She 'doesn't see future with me'

[Lotsgoingon]

I noticed something: you both fell hard after starting very casual. I can see how the surprise of that (hey, we like each other for real!) would be intoxicating. But just because it's intoxicating doesn't mean it's got any depth or staying power. 

You should NOT be spending every weekend together. No, too much too soon. Way too much too soon. You ease into that. Even six months to a year into the relationship, you want to leave some room for one of you to go off and do something else on a weekend.

Sounds like you guys smothered each other. A good romance needs some separation. You need the partners to be off and doing interesting things on their own and that adds to their appeal to each other.  You basically wore each other out. And that would be the case even if she didn't have this ex in the picture.

 

 

[Interstellar]

3 hours ago, mn7 said:

I just want to make a quick reply to those of you responding to me and trying to help. I really appreciate it, from the bottom of my heart. This is brutal for me and I hope that regardless of what turn this takes.... getting back together with her, or really moving on, that I will be able to look back at these posts and grow.

I continue to randomly have these awful feelings of rejection, confusion, and downright feeling crappy. I keep feeling like this is a really bad dream.

Of course,  you’re human you’re not a robot you’re supposed to feel that way. 

But time is mankind’s greatest healer and it will heal all wounds. 

 

Edited March 21, 2021 by Interstellar

[ExpatInItaly]

10 hours ago, mn7 said:

But, I think you're 100% right in that she's very attached to this guy.

This is normal. However poorly he might have treated her, they were together a long time . And share a child together (correct?) That attachment runs deep and she was trying to fill the void with you. She isn't used to being on her and it felt good to have a guy who was crazy about her, but...you're not him. Her heart and mind are still too enmeshed with him. 

She is going to need a long time to get over this, but my suspicion is that they are in the process of getting back together right now. 

[elaine567]

12 hours ago, mn7 said:

. Since everything out here was pretty much shut down, our Tuesday hangouts we typically drove to an empty parking lot and just sat in the car chatting it up, making out, and usually having sex.

Few grown women who would be happy with this arrangement, pandemic or no pandemic...

This is adolescent stuff, or how you treat an escort....
No wonder she thought about it and broke up with you and went back to her ex.

[Watercolors]

OP, you shouldn't be heart broken about your breakup. You should be embarrassed. You admit in the thread, that you only planned to have casual sex with her for a couple of weeks, and that you lied to her about your age etc. so already you aren't starting this "relationship" off on good terms. What did you think would happen? It wasn't a relationship, as much as it was you two hooking up in parking lots for six months. Wow. Why would you do that?

If you want to have a real relationship with a woman, you need to be a better man. No more lying. If you just want casual sex, then pay for it. Don't get involved with a woman who has baggage (like an ex-boyfriend and a child), thinking she's great to have casual sex with. You didn't have a real relationship here. You had a six month casual fling. That was built on lies. Both you and she didn't want anything serious and it got mucked up, b/c of the way you two avoided real emotional intimacy, since the physical intimacy was at the forefront of both your minds to begin with. She broke up with you, once she realized this scenario was going nowhere. Hookups in public places for dates? Gross. 

[Lotsgoingon]

Agree with @Watercolors: you started out by blatantly lying to this woman. What that tells me is that you didn't have the mindset or maturity to have a real relationship. 

Look, it's OK to go for casual sex if that's what you want. But own that brother. Claim your age and then come by the hookups honestly. Every time you lie to get something, it actually undermines your confidence and undermines your self respect. You're faking it. You want love and even casual encounters to be an affirmation of who you really are. 

People who tell the truth can emerge from casual encounters with lots of good feelings. Casual partners can sometimes drop an observation on us (point out something no one else has noticed) that's worth millions and turns out to be helpful for all kinds of relationships. Sometimes this happens (really learning something about ourselves from a casual partner) because people will hook up with people vastly different than they usually get together with. And so this person from planet (or former planet) Pluto ends up noticing something that our friends don't even notice.

