Ever felt befuddled and a sense of the surreal at the end of a relationship?

[lucy_in_disguise]

GC, K reminds me of my ex. In fact I believe following his thread is what has unleashed my own pent-up monster.

 

The only thing I can say, is that some people are just not reltionship material. The benefits don't seem worth all the work - the effort, the disappointment, brin accountable, the necessity for self- reflection and the potential of falling short, in your own eyes, that it brings.

 

I have a friend I've known since childhood who'smaintained that was the case for him. I assumed he would change his mind once he met someone he really liked. He has not and I believe him now. I also respect how much self a rareness it takes to come to that conclusion about yourself. Most people will not acknowledge that fact, goin through life pretending they are one way, when they are another.

 

It sucks to love someone who is not reltionship material. It's a real mind-fcvk.

 

Id recommend trying to occupy your mind with something else.

 

Ps I still don't get why u want to stick around in ur town. What benefits do I think u will reap,and how long will it take to start reaping?

[Zapbasket]

I'm so glad you wrote that, Lucy. That's EXACTLY where my fear lies. It's not about K. suddenly achieving all this career success when during the relationship with me he was so aimless--and not in the lazy sense but more driving himself crazy with workaholism that led nowhere and everywhere all at once. He really WAS a spinning compass, like our therapist told him and he told me, and my mother, to my great frustration.

 

"A compass doesn't just spin," I told him. "The needle might move back and forth or up and down, but it always hovers in a general direction. Where are you hovering? K, you can't just say, 'I'm lost,' and then just check out of everything."

 

Our therapist has told me time and again that K is "constitutionally incapable" of an intimate relationship. I find that a very difficult determination to make about a person, e.g., "he's just not relationship material." And that's my fear: that he just couldn't love ME but some day someone will come along and all of a sudden, poof! The "constitutional incapability" disappears. My therapist insists that is highly unlikely without extensive psychotherapy, and K quit going to therapy right after sending me the email I posted in full on the previous page (or page 4 of this thread). My mom has said for a year at least that K is the kind of man who will be content to just fly fish his way through life (and he's off hunting this weekend, so I guess my mom is right), never taking any responsibility for anyone or anything. Again, I find that hard to say about K., but so much of what others have said over the years has borne out to be true, why not this.

 

I must have been the perfect codependent to his counterdependency: Ever-conscientious, I constantly fear in relationships that I might not be "enough" or simultaneously, am "too much."

 

Interestingly, when we first started dating K confided to me that when his previous relationship broke up (she cheated on him after he hemmed and hawed about moving to a neighboring state where she had gotten a teaching position), he considered for a while the possibility that he was not someone who was capable of being in a relationship. Perhaps K. knows himself better than even he thinks he does; perhaps in K's email to me IS, indeed, a recognition that he is fundamentally lacking.

 

Yes, being in a relationship with someone where YOU are capable of intimacy and they SEEM to be but it never gets there, there is always an obstacle, etc., is a real mind-f*ck for sure. The relationship SEEMS like it SHOULD work, but it never manages to, while you exhaust yourself trying and feel more and more depleted and confused.

 

And the irony that HE should tell me that HE is "tired" out by our relationship and therefore does not wish to continue because it is not "healthy." The words "K" and "healthy" do not go together, ever. It's a pretty cruel irony but that was part of the relationship, too: the subtle blame shift so that you are always thinking YOU are the only one who can fix the dynamics.

 

Well, Lucy, I guess with your post you answered your question about your ex: DON'T GO BACK! Or else you'll end up like me and I wouldn't wish how I'm feeling these days on anyone.

 

Maybe your current bf isn't "it" for you, either. Maybe he's critical, however, in your journey to learning and experiencing what a healthy relationship is, and the next leg of your journey is feeling the same kind of crazy intimacy and passion for a HEALTHY person that you did for your UNHEALTHY first ex. I felt a great deal of passion and "likeness" with K that made all the negative stuff I posted about in my threads over the years SO, SO confusing.

 

And even more confusing is how much I love his family, and how loved I felt by them. Just last week his mother cupped my face in hers and said, "I love you." But I've started getting sealed out of the family photos on Facebook; the love is there on both sides but the loss is inevitable. Very, very painful and confusing stuff, indeed.

