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

[sunshinegirl]

How can I not help but feel devastated by this?

 

You could lessen your upset by being aware of how you are thinking about all of this. You are catastrophizing and engaging in magical thinking, i.e.:

 

The universe is NOT lined up against you, gifting K with a happy life while depriving you of same. It's a job posting, for heaven's sake. He hasn't interviewed for it, gotten it, and found it to be the missing piece that actually transforms him into the man you always wished he would be. People who are truly compatible can support each other and weather tough times (on the job front or otherwise) well together. You didn't, and now you're wishing the universe could have aligned just so, so as to create the perfect life circumstances that would have made you perfect for each other. I'm here to break it to you: the test of a healthy relationship is in how you weather storms together, not in how you enjoy life's blessings and bounties.

 

As painful as all this aftermath is, you are not helping yourself by continuing to access K/his mother's FB page, and you are not helping yourself by seeing yourself as a victim of the whims of the universe. That's distorted thinking; it's not reality.

[heartshaped]

He may not even get the job.

 

You have to (whether things work out with K or for K or not) get a hold of yourself. Go for a weekend away if you have to. If you aren't happy in the city, make plans to move. If you aren't happy with your therapist, seek a new one. Whatever it takes, do what is best for you and is going to make you happy.

[Zapbasket]

How sh*tty would it be of K to not even respond to my proposition?

 

This is what I sent to him this past Monday morning (Sept. 30):

 

K,

 

I’ve been sorting through a lot of feelings and am especially heavy-hearted that we are where we are without ever having had any couples counseling sessions, which was our original intent when we started with [our therapist].

 

Back in June, we both acknowledged that we needed to work on our communication so that we could better engage in ways that fostered trust and respect, and so that we could truly hear each other. We acknowledged that we needed help with this. It seems that the outcome of where we are now is the direct result of the very communication dynamics that we hoped to change through work, together, in counseling.

 

As I reflect on everything I recognize many instances of poor communication on my part, where I failed to take the time to understand where you were coming from.

 

I feel like we sank in mutual misunderstandings that didn’t need to have happened, that we knew we needed help clearing up. I feel like we found a source of help, and didn’t avail ourselves of it. I would like the opportunity to have counseling sessions with you, so that we can learn how to communicate better, ultimately so that no matter what we can honor the love and friendship that drew and kept us together. I can’t shake the feeling that our difficulties notwithstanding, there is far too much good between us to just throw everything away.

 

I’d like to talk to you in person about this, rather than email.

 

I hope that you are doing well.

 

 

I understand that a proposition like this is not one to which you can or should respond immediately. I didn't really have a time frame in mind of when he might respond. But now that it has been a week with nothing, I feel surprised, hurt and very sad because the possibility looms that he may just decide not to respond.

 

 

I did not expect this from him. I had no idea what his response might be--but I hadn't considered it a possibility that he just wouldn't even grace it with a response. I suppose because he reached out to wish me a happy birthday and then, a few days later on his birthday when I wrote to with him the same, he responded immediately. Of course I understand that my email to him above is a very different kind of communication. But his mother, whom I have seen twice in the six weeks since we broke up, both times volunteered the information that K is not necessarily done with the relationship. It was that information coupled with K reaching out on my birthday that made me feel a bit "safer" risking my heart by suggesting the last thing I could think of to save and right this relationship.

 

 

 

His mom called me late Friday afternoon; she didn't leave a message. She called again Saturday morning but I couldn't talk as I was meeting someone for breakfast. I figured she was calling to talk about the email as that has been the pattern with her from the beginning: call ostensibly to chit chat, and then about ten minutes in bring up something about my relationship with K--something he said to her, or some such. I always have played along, knowing she was calling with an "agenda" but playing dumb until she brought up whatever it was she was really calling about. This time, however, I brought it up first: when I returned from breakfast I called and got her voicemail and I mentioned that I had sent K an email and said, "You probably already know about it but...".

