Email him, if in person discussions are hard. “Please forgive me for doing this over email, but I struggle sometimes to find the right words when in person, so I thought this would work best. I just want you to know I’m really struggling, and though my grades haven’t suffered yet, it feels like my projects are the worst in the class and the embarrassment I feel from this makes it really hard to summon the courage to go to class at times. You’re such a great teacher I’m just struggling with my performance. I’ve scheduled help from a mental health counselor already, but if there’s anything you might suggest that could help with this too, I’d appreciate any guidance or support you’d be willing to offer or provide.”

> I asked off-handedly if her parents were proud of her as I scooped up scrambled eggs at the conference center walk-in breakfast and she seemed surprised as if she'd never been asked that particular question

Wtf? You asking for advice or practicing creative writing? There is just so much unneeded detail here (scooping eggs?!?), not going to waste anymore time reading past that. Stop obsessing over the new girl, most likely you have a crush on her because she has what you want in your life, so go back and work to develop that in your relationship with your wife, in yourself or with platonic friends. If you’ve done more than talk to this new girl (affection or emotional investment) you’re cheating or getting dangerously close so knock that shit off.

It’s not wrong to “wingman” if he makes it clear he’s taken, and he’s honest about doing it. Hard to trust him now since he lied. And his excuse doesn’t even make sense, he lied to you so you wouldn’t worry? Lying just increases worry and distrust, it doesn’t solve anything. If he really wasn’t doing anything wrong there shouldn’t be a need to lie about it.

> and I said when I'm ready for a relationship I'll work on being more secure lol

Lol, oookaaay, not sure why you’re telling me, I really don’t care what you do, I was just answering your question, you were the one taking it like it was criticism.

Google conversational narcissism and defensiveness in relationships as that’s what he’s doing. And google emotional support skills, conflict resolution skills, active listening skills, and the importance validation in relationships as that’s what you want but aren’t getting. To be honest, trying to explain this to people like your bf doesn’t work. Those behaviors arent something that change with just an explanation, they’re usually pretty hardwired and don’t change unless they get therapy and years of it and even then it’s no guarantee it gets better. And even when they work on it, while you wait, you’re continually made to feel unimportant and less than by their single focus on themselves and that can cause or worsen any mental health issues you may have. Best thing to do with someone like this is tell them what you need that they aren’t giving you and leave. Find someone better suited for you, and hopefully if he meets enough people that point out the problem he’ll be motivated to fix it at some point, but hopefully he’ll do it while he’s single so he doesn’t hurt more people while he figures his shit out.

Who said anything about scared? And YOU were the one that said you had disorganized attachment, not me, but now you’re claiming to have secure attachment? Which is it? And I never said any attachment style is bad, thats you projecting your assumptions onto to me, each attachment style has its pros and cons. It’s only bad when it gets in the way of your goals in life or hurts people you’re in relationships with.

Seriously you asked why you’re so physically infatuated and you literally said your last relationship drained you and you want just the physical right now, so seems rather obvious why you’d be more focused and drawn to the physical. But if you want to go on a wild goose hunt for other reasons, I guess more power to you.

See my other comment, what you say here proves that point even more.

> I'm half fearful half dismissive

That’s why, right there, that’s called disorganized attachment. People like that are even more likely to focus on the physical as it’s a way to feel close with out risking the messiness of being close emotionally. If your relationship break up triggered your attachment issues, it could be that you’re becoming even more focused on the physical as a self protection mechanism to avoid hurt but still have some level of closeness, thus the reason for the physical infatuation, even though you’ve not been like that before.

Just because you don’t want it right now as it is, doesn’t mean it isn’t tempting all the same. If he were emotionally more mature and you weren’t just out of a relationship and were looking for one, wouldn’t you date him? Chocolate cake analogy again, you may not want it due to the calories, but that taboo factor often makes it even more tempting.

Also maybe google attachment style, as claiming to be good at detaching and getting wrap up in the physical and avoiding or downplaying the emotional is a common avoidant attachment tactic.

What you’re mention proves my point, so maybe you don’t see what I’m saying. So here, let me try to explain this way instead, it doesn’t sound like you’re detached, it sounds like you’re infatuated. And often in situations like yours, where you normally don’t care about looks, since right now you do and you’re infatuated with it, it’s probably because you can’t have it, ie you know a relationship won’t work, so it’s all the more tempting. Here’s an analogy. Chocolate cake gets really boring if you have it every meal, but if you tell yourself you can’t have it, it becomes very tempting and when you do indulge it taste amazing. Right now he’s chocolate cake that you’re telling yourself you can’t have.

> I don't have an emotional connection to him, I'm quite good at detaching if I don't see a future and separating casual from romantic

You sure about that? Things that work out but not often, or not completely have a way of captivating attention and increasing interest. Google intermittent reward to understand this more. Id bet it isn’t as much how he looks, as people get tired of almost anything if it becomes routine. It’s that he’s just barely out of reach, and that along with his good looks is what takes it from regular attraction, to the intensity you feel now.

