- Date posted
- 1y
Resisting
I have a friend. For years I compulsively texted them whenever I was anxious about anything and I actively sought reassurance from them. Sometimes they responded; sometimes not…which I am sure reinforced it more than if it had been steady reassurance or ignoring! I recently pieced together that this is OCD and not anxiety. Looking at our past 30 years of friendship(!) … we were in and out of each others lives and lately, since I got into this terrible loop with him, it made my anxiety so much worse… better in the moment! But then everything after that felt more intensely awful until it was a constant texting back and forth …confessing, reassurance seeking…and a relentlessly building panic/anxiety. His life was a lot too right then and he took some time and space from everyone, including me. Since piecing this together, I’ve been working on it. It’s really hard with someone you’ve known this long. I hate that I’ve become someone he can’t go to. Today we went for lunch and he shared that there’s something going on with him that’s a Big Deal. And it is absolutely a Big Deal. He decided to share what it was and I said…you know, I’m worried about making things worse, I want to check in before we keep talking. He said in the past I did make things worse and that …yeah, he wanted to end the conversation and never talk about it again. I honored that… we then had a light conversation about something else while the inside of me just screamed. I want to text an apology. For today. For the past. I want to try to get reassurance from him, of course. I know not to! But I of course still want to. I want to go back in time and undo the cycle so that I didn’t hurt either of us in the past. I don’t want to be someone who is unreliable and I have been. I want to prove I’m changing and can be reliable. The road to becoming reliable is to stop. Do NOT bring it up, do NOT apologize (because he wants me to drop it—apologizing would open it back up) and to keep resisting the compulsion to text. If we establish trust again, I need to earn it. So…. I’ve been resisting. I so badly want to repair and don’t have a model for repairing without apologizing. I’m resisting. I’m not texting. I’m not apologizing. It’s been about two hours. ”Maybe I did screw up. That would suck! But I still need to get work done“ is competing with OCD trying to sneak in and say, ”but if you did fucked up then you need to do repair work!“ … this time the repair work has got to be giving him space to decide what he shares. And it might not be me again. And it might be. But not if I text right now. Today is a long, long day.