 

Sorry my posts are so long; I'm really having a rough go today with all this stuff and it helps to write it out for LS.

[heartshaped]

I've been preoccupied, but I have caught up on your thread now, GC.

 

What stands out to me the most from all your posts is your inability to let go, your need to rationalize the irrational, and to point blame at yourself in situations that you are truly not at fault in.

 

If anything, I think you need to be focusing on why do you hold on things so hard that are so difficult or do not work for you? Why do you keep choosing partners who do not treat you well or you are not happy with, but you continue to stay and fight for the relationships and be devastated when they end?

 

I think you should be focusing much less on K and more on yourself during this difficult time.

[Zapbasket]

Thanks, Heartshaped. I am looking at all those things. A lot of stuff is coming up for me, actually, and it's very hard. I'm about to add another post where I ask you all a question based on some of this stuff going through my awareness lately.

[Zapbasket]

LS friends, as I wrote to Heartshaped above, a lot of things are coming up for me in my therapy and I'm beginning to see some things that I had skewed in my mind until now. I'm still pretty confused, though, and could use some help in the form of reality-testing, especially for those of you who have read some of my earlier threads on this relationship with K.

 

So here is my question:

 

Was I in an abusive relationship? I know in earlier threads posters outright said so, and friends IRL said so, and my therapist has said "borderline abusive" as well as "abusive," but I pooh-poohed the possibility almost unconsciously--something I am beginning to see is a tendency of mine based on some family dynamics I experienced earlier in my life.

 

Now, I'm beginning to see that all my confusion at K's behavior during and after this relationship might point to the fact that indeed many of his behaviors were abusive in nature, which is why they always have caused such turmoil in my instincts, which I kept minimizing or ignoring altogether.

 

I just want to be sure I have it right, and others see it, too--based not only on this thread, but previous threads some of you may have read at some point.

 

Thanks so much. This is a very confusing time for me, and I'm determined to reach some clarity and grow into a healthier chapter of my life so that these bad relationship experiences don't keep happening.

[Zapbasket]

Every time I post on or create my own thread, I feel like my I.Q. has dropped 50 points. I can't shake this feeling of terrible confusion.

 

I actually do feel confused as to whether I was in an abusive relationship or not (per my above post). There are so many things about this relationship that leave me reeling, just full of ????????.

 

Was I dating a "Peter Pan"?

 

And how do I deal with the inevitability of an encounter in our small town (plus, we live less than a mile apart)? I DO NOT want to see him. Possibly ever.

 

I just feel racked with confusion. Sometimes I try not to think about it, but then at other times, like now, it just floods me.

[sunshinegirl]

You asked: "Is he abusive?"

 

My answer: maybe? His continuing to tease you after you've said "enough" is boundary-breaking behavior, and if it was a regular pattern, I could see that crossing the line into abusive. But I'm no expert. I suspect you and your therapist are best placed to judge whether he was or not.

 

Having said that, I'm of the mind that if the label would help you continue moving forward, and if you/therapist think it fits, then YES. By all means, give his behavior a name. By doing so, it may quiet some of your inner churning voices that keep trying to make sense of everything.

 

It really did help me move forward with my healing when I was able to put a label to 2008 ex's behavior. I think it was "The Clam" from one of the self-help books I was poring over. The description in the book fit like a tee, which allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief that I hadn't made everything up. Which in turn gave me the mental space to begin looking at my own choices and behaviors.

 

May it do so for you as well.

Edited November 19, 2013 by sunshinegirl

[sunshinegirl]

How are you doing, GC?

[Zapbasket]

Hey, SSG, I didn't see your post until now.

 

No sense starting a new thread. I'm coping; I finally escaped the world of seasonal work and got a year-round job (they're hard to come by where I live). It doesn't tick all my boxes, but I'm grateful for the peace it affords me in not having to fret about my summer employment. It's a step forward.

 

But I'll be honest: I'm still really struggling with the end of this relationship and especially with K's refusal to meet in person back in October and reliance on email to tell me he's done.

