Posting on an "up" day

[herc3352]

I had a minor setback last night, but in the end I feel that it helped me take three steps forward. I've been keeping strict NC and it wasn't helping with the feeling that she may come back, which I know you have to let go of any hope if you're going to get over the dumper. The fact that this is the third time she's dumped me and ends up coming back a few weeks later only helps reinforce the idea that she'll realize what she's lost and come back after some time apart.

 

The setback I had was that I'm in 1.5 months NC and the feeling that she'll still come back was still very potent. I decided to get on Facebook and look at her profile (big no-no, but I felt that if I saw her with another guy, I could fully let go), and it actually made me feel so much better. It really made me ask the question: "how could I give my love to someone like this?". I went through the comments and the last time we spoke (1.5 months ago), I asked her how she felt about us reconciling and was completely shut down. A few hours after that she had posted a comment that I saw last night basically making fun of me to her family and friends about how I tried to get her back. Of course it made me mad, but I went to the gym and spent some time there and actually feel a lot better today...I have some perspective.

 

Half of all marriages end in divorce, with finances being the leading cause of it. I'm 24 with a bachelors in exercise science and am going back to get my masters in exercise physiology to work in cardiac rehab when I'm out. She jumps around from job to job and has a band that she really thinks will make it in the long run (honestly a million to one shot no matter how good you are). The fact that I actually have a future that's set in stone (an employer is paying me to go back and get my masters to work for them when I get out) with a great starting pay, while she HATES to work only leaves me with the feeling that I've dodged a bullet with the breakup, since I'd be the one in the relationship "bringing home the bacon" so to speak.

 

Another factor that I've come to realize is that she's a very immature person when it comes to priorities. I grew up in a family with an alcoholic father, so I don't enjoy being around drunks, partying, etc. She always tried to change this and I felt like I wasn't a normal person because I didn't like to do those things. Now that I'm single I'm very satisfied with my bodybuilding career, school, and work and would like for those things to do nothing but become my whole world, which I felt she was hindering.

 

The final thing I'm starting to realize is that it would have never been just me and her in the relationship. She was/is a mama's girl and it has always seemed creepy to me. The first night we met, her mom tried to make out with me and I told my ex about it and all she said was "yeah, she's just drunk"; this shouldn't be a daughters response to her mom trying to makeout with her crush lol. Also, my ex is 22 years old and still sleeps in the bed with her mom, I didn't know this until right after the breakup though and when I found out I couldn't help but think "jesus christ what is wrong with you people?".

 

In the end, I feel like I've dodged a howitzer bullet, but then again this is also one of my up days; we all know this is a rollercoaster that has to be ridden out no matter how scary the ride is. Red flags have started to become more apparent and I feel a little stronger now that I've just started scratching the surface of them; it's honestly amazing how blinded you become by love. Don't take this as me bad-mouthing my ex, she's honestly a wonderful person and I love her very much, we're just too different to ever workout and it's finally starting to become apparent

[PositiveNegative]

Your post really resonates with me.

 

I know what you mean about seeing her with another guy being a potential way to "move on". I know what I felt about my ex before I found out about her boyfriend and after are completely different beasts. (She started dating him 2 weeks after she left me). I did feel that after I found out I was able to move on faster, I mistakenly asked her friend if she was dating a new guy. Well, word got to my ex and she sent me an email saying that she was. It hurt like hell at the time, and makes a future reconciliation/friendship very difficult, but I think I'm glad that she did that earlier then later (for my sake, not hers).

 

It really is so hard to see the red flags and problems that your ex has during the relationship. I know that in my relationship I made her out to be this perfect goddess, and we made early missteps by mistaking infatuation/lust for love. I have no doubt that she is repeating the same mistakes with this new guy (from strangers to boyfriend in 2 weeks!), those lessons are hers to learn. I never ignored red flags though, we always sat and talked about them, the problem is that we usually just set them aside and "made up". We never fully solved them and we let them grow.

