A is over but the feelings are not? Anyone?

[MissBee]

I think the one thing you don't want to do, may be the one solution in all honesty.

 

If you're scared of being still hung up on him in 5, 10, 15 years...then you should try 5 years of strict NC and see what happens....it can't hurt IMO. I have said some of the same things you've said....intellectually knowing we weren't going to work but still loving him and feeling "trapped" in the "love"...but I also was not in full NC....it was like being locked in a cage with the key in my hand and crying about not being able to get out. Once I did complete NC...I completely got over him. I too worried about never getting over it...but I did...once I released him completely.

 

You can't emotionally release someone you're trying to be friends with....it's illogical. I haven't seen anyone work through getting over someone by being their friend and putting themselves in admittedly, "vulnerable" situations. Impossible...and you are a case example of the futility of that.

 

You're not gonna get over him until you want to be over him...and you're saying you do but your actions show otherwise, and until your actions and your desires get in sync...you'll continue to self sabotage by saying one thing but engaging in behavior that negates that and renders it impossible.

 

My exAP and I are "cool" with each other now...and occasionally he'll drop me a one line email and so on....but the truth is, we're very compatible, we'll probably always have a level of chemistry and rapport, we know each other well...and he realizes he will probably never be able to truly be "just friends", so he avoids getting too close. I feel like I could be friends and be fine...but I do realize the possibility of it slipping and sliding as we're very comfortable with each other. He told me that even when he's 70 he'll probably still love me and truthfully the last we spoke on the phone, for 5 minutes, it was like we hadn't ended anything years before. That's just how it is and will probably be for us. I can and have loved others and will probably love someone else in the future more than I do him...but regardless, there is something there that goes beyond platonic friendship and we both had to be responsible to recognize it and protect ourselves from repeating past mistakes by not being extra chummy. He is now a friend I care about at a distance and if he needed me I'd help him but I am not putting myself in a position to cross the line by trying to call him all the time, share my feelings and all that stuff.

 

It's not a crime to still love this person, as I do think people can have more than one great love in their life...but you also realize the limits to your relationship, and realize not all your great loves will be people you are going to marry or be with romantically...and while you will always still care, the relationship does change, when you realize and let go, to a different kind of background caring versus hopeful, romantic attachment. NC allows that space for the love to grow to a dim fondness that no longer upsets your life...[/QUOTE]

 

Hi MissBee,

 

Thank you for sharing your story which is similar to mine. Self-sabotage sounds right in my situation. Since I don't want to let go in reality, I'm sabotaging my objective which is to stop loving him. When I read your post, it got me wondering. Have you met someone else yet? Someone you truly love since you and xAP ended it? Sorry I haven't read your story yet. Maybe you're married since you call him an AP.

The hardest thing for me in my M was knowing deep down that I didnt love my H nearly as much as I loved xMM. I always felt guilty for two reasons. The first was that I was under no delusion about my feelings. The second was that my H figured it out pretty early in the M. I was emotionally distant. The sex was great but emotionless on my part and this pissed of my H to no end. He figured it out by digging up my journals and reading through years of loving xMM, the break up, and finally my decision to move on which was executed like a business project that just had to succeed. H was the one who first told me I was in an EA. I'd never heard of such a thing before. Yes there was violence and major psychological abuse and I know that people are who they are. But I can't help thinking that my emotional issues did contribute to H's craziness and to our inevitable separation and coming divorce.

How do you live with one person, loving them but knowing that it's not enough or that out there is someone else you love more? NC can blunt the raw feelings but the facts remain.

 

 

Hi Nemo:

 

Things ended with us a while now, back in 2008. I did fall in love with someone else after that (but that is a whole other mess too, and I refer to this last ex often here, as while it wasn't an affair, much of the feelings and issues were similar). I had some rebounds that I didn't really care about post-A, but when I met my ex, he wasn't a rebound for me and I didn't compare him to my exAP (I wasn't married, neither was he, he had a longterm gf whom he had a child with).

