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Hi DN. I've been answering questions on this site for a really long time (2005?). Anyways, I never really used this for advice for myself but I thought you'd be the best person to ask. I was dating someone for over 7 years. He was my first boyfriend, met him when I was 12. He also used this site. We broke up a year ago. Well, he broke up with me. Things just weren't working out and he didn't trust me anymore. While I understand this happens all the time to a lot of people, it doesn't make it any better. He stopped contact with me. Didn't tell me why or anything. Just blocked all of my numbers and everyone I knew. He moved on. And I am not ready to yet. I've been trying to, but it's not so easy. When I explain this situation to my friends or family, they just say things like to get over it, he was a jerk, etc. and it doesn't help. I just get so sad when I think about things. I feel like he would be the only person that could understand what I'm going through (or used to as he moved on) yet he wants nothing to do with me. I would have done anything to fix that relationship. Especially because I did some stupid things but I really changed and matured as a person. I feel like if he would get to know me again, we could be friends. My birthday passed recently and I was really disappointed he didn't reach out. I know that I will probably never get to see or speak to him again. I guess I am just looking for some input on how to move on. Thanks for reading. (link)
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Like I said earlier, I don't know how you knew I was the right person to ask about this... but did you ever pick the person who has been through this! :-(
I hope you won't mind if I am a little blunt about some of this stuff. There are things that will only get worse and make it impossible for you to get on with your life if you don't address them, and some of them aren't nice things to think about. Please know that I speak from experience, and only wish to help you get through this more easily and quickly than you might otherwise.
First, I am very sorry that you have had to go through this. I wish you didn't have to, and if I could snap my fingers and make it go away I would certainly do that for you. :-(
The first step towards getting better with this is to be 100% honest with yourself. You can lie to the rest of the world (also not a good idea) but if you aren't completely honest with yourself, you will never fully heal.
Reading what you have written here, it feels like you have left all the major parts out. In other words, non e of the things you have said about how the relationship ended make sense on their own without some outside info that wasn't included.
Now, if you honestly don't know what happened, and one day he just blocked you without a word and you never had any clue at all why he might have been upset... that is one thing, but later in your question you indicate that you know you did some immature stupid things.
You see what I mean? Either he just severed all contact and never told you why, OR you did some things you wish you could take back... can't really have it both ways.
From here, it feels like you know what happened, and you pushed him away through something you did or said, but you are afraid to admit that even to yourself.
Is that possible? It is really hard to look at yourself objectively and just admit you screwed up (if that is what happened, I am not saying it is... only you can say for sure) without sugar coating for yourself... BUT if you can get to that point, you would be amazed how much easier it is to deal with things.
As for why other people don't understand... well, I think this was the hardest part of all this for me. Mostly, people don't really want to hear about it. It is a really rare individual that listens to your problems and actually cares. Most people might listen once, but half way through the tale they are looking for the exit and any excuse they can use to get away from you. :-(
I feel your pain.
You have already noticed that people are giving you cliche answers and easy ways to put all the blame on the other person, right? Well, those easy answers are rarely the right ones.
Is he really a jerk? Could be, I don't know enough to say. Is that the ENTIRE reason that your having this problem? Probably not.
If this is 100% his fault; as in one day he suddenly turned into a real ass, cut all ties with you and never explained why AND you NEVER did anything wrong... THEN the simple answer is he is a jerk, an ass and generally not worth your time.
Problem is: Even if that is true, it doesn't make the pain go away, does it? :-(
You asked why people don't seem to understand, and I think the answer is threefold:
Some people don't understand because they have never suffered anything like this, and just don't know what to think.
Some people simply don't want to deal with your emotional baggage and will say and do anything to shut you up about this as quickly as possible. (Do yourself a favor: Remember who these people are... they aren't your friends.)
Lastly, there are people who have been through something that, on the surface, looks similar to something they have been through (but isn't because of the parts you have been hiding from them about what really happened) and they want you to deal with it in the way that they dealt with their problem.
When you don't just accept their cliche answer of "just move on and get over it" they become upset with you, and start treating you like you failed because you didn't just turn off your emotions like a switch.
That is a problem with THEM, not you, so don't worry about that last group. Why is it they always seem to be the loudest of the bunch? Ever notice that? :-(
I came up with what I think is a great idea, let me know what you think: New law: Anyone saying the words "Get over it!" to someone suffering from any form of heartbreak should be responsible for their own hospital bills. ;-)
My wife vanished without a trace 3 days before our 10th wedding anniversary. People told me to just get over it, even before I knew if she was even alive anymore! What possesses people to be so cruel?