You lose all this opportunity and real confidence by lying. Notice I'm not even slamming lying on moral grounds. I'm slamming lying on the grounds that it weakens our own ability to learn from other people and our ability to feel great about ourselves. 

The lying = you're not ready for anything serious. You want something serious, then own your self and show up for real. 

What you describe sounds like those femme fatale movies where (like Body Heat) where the immature guy falls so hard for the femme fatale woman that they'll kill for her.  (I don't sense that his woman was a femme fatale.) These male characters are totally unbalanced and they get trapped by the intoxication of lust and love. They'll do anything to sustain the passion. But these characters couldn't sustain any kind of real relationship, and in fact, they are dumb because the woman is scamming them all along. The point is that intoxication/infatuation/wild lust isn't very smart at really figuring out the other person. It's overwhelming feeling (which is very convincing) with underwhelming brain power and clear thinking.

The way to avoid all this is to stay in your life. Not talk to someone so often. Go out and live a real life separate from this person. You had to shut down a lot of your life during these months. That never really works. 

[mn7]

I definitely "caught feelings" and she did too. I guess she just came to her senses and realized that she wasn't over her Ex.

[SpecialJ]

I think her actions indicate a pretty simple explanation that other posters have also pointed out. If she was trying so hard to immediately fix things with a cheating ex after each time he treated her poorly, that indicates she's deeply insecure. Someone a few months out from that, especially who is still in contact with the ex any more than is absolutely required for co-parenting, is feeling like crap and looking for external validation to boost her ego since she doesn't know how to do it herself (if she did, she wouldn't have accepted and continued to long for such a garbage situation). She told you she wanted to start casual and then got swept up in fantasy attention that made her feel way better for a while than her ex treating her like crap. Without the pressure of it needing to be real at first, it felt like a strong and open connection because sparks flew and it went fast since she hadn't been thinking about actually following up seriously and could just react in the moment. Plus, you created a situation where every time you saw each other it was almost like sneaking around because you don't want to get caught having sex in a public place, so you've artificially upped the intensity of the highs that come with every time you meet up. 

 

Usually when this dynamic produces the feeling of great sparks and deep connection, it's because two people who are missing something bond in a fantasy way that isn't sustainable, because the missing thing is internal to themselves and not external to a partner. So yeah, short-term it feels like an amazing connection because of the intensity and inherent instability of it,  but long-term it basically never works out. It may make other types of romantic connections feel more boring because they aren't as overwhelming, but that doesn't make this one healthy or sustainable... which is a reflection of what's going on with you inside that was there before you even met her. 

 

She's looking for a good therapist, showing you outright she has issues (although she's working on them, and seriously, good for her!). Can you let her go and introspect about any fears and emptiness you may have that attracted you to someone with low self-esteem (willing to settle for car sex dates), perhaps who seemed to need rescuing, giving you the rescuer role and allowing you to fill your own life that way? Or maybe even simpler, that you seek a fantasy situation that can't really go anywhere? Did you lie to her a bunch about yourself because on some level, if she rejected you, she doesn't know the real you to reject which softens any unexpected blows? Lots of possibilities here, all related to self-preservation tactics to shield you from healthier intimacy.

[mn7]

2 hours ago, SpecialJ said:

I think her actions indicate a pretty simple explanation that other posters have also pointed out. If she was trying so hard to immediately fix things with a cheating ex after each time he treated her poorly, that indicates she's deeply insecure. Someone a few months out from that, especially who is still in contact with the ex any more than is absolutely required for co-parenting, is feeling like crap and looking for external validation to boost her ego since she doesn't know how to do it herself (if she did, she wouldn't have accepted and continued to long for such a garbage situation). She told you she wanted to start casual and then got swept up in fantasy attention that made her feel way better for a while than her ex treating her like crap. Without the pressure of it needing to be real at first, it felt like a strong and open connection because sparks flew and it went fast since she hadn't been thinking about actually following up seriously and could just react in the moment. Plus, you created a situation where every time you saw each other it was almost like sneaking around because you don't want to get caught having sex in a public place, so you've artificially upped the intensity of the highs that come with every time you meet up. 