 

 

 

Well, when we spoke, she said she had listened to my voicemail and claimed she knew nothing about my email to K. "I haven't seen K or spoken to him since his birthday [a week and a half earlier]." Now, this was a lie. He lives on her property, and in the evening on the Monday I sent my email I saw them leaving a local restaurant together. Since she claimed so adamantly to know nothing about the email (and mind you, she told me that K had called her the week before for help deciding whether to wish me a happy birthday or not, so it seems highly unlikely he wouldn't mention my email to her), I demurred and said, "Oh, sorry, I assumed you would know."

 

 

She said, "Has he answered you yet?" And I said, "No, but I didn't necessarily expect an answer immediately as it's something he'd have to mull over." And she said, "Well, then, he's probably mulling it over," and then she made an excuse to get off the phone and that was that.

 

 

 

As is evident from what I write here, K is pretty enmeshed with his mother. So I don't for a second believe she knew nothing about my email. I feel confused as to why she'd contact me at this time, knowing I had written K and (perhaps) knowing he hadn't yet responded. Does she (perhaps unconsciously) enjoy getting enmeshed in the situation, at the expense of my feelings?

 

 

Personally, I think it would be pretty sh*tty of K to just not respond. It provides me with an "answer" of sorts if that's the way he goes, but it's pretty dam*ed negating and I'd never do that to someone. It's not like I reached out to K with this proposition six months after we broke up; it was only five weeks and we are both seeing the same therapist individually.

 

 

I don't know. It all just feels so shallow and unfeeling and I don't like his mom's role in this, either.

[crederer]

My most recent relationship feels like it didn't even happen. Almost like it was a dream or a figment of my imagination that simply just pissed away 3 years of my life.

 

It's a weird feeling when one day you are living together and planning a wedding then the next day completely without her.

[sunshinegirl]

GC, I frankly think it would be a gift for K not to respond to you. A gift of clarity - a gift of finality, of it truly being the end.

 

As it stands, you are almost unhinged, in denial about how unhappy you were in the relationship, almost frenzied in your desire to get back into it.

 

Notice that you are doing the chasing, and this is the pattern you didn't like throughout the relationship. Note also that if K's mother is enmeshed, then you are enabling her by having any contact with her at all, and by entertaining any discussion of K with her.

 

I hope you are seeing your therapist again soon. Please re-read and digest the posts of a few days ago, from me & from heartshaped. You are in need of self-care and perspective-taking. Please take some specific steps to do those two things.

 

(((hugs)))

[Zapbasket]

Thanks, SSG. Another friend encouraged me to leave town for a while, and I may do that. I am thinking of using it as an opportunity to scope out other places in which I might be happier living.

 

I am having a harder time than I have ever had at the end of a relationship. I'm wondering whether somehow I may have become "addicted" to this relationship.

 

But when I sent that email to K, it wasn't out of desperation--or at least I don't feel it is/was. Counseling was the one thing we hadn't tried and I thought if he were open to it, if we could finally learn to hear one another we might be able to right the relationship at least to a point where, if we still needed to part ways, we could do so from the best part of ourselves, honoring the connection we had. I thought--and think--we could turn things around, and I thought--and think--it would be worth it.

 

But it depends on K feeling the same way, and while it's possible he might still answer me, the fact that it has been over a week now does not bode well. My friends who know him think he doesn't know how to handle it, and so he is dealing with it the way I have seen him deal with everything else over the past three years: by doing absolutely nothing even if it means letting something good that fell into his lap slide to the floor and roll away.

 

If he is just not answering as a way to communicate finality, I disagree that that is some kind of "favor." It is an extremely, to me, hurtful thing to do. I'd never do such a thing to someone with whom I had a relationship--even a difficult one--for several years, if the relationship meant anything, which I believe it did, for both of us, in this case. It's just not in my repertoire to relate to or understand. I think it is unnecessarily cruel and negating.

