My ex-boyfriend and I were together for about 8 years. We lived together in several cities over a period of 6 years. We were friends before we got together, and we had tons in common. I had issues with insecurity and he had issues from being adopted at birth. I hadn’t been very happy for the last 2 years because I wasn’t doing what I wanted and he and I were both wanting to move, but because of finances and our jobs, we never had the timing right. He broke up with me suddenly, out of the blue 5 months ago. Despite trying to work things out, he moved out 2 months later. At the time he was starting to smoke marijuana frequently and had completely given up the meditation practice that he had which had helped us during our tough times. We hung out like nothing had happened, and I went on a quest to discover all the lessons that needed to be learned to be able to love myself and others more, all the while hoping we’d get back together.

Our communication became less and less until I got the idea that he must not really want to be with me, so I made plans to move and pursue my passions, effectively cutting off any chance of us being together again. He took this hard, and aside from a night where I asked him to come over so I could share my gratitude and lessons learned with him and he broke down crying and the following night when he came over saying he couldn’t sleep and was obviously having a hard time, he never wanted to talk about why we broke up or get closure. He then started seeing someone else.

Despite my positive outlook on my life and our relationship and ability to move on at one point, this piece of information broke me to pieces. Weeks before I had found out about the girlfriend, I had asked him to have a goodbye ceremony the day I left, which he agreed to. My last day before leaving, while we were cleaning out our former place of habitation I asked him if I could stay at his place after our ceremony since he was taking our cat. He said I shouldn’t – that he had plans with his girlfriend and didn’t even seem to care about the ceremony. I stayed anyway, after he decided he’d stay at a friend’s house. It was awful. The whole time I was asking for our goodbye, he did everything to avoid it, then left. He kept saying we’d see each other again and said we’d talk after I left.

I got to my new home/town and tried to go no contact and move on. He texted, asking how I was doing, and when I didn’t respond sent my some songs/videos about wanting to change and basically being devastated about losing his friend. He texted me and asked if we were still going to be friends. I responded saying that I wanted to be with him to resolve our issues together, to get to the core of our beings where understanding resides, to continue our spiritual relationship, etc. and if he didn’t then I would have to say goodbye. He ignored that email, but still sent me a text about a recipe. Yesterday, I finally confronted him via email asking him what he wanted (and why he didn’t respond to my email) and he said a friendship. I said I was confused by the previous emails and texts he sent that gave me an idea that there might be hope for a reconciliation, but needed to know that there wasn’t a chance we would be together again. He said he was sorry for misleading me and that he didn’t mean to. I said to not contact me and goodbye, which he acknowledged.

I’m suffering because he’s moved on. I imagine him happy with his new girlfriend. It kills me to think that she might have the future with him that we had planned. He’s swept his feelings under the rug with marijuana, alcohol and a new relationship. I’m suffering because we shared 8 years of our lives together and never got any closure. He never wanted to discuss anything. To give me what I needed, yet he thought we could be friends. He just wanted out. And now I’m the one lonely and confused. I don’t know if his issues with adoption have anything to do with this. I’m having an especially hard time knowing his new girlfriend was also adopted. Like he’s found a new soul mate to replace me. Someone who can understand him better even though I spent 8 years trying to understand him, show him compassion and help him. How can someone just drop that relationship so easily?

Have you ever had that feeling when you feel excited about life, about everyday, about yourself?
When you wake up in the morning and know that no matter what happens this will be a wonderful day!
When you can just sit quietly, think about your blessing and tear up! When you lay in your bed before sleeping and your
heart starts pounding when you think of how amazing your life is? Just because you can see the magic in the simplest, littlest things.

It’s just funny, I think if you asked someone to describe my life, I guess they would say it’s boring, because I never ever enjoy the things most people like to do, but I am just in love with every single little part of my life!

Is anyone else taken aback by the magic in this life? I mean just look at the sky, isn’t it so magical? Our existence, the little things called coincidences, oh there are so many magical things! I’m not high haha not at all, I just really really love life! And I am so grateful I feel there is no more room inside me to carry all this gratitude.
And the best part is, you can take a look at yourself, and you can see the person you want to become, and so you start working little by little, and one day you see how close you’ve become to the person you once imagined, until one day you see that person in your mirror! Ah wonderful wonderful life <3
I don’t feel this way all the time because life has its ups and downs leading to a perfect balance, but when I do feel like it, I can’t share it with anyone because people always think something is missing in their life in order to get to this state or they think I’m crazy! … So please tell me that there’s someone else out there who’s also feeling this way! Tell me that you understand, tell me that you’re in love with life! <3 Share your thoughts with me!

