Hi MsMel,

I like to fill my time doing things that will make me feel good physically. I find that when I’m feeling bad physically, any difficult emotions I’m feeling become worse. For example, I tend to hold my stress in my neck and shoulders,  causing tight muscles in both. When I have a painful knot in my neck or shoulder muscles, I tend to focus on the negative things that are happening in my life instead of the positive. It’s almost like I’m  seeing the world through negative lenses. In your case it might be like saying “If only I was with him, this pain I’m feeling would go away. Not being with him is causing my pain.” It’s the weirdest thing, but I’m glad to be aware that I do this. When I’m feeling good physically, I tend to focus more on the positive. In your case it might be like saying to myself “I feel so good physically that I can do this! I can survive and feel good without this relationship. I can be content and exist without him!”  I exercise vigorously and mostly outdoors, and I also try to eat well, stay away from alcohol and unhealthy foods that will ultimately make me feel worse. I also stretch my neck and shoulders, try to release any tension there, meditate, reach out to girlfriends, get activities on my calendar, see movies, go on hikes. All these things help, but being in good physical condition does something magic to my emotions, and also helps me to sleep better at night.

B

Dear MsMel:

It may help, when you find yourself missing his hand holding yours and snuggling, if at the same time you have these heart warming memories, that you remember what he said to you when he was verbally abusive.

If you give… sort of equal time to the memories of him in your life, your emotions for him will fit more to the whole reality of what was.

anita

Dear MsMel:

You are welcome.

You wrote: “He thinks he has no problems”- all through the relationship with you, for six years, he expressed to you that he doesn’t have any problems? If so, he blamed you (and/ or others) for the problems in his life?

anita

Dear MsMel:

You wrote that you re trying to “remember the bad to push away the sweet thoughts”- I don’t think this aim works for anyone, to push away the sweet thoughts. I don’t think it works because it is based on an all-or-nothing thinking, which is not true to reality. I will explain my point (and it is for your evaluation of course):

better aim at holding both kinds of thought: the sweet and the bitter. Because in reality he was a good man and a bad man in your life, both, not one or the other. So better hold on to both groups of thought. When we try to push one group, the other will find itself back in and take possession.

Reads to me that your ex boyfriend had and has a pathological relationship with his mother. That is a shame as this pathological relationship affects him (and you) so badly. He may have been correct when he blames his mother for causing the breakups of past relationships. Maybe his mother drilled in him guilt about being loyal  to any other woman, other than her, that is.

Maybe.

Regardless, he was not open to therapy and indeed there is nothing you can do to force him to go to therapy. His charming self, that was probably genuine. I am sure you observed a lot of genuine, loving parts of him and that is what is so confusing, isn’t it?

We tend to think of people as good or bad. It is hard to hold both in mind. Thing is, in his case, in your life, he has been bad for you, overall.

Even the cruelest person in the world, by the way, has his (or her) loving moments.

I am carried away with my thoughts…

anita