I'm having problems getting over this situation

[diableamoureux]

I'm having real problems getting over this situation and need some advice

I went to work abroad last winter and there was this guy at work I was quite friendly with. He was always very nice to me and I really liked him, though we were never really close as such. I never had a romantic interest in him, and I knew that he liked another girl at work I shared a room with. This girl had rejected him when he asked her out quite early into the season.

One night at the end of the season, all of the workers went out. My roommate quickly disappeared off to a bar with a guy she had been seeing for a few weeks, and he kept asking me where she was. I told him she'd gone away with another man. A few hours later, I went into a club and was dancing with my friends, when he came over and started dancing with me. We were right up close to one another, my arms draped over his shoulders and his hands on my waist. Our faces got so close we had our noses in each other's cheeks and our lips were touching. He suddenly went away, but came back 10 minutes later and started dancing with me again. I was quite drunk, so next time we got close to each other, I gave him a kiss. He started to laugh and told me to stop it, but then he pulled me into him and started kissing me passionately. We left the club, as the colleague with a car was going home and we needed a lift. We drove back to the village and I started to walk back to my house. He ran up behind me and took my hand, asking if he could come home with me. Stupidly, I agreed, and we went inside. When we got in he immediately started to undress me. We didn't have sex, but we got close to it. He kept saying things like "I'm not a good man for you, you're too young (I think an important thing to mention is that I'm 19 and he's 30), I'll hurt you..." My roommate eventually came home and he had to leave. He seemed angry as he was leaving, saying things like "Why did I even come here?!", but then he kissed me on the forehead and said "Bye baby, I'll see you at work." Well, turns out he got fired that morning, but I saw him the next day when he came to get his contract changed and he spoke to me like he didn't know me (in French speaking to someone very politely implies you don't know them). I saw him again at the pub the next night. He invited me to sit next to him, spoke to me a little bit, then put his arm round me and asked if I would go home with him. I did, and we had sex. We cuddled, looked into each other's eyes and talked afterwards, and it was lovely. Then he started with the whole "I'm a bad person" stuff again. When I got up to go to work the next morning, he walked me to the door, kissed and thanked me. He told me everything had been "a bit of fun", but then he started to cry, asked for my phone number and told me he'd come to my country to see me. He was leaving that night with his friend and I was leaving to go home the next day, so we weren't going to see each other again. He begged to see me that afternoon, as he knew I had 2 hours off. I told him to phone me. He never did. I was furious. I watched him leave the next day (he lied about when he was leaving), holding myself back from going out and punching him. When I got back home a week later, he had left me a message on Facebook apologising for not meeting up with me, telling me he had phoned me but it had not worked. He Facebook chatted me later that day, telling me I had left my earrings at his house and that he wanted to keep them to remember me. We went into small talk, and I mentioned I was going back to France for a holiday later that month. He asked who I was going with, and when I replied my mum, he wrote "Oh ****, haha. Maybe one day we'll see each other again. For bad things." Then he told me not to "push" him, that I was too young and too far away, but the he said that he liked me. A few days later he Facebook chatted me again, telling me he didn't have much time to talk, but he had enough to say goodbye. I didn't know what he meant, so next time I saw him online I started talking to him and he was pleasant enough to me, not mentioning anything about what happened between us. We've had no contact since.

I was very hurt at first, but I soon started seeing a boy I had liked several years before and the pain eased. However, recently I admitted to my best friend that I almost had to cancel my university application because I had thought for a month that I was expecting this guy's baby- I had all the symptoms and I was terrified. Luckily it was a false alarm, and I forgot about it over the summer, but telling my friend about it opened up all the wounds and now I can't stop thinking about him.

He messed me around and probably just used me for sex, whether it was an attempt to make my roommate jealous or not, but there's always this idea in the back of my head that he might have genuinely liked me. I have very low self esteem and tend to hope desperately that anyone who shows an interest in me might like me. I think about him constantly and I really miss him. I can't look at a photo of him without bursting into tears. I can't cope with this anymore, I'm really depressed and it's affecting my life. How can I get him out of my head? I don't have the confidence to go out and meet someone else, and my last rebound relationship was a huge mistake

Sorry for this long rant, but I'm really hurt

[dreamingoftigers]

This guy is someone you should never have contact with again. My husband is 32 and I cannot imagine him in that situation with a 19 year old and he is pretty screwed up as it is! (we are working through us both being messed up)

 

You are not missing anything by having this man out of your life except for a whole boatload of disappointment and waiting for him to come around again.

 

Your low self-esteem is causing you to live your life sheerly guided by your feelings, for example playing second-best and giving this guy sex to get his attention.

 

Sex in itself does not make you truly connected to the other person, it can however make you develop feelings for someone else no matter how unhealthy they are. Those feelings can lead you to a life of disappointment.

 

It sounds like you need to treat yourself a lot nicer than you have been. Meditate, give yourself breaks. Get some books about working on your self esteem and treat yourself with respect. It may not be fun at first since you have been indulging yourself in downer thoughts, but you must battle out your self-talk each day and turn it around.

 

You could trip over a better guy then how he treated you. As you get older you start to learn that a relationship with someone else is not just "who they are" it is "how they treat you." And to get someone that treats you right, you must treat yourself right. Consider this your kick in the pants! Do not indulge yourself in negative thinking, even if youhave to correct yourself 1000 times a day, seek out some counseling!

[dreamingoftigers]

I am sorry you are in such pain, I know what it is like to live like that. Please try not to let the cycle repeat itself. You CAN stop it with some help.