I just rejected someone today, please help?

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September 16, 2017 at 8:54 am #168918

Mina
Participant

I feel so awful. I am so sorry. So sorry.

I do not even have the rights to be depressed when I drive the person that I loved the most in this world to a depression.

I am not even human, I closed my eyes to the truth and reality because I cannot take the pain, it was a cowardice act.

I am such an awful person, my ex boyfriend is alone suffering while I live in a fairytale world that I made by myself to protect myself.

Even to the very end, I am very selfish.

September 16, 2017 at 10:18 am #168926

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

You are at the most 50% responsible for the breakup of this relationship, not 100%.

As I wrote to you earlier, I can’t think of any young woman, or a woman of any age, perhaps, being satisfied with the very little time he was available for you. His hectic schedule is not your responsibility, not something you caused or maintained. If it comforts you, I believe that this short relationship would not have lasted even if you were the perfect girlfriend (if there was such a thing).

Regarding his grade as a boyfriend, he gave himself a poor grade. He expressed that in his last email to you, following your birthday wish to him. And he expressed it to you before. So it doesn’t matter where he got the idea of being an inadequate boyfriend.

This past relationship lasted only four months. Within those four months you didn’t see each other for long periods of time. Overall, if you added the time you spent together it couldn’t have been very long. You used to call him your “partner” which I believe was more than what it was.

Outside of your attachment to him, outside of your very subjective experience of this short, short relationship, there is not much that happened and nothing is happening.

This guilt that you have, the self hate that you feel, this originated before you met him. What is that about, will you share with me?

anita

September 16, 2017 at 6:03 pm #168968
Mina
Participant
Anita,

I cannot stop feeling guilty, do you know how I was NOT aware that I have also contributed to the break up before yesterday?

I was BLAMING my ex boyfriend and his military service and his instability because he keeps making decisions that will not benefit the relationships. I did not even see my fault in the relationship.

You wrote : “Regarding his grade as a boyfriend, he gave himself a poor grade.”

Can I perhaps, help in this case? Will it comfort my ex boyfriend If I express how he was actually a very good boyfriend regardless the hectic schedules he cannot handle? and how his decision to move college isn’t his fault at all?

I have a a few important questions :

1. Did I drove my ex boyfriend into depression?

2. Was I a burden to him?

3. Did he even loved me at all?

You wrote : “This guilt that you have, the self hate that you feel, this originated before you met him. What is that about, will you share with me?”

I tried thinking but nothing really came up. I would love to explore this, Anita.

-Mina
- This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Mina.
September 16, 2017 at 6:18 pm #168972

Mina
Participant

[MORE]

Anita,

I also realise the real reason why I have been so desperately wanting to contact him. The guilt that I tried denying and hiding was manifesting itself into that desperation to talk to him, to receive his blessing.

I need to hear from my ex boyfriend that it wasn’t my fault that we broke up. That was what I was hoping for.

-Mina

September 17, 2017 at 5:14 am #168990

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

For me to understand what really happened in your four months relationship I would need to have transcripts of conversations that took place, maybe videos of those so to observe facial expressions and body language, and have contexts of those conversations. I would need to maybe get a record of his interpretations of what happened, yours, then ask each questions… that would be a heavy duty endeavor which is impossible for me to do. But I will do the best I can with what I have and with your help to understand what indeed happened in the relationship and what is happening now with Mina.

To your questions:
“1. Did I drove my ex boyfriend into depression?”- If he was depressed during the time you interacted with him it was likely because of his upbringing which took place way before you met him. I am supposing his parents instilled in him high expectations, the highest of them is for him to be perfect. This very expectation is way, way… way more likely to be responsible for his depression than any input you had in his life. When his brain was forming, leading to his depression and struggles, you were not there. From your record he spent very little time with you at nineteen and in that little time he expressed to you his distress about the other parts of his life. Overall, I would say no, I don’t think you drove your ex boyfriend into depression.