 

I don't miss the difficulties of our relationship, but I do really miss K. Even while I recognize the extent to which I was willing to accept much less than I needed, deserved, or than what a relationship needs to be supportive and healthy. He's right in what he said in his email to me, that he can't give me what I want ("I feel I'm always two steps behind you," he wrote). I struggle, still, with the reality of this. Because to me, it seems like a refusal more than an organic incapability. It is near impossible for me to understand how someone "can't" show up for a relationship. Though of course, intellectually I get that people have all sorts of hang-ups when it comes to intimacy.

 

I wish I weren't having such a hard time with all this. I feel ashamed and sad that seemingly I to date have not been able to attract and maintain a relationship upon which you can build a life. It's such an anomaly that I seem to have all the right kinds of attributes that should make it "easy" for me to have a healthy relationship. I'm pretty, smart, sociable, well-liked, industrious, imaginative, caring, communicative and in touch with my feelings, empathic, talented, and have a good if quirky sense of humor. And yet, here I am.

 

I'm still seeing a therapist; so far, I've mainly been working through the grief of the loss with him. He's pointed out again and again how K could not and did not adequately show up to the relationship, and I see it, and I see how my digging in my heels and insisting that K change was an entirely unproductive response to his inertia. I see how my relationship with my step-father and even my ongoing one with my mother influences my expectations in relationships, and my view of myself. But how to act on this knowledge, I don't know. It certainly doesn't make the disappointment and hurt surrounding K any less.

 

I've even struggled against the impulse to contact K. I won't do it, but it's a battle to resist the conviction that it's the "right" or "big" thing to do.

 

I have kept up the relationship with K's mom, mostly at her initiation. She gave me an entire Christmas worth of presents--as though I were at her house for Christmas. And the Thursday before Christmas we met for dinner and she told me K overheard her talking with a friend (and one of our coworkers at this company) about my new job and said, "Did GC get a year-round, full-time job?" And his mom said, "She did--not like you care." She told me he got really mad and said he did care and this was very hard for him, too, and she was "making him out to be the bad guy" and "GC is a wonderful person, but how can you be with someone you argue with all the time?"

 

I'm so tired of being this supposedly "wonderful person" and yet apparently never "wonderful" enough that someone in whom I have invested so much feels is worth fighting to keep in his life. I'm sick of being discarded because it's the easy way out for someone.

 

Anyway, that's the status update. Lots of feelings swirling around, while time moves forward. I hope in a year from now I'll be able to look back and see how far I've come, in all the ways that matter most.

[Zapbasket]

Does there ever come a point when you finally, truly, see the patterns you create in relationships clearly enough to form new, healthier patterns?

 

I still feel very confused about the whole thing with K. People say to me, "Simply, you should have left much sooner and your issue is that you kept finding excuses to stay despite the relationship causing both of you more frustration than comfort."

 

But it doesn't feel that simple to me; if it were that simple, then I would have been able to listen to my instincts and leave.

 

Now that it's done and K and I have no contact with one another, I see why it needed to end and I see that it's much better for me to be out of this relationship than still struggling in it.

 

But I still feel much love for K., and that confuses me. I'm trying hard not to fall into the same trap I fell into for years after my 5-year relationship with my ex-ex ended in 2007, where I believed for a long time that we had a true connection and despite forcing myself to "move on," I never entirely shook the hope that there was some form of reconciliation in our future, even if as "friends." He married this past September and since I have zero interest in a married man reaching out to his ex, finally that hope was extinguished. I don't want to carry that kind of blind hope around for so long with K. that I did with this ex.

 

I try to tell myself, "If K and I really had such a connection, we wouldn't have had so much strife in our relationship, and when finally there was an opportunity to resolve our difficulties one way or another through counseling, both of us would have leapt at the opportunity rather than quit."

 

In my individual counseling, I try hard to really SEE myself and my contribution to unhappy relationships I keep having, and I don't see clearly what I ultimately do to keep me in the same relationship outcomes, time and again. I hope I will start to have clarity... ? ...

[sunshinegirl]

Does there ever come a point when you finally, truly, see the patterns you create in relationships clearly enough to form new, healthier patterns?

 

Yes! I did, anyway.

 

GC, I wonder if you are getting tripped up by the fact that you loved K and he loved you.

 

Love is not an indicator of health or compatibility in a relationship, and love doesn't conquer all.

