Is there any chance of a 2nd chance????

[swimergrl]

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Hi everyone . . . my boyfriend of 8 months and I just broke up on Monday night. He said to me a while back that sometimes he's just not excited to see me and talk to me. However, after he's treated me that way, he feels terrible about it. After that I went on a two week work trip (early April) and he wanted to see if he missed me or not to judge if this relationship was going anywhere. He did, and when I got back things I thought were going great! Then last Tuesday night he says that he still feels the non-excitement feeling when he sees me and may think that we're "incompatible" because we don't like the same things (he likes to party until 4:00 and I don't, he used that example). He brought up the fact again he felt really bad when he treated me like he didn't want to see me.

 

I asked him last Friday if the reason why he told me we were "incompatible" to break up with me or if he was just confused at the situation and wanted to fix it. He said he was just confused. He said he didn't want to hurt me and hated to see me cry. He said that he'd think about it over the weekend and if it was a problem he thought he could fix and one we would work out fine, but other than that we just needed to break up. That weekend we still hung out but he wasn't exactly the nicest person to me, and totally didn't even realize it. I love him still so much and was so hurt by this!

 

Monday night came along and he said that he thought about the effort that he would need to put in, and that the relationship just wasn't working. I sat there crying and he grabbed me in his arms and said it's not your fault and wanted to know why I was so scared to break up. I told him that I didn't want to lose him. He said that his biggest concern for me is that I'd be lonely because I just moved here and started dating him four weeks later. That was 9 moths ago. He said he still wanted to be friends with me because he still cared a lot for me and wanted to still hang out. He’s been friends with all of his ex-girlfriends.

 

Since Monday he's called me twice at work. We play on a recreational team together every Thursday night, so he called to see if I was going, he sounded really happy and joked around with me like it was last month. It seemed to me that he didn't realize that anything had happened, when something huge happened. I don't know how I’ll react to him Thursday nights. He was my best friend down here for 8 and a half months, he didn't really have dependable friends, so I think I filled that void. When we broke up he asked me to please talk to him, which I thought was odd. I think one of the main reason why he broke up with me was because I depended on him for everything, social life, friends, happiness, girl stuff, stress relief, etc and it got too much for him. I didn't know anyone down here when he came along, and I just got lazy and thought that he was enough. But now I’m determined to go out and meet new people and get my own life together before I let him back into my life.

 

People have told me not to call him, not to talk to him at all, but I have to see him on Thursday. He called me today to ask if I would do him a favor and drive him someplace. He already found someone by the time I called him back, but I told him that I do want to be friends with him because he means a lot to me, but I can't right now, I need space and time to do my own thing, and when I’m ready to have him back in my life again I'll let him know. I want him to realize that he's losing something amazing and I treated him SO well (he even told me last week that I treated him really well), and he can't have his cake and eat it too. I tried so hard in the relationship to make him happy. Is there a chance that with this NC thing that he'll see the light and want to return? Maybe when I establish myself down here and get a group of friends together, that pressure of making me happy all the time will disappear and he'll want to come back. I just don't want this NC time period to be too long so that he'll move on and find someone else to replace me. What do you think?

[LucreziaBorgia]

Is there a chance that with this NC thing that he'll see the light and want to return?

 

Only if he can be assured that he won't be coming back to the relationship he didn't want. In other words: there have to be some serious changes before a second chance will work. If all you have to offer is a continuation of the first chance (which he rejected), then there's little hope he'll be back unless he is just nostalgic or lonely. What you can do with your 'no contact' time is to really think about what it was that you were offering him, and see if you can figure out why he wanted to walk away from it. You may have thought that you were offering him the best, but unless he sees it as the best (and he didn't apparently), he won't stick around. Really try to get objective.

 

Make a list of those things you consider 'best' and that were 'so good' - and then try to see if you can figure out what he saw that could be negative about it. For example: you said that you and he were best friends - your only friend. He may have seen that not just as 'being your best friend' - but being obligated to be your friend since you didn't have anyone else - in other words, stifled a bit.

 

This little exercise will probably be painful, but until you can try to see things from his point of view, you won't know what it is you need to work on to see if a second chance will work. There may be a second chance, but it will have to come with an understanding that you have to put the 'first chance' behind you and be willing to start again, using lessons you learn from that chance.

 

Now, there's a very good chance that he just isn't interested in being with you, second chance or not - sometimes when the spark dies, a person will not keep going back to see if they can get it back. They will cut their losses and move on. It sounds like he may have done this - and while its apparent he enjoys your company, it doesn't mean that he's going to want to get back into a relationship with you: hence the 'friends' thing.

 

Even if that's the case - still do make that list. The things you learn to see from more than one angle, may help you in future relationships.

[bicyclejunk]

there's missing someone's LOVE and there's missing someone's COMPANY.

 

When my ex broke up with me, i was crushed, i was hurting very bad. But

i realized later that i was just missing her company and the companionship,

not the actual person inside her. I knew i didn't get along with her 100% and

that she was my Soul Mate, but I still missed her and wanted her back, but it

was just because i felt Alone and missed having her around.

 

Same goes for people who Dump other people. Later they feel bad and then they

start thinking, "Oh, it wasn;t that bad maybe I should give it another Try" but they

feel that way because they Miss the person they dumped and are Lonely.

 

If he has felt more than once that he's just not excited to see you and talk to you,

FORGET THIS GUY. Move on, truly. Seriously. Nothing will change, i guarantee you.

Take my advice.

 

determined to go out and meet new people and get my own life together before I

let him back into my life

 

..This is the SMART WOMEN talking right here. You must do this, YES

[swimergrl]

Thanks for the advice!

 

Just some more on the relationship, back in April he told me somethings that make him unhappy about the relationship and I worked on them really a lot to the point where I stopped doing them. They were annoying habits that made me a better person in the long run anyway. Then later on I asked him what was it about his ex-girlfriend that made them stay together for so long. He told me so I tried to make an effort to make him happy by doing those things. So it's not like I didn't do anything, just depended on him the entire time to the point where he felt obligated to be my friend. Things that he said that he liked about me was that I was independent, reliable, treated my friends really well, and he had a lot of respect for me.

 

Now this may just be my false hope talking, but he said that he never knew what caused him to feel that way towards me, the feeling on un-excitness randomly, most of the time he didn't feel it, but sometimes he did. I think that because I was so dependent on him for everything, but realize that now and am going to do something about it.

 

I want to forget him, I really do, but we work at the same place, although we don't see each other during the day, play on the same team, and live near each other. I still think he's a great person and still care for him a lot but logically to myself he may not have been the right guy for me because of the way he treated me. But if I change the dependency thing . . . I don't know. Is this NC thing a waste of time, or is it good to teach him that I can't be there at a moment's notice for him? Should I just forget it and be friends with him now? Thanks!!!

[LucreziaBorgia]

Should I just forget it and be friends with him now? Thanks!!!

 

Ask yourself this: what do you have to gain by being friends with a guy who will not date you? What do you have to lose by being friends with a guy who will not date you?