“2. Was I a burden to him?” I think that eventually, from one point on, you were a burden to him. This is why he removed you from his life. His college social responsibilities were also a burden and he removed is position as the (what was it, I forgot, that important position…). Unfortunately for him he is likely to acquire more and more burdens, take on himself more than he can handle and continue to strive for the impossible, perfect performance in more and more endeavors, leading him, in intimate relationships. to dysfunction and overall lack of well-being.

“3. Did he even loved me at all?” I think so, from your descriptions, yes. But I don’t think he was available to adequately love you, that is, invest more in the relationship because he was driven to perform perfectly in so many areas, and in each and every area, it was an impossible endeavor leading to imperfection which means failure, sooner or later, in the mind of a perfectionist.

Regarding the rest of your last three posts:

You wrote: “I feel so awful. I am so sorry. So sorry… I (drove) the person that I loved the most in this world to a depression. I am not even human…I am such an awful person, my ex boyfriend is alone suffering while I live in a fairytale world… Even to the very end, I am very selfish…I need to hear from my ex boyfriend that it wasn’t my fault that we broke up.”

Earlier in this post I wrote that your ex boyfriend’s brain was formed before you entered his life, so was yours. These heavy duty guilt you expressed was in your brain before he entered your life.

Your core belief that you are guilty, selfish, bad, “not even human” was formed before you met him. It is now focused on him, as if there is something he can say to relieve you from this guilt, but it is not about him. There is nothing he can say to make you feel better except for the very short term, just like his last email led to you feeling relieved, but short term, and soon enough, too soon, your distress resurfaced.

The “fairytale world” that you made up about the relationship so to protect yourself from distress, that didn’t and doesn’t work. Like I wrote above, the relief is temporary at best.

Your distress is not about him even though it appears to you that it is about him. Your distress originated and maintained in the nineteen years before you met him and not in the four months of your very, very time-limited relationship with him at nineteen.

I strongly believe that it is possible for you to experience well-being if you direct your attention to this guilty core belief, to its origination and question it. Is it possible for you to attend quality psychotherapy so to explore this?

anita

September 17, 2017 at 7:03 am #168996
Mina
Participant
Anita,

Thank you for your well thought out answers. I understand that since you do not know my ex personally, or the exact nature of the relationship (expressions, body language, conversation etc) – it is hard for you to give a definite answers. I understand, but I appreciate your response very much still. It means a lot.

You wrote :”… take on himself more than he can handle and continue to strive for the impossible, perfect performance in more and more endeavors, leading him, in intimate relationships. to dysfunction and overall lack of well-being.”

I know my ex boyfriends past relationships in details. Almost all of it. I have mentioned previously that we based our relationship in being open and honest, so we knew about each other exes quite well. My ex has only been with another girl officially besides me in the past. They started dating when they were 14/15 and broke up because my ex was moving to another city (he was living in China at that moment because of his fathers work) – the funny thing is they started dating AGAIN when my boyfriend was around 17, just like my relationship with him, their relationship was also very short lived. My ex boyfriend broke up with his ex girlfriend for ALMOST the same identical reasons as the reason why we broke up. He told her that he needed to focus on his SAT and college prep in Korea, the ex girlfriend was so mad at my ex that she splashed my ex with coffee during the break up. Yes, very dramatic indeed.

I understand why she was so mad though. My ex boyfriend was the one being so excited about being in a relationship but he gave up so easily – now that I think about it, my ex boyfriend has some problems in building a relationship that is stable and long term due to his perfectionist nature. Why start a relationship in the first place when you are never emotionally ready or available? That was the question. I asked him that (when he told me that dramatic ex girlfriend story) and he told me that of course he did not know that he would break up with her, that he did not know that the preparations for SAT was going to that hard, that he did not know that he will move to Korea soon, basically saying how he cannot predict the future of the relationship due to things that are constantly changing in his life.

Those reasons reminds me so much of the reason why we broke up, that he did not know that the military will call him so early and how he he did not know that he actually wants to move college in the middle of the semester and how he did not expected student council would be very demanding. I told him this during the break up talk that he might have some problems and how he is taking relationships very lightly. He wasn’t able to say anything about it. He is a smart person, maybe if he think about it hard enough, he will understand why it is hard for him to date someone long term.

