Home→Forums→Relationships→Why do I feel I did the wrong thing leaving?!
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April 3, 2020 at 11:20 am #346904
CazParticipantI ended a year and a half long relationship about 6 weeks ago and I am struggling! My rational brain knows ending the relationship was the right thing to do, but I miss him terribly because he could be so wonderful and loving. I feel he love bombed me in the beginning, put me on a pedestal, gifts, contact and great sex. But I couldn’t live up to whatever his expectation of me was, and u feel like I was a disappiontment.
The main issues in the relationship for me were –
1- About 7 months into the relationship he told me he wasn’t sure he could stay with me if I didn’t lose weight. I put on about 5 or 6 pounds of honeymoon weight. I thought he just wanted me to lose the weight I’d put on since being in the relationship, but it transpired he wanted me to weigh less than when we first met. I struggled hugely with this as I felt he didnt love me for me and I was scared that in the future he would leave me if I got sick/old/less attractive. I just couldn’t get past those feelings.
2- He didnt like the way i dressed. Apparently i dressed like an ‘aunt’ (frumpy I assume he meant) Obviously he was entitled to his opinion, the issue was that he was very vocal when i wore something he didnt like and would expect me to stop wearing it even if i liked it because “that’s what people in relationships do for each other”.
3- He liked massive amounts of contact either via text or calls. I’d been single or a while before we met and was used to being independent. I tried really hard to get into relationship mode and remember to text when I was leaving work etc, but it was never enough. For example if I was with a friend for the evening and I didnt reply within a certain amount of time I would get texts like ‘not feeling the love’, but always with a lol or an emoji. At the start of the relationship if I wanted an evening alone he would say things like ‘dont you want to see me’, until I gave in and saw him.
4- He would throw tantrums if I said I didnt feel like having sex. I declined three times I think in the whole relationship. It was upsetting and when I tried to explain to him how it made me feel he would say ‘I know it’s wrong I dont need you to tell me’.
There was obviously more to the above points but it would be too long! There were other smaller issues as well such as not respecting my requests for privacy while in the bath, he would just walk in and talk at me. I would like to add I am currently getting therapy.
April 3, 2020 at 11:49 am #346932
ValoraParticipantHi Caz,
It sounds to me like you did absolutely the right thing by leaving him, but it feels wrong probably because you’re used to being around him, so not being around him doesn’t feel normal or right, even after 6 weeks. You really have been broken up for a short amount of time, though, especially compared to the amount of time you were together, so I say just give yourself some more time. I think it’s normal to feel the way you’re feeling because you’re sort of trying to establish a new normal, and that rarely feels right at first. As time passes, though, you’ll get used to not seeing or talking to him and it’ll likely feel more like you did the right thing, especially once you’re over the relationship and can find someone else who treats you more respectfully.
April 3, 2020 at 12:38 pm #346942
AnonymousGuestDear Caz:
You shared that sometime mid February this year, you ended a 1.5 years relationship. Seven months into the relationship, winter 2019, he told you, “he wasn’t sure he could stay with me if I didn’t lose weight”, the 5-6 pounds you put on during the first seven months of the relationship plus more weight. He also criticized how you dressed, being “very vocal when I wore something he didn’t like and would expect me to stop wearing it even if I liked it because ‘that’s what people in relationships do for each other”. In addition to this, in the beginning of the relationship, he wasn’t okay with you having an evening alone, without him. He expected you to text and call him very often. When you were with a friend, for example, and you didn’t reply to his text quickly, he would send you a message like: “not feeling the love”, with an lol or an emoji. In total you declined to have sex with him three time in 1.5 years or so, he “would throw tantrums”. When you told him how bad his tantrums over the issue of sex made you feel, he told you: “I know it’s wrong. I don’t need you to tell me”. At times, when you were in the bathroom, “he would just walk in and talk to me”, even though you asked him not to.
