Not very comfortable with emotions, your dark side, or deeper values like integrity and justice, are you David?

p.s. I actually really appreciate your comment, come to think of it. Because this is exactly the sort of conversation that could actually go somewhere and lead to some mutual understanding. Which is why I have been requesting a mediation with this man for years. Mediation is amazing for healing, and I would not be writing these articles if he had agreed to mediation.

I would imagine it would have helped immensely if he had been honest with her all along, but he wasn’t. At this point where he disappeared, he had not even told her about me. I did not realize this until he visited me in San Francisco a couple weeks later. He had earlier written an article claiming they told each other everything. That turned out not to be true. So he created a situation where he was making promises to two women that he could not keep. And that is not okay.

I don’t mind your comment because it’s constructive and clearly with loving intention. And in “classic relationship theory,” you have a point.

But do you really want to live in a world where your partner disconnects suddenly for five days instead of communicating through an issue? Especially when the precedent in the relationship has been always being emotionally available to each other no matter what?

And more importantly, do you want to live in a world where a man claims that he is available to you, makes plans to move to where you are, and then suddenly “decides” he is going to “recommit” to a woman who is moving to Africa?

I don’t want to live in that kind of a world, and I don’t think what you are saying lets him off the hook at all. It was his responsibility to make honest representations in the relationship and to communicate to resolution, not just disappear and then cop out.