Last night after writing the forum “letter not to be sent”..I stumbled and fell. I emailed him. I wrote down my feeling on TB and on a piece paper than something in me just started to email him. I am trying to be gentle with myself ans true. I don’t want to lie to myself. Put on a brave face when I don’t feel brave. In my email to him, I expressed gratitude towards him. I told him about the work I have been doing. I told him about how the more I get to know myself, the more I understand why the relationship crumbled. With all forums I started here, I never mentioned how wonderful my ex was to me. He was patient with me on and off of anti depressant. He started closing off to me when all the burden of my sadness fell solely on him. I look to him for happiness. He kept telling to self nurture, to meditate and I never listened. I was too busy blaming him and the world for my unhappiness.

I told him how I missed him but knew that I have to love myself before I can accept his or anyone else’s love. I also told him the realty of why I acted like I did when he broke it off. See it was easier to blame everything on him than to look within and face the regret. I am in a stage of regret in this journey of mine. My ex was my friend and love. Losing him has become a life lesson for me.

What I now have to remember is that I don’t want his forgiveness. I just want clarity. I want to stop crying. I want to stop pitying myself. I want to stop having expectations of others. Honestly, a part of me just wants him to respond and tell me if all the remorse I am feeling is a fragment of my imagination or if he did actually love me. I know my insecurities are surfacing. I know not having a strong belief and support system within me is creating this chaos in my mind.

Honestly, I couldn’t bare the pain anymore. I couldn’t let go without expressing how I felt to my best friend. The last memory i have of my ex is him not being able to move from where he was standing in Florence cause we had another one of our 5\6 hour flight and I was crying. For a minute I thought he was having a stroke. He tried his best to hold on to our relationship and I kept pushing him away because I wanted to prove to my self loathing self that I am unlovable. All my adult life, I have been trying to prove myself right by pushing everyone away.

In the end, I wished him lucky and told him that the woman he is with is very lucky and I am very unlucky having had him in my life and lost.

I was never going to tell anyone about this but you guys have become family I never had.
Thanks for listening again….

I would really appreciate your opinion on what I’ve been going through recently.

My boyfriend and I are 22, have been together since freshman year of college- going on four years. We have many differences, but we are reflections of each others strengths and weaknesses. I value his perspective, and I know he values my own.

But it seems that we have been disagreeing about fundamental things recently, which scares me that we may not as be compatible as I would like to believe.

For instance, last night we had a lengthy conversation about compassion. Compassion is something that I have worked through. It has been very tough at times to practice compassion towards others, but more critically–myself. It is a very essential value to me, because it allows for self-love and gratitude. But he sees it differently; he thinks that compassion is weakness. That compassion is just an excuse. There is no reason to feel sympathy because it does no good. That it causes the poor and impoverish to stay on welfare. He thinks that all that those people need to do is to “work harder” and that will take them out of the situation. But No– I disagree. Because I have volunteered in developing countries, and have heard the stories of the unfortunate. It’s not anything that they can just snap out of. They are a product of their environment, their influences, and their attitude (shaped by others). Working harder is not the answer. Telling someone that does no good. But by practicing compassion you can help them. I honestly believe that.

But it doesn’t matter– we just have a difference of opinion there. The only thing that scares me is that I actually will need compassion sometime in our relationship. Because mistakes happen and to get past them I need compassion. He needs tough love; I need sympathy. Very different ways of handling hardships. And our future children will need compassion so that they grow up knowing that its okay to be vulnerable.

Speaking of children…we’ve had this talk before. I want two children- I can tell I have the motherly instincts and I know that I’ll be a wonderful mother in the future. He- on the other hand- is not for them. He says that he could suffer through having one. I realize that most men don’t want kids until they are older. But what if he doesn’t? What if having kids makes him miserable? I would never want him to go through that- and plus I wouldn’t want a partner that isn’t excited about having kids. It shouldn’t be a deal breaker, right? That’s what I keep telling myself.

Okay and here comes the final facet of this complex situation. Last night (yes, it was a veryyy long night), he told me that he a crush on my best friend. And he left it at that. It’s just a crush. It may be just a physical thing. That’s what he thinks.

She is a very positive person, very attractive, very fitness oriented (which align with his goals right now), and I think he’s just infatuated. But my friend and I have been close for four years, and he’s known her for that long as well. It wasn’t until the last two years that the three of us got really close. We have gone on vacations before, just the three of us and I’ve never been concerned because they are both very trustworthy people, and of course I was the middleman. Then two months ago they went on a trip–it was a marathon race in a different state– by themselves (i had work, i couldn’t go). They stayed in a hotel room together, and I thought it was very trusting of me to let them go, and be okay that they were so close. Nothing happened. So it was all good.

But when he told me how he felt last night, it makes me feel scared. There is nothing holding them back from being together. They are both really great people. And I know that he loves me and that we are best friends…but couldn’t they develop it as well?

