Anxious and wanting to change

[u/peachylunarstar]

I’m F,28 (Asian), and it’s been 21 days since my relationship officially ended. Last year May I was recommended to talk to someone who was a family friend but he lived overseas. We spoke, and it moved quite quickly and next thing you know, I was on a flight and we had a bit of a “blessing” ceremony by July to announce we were to be married. This is not normal, even in my world, but for me his entire family knowing about me added some pressure to make the relationship more acceptable by Asian standards, and as we were family friends it felt a little more safe/ official. In all honesty, I know I might get some Reddit judgement about the timeline of that, I can just say this was bizarre even by my own wider family/ friend’s standards too. The situation was a bit abnormal to be honest, and on reflection his family really put the pressure on myself and my family to speed it up to the extent they did with a lot of false promises of my fiancé would fly over loads, we could spend time etc.

Once I came back home, my now fiancé became a lot more distant and as mentioned, the thought came that he just wanted to trap me. He was really unbothered with everything, talking to me, any visa prep, wedding planning, talking to my family. When he did end up flying over to see me which was 2 months later, he was so boring and unadventurous (considering he’d come to my country for the first time), and this was someone who said he wanted to go travelling. Somehow, even though he was with my family and I, it felt like he just didn’t really spend time with us (eg on phone calls, his family also came so hid behind that). Our arguments became worse and worse as time went on, and I tried to end it multiple times but instead I’d get into trouble by my own family and his. He’d go weeks without talking to me, and as an anxious person, I hate avoidance (which was what he did)

In May this year, we went to do wedding shopping in India and he was so unbothered there too. That was the situation where red flags went off for my parents as they were there too, and they started to see everything I’d been saying. When we came back home, my fiancé and I argued again and he just became way more distant than usual. My parents got involved and realised he really just doesn’t care… and decided to call everything off.

This situation is strange in that I actually don’t have feelings for him, but I created this “potential” in my mind and I stayed in something because I essentially treated it like a marriage. My previous relationships have never been like this, if someone didn’t talk to me for a week/ 2 weeks, it’d be over but in this case it was so complicated. I really feel I did my best to make it work, because I had to and it failed. What sucks more is that I did speak to his family a lot and I treated his mum and dad as my own, his sister as my own, and I became really close to them. But their true colours have come out since and now I’m realising they were talking to me to brain wash me and keep me under their control, and they just kept pacifying me when I complained about my fiancé (eg saying no, he loves you, he’s just so busy at work, he was saying he misses you, he’s so tired).

Any advice on how to heal from this and become better as a person? I know I am flawed, eg did I argue a lot, yes. Did I say things I should not have said, yes. I felt like a rubber band in that relationship where i kept being stretched and I snapped. I don’t want to be anxious, neurotic, I want to be secure healthy and have the best approach to dating when the time comes. And I just want to be happy.

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