 

I loved my very first boyfriend and I think he loved me -- to the best of his ability, anyway. But no amount of love was going to "fix" his narcissistic tendencies (a big enough problem all by itself) or the fact that he was gay (um, yeah). Just like loving an addict doesn't make the relationship a healthy one, won't heal their addiction, can't create a compatibility where there isn't one.

 

I think perhaps part of your work is that you need to examine your beliefs about what love can and can't do. You have seemed to see the red flags of at least the last 2 boyfriends you've had (I think well before you fell head over heels with them?) but maybe at some deep, unconscious level, you believed love would transform the relationship?

 

That's part of what I had to unlearn. And I did! Thankfully.

 

I'd say give it more time, be more patient with yourself, and perhaps be willing to examine why it is you seem to think love should have conquered all.

[Zapbasket]

All true, SSG.

 

I am beginning to see that while K did love me--I know that--he didn't love me ENOUGH. His love was not the kind of mature, self-reflective, self-aware love that I needed, or that is necessary for there to be a true bond. I hadn't considered that even if that kind of love WERE there on both our ends, the relationship still might not have worked. I think that if it were there, however, the way it ended would have reflected much more understanding and respect than the cowardly, self-pitying cut-off that actually occurred. That's what led me to my "bottom," where I feel I MUST sit through this dark phase of self-exploration with a therapist so that I don't waste more years in consuming connections that aren't really...well...connected. That's not how I want to live out my life.

 

My therapist is pointing out my codependent penchant for people-pleasing and making excuses for other people's behavior, at the expense of my own self-care. I am terrible at setting boundaries; I try to always be "nice" and accommodating. I see that. Funny, one of my best friends said she views me always as very confident and able to set boundaries. but I know that while I might come off that way in certain settings, truthfully I am much more expert at making endless excuses for others' bad behavior, attributing their mistreatment to some perceived lack of worth within myself rather than to their own issues that have nothing to do with me.

 

It seems that this pattern of thinking and lack of boundary setting is why I was unable to walk away from the relationship with K, first in the summer of 2010, then twice in 2011 when it seemed like I needed to end it, and then again earlier in the summer of 2013. I couldn't walk away, because while I had a gut sense that of course I deserved better (hence my oft-expressed indignation and hurt and eventually anger at K's antagonizing behaviors and irritability), there was some powerful, archaic part of me that didn't believe I deserved better. So I always was in turmoil against these opposite instincts, and therefore unable to make a firm decision.

 

In my most recent session with my therapist, he extended a clear invitation to me to reach for something more in my relationships, to hold out, he said, "for people who clearly and consistently demonstrate the kind of integrity and values that you yourself strive to uphold." He encouraged me to say "no" more, and to not be afraid to hold people to a standard.

 

The rest of the day, and now, I felt and feel very afraid and alone. Because what if, in refusing to accept sub-par behavior, I wind up all alone? And I guess that thinking is why I don't set and enforce boundaries in the first place.

 

You were right, SSG, in what you said months ago: this process is a very dark time, indeed. I feel so very alone and frightened even while I'm intrigued by this idea that I can reach for more, for better...and that if I do I just might get it. Promising, yes, but...scary, very scary. Because I've never asked for it before, and therefore I've never had it, so I have no "proof" that it is out there, accessible to me.

[sunshinegirl]

The rest of the day, and now, I felt and feel very afraid and alone. Because what if, in refusing to accept sub-par behavior, I wind up all alone? And I guess that thinking is why I don't set and enforce boundaries in the first place.

 

Oh dear GC, is being in a bad relationship really better than being un-coupled?

 

I faced down my own version of these fears, and yes, it was scary to contemplate never finding someone who was as 'good' as I hoped. I wasn't even sure such people existed, let alone whether they would ever cross my path. So I had to do some work to find some peace in the not-knowing, in actually learning to be okay with a future in which I didn't actually find the right person. I created a new vision of happiness and contentment that didn't include the "happily ever after" of marriage and kids.

 

That was very hard, but I am also convinced that it is a big part of what set me free. It gave me the strength to be on my own and not to settle when a prospect waved yellow or red flags at me. I became quicker and better at walking away, about holding out for the kind of man I knew I wanted, while also knowing that I might not meet that man anytime soon, or at all. But I was firmly convinced that being uncoupled was much, much better than feeling alone while in a relationship. BTDT.