 

Usually when this dynamic produces the feeling of great sparks and deep connection, it's because two people who are missing something bond in a fantasy way that isn't sustainable, because the missing thing is internal to themselves and not external to a partner. So yeah, short-term it feels like an amazing connection because of the intensity and inherent instability of it,  but long-term it basically never works out. It may make other types of romantic connections feel more boring because they aren't as overwhelming, but that doesn't make this one healthy or sustainable... which is a reflection of what's going on with you inside that was there before you even met her. 

 

She's looking for a good therapist, showing you outright she has issues (although she's working on them, and seriously, good for her!). Can you let her go and introspect about any fears and emptiness you may have that attracted you to someone with low self-esteem (willing to settle for car sex dates), perhaps who seemed to need rescuing, giving you the rescuer role and allowing you to fill your own life that way? Or maybe even simpler, that you seek a fantasy situation that can't really go anywhere? Did you lie to her a bunch about yourself because on some level, if she rejected you, she doesn't know the real you to reject which softens any unexpected blows? Lots of possibilities here, all related to self-preservation tactics to shield you from healthier intimacy.

This really resonates with me. I appreciate it.

I believe that the lies that I told her initially were more for my own protection. I wasn't looking for a relationship and what I think I was looking for was some casual sex and external validation that I can attract others. My prior relationships really took a toll on my self-confidence. One big thing to me is that she constantly complimented my face which is something I've been very down about for a long time. Maybe its important to note that I view her as physically more attractive than other girls that I have been able to attract in the past.

The lies I told her were actually pretty simplistic... I lied about my name so she could not find me on social media and blow my cover, my age was only 2 years off and that was really just because my dating app profile was linked to a facebook account that had the wrong age, and I lied about having kids because I felt that would be a turn off for others (and I wasn't looking for a long-term relationship.) I don't really know how to explain it but the kids thing to me was a big growing moment because I viewed that as an unattractive quality that others would not want, however, now its in the first sentence of my dating profile, lol. Keep in mind that I told her the truth about these things after like 2 weeks. And, I am proud to say that I was an open book after that and continue to be now. I'll pat myself on the back for learning from that.

To me, the car sex thing wasn't a big deal because we were so locked down out here that there really wasn't an alternative. We did go on quite a few regular dates as restrictions allowed. A lot of times when we'd meet up to hang out in the car it was just to chat and get to know each other which is all we'd really be doing at a bar or something anyways. Both of us having kids means that it was challenging to schedule times we could hang out so the mid-week car thing was often time-restricted on both sides.

It definitely did have an element of sneaking around. And we both made that comment a few times that we felt like we were doing something wrong, which is kinda funny since we weren't and neither of us had car sex for quite some time before that. We even made jokes like - I wonder what our kids will say when they find out that we've just been meeting in cars and hanging out, lol. I think we both looked at it very light-hearted.

Looking back, it seems like she was definitely missing something that I was fulfilling. I think her Ex wasn't the most attentive and seemed really preoccupied with his own life. I thought to myself quite a bit that she seemed almost like she was living her life to support his, rather than living them together. Does that make sense? As an example, he was a triathlete and they traveled quite a bit for it, but they almost never traveled just to travel, or he was frequently not around because he was training. It just really felt like she didnt have much going on in her own life and focused more on what he had going on. I probably butchered that explanation but hopefully you get it.

She definitely had insecurity issues, which drove her to accepting her Ex's behaviors. External validation from me probably made her feel great after feeling like crap from his behaviours, but then reality struck and she chose the easy path for now, which I'm assuming will be to get back together with him, if she hasn't already.

