Hi both,

No doubt I have grown a lot throughout the years. One thing I  need to remind myself: It matters what I do with the situation, not how the situation is. No doubt I have my resilience, been in even tougher situations.

I am still sharing some accounts with her (deliveroo/ netflix), i often see traces of her in those apps. I got notification that she ordered for a group of people on a Monday lunch time to our place, which is a bit unusual. This can be neutral but I started to go into the loop: Why is she not working? who are those people who went to our place etc etc

I catastrophized and thought : she must have forgotten about me and she is happy without me.

Then I remember what Anita said: I needed to think in her shoes. Her operating system is different from me. I need alone time to deal with the pain; She may need to have other people around or even ‘not think about it’ to deal with the pain. She may have really forgotten about me, or,  she is just dealing the pain. I just don’t know.

It took overnight for this to sink in. Last night, I decided to hide all her IG stories and also log out of the app, so that I won’t know what is happening to her. I was very upset as I felt the last connection(and hope may be) is lost, but I felt this is something that I needed to do.

I cried a lot last night, but this morning I told myself it’s again another day, so it’s again closer to the date when we evaluate things

thanks both

Hi Anita

it is hard to find the balance: Her needs and my needs. How to deal with the emotions when I take care of her needs(such as now when she needs space which conflicts with what I want); and how to be mindful of her needs when she takes care of me.

For now, i am very mindful of not giving up hope, and expect/ imagine that we will break up after these few weeks

Balancing is hard indeed

Hi Anita

It’s funny, your words reminded me of what I would say, but typically. If I encounter difficulties at work, I can be very logical and just stick with the plan, even if it’s hard or takes a lot of energy. this is what’s agreed on, then just do it(I typically sound very chill and relax when I say this to colleagues or myself). When it comes to personal things, my emotions overwhelms me at times, which cloud the other part of my brain(and heart)

Dear all

Last night I had a dream, I dreamed of her breaking up with me.

I woke up in the middle of the night, and was very upset. I think probably related to me detached from the apps etc.
I realized i clinging to my upset feelings this morning, was going down the spiral and I tried to distract myself. I also downloaded the ’15 things you can’t control from here as well. it did help.

When I first agreed to this break i was thinking it does take a month to really figure out if you miss someone. No contact may be good since she knows how it is without me(given I have very clear ground rules, I was struggling so much the first week without those) But in practice, it is really difficult for me,  I probably wasn’t really ready for the possible bad outcome(whihch is break up for me) at that point, logically I think that my be a solution. And  also probably because I am the one who is more attached to the relationship. I realized now that I am very attached, sometime may be just to the idea of the relationship, sometime it is indeed her. This obsessive feelings have been here since childhood, probably from when I felt out of control when I was young.

Then I realized I am very good at thinking, but not very good at practicing. I need to practice how to let go out things that can’t be controlled, knowing isn’t enough.

I still feel the cloudy/ muddy feeling in the chest, will deep breath!

Thank you Anita

yea it breaks my heart to think that she is breaking up with me.

i will try to make sense of it and stay strong