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He cried when he proposed. And then spent the next week acting like I was basically a stranger. I told myself it was pre-wedding nerves. I told myself a lot of things. — I met Ryan at a work conference three years ago. He was the kind of person who made you feel like the only one in the room — not in a performative way, just genuinely present. He remembered things. He texted first. He made me feel, for the first time in a long time, like being loved was actually simple. The first six months were the best I'd ever had in a relationship. Then the pattern started. Not dramatically. Slowly. First it was just... less texting. Then evenings where he needed to be alone, no real explanation. Then this strange thing where the closer we got — after a really good night, after a real conversation, after anything that felt like actual intimacy — he'd pull back. Like it scared him. I asked what was wrong. He said nothing, just a lot going on. I asked again. He said I was putting pressure on him. So I stopped asking. And he'd come back — warm, close, present, the person I fell for. For a week or two. Maybe three. Then the cycle would start over. I decided the problem was me. I was too needy. I needed to give him more space. Be more independent. Stop making it weird. So I started sharing less. Asking for less. Shrinking. — He proposed on our second anniversary. Got down on one knee, voice breaking, the whole thing. Said I was the first person he'd ever felt truly at home with. I believed him. I still believe he meant it. A week later he told me he needed to go stay at his friend's place for a few days. Just to clear his head. No big explanation. Just — I need this. I sat in our apartment and genuinely didn't know what was happening. This man had just asked me to marry him. And I felt like a burden. I started Googling. "Partner withdraws after big relationship milestone." "Fiancé pulling away after proposal." "Why does he run when things get serious." And I found it. Fearful avoidant attachment. A pattern where someone desperately wants closeness — and is simultaneously terrified of it. Not playing games. Not manipulating. Actually wanting both things at once, which tears the relationship apart in cycles. The typical loop: he pursues → things get close → he panics → he withdraws → I pull back → he panics about losing me → he pursues again. I read it and I cried. Not from pain — from recognition. That was us. That was every confusing cycle for three years that I'd been blaming on myself. — I want to be honest: understanding it didn't make the pain stop. I still lay awake wondering — maybe he just doesn't love me enough. Maybe I imagined what we had. Maybe I should have left a year ago. But then I'd think about the proposal. How real that was. How he keeps coming back — not to manipulate, but because he genuinely can't stay away. He just doesn't know how to stay close. I found a forum for partners of FA people. One woman wrote: "The hardest part isn't that he leaves. It's that he always leaves right after the best moments. Like intimacy is the trigger." I saved that. Read it probably twenty times. Someone in that forum mentioned Liven — an app focused on nervous system regulation. My first thought was: that's for him, not me. He's the one with the pattern. But then I sat with that for a while. And I realized: my nervous system had taken a serious hit too. Three years of this cycle had made me hypervigilant in a way I hadn't even noticed. I was reading his face before he opened his mouth. I was tiptoeing around my own feelings to avoid triggering his distance. I had stopped being myself — I had become someone who was constantly managing the situation. I took the quiz. It showed me what I already suspected but hadn't admitted: my own system was stuck in a low-grade threat response. I was living in permanent anticipation of the next withdrawal. — Liven isn't couples therapy. It didn't fix us. But it gave me something I had quietly lost: the ability to regulate my own state independently of whatever he was doing. I stopped building my whole day around his mood. I started noticing — I can feel okay not because he's being warm, but just because I'm okay. That sounds small. It wasn't small. It felt like breathing again after a long time of not quite getting enough air. — We're still together. He started seeing a therapist — his choice, not something I pushed. I don't know how this ends. But I know this: I'm not disappearing into his cycles anymore. I'm still here. As a separate person. With my own ground to stand on. If your partner runs hot and cold. If the best moments are always followed by the coldest days. If you've started to wonder whether it's him or whether you're doing something wrong — It might not be either of you failing. It might be a pattern with a name. And there's a way to not let it swallow you whole. The quiz takes three minutes. It's not about him. It's about what's been happening to your nervous system while you've been living inside this cycle. You deserve stability too. Even if he's not ready to give it yet.