I'm not sure what I was missing that she fulfilled but clearly I need to work on identifying that. What do you recommend I do to try and figure that out? I'm going on the assumption that you all are right, and working through accepting that. Logically, I completely agree. However, emotionally, I don't want to agree.

I feel that my next steps, specifically as it relates to this relationship, is to distance myself from her and work on myself. If this was meant to be, then perhaps it will be, but atleast for now, its not. I have my own issues I need to identify and correct, and she does too. If our paths re-align, great, if not... then the connection was wrong and I'll hopefully be in a healthier relationship instead.

Does it make sense for me to put an artificial timeline on when to reach out to her to see how things are going in her life? Thinking months here, not days, lol. My hope there is that the Ex will continue to screw up and she'll continue to seek counseling to fix herself, thus maybe opening the door to trying this again with both of us in a healthier place. The thought behind that is it'll pacify me for now to think there is potential for something in the future with her and some of the uncertainty will be minimized by setting a timeline. But, my logical brain tells me that the most likely and probably optimal scenario is for me to fix myself and then I will likely have full acceptance that I don't even want to be in a relationship with her. Fully moved on.

Edited March 21, 2021 by mn7

[Marc878]

You were her rebound. Look it up. 
 

Hopium  just keeps you in limbo.

[SpecialJ]

@mn7, usually this stuff has to do with abandonment fears, sometimes with fear of feeling responsible for someone else if there's too much intimacy. I suspect for you it's more the first one. One way to work on that is spending time building your self-esteem outside of dating and connecting better with yourself and your needs. Figuring out what you like to do alone or with friends, what makes you feel accomplished and good about yourself (not in a way that gets you praise from others, just makes you happy or satisfied even if it's something no one ever knows about), really anything that promotes self-acceptance so that you're not willing to abandon yourself trying to get validation from another person. Plus you need to do some work to strengthen your boundaries,  ie so you can say no when you don't want to do something without worrying it'll hurt a connection with someone (any connection with a truly healthy foundation leaves room for saying no as long as you're communicating about it), and just generally so, again, you don't lose yourself. It's similar to what some other people suggested for you to get right with yourself, really, but explains more in depth about why that may be going on.

 

Like, the comments you made about your face. That really sucks and I'm sorry you feel that way, but ultimately your face doesn't matter as much if you're comfortable with who you are. A healthy relationship doesn't rely on someone to keep validating you in that way, because the relationship should be about the strength of the connection and not about the ego boost of having a pretty woman frequently compliment you. It's nice to have as a fringe benefit, but you shouldn't need that to feel good about yourself. Feeling good about yourself and sustained confidence comes from inside, not out. If you seek women out who do that to make you feel that way, you're often going to get people-pleasers who will give you nice words over being real with you. 

 

How long ago was your divorce? There may be aspects of your divorce you haven't dealt with, too. Not saying you're not over your ex, but divorce still takes a lot out of people... you may not trust yourself because you once chose the "wrong" partner or you may not trust others depending on what you went through. Which means lots of people will be over their exes but not over the failure of the relationship. 

 

I'm glad you're open to thinking more about your side of this, because another aspect to choosing an intense fantasy relationship is you can easily use it as a distraction and focus on what's wrong with her (ruminating that she's maybe not over her ex) or what she's doing or how she feels so that you can actually ignore your own pain that existed before you met her. Always easier to try to solve other people's problems than your own, right?  So in that vein, and rephrasing hopium keeps you in limbo... you don't need to decide right now when and if you should talk to her again. It's not an either/or statement. It's okay not to know right now. I've been where you are in it being difficult to detox and think about letting go all at once, and it being so painful to try to do that it actually makes it more difficult to focus on yourself. My suggestion is you don't give yourself a timeline to reach back out to her but instead give yourself a timeline to check back in with yourself about how you're feeling. For example, I won't talk to her for the next 2 months while I focus on myself and other things. And in 2 months, I'll see how I'm feeling and if I'm feeling better, maybe I should wait another month or two or three to not interrupt my progress and check in with myself again to decide if I even want to talk to her or not.