 

 

I think that when a relationship ends people are often uncomfortable in that space of "nothingness" and there is almost always this panicked thought that maybe that was it....your last chance at love...and you'll neveeer meet someone you love again. It's not true. Holding on to that belief though does keep you tied up and hoping and wanting to reunite....but imagine if you actually knew for a fact you'd meet someone else in 2 months whom you will love as much or even more? You'd have no problems appreciating what was but moving forward excitedly to your future, and preparing yourself for your new love in the now....but we don't know...so we cling and look back constantly. I'm human like everyone else, but my past experience has shown me that I always move forward and always meet someone else and as I grow the people I attract are different and teach me something different and I don't fear letting go anymore. Now, I do grieve, but I also look excitedly to the future..and thus far, it always looks brighter. Ultimately, I am looking towards my final relationship.

 

I've never loved someone while in a relationship with someone else whom I didn't love. It's unfathomable to me, but it clearly happens, like in your case. If you and your H, whom you do not love, are finally separating and divorcing, then it solves that dilemma. What fact still remains after NC? That you don't love your husband Or that you still love the exMM? If this MM cannot be with you and give you what you want....then sorry, but you may love each other (like my exAP and I really did) but you're not meant to be. And if you're not meant to be, the strong attachment and romantic love does dissipate with the help of NC. It becomes, like I have experienced, a fondness and love that is not possessive and based on wanting to be with them and you become able to open your heart to other people and have other loves. But when you don't break that contact, that attached, possessive, romantic love still burns and that hope still burns and you are cut off from loving other people...by the way, for almost 2 years, while pretending to do NC with my ex, I was unable to truly like another man in a serious way. Once I let him go emotionally and had the final, serious NC, some months later I was all of a sudden able to feel that excitement, joy, and genuine interest in another man...I didn't compare him to my ex, it was just like when I was single before and just excited about meeting a new man in his own right. He wasn't a buffer for my latent feelings about my ex. All that happened because I let him go....but until then, I felt like I'd never love another, I'd always compare and I was just not open to moving on...as much as I said I wanted to.

Edited October 21, 2011 by MissBee

[Spark1111]

Hi Spark,

 

I don't think about him every waking moment but I have to admit I wish for the "walking into the sun holding hands" scenario sometimes. I have used all the willpower I can to do everything including a) staying in the A b) leaving him and getting married and c) fighting my feelings for him and living like I do. So far c has been the middle ground and I've been able to live with less stress and aggravation. I've admitted to myself that I love him but have refused to be intimate in a physical way. Our continued friendship makes me (us) vulnerable to discussing our emotions from time to time. I know that but I will not be in an A because that is emotionally too draining. Now I find that even loving someone from a distance is draining.

 

I don't want NC again. It didn't work before and it certainly won't work now. I can't avoid this man for the rest of my life even if I wanted to. I could stop the calls, cancel the partnership and then what? Avoid our friends too? Even if I do all that and the feelings don't change, what will happen when I see or meet him in the future? Same bullshyte.

 

I want to figure out how to stop loving him, period. It's no longer about him. That ship sailed a long time ago. It is my feelings for him that cause me pain. I am perfectly capable of saying NO to him intellectually. So this is a case where time and distance have not made the feelings dissipate. Therein lies my fear that in 5, 10, 15 years, I could still find myself in this very same place. Is my life on hold? No. Everything else is fine. But for some reason, just this one thing continually robs me of my happiness. Unrequited love - what's the solution for it? Maybe that should have been my question in the first place.

 

I knew that business partnership was going to break your heart on a daily basis.

 

You CAN'T go NC because you have a business together. Ayeyayyay FN!

 

You thought you could handle it. We all knew you couldn't.

 

How's business? So good you can't walk away from it? At what cost to you?

 

Look, if you are okay with this sitch, carry on.

