Hi Jamie,
Big warm hugs to you. I am sorry you are hurting. Ending a love relationship is so very hard. I’m going to offer my two cents worth. I’m sure others will weigh in with differing opinions, but here’s mine: I would think long and hard about if you really want to open yourself up to more potential pain by reaching out to pursue a friendship with him. The reason I say this is because it seems you are still in a lot of pain over the breakup, which is totally understandable and something you will work through as time goes on, however I think it leaves you pretty vulnerable. You say the pain has “somewhat” subsided, and you’re still crying because you miss him. Again, completely understandable but it seems it may still be too raw to initiate contact with him again. Eventually the pain will be completely gone and what remains would be a fondness for him and your time together. Only once you reach that point do I think you should even consider contacting him. And another thing, whenever I think about being friends with exes, I ask myself “do my friends treat me the way he did? Would I want a friend to treat me that way?” Maybe in your case he was a dear friend to you and as you say it was just the breakup that caused you both to express hurtful things to each other. But when I think about some of the qualities of my past partners especially in cases of betrayal, abuse, or other maltreatment, I couldn’t even call that person a friend. You should do what feels right for you, though. Follow your own heart and have the courage to do so.

ThirdEyePoke,
I would encourage you to be less judgmental of yourself and your situation. At the end of your post, you offer two solutions: accept you were never in love and let her go, or “man up” and try your best to love her. This implies you see the latter choice as the “right” one, the honorable choice and I’m just not sure it’s true. Yes, you are presented with two paths, but ask yourself what do you truly want, in your heart and soul? You allude throughout your post of things not being right with your relationship with this girl. You take accountability for your part in it, which is admirable, but there are also things that boil down to compatibility and fit. It is not your responsibility to “take care of” another person at the cost of your own happiness and mental health. Everybody “deserves” to be loved, but just because you “chose” her to date does not mean you are forever obligated to make sacrifices in order to be with her. I encourage you to read up on codependency and see if any of it resonates with you.

Kelly

Mark,

I don’t have much in terms of guidance to offer, but I wanted to let you know I too struggle with the seeming contradiction between Buddhism and psychology. I have studied the latter for longer and only recently have become interested in understanding Buddhism. For years, my “guru” was Lou Tice of the Pacific Institute, an organization I was exposed to through my work in a corporate environment. A lot of attention was put to goal setting and visualization techniques. For instance, if you have a fear of public speaking, visualize yourself delivering a flawless speech to the crowd. Over and over, play this movie in your mind of you delivering the speech, so that when the time comes to give the speech, you are simply acting out the scene you have envisioned in your mind. We move toward and become what we think about. Visualize yourself driving that fancy new car you want, getting married to that beautiful woman, or performing a drum solo to an enthusiastic audience. But isn’t that too much future thinking, when you consider the teachings of Buddhism? Shouldn’t you be mindful of the present moment and not give attention or time to that speech you need to deliver tomorrow? I’ve heard it said that spending too much mental energy on the past leads to depression whereas investing too much time focused on the future can cause anxiety. But what of goals and hopes and dreams? How do these future biased thought patterns fit into a Buddhist mind? I think for someone like me who wants to have a high level of (perceived?) “control” in my life, the idea that everything is happening perfectly, in its own time without any intervention from me causes me angst. Surely there’s something I can do to direct my life’s path. But this is ego, and ego is something I could stand to let go of.

I guess we need to take a deep breath and get out of our heads at times.

Great to hear such happy thoughts from you, Anyone 🙂

Tinyzebra, I’m so happy you’ve come to realize that feeling your feelings is essential, and not rally against any that are unpleasant. I, too, have fell into that trap where I’d feel sad, then be mad at myself for feeling sad and do you think that made me feel any better? I suffered through my relationship when I would tell my partner a negative feeling I had about our relationship and instead of him allowing me to express myself, he would explain how my feeling was “wrong” because it was based on “inaccurate assumptions” or things like that. If I really understood how things were, I wouldn’t feel the way I did, was his perspective. It can be so defeating to have a loved one invalidate you like that. But I digress, the point is you are going to feel sad and that’s ok. There are a lot of articles on Tiny Buddha about feeling your bad feelings as a path to healing, but I found this one especially meaningful:

Why Letting Ourselves Feel Bad Is the Key to Feeling Better

Hi Nami. First off, please don’t feel you have to apologize for the length of your posts or asking questions of the community. I hope you feel free to express yourself fully on this forum.

Forgive me for possibly honing in on an unneccessary detail, but I am having difficulty wrapping my head around this “3 months” timeline. In your first post, it sounds like your boyfriend was pretty clear about things being over. You’ve given each other enough chances, the cycle of bad habits, etc. You met to “say goodbye” and that was that, painful as it was. Perhaps you’ve left out some details, but did you actually discuss reevaluating things together in three months, or because the block on the phone is automatically lifted in 3 months you assume that’s when you’ll be able to call him again and start campaigning to win him back? Because, to be honest, unless it was a deliberate separation with plans to reconvene later, the 3 months seems kind of arbitrary. You can remove a block on a phone number just as easily as you put one on. You are not “locked in” to the block. If the two of you want to dicuss things, there’s no reason you can’t even before this “deadline”. The reason I ask is because I’m concerned that you are delaying moving on from this relationship because of what may be false hope in having a “happy ending” with this man in 3 months. I do apologize if my words are harsh – my intentions are pure. Three months is a long time to spend flogging yourself over things that happened in the past. It’s wonderful that this experience has opened your eyes and caused you to look inward and improve upon yourself, but please do it for the goal of a happier, healthier you and not for some perceived prize of winning him back. He is not the only man in the world, and truth be told it takes two to make a relationship succeed (or fail). It’s admirable you are taking away your own issues and mistakes to work on, but he was a player in this as well. Perhaps you will find that this just wasn’t a great fit.