Minimizing my relationships away

Whilst wallowing in my post-breakup recently, I stumbled on a major realization about myself and my past relationships. See, I’m an analyze-things-to-death type of gal, and with all this extra time on my hands, I have spent a lot of obsessive evenings {and work days, and commutes, and toilet breaks, and etc…} trying to understand the rationale behind the unexpected intense feelings for the last guy. I always strive to comprehend how my world works, why things operate a certain way, why people tend to behave in particular fashions, and this entire relationship puzzled the fuck out of me.

We didn’t date for a supremely long time. He wasn’t my usual type of guy. I fell for him HARD, even though I denied it to myself. Things about him drove me bananas-crazy, and it didn’t bother me in the grand scheme; i.e. I still pictured myself easily getting along with him for the long haul (this one in particular was a major befuddling WTF factor.)

My therapist knows, honors, and feeds my thirst for understanding, and she suggested I read a book written for singles that focused on the Imago relationship/coupling theories: Keeping the Love You Find.  A book giving me psychoanalytical information related to relationships??  Hells yeah; I ordered that shit with a mothereffing quickness off amazon {side note – so far, good read, although heavy on the psych stuff, and a GODAWFUL HORRID cover design}.

The book centers around discussing maximizer and minimizer behaviors and styles, and it immediately resonated with me.  I tend to be a minimizer in nearly all situations, especially relationships.  This website has a good summary of the two types.

I’m a minimizer because I keep everything inside… I bottle up emotions, compartmentalize my life, and tend to rely inward rather than outward. I crave independence and simultaneously reject the notion of being dependent or reliant. And when I get overwhelmed or stressed, my fight or flight kicks in and I run like a motherfucker.

Then I got to thinking… of my major adult relationships, I started to try to figure out whether those guys had been minimizers or maximizers. The X husband was more like a minimizer – we rarely had conflict, especially ostensible conflict, and he was a lot like me {which is why it’s difficult to still, even to this day, understand the demise of his love for me}. The first guy I dated for a length of time after the separation, A, was a serious minimizer, no questions.  We never had conflict, he never pulled at me in any way, and I suppose in that regard it was easy, but I was also probably “bored” in a way.

Then the realization smacked me in the face, and suddenly it all made sense.  The most recent ex-BF, the one that feels like he got away, was a capital-M-Maximizer.  THAT’S why he seemed to drive me bananas-crazy!  He came on strong, he put all his stuff out there, he was energized with life and emotions and everything. He was all about interdependency and spending tons of time together. And never having that before, I was unknowingly smitten with those traits… in retrospect, it fits my conservative, inward, independent style like a fucking glove.  But it’s hard to see that in the moment… in the thick of things, I felt overwhelmed, confused, smothered. And I wanted to run and to breathe.  But when I had the space, and the time, and the freedom, I realized I had misinterpreted things. 

So I suppose it was a breath of relief to finally understand why this guy was so different, and yet so powerful, and my inclination to run from the very thing that may be what I truly need in a partner. At any rate, I suppose it’s easy to analyze and interpret the situation at this stage… but the big question is, now that I’m armed with all of this information, will it help me to establish a better relationship next time?