Anyway. Now what?
Well, there is something that needs to be accepted... and you aren't going to like it. I know I didn't, but here we go:
It takes two people to want to be in a relationship.
Any relationship takes excellent communication to maintain.
If one of you doesn't want to be in the relationship, and this is the hard part to accept, then the reason doesn't even matter. It is just over. :-(
That was a really hard thing for me when I finally found out down the road what my wife had done, and the awful truths her mother told me over time... none of it actually mattered. The simple truth is: She didn't want me anymore.
Sure, she fell in love with someone's avatar in WoW, moved across the country so they could live and game together... but it doesn't matter.
Isn't that insane? It doesn't matter. You have to distill this to the simplest elements if you want to heal:
The reason he doesn't want to be with you is irrelevant. Blaming yourself for the failure of the relationship is counterproductive, even if it was 100% your fault.
You can learn from any mistakes you made and not repeat them in the future, but the fact is the relationship is done and accepting that is the hardest part of any of this.
Communication is the other part that makes all of this so maddening. In my case, she made up this insane diatribe about how she was doing all this for my own good. That it wasn't fair for me to have to put up with her anymore, etc...
See, that is the death of any relationship. Period.
Once someone makes unilateral decisions that effect both of you, without discussing it, then the ONLY smart thing to do is sever all ties and never look back any more than you have to.
Why? Well, once someone starts making even the smallest hurtful decisions without communication with their partner, they can never be trusted after that. In my experience, even if they say they will never do it again, they soon do the same thing in a way that has more dire consequences.
Ours started out trivial enough, and soon she had decided to relocate across the country all supposedly for my benefit... it was only half a year later that I learned part of the real reason she ran off like she did.
If she had told me the truth up front I would have tried to work it out. I would have tried anything I could... but once she made the decision for both of us, there is no trust.
There can never be trust again in a situation like that.
Just as with your situation: If he just severed all ties from no reason, and without trying to work things out, then it would be stupid for you to try and be in a relationship with him again.
Why? Well, because let us just say that everything went along great for years... and then one day something happened that your partner didn't like. What do you think would happen? You guessed it, they will do the same thing over again.
People who refuse to communicate effectively, think they are the smartest people in the universe AND think that they should be able to make decisions for you as well... Yikes! Not to be trusted.
If you think about it, this is a high form of narcissism! They think only their needs are important and to hell with everyone and everything else.
They have a tendency only to think of themselves in any given situation. Even if they say they are doing something for the benefit of someone else, THEY are deciding what is best for that person... completely against their will.
If a person won't agree to therapy after showing that this is what they are like, it is foolishness to even think about taking them back.
Why do I say all this? For one thing it helps to know how screwed up the situation is, but most importantly to convince you that this is OVER.
Accepting that the thing is over, is really hard.
Even after you think you have accepted that the relationship is over... YEARS after, in fact, you will still find yourself thinking, saying or doing things that show you think there is still hope.
Hope is usually a good thing, but in this situation hope is your enemy. Kind of like starving to death while you HOPE every dollar you spend will win the lottery.
At some point you need to stop hoping for what you are sure isn't a reality, and deal with your basic needs.
Great, now how do you move on, right?
Well, I never believed this, but I have found it to be true now that it has happened to me: The only thing that closes that wound as completely as possible (time builds scar tissue, but does NOT heal all wounds) is to fall in love with someone new.
I don't mean go out and make an effort to find someone to fall in love with... that never works out well, by the way. I just mean that you need to be open to new people. If you are pining away for a cold dead romance, you will miss the interest of the person you were really supposed to spend your life with.
Now, how about we see if I can read your mind a bit? Do you ever feel like nobody could possibly understand what this feels like?
How about the feeling of being the only one this ever happened to? I mean, sure, other people broke up, but MY break up is special, and unique... and it hurts worse than anybody else's!
How am I doing so far?
The secret is that EVERY single person to EVER go through what you or I have been through feels exactly that way.
There is tremendous relief in knowing that I am not the only guy some girl moved away from so she could slut it up, all the while telling me that she was going whoring for my own benefit.
Turns out I have talked to DOZENS of guys since this started that have stories so similar to mine that only the names and places change!
So, from me to you: You aren't alone. It may take you time to fully believe that, but I promise you it is true.
Great, now how do I heal?
I am glad you asked! :-)
Put as simply as possible:
The same way you overcome anything else in life that is all about you: STOP FOCUSING ON YOURSELF!
Sorry to shout, but that is important.