[Zapbasket]

No, I wouldn't want to spend my life in an unhappy relationship, where "unhappy" means feeling you are compromising the very essence of who you are and thus are "alone," i.e., alienated from your true self.

 

I think coming to acceptance of the possibility that I may never find that wonderful, true companion with whom to have a family and share life's adventures with is a bit further down the road in my self-work. That's very, very hard to come to terms with even though I do understand what you're saying, that staring that reality in the face and embracing it rather than railing against it ultimately set you free. Right now I'm struggling with the idea that I truly can reach out for "better" in my relationships and that to do so I must change certain belief patterns about myself. It saddens me so deeply to begin to recognize how little sense of true self-worth I have. I know I come across as strong and confident, independent and upholding high standards for myself, but I see that especially to certain "shady" types I give off vapors of insecurity, loneliness and woundedness. I carry a sad little girl inside me and perhaps it is not as well hidden as I had always thought.

 

You weren't kidding when you said, as you have many times, that this kind of self-work is very hard. I've seen therapists before, but what seems different this time is that I have hit a personal "bottom" in my life and it has given me the impetus to face hard facts that I could not or would not face before.

 

Let me ask you this: when you reached a place where you truly could experience and envision happiness in a life where you were single, what did it look like? Were you always surrounded by friends and family in your vision? What were your holidays like (in your vision)? I know that now that all my close friends are married, and all either have or are actively trying to have children, I feel very much like the odd one out and sometimes these friends get preoccupied in their family and married lives in ways that don't leave as much room or time for their singleton friend as in times past. Of course I understand that, and am supportive. But privately it just highlights my loneliness. I want to be someone's Number One, and have the pleasure of reciprocating that.

[Zapbasket]

I wrote the above post an hour or so ago, and now I am still awake, cringing in fear that I won't find a good partner. I need to share some feelings.

 

First off: okay, it's true that it's better to be alone than in an egregiously deficient relationship. But even in a good relationship, you don't feel connected all the time. You fall in and out of connection, in and out of love, and in these vicissitudes you and/or your partner discover ways each of you might sabotage the connection, or loves imperfectly.

 

My therapist points out that a "good" partner is not someone who honors the relationship perfectly, but someone who is self-reflective and will pause to examine their contributions to relationship problems. My therapist points out that K was NOT capable of that kind of self-honesty. He clarified what he had meant when months ago he said K. was "constitutionally incapable" of the kind of self-honesty necessary for any relationship to have a real chance: that it doesn't END there, with the "diagnosis" of constitutional incapability, but that that is where the work BEGINS, e.g., "I am constitutionally incapable but I want to learn how to be capable and I am willing to do the work necessary to begin to open my eyes." Instead, my therapist points out, K stopped therapy, quit the relationship with "I can't give you what you want" and "I feel I'm always two steps behind you" and "It's clear that something, perhaps many things, are keeping me restrained"--but then he stops doing the work that would help him figure out what is tripping him up.

 

On a related note I feel wracked with hurt that K essentially abandoned me. It would have meant so much for him to have chosen to work on the relationship with me with a counselor. I have to respect the choice he did make even while I know it is basically him running away--not even from me so much as from the problems and ultimately, from himself. The way things went down shows that we had far less of a connection than I thought.

 

I look around me and see people struggling in their marriages, etc. No one has a perfect or easy life. I don't know anyone who has a "soulmate," necessarily. Just someone who shows up and tries. Which is more than I've had, true. But what I mean is that I feel like I'm having to keep trying, and trying, and reaching out for something deeper, when honestly "good enough" will do. Isn't that what everyone else has settled for? And in that "settling," they at least have an imperfect companion to their imperfect selves to grow with.

 

I do really miss K. I won't reach out to him, but sometimes, like at these late-at-night times, I wish there were something I could do or say that would grease the wheels to him talking to me, with honesty to himself as well as to me. I know it can only come from him.

 

I don't know. I'm just thinking aloud, I guess, and interested in hearing from anyone going through, or having gone through, similar questioning and experience.

[sunshinegirl]

Let me ask you this: when you reached a place where you truly could experience and envision happiness in a life where you were single, what did it look like? Were you always surrounded by friends and family in your vision? What were your holidays like (in your vision)?

