Q. I got home from work. looking forward to a date night with my boyfriend. What I found was a dark apartment and letter on the sofa. It was a break up letter. Why? Because he said he did not like confrontation. Since when did communication and confrontation mean the same thing? –Tiffany
So more of my story. My boyfriend, Eric found out he would be required to attend some intensive training in another state for an unknown period of time. I will admit I have anxiety and sometimes I have trouble with news that might not be to my liking but really, “a break up letter” because you did not want to talk to me about this training.
Eric thought he had totally figured out what I would think, how I would react and what I would say. His movie was now in production. To avoid me “freaking out” about the long absence we would have with the training, he simply wrote a letter saying I would be better off with someone else. What is happening here?
He doesn’t like confrontation. He hides from it. He runs from it. Somehow he confused communication with confrontation and never ever mentioned the upcoming training.
I was so confused when I came home to a dark apartment and breakup letter on the sofa. I could only read a couple of sentences and called him. I could barely breathe thinking he wanted to end
our relationship when we had been talking and texting throughout the day and he seemed fine. He said he was looking forward to our date night.
So now we were sitting on the sofa and he was “finally” communicating about the letter, the training, his fear about how I would react. How much of this could have been avoided if he had just talked to me when he found out. We could work through it, look at options, see how we could make it work.
We both realized that this was really more about him than me. His fear of failure, his inability to see beyond the immediate paralysis of his problem solving ability.
He apologized for writing the letter. He agreed that was not the way to solve problems that were really not that big but would require some adjusting.
I’m not sure why communicating in a relationship creates such obstacles but it does. I hope Eric and I can move past this bump in the road. Let me tell you, coming home to a break up letter when life appears to be smooth sailing was not the date night I expected.