 

As for K's mom, now that she and I both know that the other knows about my email and knows that K has not yet responded, especially if K never responds I don't think she will call me again. Which is sh*tty, if healthier, given she came to my house a month ago to tell me that I have not lost K's family, that she loves me and intends to keep me in her life.

 

It's all so upsetting

[sunshinegirl]

Thanks, SSG. Another friend encouraged me to leave town for a while, and I may do that. I am thinking of using it as an opportunity to scope out other places in which I might be happier living.

 

I am having a harder time than I have ever had at the end of a relationship. I'm wondering whether somehow I may have become "addicted" to this relationship.

 

But when I sent that email to K, it wasn't out of desperation--or at least I don't feel it is/was. Counseling was the one thing we hadn't tried and I thought if he were open to it, if we could finally learn to hear one another we might be able to right the relationship at least to a point where, if we still needed to part ways, we could do so from the best part of ourselves, honoring the connection we had. I thought--and think--we could turn things around, and I thought--and think--it would be worth it.

 

But it depends on K feeling the same way, and while it's possible he might still answer me, the fact that it has been over a week now does not bode well. My friends who know him think he doesn't know how to handle it, and so he is dealing with it the way I have seen him deal with everything else over the past three years: by doing absolutely nothing even if it means letting something good that fell into his lap slide to the floor and roll away.

 

If he is just not answering as a way to communicate finality, I disagree that that is some kind of "favor." It is an extremely, to me, hurtful thing to do. I'd never do such a thing to someone with whom I had a relationship--even a difficult one--for several years, if the relationship meant anything, which I believe it did, for both of us, in this case. It's just not in my repertoire to relate to or understand. I think it is unnecessarily cruel and negating.

 

As for K's mom, now that she and I both know that the other knows about my email and knows that K has not yet responded, especially if K never responds I don't think she will call me again. Which is sh*tty, if healthier, given she came to my house a month ago to tell me that I have not lost K's family, that she loves me and intends to keep me in her life.

 

It's all so upsetting

 

Getting out of there for a little while will probably help. It just sounds like too small a town with too little breathing room.

 

What I mean by non-communication being a gift is that, as painful as it is, it gives you finality. Any slight hint of an opening from K would (will) have you spinning your wheels, dealing with more hurt and confusion for weeks or (god forbid) months longer.

 

When my 2008 relationship broke up, it was because he cheated on me. As unimaginably painful as it was at the time (and I would NEVER have called it a gift back then), he freed me. See, I'm not sure I would ever have severed the relationship on my own, yet it is what desperately needed to happen. As awful as that ending was (and it didn't honor ANYTHING we had had together), he did the ending for me, and in retrospect I am so glad that he did because it broke me down to the point that I finally addressed my own issues, got emotionally healthier, and then met my husband.

[Zapbasket]

What I mean by non-communication being a gift is that, as painful as it is, it gives you finality. Any slight hint of an opening from K would (will) have you spinning your wheels, dealing with more hurt and confusion for weeks or (god forbid) months longer.

 

So you don't think there's any possibility that, given it's not just "getting back together" but rather attending counseling together to learn how to hear one another better, would be incredibly cathartic? I can't help thinking that if we could communicate better, the trust issues would fade at least a little. I know the bulk of the trust issues come from his issues, but I feel badly that perhaps I did not make it safe for him to discuss his feelings with me. I wrote that email to K on faith that if we could agree to go to counseling at this point, it could be the best thing we ever could do.

 

I don't want a relationship with no issues, just one where both of us are willing to show up to work on them. It troubles me that the relationship ended just as we had begun individual counseling, that was supposed to be a tributary to couples counseling, and we never got to that point.

 

I take much of the blame for that, too, because the day the relationship ended (8/23), I was so upset that he just gave up mainly on himself and by extension, the relationship, that I said, "Then there's nothing to talk about, then," and left his apartment. I wish I had suggested right there that we go to counseling together for an agreed-upon period of time before deciding to end things.