 

It gives you a chance for your emotions to catch up to your logic and see if your perspective shifts, while not causing you anxiety with fear of never being able to talk to her again. Focus on yourself first, worry about that later when you're thinking more clearly. If you feel good about your progress and you've increased your self-esteem and have healthier boundaries and want to reach out, that can be okay. As long as you have zero expectations. But it's okay to not know how you're going to feel instead of artificially trying to hold on and having some illusion of control through "planning." 

 

I do agree, and see the most hope in your comment, that "my logical brain tells me that the most likely and probably optimal scenario is for me to fix myself and then I will likely have full acceptance that I don't even want to be in a relationship with her. Fully moved on." And I don't think you should drag this out and keep reaching out to her because she ended things and she's kind of a mess. But it's totally okay that you feel like you want to, and that maybe you'll want to in the future, or maybe you won't. All the ways you feel right now are okay, and after some time shifting focus to yourself, it's very likely you'll start feeling a lot better and even being attracted to other types of women who can give you what you are looking for (once you figure out what that actually is).

Edited March 22, 2021 by SpecialJ

[Lotsgoingon]

Hang in there. You probably need to work more on seeing this woman for what she is.

Yes, you felt great with her, but ... she's got some serious esteem problems. Has to in order to put up with the ex. Well you gotta let yourself imagine how esteem problems would affect you and her were you to be together more. 

Esteem problems. You express love for her. She barely registers it. She can't take it, can't enjoy it, can't build on it, can't really believe. At its worse, she thinks YOU'RE defective for liking so much--that's how committed low-esteem people can be to their own rejection. Low esteem: she'll put up with abuse. You'll not stand up for herself on a job or with family or friends. She probably doesn' t serious ambitions for herself that she's focused on. 

Worse, she might be in that damaged state where she gets TURNED ON by a semi-abusive guy. You're thinking this ex will mess up and make her miserable and maybe she'll come back to you. 

Dude, that ain't gonna happens. She's COMFORTABLE with the abusive treatment. Emotionally comfortable. She's willing to put up with the bad treatment. She wants to be his doormat. You want to treat her differently because that's who you are. But just know: that treating her in a good way might just be what she doesn't want. People get attached to neglecting and abusive spouses all the time. All the time. You cannot "talk" them out of this or "love" them out of this. They have to fix themselves.

Does she have many girl friends? My bet is no. Does she have serious career focus? My bet is no. Does she have hobbies that she's interested in and pursuing? My bet is no. What this means is that just a month or so more, you would get sick of her, bored to death with her. Find her needy and unmotivated and unfocused. We can only be teenagers kissing and making out in cars for so long. Your adult brain will cut on at some point.  And, you should NEVER trust her if you were to reconcile. You should NEVER assume she isn't floating little offers to the ex. Never!

Releasing him will requires serious work on her part--like years of serious therapy work. Mediocre therapy won't due for this kind of destructive attachment she has. She needs to highly skilled, intense therapy for several years to break that pattern. 

Do you see who you're dealing with? 

Oh, and the big problem with dating a woman like this. Which is guys like you (and I've done this for sure!) start to think to themselves, I'll be so nice. She'll want to be with me. That's utter juvenile illusion. Dating someone like her actually puts you on the defensive, because you go into rescue mode. You try to make things so good for her. Guess what? You don't demand the same attention and care from her. It's a losing proposition. Going in.

Dating someone who still has contact with a neglectful ex is almost--not quite--almost as bad and as fragile as dating a married person. Same psychology. 

 

Edited March 22, 2021 by Lotsgoingon

[ExpatInItaly]

12 hours ago, mn7 said:

Does it make sense for me to put an artificial timeline on when to reach out to her to see how things are going in her life? 

Not really, no. 

Months aren't going to make much difference in terms of how attached she is to her ex. She didn't start dating you for the right reasons. Chances are that when (if) she heals from her past relationship, she will start over totally fresh with someone who isn't from her past.