 

The thing you mentioned about the future is one of the last things my ex and I talked about that eventually lead to our break up. I'm about to graduate with a major with an 80% employment rate. She is doing something with a not-so-guaranteed future, something her father is actually concerned about. She knows it's going to be difficult to find a job and her major will most likely require her to move elsewhere. The discussion kinda came to the conclusion that we probably won't end up together. I am leaving this school, we would then be in an LDR. Even when we're back at home, we're an hour away. I'm sure this ate away at her and her most practical solution would be to detach herself from me and she did. I fought to keep us going though, but she didn't have faith.

 

She has the potential to be a great person, fundamentally she is a very caring person, but she used that as a way to cope with her own problems. She had too many internal demons for just one person(me) to help cleanse.

[fistandantulus]

That I agree. The biggest part of "moving on" without looking back is, I think, recognizing some facts that we all missed during the relationship, or disregarded at best. When we start doing that, we actually see that the breakup was far more beneficial for us than we expect, and see all the reasons not to put up with the drama again in case of a reconciliation. This is what I always keep telling myself: "My life was beautiful before I met her, she put the drama in my life, I coped with all that drama and with her constant state of unhappiness, and she broke up with me at the end. Why the hell would I want her back? Why the hell would I put myself in her hands again to make me miserable and unhappy once more? She did me a favor she isn't aware of. Let it remain like that!" Now I see that it wasn't my fault that she "fell out of love". She could never love me and she would never do it if we kept on. I am a lot better man in every aspect than I was when she was supposedly in love with me. So, if somebody failed in this relationship it was her not me. So, is it logical to hope for getting back? It would be total nonsense!

 

Cheers

[herc3352]

Your post really resonates with me.

 

I know what you mean about seeing her with another guy being a potential way to "move on". I know what I felt about my ex before I found out about her boyfriend and after are completely different beasts. (She started dating him 2 weeks after she left me). I did feel that after I found out I was able to move on faster, I mistakenly asked her friend if she was dating a new guy. Well, word got to my ex and she sent me an email saying that she was. It hurt like hell at the time, and makes a future reconciliation/friendship very difficult, but I think I'm glad that she did that earlier then later (for my sake, not hers).

 

It really is so hard to see the red flags and problems that your ex has during the relationship. I know that in my relationship I made her out to be this perfect goddess, and we made early missteps by mistaking infatuation/lust for love. I have no doubt that she is repeating the same mistakes with this new guy (from strangers to boyfriend in 2 weeks!), those lessons are hers to learn. I never ignored red flags though, we always sat and talked about them, the problem is that we usually just set them aside and "made up". We never fully solved them and we let them grow.

 

The thing you mentioned about the future is one of the last things my ex and I talked about that eventually lead to our break up. I'm about to graduate with a major with an 80% employment rate. She is doing something with a not-so-guaranteed future, something her father is actually concerned about. She knows it's going to be difficult to find a job and her major will most likely require her to move elsewhere. The discussion kinda came to the conclusion that we probably won't end up together. I am leaving this school, we would then be in an LDR. Even when we're back at home, we're an hour away. I'm sure this ate away at her and her most practical solution would be to detach herself from me and she did. I fought to keep us going though, but she didn't have faith.

 

She has the potential to be a great person, fundamentally she is a very caring person, but she used that as a way to cope with her own problems. She had too many internal demons for just one person(me) to help cleanse.

 

I actually JUST got done reading your coping journal before checking my replies and I commend you for staying strong/mature with your situation; you've handled everything very well, and I believe the changes you've witnessed in your ex only reassure you that she's definitely not the person you once fell for and, with that being said, you're better off without.

 

See, I'm not a believer in divorce; I was raised in a family where my mom was treated like a doormat, always trying to resolve problems, and my dad seemed to TRY and create more because he knew she would stick with him through thick and thin. This trait has been "bestowed" unto me and my ex definitely took advantage of this. For example: I had a bodybuilding competition that I had this past June and let her know a year in advance of when it took place and told her not to book any shows that weekend. Two weeks out from my competition and I get the "I can't come bc we booked a show" talk lol. The problem was that my fellow gym rats were more pissed than I was and my thinking was "it's what she wants to do as a career, she needs to do it"; essentially, I was okay with it (at the time). The next weekend she had a show, but I was taking summer classes and had to write an essay, so I declined. This escalated into her getting pissed because I won't take my work with me, while I tried to resolve the problem.

