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Broke up 6 weeks ago and can't let go

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  • This topic has 11 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 5 years ago by Gary.
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  • October 26, 2019 at 4:14 am #319779
    Kiky
    Participant

    Hello,

    I’m just shy of the two month mark of the end of my 4 year relationship. We broke up because we realized that we had become toxic for one another and drove each other to different levels of depression and isolation. I’ll spare you the details of how we got there unless you really want to know, but ultimately the future I thought I was going to have was one that was all fantasy – a result of the inability to tell me the direct truth for fear of hurting me but causing extreme distress in him. I knew it was happening. I felt it. I could tell he was pulling away. He was no longer present but I didn’t know why… until that day came and he broke up with me. I knew it was coming but yet I was completely blindsided. Took me a week to move out of the house. In that time we had more discussions and also some laughs and a lot of tears. I know he didn’t come to this decision lightly and he himself cried about it for about two weeks after I left. It would be easy for us to split ways and to have no contact IF we didn’t share a dog. I love that dog. I’m not willing to give up seeing that dog and he’s not willing to let me. I tried to take the dog full time but the situation here was not the best for him so I let my ex have him and I have been taking him one day every couple weeks for about an hour. The problem here is that while we have attempted minimal to no contact and have been fairly successful in that we have limited our conversations to the dog and only the dog, we still have to see each other. To make things worse we work for the same company so I see his name every single day on our internal messenger program (thankfully we don’t work in the same building).

    I know that our romantic relationship is over. I know that, as we two are now, that we cannot have a healthy romantic relationship. I wouldn’t say our breakup was completely amicable but it was mutual after all was said and done. My biggest concern is the friendship. I know that space and time are what we both need but I can’t walk away. I’ve found myself ruminating over why can’t he be my friend? Why isn’t he comfortable and why doesn’t he know how to be friends with someone he once loved? I have walked away from friends, lovers, and relationships in the past without even a backward glance but I feel stuck because I put so much value in our friendship… I think more value in that than I did in the relationship (part of why it didn’t work probably). He has told me that we have four years of emotional investment and he doesn’t want to lose that and I echo those sentiments. There is still love there. We both know it. It just can’t be right now (and maybe never again honestly… only God knows and time will tell). I feel like a crazy person because I desperately want to distance myself from him and move on but I can’t.

    Over the course of those four years we both lost our individuality and are now separately trying to find our happy again. The downward spiral is that I want to be a part of his happy but not as a lover but as his friend. I don’t like the fact that right now I can’t read him at all and can’t tell what he is thinking or feeling because he has become more emotionally distant and stoic and the closeness I once felt when I was near him is gone.

    His feelings for me changed at some point this year so I know he is no longer in love with me (or at least that is what he says). I am still in love with him but I know it won’t work so why am I so hell bent on keeping our friendship alive? Why is this one man someone I cannot simply turn my back on and walk away from? I don’t know how to go from being his best friend to someone he once knew. I can’t disengage. I’ve been journaling and trying to find things to do by myself and with my bestie. I’m trying very hard not to force myself on him and have respected his wishes for space but he feels pressured because I feel so strongly about not losing the friendship we had. Maybe that was fantasy too and I’m just going in circles trying to start this friendship over (I know it will never be what it once was – and maybe that’s a good thing too). I don’t want to push him away but I can’t stop and I’m so frustrated with myself because of it. I ask myself when did I become this clingy and needy and afraid. I feel like I’m in a hamster wheel and I can’t get off. Any suggestions or advice would be most appreciated.

    October 26, 2019 at 9:19 am #319853
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Kiky:

    You wrote the following: “I know that our romantic relationship is over”, “It would be easy for us to split ways and to have no contact IF we didn’t share a dog”, and “My biggest concern is the friendship”-

    -but reads to me that you don’t really know that the romantic relationship is over, that your biggest concern is the romantic relationship and that it has not been easy for you to split ways not because of the dog but because you are still in love with him (“I am still in love with him”).

    I don’t think your mind and heart are together in regard to the ending of this relationship- your thinking brain thinks it figured it all  out but the heart disagrees.