 

If not, you got to get away from this man. A brilliant poster her has the tag line of: A recipe for misery? Desire the one thing you cannot have.

 

You've got it.

[FelicityShot]

I have read threads and posts where OMs/OWs have broken it off but still think about the MP. In my case, I joined LS because I needed help. I'd broken it off years earlier but was in an EA. At some point I wanted MM and was fed up of having these "feelings", at another point I was angry and could see how selfish he is. By the last thread, I'd made up my mind to move on. You get the drift? A rollercoaster ride.

 

1. Is there anyone here who even years later still has feelings for their xMP and thier xMP for them?

 

2. Is it normal for the feelings to linger for years? If it is, what does "moving on" really mean?

 

I sometimes wonder if NC is one of the very reasons feelings can linger. I am suspicious of NC as a way of dealing with things because

 

1. It means you avoid the trigger rather than resolving

2. It's kind of cruel (almost playground cruel)

3. It leaves xWSs and their APs in limbo

4. It seems to me born of weakness rather then strength - we should not avoid the things which disorientate us, but rather meet them head on until they do so no more

 

However, if the way things play out between people when in contact is toxic, then sensible to keep it to a minimum. V LC can only serve to remind of the toxicity, until that person moves out of your life, or vice versa.

 

Saying I need NC is like saying I am too weak to resolve my emotions. This can be true, but seems incomplete and likely to cause problems later.

 

It's like a kid at school who finds math class difficult, and so skips that class as a way of dealing with the problem. Without understanding that math is gonna be there later on too, however many classes you skip.

Edited October 22, 2011 by FelicityShot

[FelicityShot]

I just wanted to add, that you do have to find your own strength of who you are. If you have that, then any love you feel or contact you have will be dealable with.

[FelicityShot]

NC is the accepted way to get over someone, to be able to separate oneself from the source of the pain and to get some objectivity.

 

It's recommended by therapists and other professionals so it's not just fly by night stuff but of course we all are entitled to our opinion and mine differs from yours. See bolded below.

 

I'm sorry but the above just doesn't make sense to me. NC is strength and courage if you do it because the relationship is over.

 

However if one is not ready for it to be over, NC will fail. A person must be ready for the end.

 

I respect your viewpoint.

 

I would find it helpful if you took my view and imagined I might be right, and then looked at it.

 

Rather than re-iterate things that are said by therapists - that you already feel you know to be true.

 

It is bolded that interests me. IME this was not true at all -and so I want to question it. I also feel very strongly that the source of people's pain is often more within themself than in any exterior factor.

 

If you are right, then I wonder about the opening post on this thread.

 

It is the accepted wisdom I am interested in - accepted doesn't mean right.

 

There is no research which looks at As which ended in NC vs As which didn't and all the permeatations in between to guide us. So why is it accepted?

 

It is a cultural thing, aimed at maintaining the status quo -Ms.

 

I guess there are many variables at play, but the NC thing here on LS strikes me as unsubstanstiated dogma.

 

I think there are better ways to achieve your own power than cutting people out.

[Ruby_shoes]

I sometimes wonder if NC is one of the very reasons feelings can linger. I am suspicious of NC as a way of dealing with things because

 

1. It means you avoid the trigger rather than resolving

2. It's kind of cruel (almost playground cruel)

3. It leaves xWSs and their APs in limbo

4. It seems to me born of weakness rather then strength - we should not avoid the things which disorientate us, but rather meet them head on until they do so no more

 

However, if the way things play out between people when in contact is toxic, then sensible to keep it to a minimum. V LC can only serve to remind of the toxicity, until that person moves out of your life, or vice versa.

 

Saying I need NC is like saying I am too weak to resolve my emotions. This can be true, but seems incomplete and likely to cause problems later.

 

It's like a kid at school who finds math class difficult, and so skips that class as a way of dealing with the problem. Without understanding that math is gonna be there later on too, however many classes you skip.