 

Sorry for the rant, but I feel like that illustrates how people change bc when we first started talking two years ago, she LOVED the fact that I was a bodybuilder and it was such a turn on for her. After seeing what hell I put myself through throughout the year (bulking, cutting, carb depletion, water logging, etc.), she took a disinterest in my lifestyle and eventually I was dieting alone, working out alone, but still TRYING to make time for us by taking her out on dates throughout the week (while she did nothing to show an interest). Everything turned into MY fault because I was staying "in tune" to my own wants and needs from life and not giving up what attracted her to me to begin with. This was all brought to my attention during our "closure meeting". I had become boring with never drinking, never getting high, never going out; but honestly, I'm okay with that. If you asked me to give it up a couple months ago in lieu of her coming back, I would've dropped my healthy ways to be with her. In retrospect, I was a fool for thinking that way; if there's one thing that I've learned with this relationship it's: don't lose yourself just to make someone else happy

 

Each day is a new day and while I still have hopes of her coming back, I'm not going to stop my diet, workouts, sleeping for her...she's not that important to me and nor should yours be. What we once loved is no longer residing in that person and karma's waiting to bite them in the ass

[PositiveNegative]

Great post.

 

And thank you, I've made some slip ups for sure, but I do believe that I have made some great strides in this relative short time. I thank LS, and the numerous people who's ears I have talked off in these past two months for it.

 

I'm glad you never gave up doing what you loved. I mean of course we all try to bend over backwards sometimes for the ones we love, but when our spines are about to crack maybe somethings off, ya know? As for my ex, we had a lot of common interests but her biggest interest was something that I knew virtually nothing about. How lucky for her to find her new guy at her job (she works at a place that deals with said interest). By the end I found myself desperately trying to prove to her that I had become really interested in that subject (and I was somewhat... because of her). It was a cop out though, just an excuse, at the end of the day she just lost attraction to me and wanted to date around.

 

Good luck with your journey.

[herc3352]

This thread may actually become a journal for myself. Don't really know how I feel right now, I'm sleep deprived (going on 48 hours) and my brain doesn't really want to function lol. Had a lot on my plate the past two days with work and hanging out with friends, but also ran into some truck problems early this morning. Got done working out and went to see another one of my friends (1am, had to be at work at 4am) and my truck broke down and it brought back some old feelings. I had a flat tire around April while me and the ex were still together and my tire iron didn't fit my lugs :/ so I called the ex and she waited with me until her roadside assistance stopped by and let me borrow their tire iron. Eh, it's funny how memories are triggered by the slightest thing, I honestly didn't even remember that until I was on the side of the road thinking "huh, road side assistance would be GREAT right now" lol. Still want to talk to my ex after 7 weeks NC (except for the fb thing, which did help me lose hope btw), but I keep reminding myself that I must not have meant s**t to her since there hasn't been one breadcrumb sent my way. What's even more screwed up is that MY dog is living with her still and I want him back, but I live in an apt and I'm hardly ever home so I know he enjoys having the open space to run around and the thought of crating him while I'm not home isn't an option in my eyes. Seriously, not even an update on how MY dog is doing? Such BS...I'm probably overthinking things from lack of sleep but still holding strong. Thinking of seeing her now seems like it would be the same if I bumped into a friend from years ago for the first time though, so I guess I'm making some progress

[herc3352]

After the breakup (about 3 weeks actually), I started talking to this other girl who I found out does figure comps/photoshoots. We really hit it off, but I warned her that I wasn't ready for a relationship and we should just be friends until I was over my ex. Since then she's been my rock; we've hungout literally everyday since we first met and we workout together/keep each other motivated.

 

She broke up with her ex six months ago because she found out she was the other girl and he was engaged to someone else the whole year they were together. Eventually the ex did make contact with her (about a month ago) telling her that he's found god and realized the error of his ways, how great of a girlfriend she was and he had broken things off with his fiance so he could be with her. She told me about all of this and said that he was a POS and she couldn't even consider him a friend after what he did to her (he gave her "diuretics" for her photoshoot that were actually steroids; she used to sing, but now can't because the 5 months of "diuretics" has changed her voice drastically).