 

I dunno. I had (and have) faith that counseling could be a really good thing.

[Zapbasket]

God I feel really low for sending that email. I truly trusted he would respond--with what, I did not surmise, but I never thought he would just choose to ignore me.

 

It has been a week and a half. Of course I didn't expect an immediate response, but I thought after a few days to a week he'd respond, especially given I sent it last Monday morning and so that was a full week and a weekend, and here we are into Thursday of the next week.

 

It hurts especially because we see the same therapist, and his mom has been so closely involved in everything up to now that often she pushed him to do something in/for the relationship that always left the question of whether he'd have done it if she hadn't pushed him. (Yes, I realize how f'ed up that is.) So in a way I feel triply ganged up on, imagining my therapist and his mother saying to him, "You don't have to respond if you don't want to."

 

And believe me, I realize that is true. Just as it is true that in relation to other people, we're really not obligated to do anything we tend to feel "obligated" to do. We can't kill or physically harm the other person; it's pretty universally felt that you don't want to intentionally hurt another person; but then there are things like this, where all three of these people--K, his mom, our therapist--know that I'll spend a certain amount of time in the dark, wondering and hoping and waiting, and then as silence continues feeling confused and sad and hurt, and finally accepting the writing on the wall but feeling humiliated and silly and just...negated...by someone who had a tendency to be negating throughout the relationship anyway.

 

I feel like I'm just getting played all round. Of course I was, and am, imperfect in more ways than I can count. But I was not a bad girlfriend to K. I was a good girlfriend. Yes, after three years I got pretty frustrated that he continuously complained about his job situation and took out his frustrations on me and things around us. I got frustrated that he was so stuck. I tried to be supportive, and eventually, yes, I grew to resent that he wasn't working to improve his situation despite being unhappy with it. I felt gradually that the relationship was becoming ever more unbalanced, and it seemed I was the only person a) aware of it and b) trying to do something about it.

 

From my perspective, again acknowledging that I was not perfect by a long shot, it seemed even from early on that most of the relationship sabotage was coming from K. I can't help it; it's what I observed.

 

But I think what troubles me now, and confuses me, is that K can say, "It was a bad relationship" because of course when it's bad for one person it's inevitably bad for the other. I really resent that because I never heard him truly take responsibility for any part of the relationship that went wrong. It was easier to blame me than to examine himself, and that was the cause of many of our fights. Though he would claim that I only ever blamed him.

 

So then, I think of that, and I wonder: WAS I a bad partner? I tried, I really did. And to see what looks like a definite extrication from the relationship on K's part makes me feel humiliated, small and confused, because why does he suddenly have all this clarity when he seemed to be asleep through most if not all of the relationship?

[Zapbasket]

Have any of you ever felt so bad, and so unable to get a grip on your thoughts despite knowing all the right techniques, that in the aftermath of a bad situation you just up and left town...for good?

 

I'm starting to think that this might be the best course of action for me. It seems ridiculous, on the one hand, especially given I have nowhere to go, but on the other hand, it's feeling increasingly ridiculous to feel this bad with no respite.

[lucy_in_disguise]

Have any of you ever felt so bad, and so unable to get a grip on your thoughts despite knowing all the right techniques, that in the aftermath of a bad situation you just up and left town...for good?

 

I'm starting to think that this might be the best course of action for me. It seems ridiculous, on the one hand, especially given I have nowhere to go, but on the other hand, it's feeling increasingly ridiculous to feel this bad with no respite.

 

Frankly, I don't see why you haven't left yet. I understand you have a job, but besides that, what else ties you to the area?

 

You're living in a town with so few therapists that you are forced to share yours with an ex. Sounds pretty sthity to me. I think better things await you somewhere else.... Probably almost anywhere else tbh.

