Dear jace:

My thoughts: regarding “I want to thank him for the realization he gave me”- If he ended the relationship with you with the purpose in mind that you will arrive to a particular realization so that you live a better life, then maybe a thank you would have been appropriate, but that was not the case. He did not give you a realization, neither did he plan that you arrive at it, so it doesn’t make sense to thank him for it.

Regarding “I am not going into this suggestion expecting anything. If he says yes, then cool! If he says no, then also cool!”- it took you less than a minute to type these three short sentences, correct? But if you resume a relationship with him, there will he hours, whole evenings, nights, weeks of it probably not being so cool.

It is similar to this situation: a person decides on going on a diet to lose weight. At the moment of making the decision, the person is not hungry, feels calm and feels confident: I can do this!

But then the day proceeds and she gets hungry, she eats some, still not full, but still confident, she resists and sticks to the diet. Then night, and the day after, still doing okay, but the day after she passes by a pizza place and before she knows it, she has three slices. And then she feels some distress, a bit confused, I thought I had it! She thinks. What happened?

Time happened.

In your case, the three slices of pizza may be a repeat of this: “I was totally blindsided. And devastated. I did nothing but lay in bed and cry for a week… call him, text him, get drunk and yell at him, get drunk and beg him back, the whole nine.”

anita