Get out of your comfort zone. Do something new. Above all things I can suggest, and if you aren't willing to do this, then you don't want to heal:
Go do something for someone else.
Volunteer. Work in a shelter, feed the homeless, visit the animal shelter and volunteer to pet the lonely animals... do SOMETHING for someone beside yourself.
If there were a magic pill that made personal problems vanish, this would be the closest thing to it.
It is impossible to feel sorry for yourself when you are bottle feeding an abandoned kitten every hour on the hour.
More often than any other advice I have given here, this is the one that I hear back from people after they have spent some time adjusting their life so the world no longer revolves around them... I hear back that lives have changed.
About the time you joined the site there was a guy who was ready to kill himself because a girl wouldn't go out with him because he couldn't afford a car she wanted to be seen riding in.
About a year after I told him what I told you, I got an e-mail telling me that he had the pills out on the table and was ready to die because he couldn't live without her... and he thought that what I had said made sense. He did call a hotline and talk to someone right then, but in the next week he started volunteering in a shelter. Over the course of the next year, he figured out what life was really about and how completely useless the petulant princess he was enamoured with really was.
He ended up falling in love with another volunteer at the shelter, and the e-mail served as an invitation to their wedding. :-)
She wasn't a princess when he met her, but she became the queen of his heart as they learned and grew together.
She was also there because her life was all about her, and she was sent there as therapy to try and break the cycle of self obsession.
Consider the happy couple:
He: on the verge of death because Princess Barbie won't have him.
She: On the verge of death because when she looks in the mirror she doesn't think she is Barbie enough, so she continues to try and kill herself past the 78 pound mark.
After a year of volunteering together, and realizing that the world doesn't revolve around them... that you don't have to be in total control of anything for the world to keep turning and that his perceived poverty, along with her perceived fatness don't even exist in the real world... Well, it changed their lives forever.
She: is now a healthy weight, and says it has a great deal to do with being around meth junkies (hard to keep believing thin is pretty when you are around meth junkies... in fact, it may be impossible!) and can't believe she was ever so self absorbed.
He: Realizing that having an operable vehicle, ANY operable vehicle, was a gift that many people would give a limb for changed his obsession and self absorbed need to value himself by what he drove. He also can't believe he was ever so self absorbed.
Basically they both learned how to value themselves by who they were, and what they had to offer the other people in the world, instead of valuing themselves for how much money they had or how much they didn't weigh.
Sorry for rambling, but I love that progress report more than most I have gotten over the years here. These two were some of the most hopeless people I have ever met.
If they can get things together and find love in the face of hopelessness, you can also.
In fact, she had damaged her body so badly she was told there was a 0.0% chance she would be able to have babies... well, through the love they found for each other and the health that came with the hope of their love I hope the doctors all choke on the fact they have had their second child. :-)
This is the place where hope is our friend.
So, turning ramble mode off, if that is even possible for me, I would like to simply say:
Get outside of your normal routine. Your normal routine isn't working out. Change it.
Go be of service to someone else. If you are good at anything, go to your community college and offer to teach a course in it.
Go feed the homeless.
Volunteer in a women's shelter.
Spend an afternoon loving on unloved animals. (WARNING: You may acquire animals this way. Try to avoid this if you can, as taking on new relationships of any kind before you have dealt with your old one usually leads to regret. Example: "I found a new person I want to move closer to... oh, wait, I can't... I have three dogs and 14 cats, I can't move. Damn." ;-)
Tutor people in subjects at which you excel.
Call VOA Volunteers of America, and sign up. You would be astonished how many places you can volunteer.
Get out of your rut, and start focusing on other people. Your problems will seem far less overwhelming... and you may meet the person for you, all at the same time.
You certainly don't have to take this advice... but I can promise you that at some point in the future you will wish you had.
I hope you do well, and if you feel like offloading the rest of the story (the part that I mentioned felt like it was missing) or just need to talk a bit, I will be around.
Good luck!
P.S. If any of that didn't make sense, ask questions. I am falling down tired as I write this, so to bed I go.
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Thank you very much for giving me advice. I know parts were left out as they are really personal. I completely understand what you're saying about admitting it to yourself about pushing him away. I have owned up to a few things, but he didn't. He messed up too and for whatever reason, only my mistakes were pointed out. I feel like I would be feeling so much better if he would have just told me "hey I'm never talking to you again" as weird as that sounds. That I could deal with. Not one day blocking me on every social media and phone possible because he got a new girlfriend or whatever reasoning he has. I am definitely going to take your advice and do things that are helpful to others. Thanks again.
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