[lucy_in_disguise]

And to answer your question.... Yes, I have left a place because I felt trapped in my mind thinking of someone. It was a great decision and I would do it again.

 

There is no shame in picking the easy path to happiness. Staying in a 1-horse town where you have no family, few friends, and minimal dating prospects is not the easy path. Of course you are having problems moving on.

 

I don't mean any offense, but I think you need to write off this doofus once and for all. You are pining and rationalizing why that's ok when you need to get angry at him for letting you down, and then write him off, permanently, and move on, because you deserve better than this bllusthi.

 

IMO there is nothing to be understood. He is not the man for you, thats the bottom line, and why is somewhat irrelevent once you accept that fact. If that's not clear to you yet, that's what you need to focus on in therapy.

Edited October 10, 2013 by lucy_in_disguise

[Zapbasket]

Thanks, Lucy. I'm glad to know that someone else has actually up and left town in order to be able to move on from a relationship. I really feel out of my mind right now and if I don't do something, I'm going to sink in so deep I will just lose it.

[Zapbasket]

So...is no one surprised that K hasn't responded to my email? See, I *am* surprised. I really didn't expect it. This wasn't an email with some vague cloying, "I miss you." I kept it simple: we had agreed to go forward in June on the idea that we'd get couples counseling, and we never did and the relationship ended with so little from him that it left me reeling.

 

I didn't say, in the email, "Counseling? Yes or no?" I said I would like the opportunity to go to counseling with him and asked that we please discuss it in person. I don't think I was pushy in any way.

 

I have a hard time believing that he is suddenly so clear about everything that he can draw this hard line and knowing that is what he is doing.

 

Man for me or not, this is extremely hurtful. I think decency and care require more.

[lucy_in_disguise]

Maybe he's trying to do u a favor by not letting this whole show re-start.

 

My ex that brought me to ls and made my life spin out of control did something similar - out of the blue a few months after we broke up, stopped answering emails/ calls - and I recall how painful that was. It was worse than the breakup itself because it made me feel he didn't care at all, that what we hadn't didn't matter and maybe wasn't even real.

 

A few years later we did get back in touch and he apologized for not being capable of a relationship the way I needed. I should have known that was the case all those years ago but I needed to hear it from him to believe it. Now I like to think I would be strong enough to be able to give that closure to myself if I was in a similar situation.

 

I also know now why he stopped picking up. It was something we both needed to move on. The way he went about it with no warning was hurtful but I can forgive.

[heartshaped]

Honestly, GC, I am surprised, but if this is the way out K is taking there is nothing you can do to change that.

 

I agree that perhaps it is time for a move/change.

[lucy_in_disguise]

I think what can be frustrating about a relationship not working out is the questions that are left unanswered. Like if you ever cared, how can you stop, and if you haven't stopped, why would you ignore a simple email (amongst others). For an intelligent, analytical person, there is a need To understand why it didn't work, and it is maddening to be denied those answers.

 

What I have realized that I believe helps me to be a happier person, is that those answers don't really matter. You can spin your brain for years trying to understand k's perspective/ your part in the relationship's failure but you may never get to a satisfactory conclusion. That's the problem with happiness/ love, the dynamics are complex and behaviors frequently irrational. And once it is over, once you have come to the conclusion the person you are with, as you (both) are now, does not make you happy... There is more to be gained by focusing on the future, than dissecting the past.

 

It can be liberating to relinquish the need to understand.

 

Get away for a while... Focus your mind on something new. You may find you don't need all the answers.

[Zapbasket]

Well, I saw my therapist today. Just when I think I maybe should find a different therapist, so that I'm seeing someone who is not also seeing K., I'm reassured that this therapist knows what he is doing.

 

I flat-out asked him whether he had encouraged K to just not respond to my email. He actually looked surprised that K hadn't answered and said, "Absolutely not. I'd never advocate that because I don't believe it is the right thing to do." He continued, "Being on the receiving end of that is incredibly hurtful."