 

Hi FS

 

Just out of interest what would you advise as a way of dealing with the pain? I know that at some point living in a small town I will see XMM around, but I feel like if I do right now I can't handle all the conflicting emotions that come to rise. For me going NC gives me healing time so when the situation arises I am stronger because I'm distanced from the emotions and him. Its cold turkey so I can see it for what it was without the rose tinted glasses or XMM influencing my thoughts re how I feel etc. I know XMM had a hang up about not being a bad guy and so I think he tried to influence my opinion of him. NC keeps his thoughts away thus seeing the bigger picture more clearly, not so much avoidance, although that is a small part for now, more not getting caught up in the confusing going round in circles talk which keeps the wounds open. Do you think another way is better, say LC? I think that would keep me on tenterhooks 'waiting to hear' and analysing when I did moreso. Just curious as to your thoughts. x

[Choose Life]

I just wanted to say NC is the only way to truly on. I have tried the friends route, and we just fell back into the old pattern, back on

the roller coaster! Then it went to seeing each other from a distance, and that just hurt too. Now it's totally NC the hurt is less, I feel more at peace and finally moving on.

[findingnemo]

 

 

Hi Nemo:

 

Things ended with us a while now, back in 2008. I did fall in love with someone else after that (but that is a whole other mess too, and I refer to this last ex often here, as while it wasn't an affair, much of the feelings and issues were similar). I had some rebounds that I didn't really care about post-A, but when I met my ex, he wasn't a rebound for me and I didn't compare him to my exAP (I wasn't married, neither was he, he had a longterm gf whom he had a child with).

 

 

I think that when a relationship ends people are often uncomfortable in that space of "nothingness" and there is almost always this panicked thought that maybe that was it....your last chance at love...and you'll neveeer meet someone you love again. It's not true. Holding on to that belief though does keep you tied up and hoping and wanting to reunite....but imagine if you actually knew for a fact you'd meet someone else in 2 months whom you will love as much or even more? You'd have no problems appreciating what was but moving forward excitedly to your future, and preparing yourself for your new love in the now....but we don't know...so we cling and look back constantly. I'm human like everyone else, but my past experience has shown me that I always move forward and always meet someone else and as I grow the people I attract are different and teach me something different and I don't fear letting go anymore. Now, I do grieve, but I also look excitedly to the future..and thus far, it always looks brighter. Ultimately, I am looking towards my final relationship.

 

I've never loved someone while in a relationship with someone else whom I didn't love. It's unfathomable to me, but it clearly happens, like in your case. If you and your H, whom you do not love, are finally separating and divorcing, then it solves that dilemma. What fact still remains after NC? That you don't love your husband Or that you still love the exMM? If this MM cannot be with you and give you what you want....then sorry, but you may love each other (like my exAP and I really did) but you're not meant to be. And if you're not meant to be, the strong attachment and romantic love does dissipate with the help of NC. It becomes, like I have experienced, a fondness and love that is not possessive and based on wanting to be with them and you become able to open your heart to other people and have other loves. But when you don't break that contact, that attached, possessive, romantic love still burns and that hope still burns and you are cut off from loving other people...by the way, for almost 2 years, while pretending to do NC with my ex, I was unable to truly like another man in a serious way. Once I let him go emotionally and had the final, serious NC, some months later I was all of a sudden able to feel that excitement, joy, and genuine interest in another man...I didn't compare him to my ex, it was just like when I was single before and just excited about meeting a new man in his own right. He wasn't a buffer for my latent feelings about my ex. All that happened because I let him go....but until then, I felt like I'd never love another, I'd always compare and I was just not open to moving on...as much as I said I wanted to.