What do you think, Anita? You have my ex details about his past relationships now, do you think that his personality to achieve everything perfectly is taking a toll in his romantic relationships with women?

You asked : “Is it possible for you to attend quality psychotherapy so to explore this?”

I would love to, but you have to be aware how depression and mental illness is looked down here in Korea. Having them means you are crazy, If I do receive a real therapy or getting help from a mental hospital, I would have red records on my resume. Mental illness isn’t a disease worth talking about or have discussion about. It is a taboo here. For the sake of my future career, I cannot take any risks. My ex boyfriend, he mentioned how he actually wanted go see a therapist and get a real help from experts but for people like him (and me) getting treatments means we have no thoughts about working in big important companies, because they do not accepted mentally sick people and even the people who is 100 percent cured isn’t accepted because they have records about getting treatment. They are afraid that it would intervene with our work if we someday got it back.

I do have a plan to make an appointment with the university counsellor though. What do you think about this?

-Mina
- This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Mina.
September 17, 2017 at 8:01 am #169002

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

As to the first part of your recent post, you ended that part with the question: “do you think that his personality to achieve everything perfectly is taking a toll in his romantic relationships with women?-

yes, your account of his past relationship verifies for me what I stated already, that he indeed does ” take on himself more than he can handle and continue to strive for the impossible, perfect performance in more and more endeavors, leading him, in intimate relationships. to dysfunction and overall lack of well-being.”

I can expand on it: his military service is compulsory, so he didn’t take that on himself. Some of his challenges are not his choosing and some are. By adding to the first he overwhelms himself. I think that being overwhelmed is a state of anxiety, distress which leads him to dysfunction, in intimate relationships as well as in life otherwise.

His relationship history is congruent with what I wrote to you yesterday: “I believe that this short relationship would not have lasted even if you were the perfect girlfriend (if there was such a thing)”

Regarding the second part of your post: so, it is assumed in Korea that if you attend psychotherapy, it means that you are mentally ill, that is, there is no such thing as a person needing help with some distress, no mental illness involved?

And there is no way to have it off-record? If there is no way then I understand your concern.

* Your boyfriend thinking about therapy is another indication of his distress. I have enough evidence, in my mind, that the breakup would have happened regardless of who you are and is no indication whatsoever of a wrongness on our part.

anita

September 17, 2017 at 8:10 am #169004

Not_so_lost_star
Participant

Hi Mina,

I hope you do not mind me saying some things here – I thought of saying something as I saw you being very hard on yourself in your recent posts and I just wanted to reach out to you. If you find that what I am saying is not what you need at the moment, then please feel free to ignore my post 🙂 I am also cautious about disrupting the flow you have with Anita so my only aim is to say something to you in the hope to provide some comfort (if it does).

I have been reading your postings as I was in a similar situation as you. My ex bf also had one million and one things going on with his life and like your ex bf did, he dropped me from his life. And it hurts so much to be the one that is removed out of the one million and one things that was going on. So I hope you know you are not alone in feeling the way you do.

Having read your posts, I am in awe of how insightful you are and how open you are to see how you can improve in various ways. I think not many people are open to it and not many people accept their part to play when a relationship ends (although you seem to take on more than your share of the responsibility).

I wanted to reach out to you when you shared on your strong sense of guilt that you felt that you pushed him away as you were an “awful person and a terrible selfish girlfriend”. I do not think you are an awful person or a terrible selfish girlfriend. What I saw from your sharing is that you are a normal person who has needs to be fulfilled in a relationship and what was unfortunate is that your boyfriend was unable to meet your needs due to his other commitments. It is never selfish to have needs and naturally in a relationship, you would want your boyfriend to meet your needs. And you put his needs above your needs as he was a “God” to you and thus his needs seem more important than yours, so much so that you neglect your own needs. You tried your best to be understanding by accommodating to his schedule, not voicing out your needs to him and lowering your expectations.