Now that you understandably ended this relationship, (and even though you understand rationally it was the right choice), you are struggling because you “miss him terribly because he could be so wonderful and loving”, and you believe that at the beginning he put you on a pedestal and then got disappointed because you “couldn’t live up to whatever his expectations” he had of you.
My input: first, emotions have their own logic- when you hurt a lot, you are hurting, and logic will not take the pain away.
The fact that you miss him terribly does not mean that you made the wrong choice. All these things are true: he was loving and kind to you, and you had great times with him, and he was inconsiderate, disrespectful, demanding and cruel, and you did the right choice ending it, and you miss him. All these are true and exist together, neither one contradicts the other.
You may very well be correct in your understanding that at the beginning of the relationship he put you up on a pedestal and then he got disappointed. But that didn’t happen because you were not good enough as a woman and person, but because his expectations were probably unrealistically and fictionally high: any woman that he will put on such a pedestal will disappoint him.
If he was never loving toward you, if you didn’t enjoy intimate time with him=> you wouldn’t miss him now. If he wasn’t repeatedly inconsiderate, disrespectful, demanding and cruel to you=> you wouldn’t have ended the relationship.
No matter how kind he was to you in the beginning, or in between his unkind times, he couldn’t make up for his disrespect and cruelty because disrespect and/or cruelty void the love. If you went back with him, you may have moments when you will enjoy being with him, moments when you forget the cruelty, but those would be moments only, the suffering will take over sooner than later.
Do post again, anytime you want to.
anita
April 4, 2020 at 1:55 pm #347112CazParticipantThank you for the replies, I know I’ve done the right thing, its just my brain playing tricks on me. I think its an evolutionary thing whereby the brain tries to protect you from the bad stuff (like after childbirth), but in this case it is not very helpful to have all the nice memories swirling round in my brain! I will try to be kind to myself and give myself time, the current climate unfortunately doesn’t help due to not being able to socialise, but it wont be forever and when we will all be free again.
April 4, 2020 at 2:27 pm #347120AnonymousGuestDear Caz:
You are welcome.
“evolutionary thing… like after childbirth”- do you mean that your pain from this breakup is as bad as the pain of a woman giving birth, and just like (I heard) a woman forgets the pain, in a similar way, you forget the pain that you experienced in the relationship and remember only the good feelings/ memories?
I too, hope that this social isolation “won’t be forever and .. we will all be free again”!
anita
April 4, 2020 at 4:07 pm #347136CazParticipantAnita –
Yes in a way, I’m not saying, of course, that my pain is in anyway comparable to the physical pain of childbirth (never having gone through it myself!) But I do believe that when some relationships end, you either end up vilifying or idealising the relationship, and in my case it is idealising, which is similar to how people forget the pain of childbirth. Not the best analogy maybe but I thought it up on the spot so to speak.
I’m perfectly aware there was some low level emotional abuse in the relationship, but I’m having a hard time accepting this fully, I keep blaming myself. But hopefully with therapy ill be able to move on, learn and put it behind me.
All these are true and exist together, neither one contradicts the other.
April 4, 2020 at 5:09 pm #347142AnonymousGuestDear Caz:
Idealizing the relationship with this man/ idealizing this man leads me to think that this relationship parallels your relationship as a child with a parent (Romantic relationships often parallel childhood relationships with parents).
Examples:
1. You wrote regarding this man, in your original post: “I couldn’t live up to whatever his expectation of me was, and feel like I was a disappointment”-
– it may be that you couldn’t live up to whatever your mother’s (or father’s) excitations of you, and you feel like you were a disappointment to her (or him, or both).
2. You wrote regarding this man in your recent post: “there was some low level emotional abuse in the relationship, but I’m having a hard time accepting it fully, I keep blaming myself”-
– it may be that there was some low level emotional abuse in your childhood, you are having a hard time accepting it fully, and you keep blaming yourself, instead of holding your mother (or father, or both) responsible for emotionally abusing you.
… Maybe, possibly?
anita
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