draft

Upon chewing this over with some emotional distance, I’ve drawn a few conclusions.
We are, in at least one significant sense, an unusually bad match.
I’ve touched on this a bit before, but to put it somewhat clinically: through essentially no fault of either party, I am a person with a _low neglect tolerance threshold_, and you are a person with a _high propensity towards partner neglect_.
I’ll begin repeating that initial statement: I don’t want to speak about choice or agency, or to use blame-like terminology. I do not believe this is anyone’s fault.
I’ll begin with myself. I believe that my history has left me with a higher-than-normal level of anticipated neglect. This is not irrational, and is the Bayesian response to what has been essentially continuous neglect since birth. Beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences – the belief “I will be abandoned” is dialed up, but in proportion to actual abandonment events. I am _unusually anticipatory_ of coming neglect, and _unusually skeptical_ of sincere displays of connectedness.
I suspect this is what’s under the hood with regard to most of my resistance to accept help in the general sense, or to only rely on myself; an overweighting of the imposition on others (‘I never had any help growing up, so help must be unusually difficult to offer, and would be an outsized imposition on other people’). My stomach tends to turn over in those circumstances, and I suspect this is because an opportunity to receive help is also another surface upon which to be abandoned – not exposing myself to that surface, by doing things entirely alone, means not exposing myself to the possibility of neglect or abandonment when that assistance does not come. No expectations means no disappointments; no bonds means no heartbreak at the dissolution of those bonds.
To turn to you – whether or not you are aware of this, you have an unusually high level of detachment / distancing behavior. This is made particularly obvious by circumstances of prolonged exposure, like a protracted relationship, due to high N.
To clarify: I do not believe that this behavior is deliberate in most circumstances. “Distancing behavior” here refers to several things, including inconsistency in communication (dropping communication, abandoning conversation with no warning, leaving re-establishment of communication and rebuilding communicative norms to the other party). It can be withdrawal from a partner’s inner life or interests, or reducing behavior (talking over someone, interrupting them, ignoring them, not responding to their point of view).
I believe that some amount of this is secondary to inattention (whether inattention is _secondary to_ ADHD, or whether ADHD is _defined by_ inattention – making ‘inattention is due to inattention’ tautological – I can’t say). I also believe that some amount of this is secondary to autistic features (difficulty grasping and anticipating socially normative/appropriate behavior).
Your response to not understanding these features is to withdraw. My response to that withdrawal is to say that I anticipated abandonment – because I did, because of my background, and that prior is nudged higher each time.
This makes establishing trust essentially impossible. I do not trust you to act as a consistent, reliable partner – this is in response to actual events – and push you out (why extend my trust to this person?) In turn, you seem to intuitively understand ‘go away’ (and will do so), but do not seem to intuitively understand requests towards bonding behavior (consistent behavior, vulnerability, reliability, active listening). This reinforces the prior -> ‘this person is untrustworthy and will abandon me’, which reinforces isolating behavior on my part, ‘see? You were very ill and he abandoned you entirely. All the attempts at bonding in the world won’t work, but he’ll wash his hands of all responsibility towards you as his partner at the slightest suggestion; you were right to not trust him’.
I do not trust you, and my distrust is in part due to my neglect prior (which existed long before I met you), and my prior on neglect by you specifically (see: circumstances like these, and many others before them). This tends to be paralyzing – to use a crude model, think of an iterated trust fall exercise. Assume partner B is inattentive or distracted or confused about the exercise and drops partner A several times. The only way for A to re-establish trust is to combat the prior of ‘B will drop me when I fall’, but A will have greater and greater reluctance to attempt the fall _due to_ the previous experience of being dropped several times. You and I are here.
You have asked me to make social expectations obvious (to combat autistic features re: not learning those expectations) and to generate systems that ‘control for’ inattention (like a double-tap system). These seem reasonable. I do not trust you, and my distrust is in part due to my neglect prior (which existed far before I met you), and my prior on neglect by you specifically (see: circumstances like these, and many others before them).
I can attempt to do this – and have done so, with mixed success. I ask that in turn you attempt to accommodate my learned wariness by attempting to take a hard look at your own abandonment-adjacent behavior.
It is my hope that I can come to trust you, but that will involve creating systems that facilitate your presence as a consistent and reliable partner. I don’t think this is impossible; I do not distrust _everyone_, nor do I anticipate neglect from everyone. This is my first relationship where that particular wound has been salted – I do not have a history of anticipating neglect from partners, and have healthy relationships with friends //. Put another way, I do not believe anticipating neglect is inevitable, but I _do_ believe that while most people will take neglect badly (neglect flies in the face of what it means to be a partner), I will take instances of neglect _unusually_ badly. This is not sustainable.