However, I think it is inevitable that even though you tried to be understanding, your needs are calling out to be met and that is why there were times when you told him how you would hope for your needs to be met. I sense that you try to tolerate the distress of your needs not being met until the point that it may come out in a way that may appear to be “demanding”? It is not wrong to communicate your needs to your partner and sometimes we just need to refine the way we communicate them.

And it seems like your boyfriend’s needs were not met in the relationship too – his needs to be an overachiever , to be a good boyfriend and to meet his girlfriend’s needs. So he is responsible for the relationship not working out in the sense of not being able to meet your needs and he recognises that too. I think even though you did your best to be understanding, he could still feel that your needs are not met.

So what I see is that both of your needs are not being met in the relationship and it was just not a fit given the circumstances. A relationship takes two hands to clap and no one is 100% responsible for it not working out in the end. So dont be so hard on yourself. You are only human and you have your needs. A relationship is not healthy when you both are not having your needs fulfilled. Your needs are important and should be fulfilled.

I do not doubt his love for you as my personal view is that he let you go out of love as he knows that he cannot fulfil your needs and that is why he hopes that you can live your life without him.

I was rooting for you when I saw how you fulfilled your own needs by drawing your own boundaries of not doing things you do not like (e.g drinking to socialize). And I really liked that post when you said you did things by yourself and you enjoyed it! I was so happy for you when I had the glimpse of Mina living for herself.

And I think like what Anita said, “your distress is not about him even though it appears to you that it is about him. Your distress originated and maintained in the nineteen years before you met him” and that would be worthwhile to explore.

Sometimes through relationships, that is when our deeper issues surface and it is a good opportunity to work through them. Try to turn the focus back to yourself and not look to him for answers. I think the answers lie deep within you and I hope you get to see the answers through competent psychotherapy which your university provides.

Wishing you all the best dear Mina!

September 17, 2017 at 8:33 am #169008

Mina
Participant

Anita,

1. Regarding my ex boyfriend going into a therapy – this was something that he never fully and directly said to me. Me, my ex and his best friend gathered once to drink together and they talked about military service. My ex`s best friend was physically sick so he was exempted from serving the military, my ex boyfriend “jokingly” suggested that he should use mental diseases (his current situation at that moment) as an excuse so he would be exempted too.

But at some point, he does understand the risks of admitting to being “depressed” in Korea isn’t worth it just to avoid military service. I am so sorry to write something that was based out of an assumption. I need to clear that up. Maybe he was thinking about it as he mentioned it a few times to me and his best friend but it was never seriously attempted or discussed by him. He had a hard time admitting that maybe he really was depressed, considering the stigma of mental patients here. He is, after all, is a perfectionist. Admitting that he has a mental problem isn’t perfect.

2. Regarding psychotherapy – I actually have never even heard of such things here because it was never socialised to young students. Like I said, people here aren’t very aware of mental illness or any kind of mental therapy that does not involved the patients being crazy. People here thinks that If I go to a doctor for a mental illness or issues, I am crazy. That is the stigma. You can check how Korea has the highest rate of suicide in the world, people does not understand the concept of depression. I was like them too, you know. I thought that all depressed people are so weird, like they keep torturing themselves and stop being happy … it is a weird and foreign concept for me. I used to think that depressed people are losers. Until I became one myself. I understand that depression isn’t something to be taken lightly and isn’t that simple to be cured.

I realise that depressed people aren’t those who are looking sad all the time, sometimes they are your friends, your boyfriend, or maybe your parents. They still laugh and live their life normally but inside … you do not know how much pain they are in. When I look at my friends in the university – I realise how we all are living in the same way – we get into this prestige university by studying night and day for 5-6 years of our lives. Imagine that when you are only 19. We have parents expectation and academic issues that we need to deal with. We are all… at the end of the day, just trying to survive. Being perfect is the ultimate goal. Being respected in another goal. Being successful isn’t a question, it is the answer.

If I would have given a choice, maybe I would choice to live without any kind of expectations from anyone. Not from my parents, my friends, my teachers, anyone really.