 

I can't disagree with that.

 

I also asked him whether, given he keeps telling me that K is not capable of sustaining a healthy relationship, he correspondingly is telling K the same thing about me. I've tortured myself imagining that he is saying to K, "GC is a b*tch; she's not right for you; etc." But my therapist said no, he was not saying anything along those lines to K. In fact, he said, "Without betraying confidences, GC, the truth is that K is in here desperately trying to figure out his sh*t." I took that to mean he's not really processing our relationship in therapy.

 

We talked a lot about accepting "crumbs" and how that does not make the relationship I want. And how K is only capable of crumbs, and how one example is his non-response to my email. He pointed out the irony of K's continuing bad communication patterns in response to an email requesting counseling together to learn better communication patterns. Yes, my therapist said, K does sometimes show up and do what he's supposed to do. But you want to have that happen CONSISTENTLY. That's the difference between someone who is healthy in a relationship versus someone who is not. And on my end, he lauded me for loyalty and the tenacity of my feelings for K, but he said that it teeters over into the unhealthy category when I love someone so much that I forget to love myself first and foremost.

 

"Never," he said, "get involved with a man who is so enmeshed with his mother." He also said to me that just because K is in therapy doesn't mean he is going to get "cured." I said, "Well, but if he's committed and keeps on coming, then he can get better, right? As you said in the last session, it's not like he's a narcissist."

 

My therapist said, "Well, now, I didn't say he wasn't a narcissist. The clinical definition of narcissism spreads across a continuum. When someone is on that continuum, not quite to the NPD category, that stuff does not change very easily, or at all." Once again, he is reiterating that change will come about very, very slowly for K...if at all.

 

It is clear what my therapist is trying to communicate to me, but somehow even though I see it too and have for a long time, I can't let it all go. I think because I have not experienced a man who is truly available, truly shows up to the relationship, etc. That, and this stuck thing from my early family dynamics that believes if I can keep extracting the crumbs, eventually I will get the whole enchilada.

 

These revelations don't mean I'm not still beside myself about K not responding to me. I still am holding out some hope that he will respond soon enough. Is that crazy?

[Zapbasket]

I think what can be frustrating about a relationship not working out is the questions that are left unanswered. Like if you ever cared, how can you stop, and if you haven't stopped, why would you ignore a simple email (amongst others). For an intelligent, analytical person, there is a need To understand why it didn't work, and it is maddening to be denied those answers.

 

What I have realized that I believe helps me to be a happier person, is that those answers don't really matter. You can spin your brain for years trying to understand k's perspective/ your part in the relationship's failure but you may never get to a satisfactory conclusion. That's the problem with happiness/ love, the dynamics are complex and behaviors frequently irrational. And once it is over, once you have come to the conclusion the person you are with, as you (both) are now, does not make you happy... There is more to be gained by focusing on the future, than dissecting the past.

 

It can be liberating to relinquish the need to understand.

 

Get away for a while... Focus your mind on something new. You may find you don't need all the answers.

 

Oh Lucy, I know you are so right but I just can't fully embrace that right now. I do want answers. More than anything, I want an answer from him, to my email. I think I am just still too wrapped up in the hurt. But I do know that what you are saying is very wise.

 

I read your first thread on LS. It looks like there might have been a previous one that was deleted. Did you find your way to choosing men who treated you better? If so, how? (Hope you don't mind my asking.)

[Zapbasket]

Honestly, GC, I am surprised, but if this is the way out K is taking there is nothing you can do to change that.

 

I agree that perhaps it is time for a move/change.

 

Heartshaped, why are you surprised?

[heartshaped]

Heartshaped, why are you surprised?

 

Because to me ignoring something like that is just cruel. He could have responded with anything at all even that he would rather not, but to not respond at all is cruel and childish. Doing nothing is often far worse than doing something.