But my guess is that they're going to continue this dysfunctional relationship for a long time to come. 

[mn7]

So much great feedback, thank you all. This is definitely a process for me and won’t be a quick thing. I’ve made an appointment with a counselor to begin working on myself and am hopeful that will lead to long-term changes.

I’ve been feeling much better about the whole situation, which I attribute a large part of to reading your comments. I’ve been thinking about what to post so hopefully this makes sense to y’all.

• She reached out to me last night.

Last night, out of the blue, she texted me. I debated for a few hours whether to even reply and ultimately gave in and replied. Keep in mind this whole text conversation was about 10 minutes long, it could even have been shorter but I was delaying my responses to her. After not replying to her initial text, after 2 hours she said “Wowww ok, well hopefully your alright I was just checking in on you” I replied asking how she was doing. She basically said the same thing and I told her that I ran a race this weekend and did really well. (bragging, how pathetic!) I then said, “our usual time and place tomorrow?” which I truly meant as a joke, and she said, “lol no, sorry” (ugh, desperate is ugly and I knew the answer) She then asked how I was doing and I gave her vague replies like “enjoying life as it unfolds”, she responded, “Glad to hear your doing well, take care of you”, I said, “you too, keep working on yourself”, her response was, “thanks, u seem so distant”… I didnt reply to that and 5min later she said “U mad at me? or upset?”, I replied “biting my tongue not to say things you don’t want to hear” (clingy!), then we both said goodnight.

I have a ton of thoughts about the conversation but a couple stand out. Why would she reach out to see if I was ok? To ease the guilt or bad feelings she has about how it ended? To make it easier for her to move on if I told her I moved on? Because she misses me? Bored? To see if I would even reply? What was she expecting out of the conversation? The “U seem so distant” comment really confuses me.

• I’m trying to lose interest.

Some of you have made comments about how this was an unhealthy relationship from the start and that I am likely better off anyways. This is something that I am trying to emotionally accept but am accepting more and more from a logical perspective. There are things about her that I do not find attractive and I have been focusing on those to make this easier on myself. I think that we could have been a great couple if we had met at a different time, when both of us were healthier mentally. I randomly think of her throughout the day and when I do I try to think of all the negative things about her. I assume that’s a good idea?

• I’m struggling with periods of feeling down.

Although I’m starting to accept the logical side of this, I’m definitely still feeling pretty rough about it. I think one of the biggest things is how strong that connection we had was. It was literally a stronger feeling than I had for my ex-wife. I know I have to accept that its over because failing to accept it doesn’t make the relationship come back, so I just need to accept it. No use crying over spilt milk, right? I live a fairly easy life with lots of free time. I’ve been trying to occupy myself but I’m already pretty much living the lifestyle that I want, lol. Unfortunately, I can’t distract myself much when I’m lying down to sleep, or during other periods of leisure. I will say though that I’m starting to feel less rejected and not wondering what was wrong with me, instead its more just a longing for the relationship. I try to convince myself that this was the right person, just the wrong time. That doesn’t seem to help much though, haha.

• I’m going no contact

I’m still feeling the desire to continue the relationship. I feel that if we both made some of the personal changes we need to make anyways, along with some changes to the relationship, that it would be worth pursuing. I’ll be honest with y’all and say that her reaching out really made me feel much better. However, I made a bunch of mistakes during that conversation that I’ll probably over-analyze for a while.

I’ve been reading a bunch about No Contact and I think that approach makes the most sense for me. The way I’m rationalizing it is that if I pursue NC and we never get back together then I’ll be a stronger person anyways; or, less likely, if NC leads to the relationship restarting, then even better, lol. So, what I’m going to do is not initiate any contact with her for 30 days. At the end of those 30 days I’ll re-assess and hopefully have no interest in contacting her. Or, I’ll reach out and see what happens. In the meantime though I’m hoping that I’ll continue to grow and ultimately lose interest. My goal is to align my emotions with my brain and learn from this whole experience. The 30 days will be rough, but I think that putting a timeline like that will make it easier for me.