Sometimes I look at those high school students here studying until 11/12 at night everyday for 3 years just to get into this university that I am currently in. I feel so bad and I wish that I can tell them this : it isn’t worth it and your happiness isn’t guaranteed.

I am here after all of that and I am depressed. It does no matter which university you are in, which major, how much money do you have or how smart you are … what matters is your happiness.

-Mina

September 17, 2017 at 10:01 am #169018

Anonymous
Guest

* What an excellent post by lost_star, if I may say so!

Dear Mina:

Excellent insight, I say. You must have been calm when you wrote the above. On the other hand, the post yesterday, about you being an awful person- you must have been distressed when you wrote that one. We think best when we are calm.

You are very meticulous, careful about details (regarding #1). His comment about using mental illness as an excuse came from someplace, from previous thought, private thoughts he did not share.

You wrote: “Being perfect is the ultimate goal. Being respected in another goal. Being successful isn’t a question, it is the answer.”- these teachings by parents to their children lead to the children, minor and adults, to be overwhelmed. And even when financial and professional success is achieved (when it is, many don’t make it there, isn’t it so..), many are not content and still suffer, like you can attest to.

It would have been such a good thing if indeed you could help struggling others. But before you will be in that position to help, if such was at all possible for you, in the society you live in, you need to stay calm so that you can think as well as you were thinking when you posted this last post.

anita

September 18, 2017 at 3:56 am #169070

Mina
Participant

Hello Lost Star!

I am very happy and grateful that you put such an amazing feedback and input into my thread. Thank you very much, it means a lot to me.

First of all, I am sos sorry to hear about your break up as well. I know exactly how awful it feels. I hope you are doing and is recovering well.

You asked : “I sense that you try to tolerate the distress of your needs not being met until the point that it may come out in a way that may appear to be “demanding”?

Yes, you are 100 percent correct. I have this really bad habit, that is every time we meet – I have a hard time seeing goodbye and parting ways because I truly did not know when we will be able to see each other again, I was emotionally drained out from his lack of time. It made me turned into a very clingy girlfriend and needy person.

You wrote : “I do not doubt his love for you as my personal view is that he let you go out of love as he knows that he cannot fulfil your needs and that is why he hopes that you can live your life without him.”

I share the same view as you on this one. I was in so much distress that I questioned his love for me. He did loved me, there was no doubt about it. Regardless of the whole thing that affected the break up or caused it, I can also share many things that I loved about him and a lot of things in the relationship that was very good and worth smiling over. These days, I cannot help but think what if my ex boyfriend wasn’t so much of perfectionist and If I wasn’t so needy … would this relationship lasts? Maybe not, as Anita have stated but I cannot be help to think and wish that we are still together.

Thank you once again, for writing me a beautiful and detailed feedback. You are such a nice person, you even read almost all of long threads about my ex that has been going on for months, most people would just ignore or write a stupid feedback without reading any of my posts but you read it. and most importantly, you understand 🙂

I hope that whenever you are, you will always be happy. I hope you have an amazing life and day!

Sending you all my love from Korea,

-Mina

September 18, 2017 at 4:31 am #169076

Mina
Participant

Anita,

Thank you for the compliment! You are right. I wasn’t in a good condition when I read your thread. I was very shaken up, and was filled with a lot of guilt.

You wrote : “His comment about using mental illness as an excuse came from someplace, from previous thought, private thoughts he did not share.”

That is what I thought as well. My ex talked about a lot of personal stuff regarding his past exes, his family problem and his studies but his mental health was never seriously discussed. At that time, I wasn’t well aware of his mental health problems. I remember one time that he told me how he isn’t sure about things in his life. Especially about his future and his study in our college. He feels very lost at that time and I feel like I wasn’t able to say anything comforting or any answers to help him when he expressed his concern, I have regrets regarding that.

