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John

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Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
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  • #151866
    John
    Participant

    I am in a similar situation and this is what works for me to stop letting my past experiences (or lack thereof) keep me down and prevent me from having a good relationship in the future. So your track record is having love once in 26 years.  Instead of seeing love as something that happens to other people all the time, but to you only once every 26 years (that sounds pretty hopeless) I try to look at it as a skill that is learned. Three months ago you had zero skill and you cannot be blamed for that. You had no experience. Now no matter how much or little you have learned through this experience you have INFINITELY more skill. Any skill is better than none and this will serve you in the future if you let it.

    #150588
    John
    Participant

    I am so sorry to hear what you are going through. I also suffered a breakup with my fiance where she quickly went to a guy we had both known for years whom she never once had anything nice to say about while we were together. In fact, she had said quite a lot of not so nice things about him and now he is my replacement.

    I am shocked at how instagram is flaunting their relationship in your face against your will. I am on no social media (except forums like this) so I dont have to deal with any of those things. I dont know anything about how intagram works but is there no way to block that from happening? Having to see that stuff can not  be healthy.

    Take care.

    #150366
    John
    Participant

    I wouldnt mind if my partner said they loved their  best friend but in a different way. But EQUALLY and in a different way would seem a bit much especially if they are dancing all over each other. I wouldnt want a hetero female partner to be dancing all over a hetero guy friend so I dont see why you should have to accept that behaviour.

    If you have any feeling left to salvage have you considered trying to talk about it again, but this time to make him understand that that you are not asking him to choose between you and his best friend? That you are only asking that he doesnt behave inappropriately with his best friend? ie. only dance that way with you?

     

    P.S. Inky, I think the OP is a male though they dont explicitly say so.

    #150207
    John
    Participant

    Congratulations! I usually come here to read about other peoples relationship problems (so I can learn from them) but successes are good too! This was really nice to read. Please keep us posted on how things are going in the future.

    #150021
    John
    Participant

    I dont believe in souls and especially not soul connections but to me what you wrote was very rational and reasonable and had nothing to do with that. In fact I would love to find a woman with exactly this attitude. I would even make an exception and date someone that young if they were that wise (I am 30).

    I especially like the part that love is a choice. In my last relationship I loved her as much as ever right to the end, no matter how she treated me because I had made the commitment to love her forever. I didnt see it as some fleeting mythical creature. I made the decision long ago to love her and therefore stopping was never an option.

    Then all of a sudden she didnt love me anymore. It was a long time in the works but she never communicated so to me it happened in an instant. I was furious and still am nearly 8 months later because I dont understand how someone can just let such a great love die like that. The way I see things she made a decision to stop loving me and that is what I havent forgiven her for yet.

    #145467
    John
    Participant

    Its funny that personality tests came up because when I read the OP the first thing I thought was that those sound like very INTP problems. That is because I am an INTP personality type and I identify with everything said and have heard other INTPs online complain about the same things. That doesnt mean the OP is INTP of course but looking into personality types can be very valuable to help understand why you are the way you are and how different people see the world differently.

    #145289
    John
    Participant

    I don`t know how your husband would react but it if it were me and I knew about this I would expect you to choose. I would prefer you to choose me but I would rather you choose the other man than to continue going on like this.

    #145139
    John
    Participant

    When you say that the sex frequency changes, are you implying that this is due to his desire, or lack thereof?

    How often does he desire sex when you are not in the mood, or perhaps when it is late at night and you need to rest up for work in the morning?

    Also, what is his work schedule like? If he works in the evening for example when you are just finishing work then maybe there just isnt enough time to connect with you as much as he likes. If most of his free time is during the day when you are at work then it is possible that he turns to porn because you are not around then and it is nothing personal.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by John.
    #143939
    John
    Participant

    From the topic title I was expecting to read that he is being abusive to you and/or not leaving you alone. From the content it reads to me like you want to keep contact with him, but he is being dismissive and disrespectful and that the real difficulty is your lack of closure.