 

For me it was a life surrounded by friends and family, many of whom have children whom I love, and so I decided that I could find a real happiness in being a wonderful "Aunt Sunshinegirl" to those various kids. It was also a life where I found new appreciation in the freedom to pursue my hobbies - traveling and athletic pursuits, mostly - and to find adventure wherever I chose.

 

I also negotiated with myself to view my girlfriends' healthy and strong marriages differently. Instead of dwelling on my envy (of which there was plenty), I held their husbands up as models of the kind of man I wanted in my own life, the kind of man I would hold out for. Several of them are models of kindness, compassion, and devotion, and instead of bemoaning, "The good guys are all taken!" I stopped that thinking and said, "I just haven't met mine yet."

 

On that note, I should say that my vision never fully let go of the dream of finding my mate. But I actually became okay with the idea that I might not meet him until I'm 50 or 60. And it became a neat thing to imagine how our lives would eventually come together, and to wonder what kind of cool life path he will have taken to get to the right time and place for us to meet.

[Zapbasket]

On that note, I should say that my vision never fully let go of the dream of finding my mate. But I actually became okay with the idea that I might not meet him until I'm 50 or 60. And it became a neat thing to imagine how our lives would eventually come together, and to wonder what kind of cool life path he will have taken to get to the right time and place for us to meet.

 

Oh man, I have work to do yet because the idea of not finding my mate until I'm 50 or 60 makes me very sad.

 

I had a difficult day today, after a flurry of empowerment after my therapy session on Friday. Missing K and then feeling this burning dead-weight in my heart that he just quit and was done, and is done and likely will never contact me. I owe his mom a phone call and I've been putting it off, not because I don't want to talk to her or uphold a friendship with her, but because I'm really struggling with conflicting feelings about K and I don't want to pretend any longer that this is easy for me and I am "fine." I am NOT fine and K's actions have left behind waves and waves of hurt.

 

I feel ashamed that it is so hard for me to accept that K could be so utterly, decisively DONE with me, so much so that he's perfectly fine not having me in his life and would rather keep me out than have really tried to work on things. Because he didn't work on anything, really.

 

When does this pain end? I told him many times how much it had hurt me when my ex-ex severed things with a cold email and it's uncanny how similar K's email is to the one my ex-ex sent. Not only did I tell K about that email, I also shared with him a piece of writing of mine where I wrote about my deep depression in the aftermath of that email. How could he have forgotten those things? It really, really hurts.

[BOREDouttaMymind]

what this means is that youre an awesomely strong woman who is able to move on.

[sunshinegirl]

GC, I sent you a PM.

[Zapbasket]

(SSG, I pm'd you back.)

 

I probably should start a new thread, but I don't know what to call it. I'm having a really hard time. Something has really hit me and the past couple of days I have felt truly awful, like...scrambled inside.

 

I feel so betrayed by how K. chose to end things--via email, and refusing to meet with me to end things compassionately and with awareness that there were other relationships formed through this relationship that need attending to.

 

For instance, I have found myself unable to talk to K's mom recently. She has called me, and I have been unable to answer at the time (because busy), but then I have only texted her back because I just cannot talk to her and pretend that I'm fine when the truth is that I am sooooo hurt at her son and angry and sad and feel, well, like a mess.

 

I need some support. I have this feeling that K has suddenly gone off and found all these friends and people to do stuff with when during the relationship he never did anything with anyone and never introduced me to anyone, etc. Meanwhile, I've been trying so hard to go out and meet new people and have just not had much luck, meeting people with whom I have things in common, or meeting guys who only want to try to get into my pants, which is the farthest thing from my mind. Dating generally is not on my mind one bit.

 

How could K suddenly find people to do stuff with, and new friends, when I was always the more social of the two of us? That hurts, and then....

 

...it really throws me for a loop how much this whole breakup, the way K ended it, etc. recapitulates so much from my breakup from back in 2007, that I posted about copiously here: http://www.loveshack.org/forums/romantic/marriage-life-partnerships/128170-i-ve-made-my-decision-needed-6.html.

 

I mean, what does that similarity say? That I am imposing the same "story" on the relationships, or that I have chosen the same kind of guy, or that guys just don't want to be with me?

 

I really feel like crap, like I don't have anywhere I can turn. I could use some thoughts or helpful words :-(