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My ex partner is very likely FA and I’m trying to understand if this relationship still has a chance or if I should let go.
For almost 10 months, our relationship was genuinely amazing. We were deeply in love, very affectionate, emotionally close, and constantly making plans for the future. He regularly called me the love of his life / soulmate and we were honestly very happy together.
What confuses me is how suddenly everything changed once the relationship became more concrete and serious.
Things shifted right after:
he went back to work after a period off,
we started seriously talking about moving in together,
and the relationship started feeling more “real” and committed.
Almost at the same time, he became emotionally close to a new coworker. To me, she seemed to become a sort of emotional escape/safe space once commitment started overwhelming him.
That’s when he suddenly became confused, fearful and emotionally inconsistent. He broke up with me saying he felt lost and unsure about everything.
But since then it’s been intense push/pull:
he came back saying he deeply loved me,
that I was still the person he truly wanted,
that he knew we had something rare and special,
then after seeing the coworker again, he spiraled back into doubt and confusion.
Now he says:
he knows he loves me,
he knows we could be happy together,
he’s terrified of losing me,
but he also says he feels lost, doesn’t know who he is anymore, and is scared of hurting me again.
It really feels like the relationship becoming serious triggered some kind of deactivation/panic in him, and the coworker became an escape route once intimacy and commitment became too real.
Does this sound familiar to other FAs? Can space/no contact sometimes help someone like this regulate and realize what they truly want? Or is this kind of push/pull usually too unstable to recover from?
I’d really appreciate honest perspectives from people familiar with FA dynamics