 

Anyways, last night we were over at a friends house hanging out and she gets a text from her ex while I was playing with her new phone (I wasn't snooping, she wanted me to fix something on it) and when I see the name I just say "you have a text" and give it back to her....she then tried to hide the fact that they were texting back and forth; this carried on for about an hour. Anyways, today I was about to comment on her FB and saw her status saying "he makes me smile". The idea of her back with her ex bothers me because I know the guy and he makes a lot of money in the "pharmaceutical business", is a habitual liar and I don't want to see her getting hurt again. We haven't been as talkative to each other today, so I'm realizing that when I'm with her, I have a great mindset while actually doing things we both enjoy and it's less time that I spend dwelling on the ex but if she goes back to this dbag, I'm going to lose a great friend because he's extremely controlling, and I'm left without my friend. Btw, I moved to this area in 2009 when I started dating my ex, so all my friends were hers, leaving me with ZERO friends where I live besides this one. I'm here for school and hate partying/drinking, so at the ripe age of 24, that makes me abnormal; any of the people who try and reach out are known to be partiers/drug users and I don't wanna flock with a bad crowd.

 

Anyways, without being around her today I've been at home trying to catch up on sleep, but the dreams always center around my ex or her mom telling me to move on while walking out the door. These have really toyed with my mind and have made me want to reach out to her. I have her fb and email blocked, and number deleted out of my phone. I decided instead of dwelling on it, I would get on here and write out what's been on my mind. Actually reading some responses in the second chance forum by Rorschach64 has really helped out a lot, I strongly encourage anyone reading this to look him up and view his replies. Basically, he laid it out like this: If you think you have a shot of a second chance and it's been months of NC from your ex...HANG IT UP!, that person obviously didn't give a damn about your relationship or you in the first place and neither should you. There's no sugar-coating that goes on from him and that's exactly what most of us need. We spend hours on here (I was guilty of this about a month ago) looking for hope in threads that our ex will come back to us and everything will turn out wonderfully. For some, that does happen (happened twice with the same girl for me), but, eventually, you have to have some self respect, pride, and/or dignity and tell yourself that if it didn't mean that much to them, then it isn't worth the pain of hanging on to false hope

[herc3352]

Today's been a pretty good day; it started out kind of rocky but I feel that it ended on a good note. Started off going to work at 5am (yesterday morning) where I was greeted by a coworker with "hey, I saw your girl this weekend", I thought he was talking about the girl from my last post, so I said "well, that's weird because I've been with her all weekend". He then clarified by saying "no, the short one, the one you dated for a couple years; it was weird seeing her without you and dancing with other guys". I didn't know how to respond, this was a friend of mine and he knew how much I hurt after the breakup, so I just told him to walk away. I can't understand how someone can be so inconsiderate and just plain stupid about something like that; to me it's the equivalent of asking someone how their dead mom is, knowing that she's dead.

 

Other than that little mishap, I feel that I've done very well today. I did have some weak moments when I got home tonight thinking about how everything ended, but decided to hop on here and post instead of keeping everything bottled up. The main thing that I keep asking myself is "did I faze myself out?"; what I mean is when I broke up with her last April (couldn't get the thought of her making out with a guy while we were together out of my head), she went no contact instantly and after a week I realized that I'd rather be with her because she made me happy as opposed to being without her because of a drunken slip up.

 

The way I thought it out was that the longest point of NC for me after the breakup was two days at best before I started trying to win her back. I jumped through so many hurdles trying to make her happy and come back, but to no avail. I did think she was reconsidering her decision bc she kept handing me the "I love you" and "I miss you" lines, so I kept up with it. Each time we saw each other she became more and more distant until it was like I was having lunch with a friend and her referring to me as DUDE or MAN and no more kissing or even hugs.

 

Each day I feel like I'm growing stronger, but this is also the longest amount of time it's taken me to get over a girl. It used to take me about a week actually, but now I'm on 3 months and still have my weak moments...that's the hardest thing about first loves I imagine