I can't really say how much I appreciate people affirming for me that this is a "real" thing - so please don't apologise for making it about you...it's so helpful to know there are others out there.

I work from a more simple way of viwing the world.

If I care about someone I consistently act like it. If I like someone, they are "worth it" to me and nothing would keep me from being with them. It's hard for a person like me to understand this.

I will say though, I have a friend with an eating disorder, my ex fiance had severe depression and I myself once had very bad anxiety attacks and none of those things were thing we could just "overcome" - so if I can see his commitment or attachment issues as beyond his control it spares me the pain of feeling like he didn't care about me.

He did tell me, on more than one occassion that he could not allow himself to be close to anyone because it was "self protection". I did feel like it was just gassing, but then he did a lot of things to create space and distance between us ultimately. Push and pull, back and forth. Neither able to be with me or to let me leave.

I feel ultimately like we both wanted to be around each other and get the happiness from that but my end gola was more intimacy and his end goal was to make sure that didn't happen.

I will say he's sent me a lot of messages (prbably around 20 A4 pages in total) in which he's expressed a lot of remorse, expressed how bad his commitment issues are, told me that he really did like and care about me but that he is a messed up person. He seems veyr sincere and truly sorry but I think at the end of the day there is not much I can do.

If I go back I think he will do the same again

Although I really, really wish I had known all this before!!!!! I interpreted his distance combined with his words of being afraid of being hurt or dumped that he needd more reassurance from me - so I probably made it a lot worse!!!