He said that he told me because he wanted to be honest with me. I appreciate that. But at what point do I decide what to do? Do I let time figure this thing out?

Am I overthinking this? I know that I’ve covered a lot of different issues here. But I can’t talk about this to anyone. I don’t want my friends of family to have a skewed perception of my boyfriend because everyone loves him and I don’t want to involve anyone in our issues. Maybe an outsider’s perspective will help.

Thanks.

There are some times when you find yourself in a situation that’s like the straw that broke the camel’s back, like a drop that overfilled the glass. Since my childhood I lived a very lousy life,with a lot of problems,loneliness,pain ,abuse etc. But miraculously I’ve always managed to go through everything without losing hope. To get to the point, it’s been three years now that I’ve had a problem I can’t deal with whatsoever. One of the terrible aspects of my life is the family I was born in. Just to keep the story short I’m the fourth child(girl) of a five children family and I’ve been havind bad relationship with my little sister since I can remember. She is the fifth and last child so my parents spoiled her very much whereas they have been very cruel with me.Just an exemple of the uneven treatment is that they always beat me up as the older one to the point that it would take days for my wounds to heal but they never laid a hand on her. So despite of growing up feeling this kind of injustice in everything I always loved her and was a caring sister. But as we were growing up she developed a very selfish personality with no respect and gratitude for me . At some point when we were still living together I didn’t talk to her for a whole year due to my impotence to deal with her disregard and harshness towards me.

When my father gave me no choice but to leave home I was relieved a lot from my family’s burden but I had to go through horrible times to stand on my feet and feel for the first time a little bit free.But at that point, almost three years ago, something happened that may seem stupid to a lot of people but it has turned into an obsession for me for the last three years. During all the previous years and all of the suffering that I have endured in almost every aspect of my life ,because when you start your life badly it goes on worse due to one problem causing the other, I never holded a grudge and never resented god or hated any person that hurt me because one dream kept me alive. I had been dreaming from the early years that one day I would be travelling all around the world,away from all the people that brought upon me so much pain because back then it was the only thing nobody cared about, no one wanted it , no one knew how great it would be so it was the only escape possible for me,exactly because all of the people that were suffocating me would not be there. The big mistake was that I got so hung up on it that I didn’t see how I was developing my own weakness because as I realized later, the things we need end up owning us. So what happened?? My little sister met a wonderful guy, he is successful, handsome and loves her very much. So what are the chances?? He loves travelling and his job includes a paid trip every 6 months so he always takes my sister with him and she always brings souvenirs home( she lives with my mother so I always see them when visiting) and now her dream has become travelling the world and she speaks about it all the time.

So this is the situation in general. My problem is that since it started I have completely lost my mind. Suddenly all the pain that I’ve been repressing in me has turned into hatred,rage and I feel out of control. After that I cry every day as if I’ll cry all I haven’t cried all my life.I can’t sleep,I see it in my nightmares.Any time I hear somebody talking about trips or see something relevant on tv, it makes my stomach move. Now I feel disgust about the thing that holded me through the years so now I feel like collapsing. I don’t recognize myself anymore,all the bad things I’m considering doing in order to restore this injustice since life or god or whoever does nothing about it. What makes me furious is that I find no sufficient answer to this injustice,which I am absolutely aware that represents all the unfair things that I’ve seen in my and in others’ life.I mean how is it possible that I have been always a good person, I have fought so much against evil and I have suffered so much through the best years of a person’s life keeping the FAITH alive and my sister, a selfish,spoiled and ungrateful person who lives only to indulge her whims gets so beautiful things, worthy people to love her and what’s aggravating my rage is that she is LIVING MY DREAM!!!!! Even at this moment, while I’m writing, I feel my hands wanting to smother her.

It’s been three years and I can’t find any remedy to cure myself.Every day I feel worse, I can’t move on because I’m stuck, this hate is asphyxiating me.I can’t cope with this injustice. I can see a meaning in life taking something away from me but why did it have to be specificly the only person I hate, I mean why???? Why do I have to keep my faith strong and my hops up when it’s all meaningless,when goodness makes no sense,when you rarely get a chance to avenge your pain.This question has torn me apart,it’s eating away at me slowly and patiently a single piece every day, I feel sicker before my helplessness to react. I can’t react because I can do no harm,because I can’t show it hurts me because she will feel even better, It’s like the only thing I can do, to ACCEPT it, it’s the only thing I CAN’T do.

I’m so sorry for my rumbling for so long,it’s my first time I share this story with someone ,since I have no friends, and I tried to keep it as short as possible. Anyone who would be interested to answer, please don’t waste your energy in platitudes,in patronizing or condescending advice. No offence to anyone but only an inspired recommendation can do any good to a person to who death seems the only answer any more!!