 

But in retrospect, I suppose it is often that he does nothing...but this just seems to be to a new degree at least, in my perspective.

[Zapbasket]

I am having such a hard time. This week has been awful for me. On Monday it will have been two whole weeks since I wrote to him.

 

I feel like such a broken record, but I just cannot BELIEVE he hasn't replied. This weekend he is out of town, surrounded by his family and childhood friends. I find myself just wreaked, wondering how in the world he can be carefree knowing he's ignored my email. And the only thing I can come up with aside from him being a huge jerk is that in his mind he fully intends to write me back, but just needed to deal with some feelings.

 

Look. I'm not saying he should want to go to counseling with me. I completely understand why he might not want to. But I think to just ignore me is beyond inconsiderate, even, perhaps, a little sadistic. A friend suggested that perhaps it's because he's so lost and confused and he just really doesn't know how to deal, but for a thirty-eight year-old man I don't think that passes muster as an excuse. Do you?

 

I was holding up very well since the breakup--exercising, hiking, meeting new people, getting involved in new things, job-searching, etc.--but this whole week I have been a disaster, unable to concentrate on anything, just reeling from hurt and confusion and imagining scenarios and being unable to stop my mind from flailing all over the place. I cannot be alone, which is very unlike me; I've lost 10 pounds since the break-up seven weeks ago now.

 

Why, why, why do this to someone? Even just saying, "I think we should not talk for a while" is much better than just ignoring my considered email like he couldn't be bothered and didn't give a flying f*ck.

[Zapbasket]

Because to me ignoring something like that is just cruel. He could have responded with anything at all even that he would rather not, but to not respond at all is cruel and childish. Doing nothing is often far worse than doing something.

 

But in retrospect, I suppose it is often that he does nothing...but this just seems to be to a new degree at least, in my perspective.

 

I just posted my previous comment and then saw this, and started to cry. I so agree, Heartshaped. It hurts unimaginably. Just unimaginably. And I agree, it is to a new degree. I honestly did not expect this from him.

 

Here's another question: do you think he's so "lost" and "confused" that he just cannot muster an answer right now? Do you think that passes as an excuse? (I don't.)

 

Like I said, I feel somehow that this is sadistic. That he's doing it precisely BECAUSE he knows how much I'd hurt from this. That that is his whole intent, and he's going to drag it out as long as he can. Which is just...wow.

 

I wonder what his mother knows of this. That's the other thing that tortures me. I told her I'd written him; I didn't tell her what, but from prior precedent I know she had to have asked him about it after she and I spoke this past weekend. Could she possibly be telling him not to answer me, after always having wanted so badly for us to end up together? God this is such an awful mindf*ck.

[Zapbasket]

I don't know why this only now occurred to me, but...

 

...is it possible that K is not answering not to knowingly not answer, not because he's "lost," but because he's repeating the control cycle that characterized so much of his behavior in the relationship? Meaning, that he KNOWS how much this hurts me and that is his entire raison d'etre.

 

If this is the case, then the pattern is that he'll eventually respond, but the attitude will be "Yea b*tch, I responded on my own good da*m time."

[lucy_in_disguise]

As I see it, the possible explanations are:

 

1. He jut doesn't feel like dealing with it right now

2. He has decided to go hardcore NC for both yalls good

3. He is doing it to hurt you

4. It is a control tactic like you mentioned

 

But, I implore you I ask yourself, why does it matter what the explanation is?

 

He is showing you (in yet another way) that he is not the person for you. Why waste your precious time trying to figure him out?

 

Imagine a teen girl who slept with a bad boy who won't call her back. What would be your advice? Think reallllly hard about why some people can be such jerks? Or move on and forget him?

 

What you're going through seems different because you don't want to acknowledge that k is a jerk, plus you feel like you were much more invested.... But its really not. The point in both situations is that you're beating a dead horse thinking about him. He's not worth the time.