack empathy and ignore the fact that other people have feelings too. Lizzie, you deserve someone who loves you for you, and this is probably just one of your future hopes and dreams, and when we look at it as such, we realize that the emotionally unavailable person is NOT the right person for us, and we should not SETTLE for less and we should NOT settle for the crumbs of attention that they show to us. FOCUS on the character of the person and the qualities of character that you truly need to have in a mate, and guard your heart until you find out that the person is of a good character and not emotionally unavailable and/or a narcissist. Too often, we get lured in by a person’s good looks and charm, but as it says in Proverbs 31:30 “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting.”

Best regards and God bless,

David

My thoughts are this - it could be because of both you and him. Everyone has issues and people relate differently to different people. Don’t you have different sort of friendships with each of your friends? Of course you friendships are based on respect, trust, things in common, etc…. But for instance I have friends that I exercise with and socialize with. I have other friends that I have known for years and they know me inside and out. But we don’t socialize as much because they are married with families. I have friends that are professional friends and we talk about our careers. I have friends that are work friends and we go out for drinks after work and indulge in office gossip.

Maybe he and this woman clicked in some way and are in the honeymoon phase right now. I can guarantee you if he has issues being an EUM they aren’t going to be “fixed” overnight unless he is committed to fixing them. And even then change doesn’t happen overnight.

Maybe you are EU also. I know I am/was. It’s taken me nearly two years of reading and learning about emotional unavailability to grasp how it’s affected me and my relationships. Am I changing - yes - but it’s hard and the progress is slow.

I’ve had several relationships where they guy seems unavailable with me and then shortly after our relationship fails he starts dating someone and it’s ended up in marriage.

Looking back, I know that I was also exhibiting unavailable, unhealthy behavior in those relationships.

It has nothing to do with looks, smarts, etc…. It has everything to do with how two people relate.

You are not responsible for “fixing” your ex. You never were. Men generally don’t want to be fixed, saved or mothered. If there is any fixing to be done, they need to do it on their own time.

My best advice for you for getting through this is to just let him go. Letting go is very painful at first. But - you will notice - maybe a few weeks after the painful first couple weeks of beginning to let go - that letting go feels GREAT. You will experience a new sense of freedom, space and feeling good that is just out of this world.

So let him have his relationship. LET GO of him. Focus on you and your issues (whatever they may or may not be).

Good luck!

my ex new guy texted me this morning asking if i had a sore head as yet i havent replied. i will reply i will see him again just so i can make a dramatic exit lol oh and get my stuff off him. i wont fall for this shit again.

I am doing better and am finally starting to feel good about myself but this is simply a nagging question…I so wonder WAS IT ME??? OR HIS ISSUES??? He seems so happy with her…but it is still new so wonder if it will wear off like it did for me and him and she will end up going through everything that I have gone through…

Any thoughts would be greatly appriciated..

Debs, You aren’t the first. I thought I would have better judgement after ending it with an EU and thinking I knew all the signs of an EU and what to avoid, but I was wrong. The next one looked different and acted different, but turned out to be the same horse different color and it freaked me out that it happened again. I took a break from dating to find out what it is about me that attracts and is attracted to these guys. I cannot go through it again. Sorry about your birthday that sucks but take comfort in the fact you found out only two weeks into it what his true colors were under the nice guy facade, and not 6 months later.

i just jumped from one eum to another without even tripping. two weeks of nothing except me being a fool.

oh i met a nice guy two weeks later he stands me up on my birthday no less. i need beheaded

I know this is why he left me for her. I know this because Steve is a superficial person himself. He is very shallow. He as much as told me he was leaving me partly because my butt was not big enough.

I guess what I am saying is I found someone to reject me over the same things I reject myself for..and that is not having any superficical qualites.

I suspose this is the reverse of overestimating yourself. It seems everyone overestimates the importance of the superficial stuff.

This is not how it normally is. Most guys I date were superficical but didn’t reject me like Steve did because I met their standards. Ths doesn’t mean they weren’t just as superficical and unavailable as Steve though.

In the end I always realized these guys who claimed to love me never really knew me. They getting to know me at the outside. So shallow. All of them

good luck its hard but you will get there if you stand firm and we’re here if you need us

good luck

It’s funny how much work it really is to learn how to love myself, to genuinely have solid self-esteem and be a good person, regardless of ‘things’ or ‘accomplisments’…
I realize that all the years I spent obsessing/grieving/staying stuck over one EUM or the other was really just a way to not work on improving myself.

Thanks again NML