But, what do I do if she reaches out? She only lasted 3 days before texting me, so I have a suspicion she’s not going to go 30+ days without texting me. I’ve read different things that I should not respond at all, or that I should just avoid being the initiator. If I do respond, I definitely will not be saying that stupid clingy desperate stuff again, I know that much!

[trident_2020]

BLOCK HER

[ExpatInItaly]

She's trying to keep you warm as her back-up option in case things go south with her ex again. 

Stop falling for it. 

She is not the great love of your life, dude. 

[Marc878]

No contact means no contact.

She just threw you a breadcrumb.  That’s all this was. 

Hurt people hurt people. No need to analyze this. You were just a rebound.

“Wowww ok, well hopefully your alright I was just checking in on you”.

Her ego thinks she was your whole world and you are alone and pinning away for her.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Marc878

[mn7]

She just sent another breadcrumb asking me about a song in a Spotify playlist we shared while dating. Jeeeez... what a mindgame.

[trident_2020]

You're not doing yourself any favors.

 

[mn7]

3 minutes ago, trident_2020 said:

You're not doing yourself any favors.

 

I didn’t reply, posting here cured that urge.

[trident_2020]

You're not doing yourself any favor by accepting her breadcrumbs

[SpecialJ]

On 3/23/2021 at 2:24 PM, mn7 said:

But, what do I do if she reaches out? She only lasted 3 days before texting me, so I have a suspicion she’s not going to go 30+ days without texting me. 

First, GOOD ON YOU for making an appointment with a counselor 👍

 

If she keeps breadcrumbing you after ending it, it's because of her own stuff. She likes getting your validation and clearly has abandonment issues (obvious from how she clings to her ex when he mistreats her). She'll breadcrumb you for as long as you allow it. 

 

At this point, I'd play no games. I'd flat out respond to her breadcrumb with something like, "I'm going to take some space for a bit since things have ended between us, please respect that." And then after sending it I'd block her for the duration of time you want to be No Contact. That allows you to both communicate directly and place a healthy boundary, eliminates guilt or anxiety around blocking her because you told her you're going off to do your own thing for a while so she shouldn't expect to hear from you while not actually being needy, and most importantly stops you from seeing any more of her breadcrumbs.

 

Having been in a situation where I needed to go no contact for my own sanity with someone who had their own issues and crappy boundaries, I can tell you that even after almost a year of no contact, it didn't ruin any chances, he wasn't mad at me about it at all. He was happy when we reconnected. But since I was feeding myself the same line about if we both just worked on our issues we'd be great together, and then the reality was I did the work and he didn't at all as he had no interest in such things, reconnecting just went the same way over again. That time through, I finally learned my lesson for good.

 

So I encourage you to block her and take some space, while I also understand the compulsion to feel bad about that and fear not being able to reconnect eventually. I assure you that those fears are unfounded, do what's best for you now. And at some point you'll either come out the other end stronger and not interested in reconnecting, or you'll come out stronger then perhaps reconnect and then probably find out that it's a waste of your time. Win for you in either case, though one possibility may be more of a time-waster like it was for me before you totally get there. 

 

It is a process, but you've got this. 

[mn7]

Her last text to me was, "I won’t text anymore apparently u rather not talk"

Perfect. I'm going to continue NC for 30 and re-assess. Like you said, I'll probably not be interested in reconnecting.

[trident_2020]

What's to reassess in 30 days?

 

[mn7]

7 minutes ago, trident_2020 said:

What's to reassess in 30 days?

 

I keep saying I'll re-assess in 30 because I don't want to accept that it's done. But, I can see that it's likely done and am hoping the 30 days will change my perspective to accept it. I atleast know that NC for 30 will help me move on.