When it’s time to say good bye, position yourself away from him, or with someone in between. Then don’t hug anyone, wave good bye and leave. He can’t hug you if he’s not close enough. Do that a few times and he’ll get the picture.

Tell your husband the ring was mailed back, but you don’t want to revisit the trauma of what happened. So you want to sell the ring at a pawn shop and donate the money to a domestic violence shelter. Hold firm that you do not want to revisit what happened, you do not want reminders of it like the ring, and you do not want to work to find the person who did it, you don’t want to waste anymore time of your life on what happened years ago. If he has trouble accepting this, schedule couples therapy asap. It’s your trauma, only you get to decide how best to process it and move forward. I’m so sorry this happened to you.

There’s ways to help, it doesn’t take mind reading, exaggerate much? And if you’re trying to help, what are you doing to help? All you describe is policing his phone, getting upset about it, then complaining about it on Reddit.

Yep it is on him, and that’s all you’ve been saying. Blame blame blame. If you want to help, you’d look for ways to empathize and problem solve. I even gave you ways to empathize that you could use to start to problem solve, but your response to that was to put it all on him instead. You’re in blame mode not help mode.

> If he changed his mind or needed to say yes to avoid conflict, he needed to communicate that. Because he hasn't, that's on him.

Saying it’s on him, how does that show you want to help? If anything that shows you don’t want to help, thus my point. No where have you said you want to help him with communication, you’ve just been blaming and pointing fingers the whole time. Blame is where you want the other person to take responsibility to fix it, helping is where you share that responsibility.

If you don’t want to help him through that, that’s fine, but then stop complaining about it and break up with him already. You clearly have problems with him, don’t want to help him with better communication, and you don’t trust him. Why you still bothering with him then?

No, it’s controlling or dominating to try to force other people to behave how you want. Boundaries are what you do for yourself, not what you force other people to do for you. For example, here, a healthy boundary is to break up with someone who says one thing but does another. It’s controlling and codependent to stay with someone and try to force them to do what you want when they clearly aren’t going to.

For all of these types of complaints, rather than break up because he’s untrustworthy or discuss with him why he says one thing but does another, your solution is to monitor and object to his behavior getting more and more mad. I don’t see how that’s helping either of you.

Rather than break up because he’s untrustworthy or discuss with him why he keeps doing it even though he said he wouldn’t (he could be having trouble with temptation, he could just have agreed to avoid a fight, he could have changed his mind) you’re instead monitoring his phone and getting more and more upset by it. If you don’t want to call that policing, ok, how about controlling, or nagging, or dictating, or dominating?

If youre bothered by porn and he wants to use it, then you’re not compatible. Stop trying to police and control someone else’s behavior. The more you do that, the more they’ll lie and hide shit from you. Instead break up and find someone you’re compatible with who you don’t have to police.

So you’re lonely, and instead of continuing to look for friends you can connect with you want to talk to someone you openly acknowledge was emotionally abusive? That’s better? Sorry, ngl, that sounds like you’re rationalizing reasons to just start things up again. I mean you can talk to him if you want, but I can’t imagine that working out well for you in the long run. Most likely he’ll get emotionally abusive again, you’ll have to reheal and then you’ve wasted more time on him that you could have spent trying to find people you do connect with that aren’t abusive.

> I can’t stop grieving who he was. Who he somehow still is.

Stop lying to yourself. The real him is the shitty cheater, the person you miss is not real, it’s just the charm he puts on so you put up with the rest of his crap. Do not talk to him, as you’ll just get sucked in again. And you feeling connected, also that’s not connection, that’s you falling for his bullshit again.

Here’s an analogy that might help. You know how when you’re really hungry even a stale piece of bread taste amazing? But it’s not the bread that makes it taste good it’s that you’re starving. Same thing when you “love” an abuser. It may feel like you connect with them but in reality, it’s because in the relationship you were mostly starved for his attention, so now when you get it, it feels awesome. But it isn’t. It’s just a stale piece of bread that just seems that way. Google intermittent reward, loss aversion, and trauma bonding as those concepts are similar and they all explain why it’s so hard to break free from abusers. But really, I promise you, every abuser is just a crusty old stale piece of bread or else they wouldn’t abuse you in the first place.

One reason it happens is if he’s a really bad people pleasers and fears being disliked. So he’ll try to make everyone like them, and if he can’t he’ll prioritize the people he doesn’t know as he doesn’t know if they’ll forgive him but he does know the people he’s close to will. Basically he takes advantage of the people close to him, in order to make sure everyone likes him, but in the end, he’ll lose close friends as that gets old fast. If that’s his issue, it can take years of therapy to figure it out, find solutions and develop better behaviors, if it’s possible to fix at all. So the sooner you jump ship, the better.

> I gave him $2 to put on a song and he went to the music thing and there was a girl next to it and he asked her what song she wanted on!

This is all you need to know, he can’t keep his word, he’s worried about impressing a random chick then making his gf happy. And tries to get away with it by lying and gaslighting you. Nope, nope, and nope. Leave this man. He is fundamentally broken and even if he was willing to fix it, it would take years of therapy. Do not waste one more second of your youth on this ass hat of a boy.