    What do you think?

    anita

    October 26, 2019 at 12:15 pm #319899
    Kiky
    Participant

    Hello,

    Thank you for your reply.  It’s funny you mention that because he told me the other night that my emotional side needs to catch up with my rational side.  Our romantic relationship is over.  I have cried my tears about it.  I am still in love with him and that will take a long time to heal but he and I cannot function together in that kind of relationship.  It won’t work.  He can’t communicate directly what his thoughts and feelings are and because I can pick up on when he is not telling me the whole truth but bits and pieces, my mind will spin out of control on the “what ifs” and he can’t handle that.  He’s told me that he wishes he had the right words to say to understand where his mind and heart is but he simply can’t articulate it.  I can’t be in a romantic relationship with someone who struggles to communicate.  I feel cursed in a way because I have this need to have clear open communication with no wiggle room for misunderstanding.  It needs to be direct, even if it’s hurtful, because I HAVE to know.  My mind and heart know this which is why I feel like I am at peace with that part of it.

    It’s the friendship.  I don’t have a lot of friends.  I have work friends and only a couple really good/best friends.  I am shy and can be difficult to get to know but if I’ve opened up to someone because they have felt I am worth knowing, I tend to cultivate those relationships and put a lot of time and effort in to making that flourish.  He and I were friends before we got romantically involved.  I can’t seem to let go of that piece.  I’ve been over this in my mind as to why this is so hard for me because everything in me wants to rebuild that and only that.  I have no illusions that he and I will somehow get back together and that isn’t what motivates me but I don’t know what does.  Yes, I’m still in love with him and maybe that does have something to do with it because I still want him close by.  It’s familiar.  I want to see him become happy again and celebrate his successes and be there if he falls and needs support.  It’s what friends do for each other but I also want to do it from a friendly distance.  I don’t want to go too fast with this and I know I am pushing a little too hard and I don’t want to keep falling in to the trap of why why why.  It’ s not doing me any good and quite honestly it’s pushing him farther away.

    I want us to be friends, the kind of friends we used to be but brand new because the old friendship is gone.  I know it is going to take time.  Baby steps.  I just have to keep my emotions in control and stay level headed.  I need to work on ways to be friendly but a little bit distant.  Boundaries.  I just want off the spin cycle.

    October 26, 2019 at 12:48 pm #319905
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Kiki:

    You wrote: “I can’t be in a romantic relationship with someone who struggles to communicate… I am shy and can be difficult to get to know”- meaning you too struggle to communicate?

    anita

     

    October 26, 2019 at 3:03 pm #319931
    Kiky
    Participant

    I struggle initially because I’m not good at striking up a conversation with someone I don’t know very well.  Once that initial obstacle is overcome (either someone has approached me and started chatting or for whatever reason I feel comfortable and confident in the moment to approach someone else) I can be very chatty and love a good conversation.

    October 26, 2019 at 5:32 pm #319939
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Kiky:

    I will be back to the computer and reply in about 13 hours from now. Take care.

    anita

    October 27, 2019 at 8:47 am #320005
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Kiky:

    You wrote that the two of you were good friends before you got involved romantically. You got involved romantically and the two of you “broke up because we realized that we had become toxic for one another and drove each other to different levels of depression and isolation”-

    -following such negative, devastating experience at least on his part, feeling depressed and isolated, and in a toxic state as a result of a romantic relationship with you, I don’t see how the much earlier friendship can be resurrected or how a new friendship can be formed. A person automatically and naturally does not turn toward what was experienced as toxic; a person naturally avoids that which was experienced as toxic.

    The reason I wrote that at least that was his experience is that he told you that he is no longer in love with you, but you stated repeatedly that you are still in love with him.

    What you wrote here is perplexing: “he broke up with me. I knew it was coming but yet I was completely blindsided”- how can you have been completely blindsided if you know it was coming…?

    “I have this need to have clear open communication with no wiggle room for misunderstanding”- I don’t know if such a communication is possible. In regard to this or that specific matter or topic- it is possible, but it is not possible at all times, on any and every topic.

    “I HAVE to know”- what specifically did you or do you have to know?

    anita

    October 28, 2019 at 12:03 am #320191
    Kiky
    Participant

    Hello!

    I would agree and one of his fears about attempting to rebuild our friendship was that the toxic aspects would somehow seep in to it, making it almost impossible to stay friends but he is willing to try as long as we don’t talk about our past relationship and why it didn’t work and keep things light.  Essentially he wants to go back to the very beginning when we may text here and there to see what the other is doing, have a short conversation and then go off and do whatever we individually are going to do. On the two Thursdays a month when I have the dog he will drop the dog off and I will take him to the dog park or wherever for about an hour and then bring him back.  I’ll stay for about 30 minutes or so and we’ll talk about our day and other light topics of conversation and then I leave.  This is something that we mutually agreed to this last Thursday.  We agreed that we cannot be together and need to take individual journeys to heal ourselves and find our happy again but that there’s no reason at this point we can’t start from scratch and take it day by day. We had a great short visit with smiles all around and honestly it was very relaxed.