    I am so sorry that it ended this way for you and I can’t imagine how awful it must feel, but I am afraid that you are not going to get the closure you seek from him. It sounds like you are sceptical of his reason for breaking up with you and rightly so, for it really sounds like he is being dishonest about the real reason.

    It is also possible that he is being dishonest with himself and actually believes the story he is telling you because he is unable or unwilling to examine his feelings. Either way, sadly it seems like he has made up his mind and you wont get any satisfaction from confronting him or any further contact with him.

    I know it must be hard to let go without proper closure but unfortunately it seems he is not willing to indulge you so I would recommend no further contact with him. I’m sure it’s of small consolation right now but I truly believe you are better off in the long run without without such a person in your life, whether as a lover or a friend.

    #128347
    John
    Participant

    In my last relationship, which ended badly I WAS your boyfriend. It is very sobering to read your story because it is like reading my exes perspective which I still struggle to understand

    @Winchester1990 said:
    I’ve mentioned multiple times about him getting help which he won’t say yes or no to, I’ve offered to go with him and support him every step of the way too.

    Let me say THANK YOU for this, even though I’m not your boyfriend. This is what I wish my ex did for me and I still wonder what might have happened if she had. Maybe I would have gone along with it. Maybe I would have still resisted. I will never know. All I know is that instead of helping me realise my problem she failed to communicate and even lied and made excuses when I was puzzled as to why she was becoming more and more distant.

    When the relationship ended all of a sudden I was forced to get help, or give in to my suicidal despair. I started taking SSRIs, going to counselling and learning mindfulness meditation and one or some combination of those things (I can’t be sure, maybe it was all three) has made a HUGE difference.

    Every time I break through to a new level of seeing the good in life (and dissipating my cloud of despair) I can’t help but think that my ex would be so proud of me, then I realise again that she is no longer in my life and based on how poorly she handled my issues she does not deserve the new and improved version of me that I am becoming.

    It sounds to me like you deserve the best version of your boyfriend, the problem is how to help him become it. You do not deserve to be dragged down if he refuses to see what he is doing to you and change.

    I think is he really cares about you and is made fully aware of how he is affecting you he will want to change. At least, that is how I think I would have responded, but I can’t be sure.

    I won’t pretend to know what you should do because that is beyond my experience, but my conjecture based on my experience is if you don’t do something soon then you will find you no longer love him like you used to and it wont be worth it for you.

    Making him see your point of view wont be easy, and it may hurt him a lot in the short term, but you can`t help the way you feel and that is better than hurting him even more later. Considering how destitute I was when my ex left me, I feel like I would have done anything to please her if only she let me know what danger we were in before it was too late.

    #139651
    John
    Participant

    Hi everyone.

    My situation is so similar to the original poster’s that I almost feel that every reply is directed at me too. There are so many parallels even down to the ages of the parties involved: I am 30 years old and some months ago I was left by my 25 year old fiancee. I wanted to be married and have a family by now and now my goal is to have that by age 35 just like you Josh.

    I am going on 3 months of absolutely no contact (and I don’t use any social media) so I have no idea whether my ex is dating a pill popping dishwasher but I know how she sleeps around when she is single which drives me crazy with rage and jealousy.

    I’m a couple of months further down the road so I was going to chime in with some advice and what’s helped me so far, but what I was going to say seems to contradict what Anita is saying, so instead of adding the confusion of conflicting viewpoints I would like to better understand what Anita means and maybe I will find that we are not in such disagreement after all.

    My issue is that the advice of dating when still attached to an ex seems counter-intuitive to me because that is the opposite of the commonly suggested wisdom of taking your time to heal, detach and work on independent self driven happiness before attempting to date again.

