Dear User34:

Yesterday, August 23, you wrote regarding your ex boyfriend and his current girlfriend: “bottom line, it seems that they are engaged now, after 5 months of dating.. I see that everything seems so perfect there, and all of their acquaintances are delighted to hear the announcement rooting for them… I feel like I am watching a movie, and not real life”-

– I agree that you were watching a movie, a fiction based on a true story movie. The Truth part of the movie is that two people got engaged and their acquaintances congratulated and rooted for them.

The fictional part of the movie is that because the two individuals got engaged they are perfect for each other, that both of them are mentally healthy, compatible and able to live a good life together, and that all the acquaintances who congratulated them and rooted for them know that.

Reality is that the natural, polite and appropriate reaction of acquaintances to two people getting engaged is to congratulate them, so to maintain the acquaintance, or if working with any of the two, to keep the atmosphere in the workplace pleasant. Congratulating is a getting-along strategy, not a belief that the engaged couple are a good match.

Following are quotes of what you shared From April to July about your ex boyfriend, who is now engaged to another woman. In parentheses are my comments:

“he seemed to have a problem with alcohol.. and seemed depressed, confessed to have suicidal thoughts… a few weeks before we split, he went to see a therapist. He was very excited, loved it, and was feeling better already” (He was unwell and he was not healed following a few sessions with a therapist: he was desperate for a quick fix, desperate to feel better quickly..  so he made believe that he healed and he felt much better, for a while).

“2 weeks after the first session, he broke up with me via text message” (he didn’t thoroughly evaluate his relationship with you and figure that you are unfit to be his girlfriend. He was impulsive, impatient, quick to act). “Until the last weeks of our relationship, he did not want to see a therapist- he said it was stupid” (He did not change his mind because he did a thorough research on therapy and came to the conclusion that therapy is not stupid. He was impulsive, quick to change his position on things and people)

“He was with some 10 years older woman and then he moved and started a relationship with this coworker” (He is impulsive, quick to form fast relationships) “He even gave her the slippers we bought for me to wear in his apartment” (He is in such a hurry that he didn’t take the time to buy her new slippers)

“He also asked me to move in with him in our first week” (His impulsivity is nothing new).

“he said that he would kill himself if we break up… I used to beg him to stay calm, to drink less” (He was significantly unwell).

“I used to beg him not to speak poor of me when he was drunk- he was calling me stupid, idiot” (He was a mean, abusive drunk) “My boyfriend used to apologize after some bad fights, seemed sincere. However, he would sometimes add ‘Well, it’s not like I hit you or something'” (If he was sincere when he apologized, then his sincerity evaporated soon after, and overall he didn’t take responsibility for his behavior).

“he used to turn off his phone when he was drinking and being angry or in a fight- not necessarily with me- and we would not know what happened to him..his parents sometimes used to go and search for him in the middle of the night” (irresponsible, unreliable).

You wrote: “it’s about our good moments, sometimes about the bad ones. It is still strange for me to think they are both coming from the same person- e.g. being kind and caring, then yelling or accusing and insulting me”-

– but it was the same person, and he still is the same person.

You wrote: “I might also perceive the reality in a distorted manner.. I am going to try stay in contact with reality, and not in my imagination”- in your imagination, he is in some fairytale relationship, fairytale in the sense that he is no longer mentally unwell, no longer impulsive, no longer a mean drunk, no longer irresponsible, that he has changed because he is with .. the right woman.

Reality is, adults don’t change because he/ she is in a relationship with someone new.

“When I was a child, I used to beg them (mostly my mother) to spend time with me.. I felt abandoned over and over again, felt like it was my fault”-

– as a child, you were so desperate for your mother (as all children are) that you didn’t and couldn’t see her as anything but as someone you need desperately, no matter who she was as a person.. you just needed a mother. And whatever went wrong, you felt (as all children do) that it was your fault.

Fast forward, with your ex boyfriend, you just needed/ need him, no matter who he is, and when things did go wrong, you felt that it was your fault.

In your next relationship, you will also feel desperate, and you will also feel that what goes wrong is your fault. You will be the same person with a different, new man in your life. Just as he is the same person with a different,  new woman in his life.

anita