—

This is irrelevant to the last reply above but I would like to share about my day and my current mood, I hope you do not mind, Anita 🙂

Today wasn’t a very good day for me. These past few days has been ok, I did not feel like life is a burden to me. I felt quite happy when I interacted with some of my friends during a class and I went to watch a sport competition over the weekend with my best friend here and it was a lot of fun.

Today though, my head was filled with a lot of sad and bad thoughts about life. How life isn’t worth living, how ending my life would be the answer to all of my problems. I read a story about a girl named Madison Holleran, she reminds me a lot of my own self currently – that Madison girl ended up killing herself and left a suicide note quoting Virginia Woolfe : “I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”

It describes everything that I am going through. Seeing her life story is like seeing my own life. I was very shaken up reading her story and thinking about … that maybe I will end up like her as well. She is also 19 just like me and is also an academic over achiever attending a prestige university, even our GPA is the same. Her last GPA as a freshman before she killed herself is the same as mine. Just like her, I wasn’t giving any credits to myself for the GPA – I think it was all because of the curve, not because I studied hard.

I feel so scared, so afraid that maybe that is how my life will end up. Just like Madison, I understand her feelings of being locked in. I hope that my story will turn out differently from hers… I really do.

P.s, this is Madisons story :

I hope you do not mind.

-Mina

September 18, 2017 at 6:18 am #169092

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

What if you had to live your whole life with a person you dislike, a person so awful, so selfish, that you wonder if she is even human. What if you woke up to that person being there in the morning, and you went to sleep with that person there, and in between morning and night, there she is, no escape.

If that person, awful, selfish, was you, then you are “locked in” with that person. In your post from two days ago you wrote: “I am not even human… cowardice act… such an awful person… very selfish”.

When you are stuck with a person like that, you want to escape that person, and you think, as you shared in your last post: ” How life isn’t worth living, how ending my life would be the answer to all of my problems”.

We need to be “locked in” with a good, loving and lovable person. A perfect GPA is not the same as love, has nothing to do with love. Neither does material and professional success following a high or perfect GPA have anything to do with love.

To explore your self disapproval and the guilt you feel, I ask: do you remember disapproving of yourself before you met your ex boyfriend? If you’d like, go back in time, scan your memory and share when and in what context did you feel inadequate, not good enough, less than perfect, and therefore unacceptable.

anita

September 18, 2017 at 7:27 am #169124

Mina
Participant

Anita,

You asked :”Do you remember disapproving of yourself before you met your ex boyfriend? If you’d like, go back in time, scan your memory and share when and in what context did you feel inadequate, not good enough, less than perfect, and therefore unacceptable?”

I tried thinking about this so hard but I cannot feel like there is anything big, here is a few things that I came up with :

1. I did not have a lot of friends during the 3 years in high school because I was an over achiever so people tends to dislike me. I have my group of friends, we are still best friends until now – but I have to admit that I only have around 10 people that I truly consider as good, loyal friends.

2. I broke up with my first love when I was 15/16 and it left a huge scar for me. I had a lot of attachment to my first love, we were friends since we were 9 years old and then we started dating and broke up. It wasn’t a very nice break up, he expressed that I was a very good friend but a very boring girlfriend. It was so difficult for me to accept, I realise after a few years later that he wasn’t a good boyfriend at all. Not just to me but to almost all of his exes. He isn’t very loyal and has commitment issues. I do not have any relationship with him. I mean, we are technically still friends but I do not feel anything towards my first love anymore. No feelings at all. He is almost like a stranger to me. He has changed a lot and I have change a lot as well.

3. My parents especially my mother always criticise how I do not have a lot of friends. Personally, I do not need a lot of friends, I only need a few that truly cares about me and loves me. My mother seems very upset and has always expressed how I am very “anti social” – which is not true. I am just not comfortable with certain situations involving a lot of people that I know does not get along with me. I always try to be nice and polite to everyone, but it does not come easily for me. I like being alone.

Maybe there are more but these are the only ones that I can think of.

-Mina

September 18, 2017 at 7:47 am #169138

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

You wrote above: “My mother seems very upset”- can you describe to me what “very upset” means?

anita
Author

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