    As far as being blindsided, maybe that was not the proper word since you’re right.  I DID know it was coming.  I just either didn’t know when or didn’t think he’d do it or maybe both.  I had thought that maybe we could work through it and come out ok on the other side but I know now that this would not have been possible.  It was a punch in the gut either way.

    As far as communication, deep emotional communication, and one of the many things that I need to overcome is insecurity.  I need an extra bit of someone telling me I’m beautiful, I’m loved, etc etc.  If I noticed that something seemed to be bothering him, and it could have been just a bad day at work or something really bad, I’d poke at him to try to get him to open up.  Eventually he would give in and start talking but he almost never told me the entire situation, just enough to get me to stop poking at him about it. I know people don’t like this and this is another thing to add to the list of things I need to overcome.  I have this horrible habit of wanting to fix it.. whatever IT is and sometimes I just need to leave it alone. When I felt like I wasn’t being told everything that would be when the overthinking would start and there I go.. spiraling again.  Eventually it lead to him being completely closed off from me because as he told me, “even when I told you everything you looked for something else…something that wasn’t ever there because your brain manufactured all these what if scenarios”.

    I’m pretty broken and I am just as at fault in this relationship as he but I will say that this relationship has given me insight in to some of the ways that I am broken so that I can start to work toward overcoming it.  This week I’m going to start looking for a gym.  I have already started tracking food and trying out mindfulness (something I’d never done before) on the suggestion of the BH specialist I saw a few weeks back.

    October 28, 2019 at 11:18 am #320259
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Kiki:

    So what he is interested in is having a casual, light friendship with you, nothing deep. More like a friendly acquaintance. I can understand his position because the relationship with you was way too deep for comfort, meaning you interrogated him about his thoughts and feelings in order to prevent or put a stop to your overthinking: “When I felt like I wasn’t being told everything that would be when the overthinking would start”.

    So let’s say he had a bad day at work and he looks distressed, you start thinking something like: what is distressing him, what is the problem. I better fix his problem because if I don’t, I will have a problem (he will end the relationship or  whatnot), so  you interrogate him, “poke at him” until he “would give in and start talking but he almost never told me the entire situation, just enough to get me to stop poking at him about it”- a similar scenario to a suspect being interrogated by the police.

    Yes, better you end that behavior in the context of a close, intimate relationship. As is, reads like you intend to continue the now friendly acquaintance-type relationship with him.

    Practicing mindfulness is an excellent idea and so  is a regular exercise routine. You are welcome to post here anytime you want to and I will be glad to read and reply to you.

    anita

     

     

    October 28, 2019 at 10:34 pm #320345
    Kiky
    Participant

    Hello Anita!

    Yes we are going to try to start the friendship over.  I’m perfectly fine with casual.  I am not looking for anything deeper from him.  I want to start at square two.  Square one being what is left of the friendship we had and start rebuilding that foundation and making a better base.  Ironically since we talked about doing this, I’ve seen him on Thursday and Saturday.  I took the dog for a bit on Saturday so he could go out for a few hours (our dog has separation anxiety so someone has to be with him or he’ll eat the couch, the wall, etc).  He got back and I stayed for about 30 minutes and left. As I was on my way home he called me to say he got an invite to go out with one his guy friends so his daughter was coming to watch the dog.  He could have texted that but he chose to call “just to say hey”.  He’s texted me daily since.  Nothing more than a 10 minute conversation mind you, but he’s initiated contact nonetheless.  I feel as long as we can take it slow and steady we are going to be ok.

    Thank you for your insight to my situation.  You gave me things to think about and realize how I was behaving.  I realized how much of myself I had lost and I did things I would never have tolerated prior to this from anyone, much less myself.  It’s going to be a long road ahead for me as I work toward positive change for my sake and those around me (including him).

    I got this! lol

    October 29, 2019 at 6:44 am #320367
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Kiki:

    Reads like you “got this!” and I hope square two goes well and that you will have all the patience required to stay in square 2 for a while. You were encouraged by the fact that he called you vs texting you. But you may experience discouraging developments- be prepared and patient, and post again anytime!

    anita

    October 29, 2019 at 6:54 pm #320463
    Gary
    Participant

    Kiky , at the risk of sounding coarse , I’d like you to google corey wayne. He’s a life skills coach and it doesn’t cost anything but time. Heaps of sound advice that works.

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