 

Nothingness has been a state I long for, for years. Perhaps I'm conditioned to believe that you only love once. I know that intellectually I believe otherwise and so it can't be that. I do have a fear that I'll never love like that again. I have expressed as much to my friends before saying that I know deep in my heart that this is the man I love. Have I been able to fall in love again since I met him? Yes, I have. I once met a guy 18 years older than me. I was shocked by him because he was so different, not like anyone I'd ever met before. I fell for him instantly. During our R, did I dwell on xMM? No I didn't. I thought of xMm less and less. The new guy knows xMM and wasn't impressed by him. New guy spent a considerable amount of our first meetings together questioning me about why I love xMM. He told me what he thought of him and why. Everything he said made sense. But new guy and I quickly realized that my feelings for xMM existed regardless of the negative things about him. I loved xMM almost unconditionally. My R with new guy developed into a friendship. We got each other. He was fun and intelligent, good-looking and loving. (I met new guy 9 months into my separation). The "love" I had for him was real, but it turned slowly into the love I have for a friend. There was no hiding from the fact that my heart was taken.

 

Nothingness would be welcome. It'd be a clean slate from which to start. Having had Rs and even an M while still in love with xMM, I'm sure that I'd need to fall out of love before I start seeing someone seriously. My feelings for xMM exist regardless of the obstacles. My life has moved on without him, the feelings haven't. Could total, committed, long term NC work? It's a gamble. If I was told by a psychic ( if I believed this was real) that Mr. X is out there waiting and that he's perfect for me. I'd probably ask the psychic to elaborate on "perfect". Maybe he'd be better looking, cleverer, kinder, richer, fitter, etc. It'd sound promising but would any and all of those things make me love him more than I love xMM?

 

So at the end, it all comes down to me and the concept of letting go. Perhaps I haven't tried hard enough or long enough. But I have made many attempts to let go. All my Rs and my M was an attempt to let go, to move on. The 2 NCs were an attempt to let go. My refusal for any intimacy is an attempt to let go. What I'm hearing from most here is that I haven't tried hard enough. That I need to try again and this time have NC for a much much longer period. It sounds logical. It sounds like a hard road but not impossible. But why did total NC not work for me before? What is so special about my case that defies normal attempts to let go? NC worked for others, how come it didn't work for me? I think I'm opposed to NC now because I have failed miserably, not once but twice. I'm jaded about NC.

[findingnemo]

I sometimes wonder if NC is one of the very reasons feelings can linger. I am suspicious of NC as a way of dealing with things because

 

1. It means you avoid the trigger rather than resolving

2. It's kind of cruel (almost playground cruel)

3. It leaves xWSs and their APs in limbo

4. It seems to me born of weakness rather then strength - we should not avoid the things which disorientate us, but rather meet them head on until they do so no more

 

However, if the way things play out between people when in contact is toxic, then sensible to keep it to a minimum. V LC can only serve to remind of the toxicity, until that person moves out of your life, or vice versa.

 

Saying I need NC is like saying I am too weak to resolve my emotions. This can be true, but seems incomplete and likely to cause problems later.

 

It's like a kid at school who finds math class difficult, and so skips that class as a way of dealing with the problem. Without understanding that math is gonna be there later on too, however many classes you skip.

 

Hi FS,

 

I see what you mean about NC being like running away from one's problems. But I also recognize that desperate times require desperate measures and I was desperate when I tried NC. To me it was my only choice given that I needed to get on with my life. I was too weak at that time to avoid being in a full blown A. My issue with it was that it didn't work. It didn't prduce the results I needed from it. For this reason I don't think it's something I should try again.

 

Your take on NC is interesting though. It makes one wonder if NC works for everyone. If it doesn't, then what?

[findingnemo]

I just wanted to say NC is the only way to truly on. I have tried the friends route, and we just fell back into the old pattern, back on

the roller coaster! Then it went to seeing each other from a distance, and that just hurt too. Now it's totally NC the hurt is less, I feel more at peace and finally moving on.

 

Hi Choose Life,

 

Did you move cities or something? How did you achieve total NC where you even avoid accidental sightings?