    Now Anita, I’m aware that maybe this is not what you are suggesting at all, as you are clearly saying that it is a good time to “interview” and you never mentioned that he should actually date at all.  Perhaps it is simply my issue that I have a hard time separating “interviewing” from “dating” in my mind so this is where I could use some clarification (I hope I am not hijacking this thread too much, but my thinking is that is the OP or anyone else reading this are like me then maybe they could use some clarification too)

    Did you mean that he should interview completely separate from dating? As in dispassionately (and thus unbiasedly) collect information about potential partners now to help decide which one to date when the time comes?  Or to collect the information with the intention of going right ahead with a “hire” when one is found?

    #139435
    John
    Participant

    It seems to me like you might be affected by a bit of a stigma against therapy. Maybe some people who were around you growing up gave off the attitude that therapy is for “crazy” people?

    In my opinion everyone needs therapy at some point in their lives or at the very least could use it. It is the truly brave and wise who choose to make use of it before they have no other choice.

    #128323
    John
    Participant

    I have gone through a similar thing recently with a part time long distance relationship (my partner was gone for up to a month at a time and sometimes only spend a few days at home). I wont tell my whole life story, but my point is I can understand how you feel a lot.

    From my my perspective it seems that you two were a very poor match in terms of neediness. That is not your fault nor his, and it does not make you an inferior person at all. In fact, such a mismatch can serve to intensify the mismatch, making you feel needier than you might otherwise be and making him more distant than he might otherwise be. I’ll bet you probably feel very self critical for being so needy but it isn’t your fault. You couldn’t help it considering how distant he was and how much room for insecurity he left in the relationship.

    LDRs are always tough and I imagine it must have been very tough to transition into one after 3 months of dating, especially if you feel like you never got what you need for those 3 months.

    I will tell you this: you are better off in the long run with this relationship ending. I know it will be hard to believe, and you don’t have to believe me right now. I know how alienating it can be when people try to tell you what to believe when you are hurting. All I ask is that you consider it and soon you will believe it in your MIND. It won’t help. Eventually you will believe it your HEART and that is what will drive the healing.

    But for now I beg that you cut yourself some slack and allow yourself to grieve as long and as much as you need to. Even when it’s for the best in the end, breakups can be devastating and I’m very sorry that your family doesn’t seem to understand. That is their problem, not yours. There is no shortcut around the pain. However, you have enough on your plate and you do not need to add to it by feeling guilty about how you feel. No matter what your family says and no matter what anyone on the internet thinks, it is NEVER stupid to feel sad over a breakup.

    #128231
    John
    Participant

    Was just reading through this forum to put my own recent breakup in perspective and I felt compelled to reply to this.

    I know it must must be unimaginably painful to see him dating the new girl, but the way I see it is that fact completely proves he is full of shit.

    For one, it proves that you were right to go through his phone. Maybe if he was completely innocent and he caught you going through his phone he would have right to be mad. But YOU caught him, the fact that he dated her is the ultimate proof that you caught him in a wrongdoing so the way I see it, it doesn’t matter what you did to get that information, it is good that you got it so you can see what kind of person he is before you are even more invested in this relationship.

    Finally, it proves he was lying about not taking enough time between girlfriends too. If that was the case, wouldn’t he need this opportunity to take the time that she claims he should have taken before dating you? Not only is he not doing that but jumping into an another relationship right after yours too!

    I think all this crap about losing trust in you is just a way to deal with his own guilt being discovered. Either that, or he is just a philandering asshole and he wants to have a girlfriend who will never be suspicious of his infidelities.

    I second what Anita has said. I am proud of you for having the strength to avoid him and I would suggest that you keep up the good work in the future! HE is the one not to be trusted and you are much better off without him in the long run.

    If it is hard to see that now, I can assure you that you WILL see it in time. This is coming from a person who a few months ago was on the verge of suicide and couldn’t imagine life without his fiancee. I don’t expect you to be happy right now about the fact you dodged a bullet. I wasn’t. You still need to mourn for the person you thought he was and the future you thought you had together. Seeing the reality of the situation does little to ease that pain but I know if you stay strong now you WILL be glad in time 🙂

Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)