Having trouble getting over my ex...

[saymyname]

It hasn't even been 2 months yet, but I'm realizing I'm having trouble getting over my ex because I keep holding out hope... I've been on dates with other guys and had sex with other guys, and so has he... but we've kept in good contact. He'll text me and I'll text him... random things... I'm always the one to bring up the breakup though... i just feel so dumbfounded. It's hard to comprehend how someone can change so much in a year - it blows my mind. He still treats me very well but says that I'm not the kind of guy he wants, and yet we keep the lines of communication totally open... I asked him if he wanted to be friends, and he said he thinks it's too soon... he thinks he wants some kind of glamorous plastic gay boy, which doesn't make sense to me at all... he was never into that before. We hooked up this weekend after the club and had sex that night and again the next day. It was very affectionate but still he keeps his distance - he wouldn't say I love you back. He's so bent on being single, but keeps me around. It's killing me. I asked him if he'll ever think we'll be together again in the future, and he said he doesn't know, and doesn't want to say yes or maybe because he doesn't WANT me to wait around for him. But I'll say something like, well what happens when you've realized how good you had it, when these plastic boys and this plastic life you're into right now, when you realize it's not so glamorous - will you come running back? It's so unhealthy for me to even want someone who doesn't want me, and he's the one that fucked around the last couple months, too. I just feel so fucking used and emotionally abused and thrown out.

And it's so fucking hard because I still love him and I don't see how I can get over him when we're like this. It's as if I'm just waiting for him to realize his error. But instead he's crushing on this other guy, which is making me so mad, and so frustrated, because I don't even know why I would want to be with someone who is so young and confused and wants someone fake instead of the genuine lover he had. I want to stay friends so that maybe things can work out in the future, but staying on these friendly and affectionate terms makes me feel like I'm just going to pine over him for 5 months while he has various flavors of the week until he realizes how big he fucked up, which may never happen. I'm taking this whole thing a lot worse than he is, too, which is also unfair.

Oh, and by lines of communication, I mean 45 minute long phone conversation, calling each other on skype, etc. I tried to just do the whole no contact thing and it lasted about a week until he started contacting me and then I caved in. He started to get a little jealous too when he knew I was seeing someone. I feel like he's a power freak and if he's not manipulating someone and controlling their emotions, if he doesn't have a guy wrapped around his finger, then he isn't satisfied, and somehow he's got me back in that position. I feel like I should just totally cut him out of my life, block him, delete him, but then it's like... well... I still love him a lot and care about him.

And as soon as we finished having sex this weekend he said, directly after, "that was a mistake, you know, that doesn't change anything," and I'll be like why do you act like this is so fucking final? And he gets pissy whenever I bring up the actual breakup and says we should be in a different place with it now. I don't get it.

 

[ThreeCrows]

Ugh... that really sucks. He's been really unfair to you. I can't think of advice, so all I can offer is my sympathy and hope that things improve for you.

 

[Horschallen]

It takes time to get over a relationship. It will help to begin the process of letting go by not pressing on him to explain, to communicate with you, etc. Try not to instigate any future dialogues and begin to diversify yourself with other people in different groups. 2001 was a very difficult year for me and three years later, my move across the country helped me with the letting go issue. Even now, I still think about him very often, but it is not as painful as it was back then. I really do wish you well with this journey.

 

[saymyname]

It takes time to get over a relationship. It will help to begin the process of letting go by not pressing on him to explain, to communicate with you, etc. Try not to instigate any future dialogues and begin to diversify yourself with other people in different groups. 2001 was a very difficult year for me and three years later, my move across the country helped me with the letting go issue. Even now, I still think about him very often, but it is not as painful as it was back then. I really do wish you well with this journey.

Thank you. Those sound like good ideas. I think maybe that's what's made it so hard - I keep trying to make sense of things, and I can't. I almost feel like the last couple of months, he was trying to get me to break up with him by acting out all the time. But he knew I never would, and eventually it became mutual when it was obvious to me that something was up, and I brought it up before him. I agreed with it at the time to save face. But now I'm just flustered because I over analyze and think about everything, and he either repressed it (admittedly) or doesn't think about it. I've tried to explain to him how I feel, but it never feels like enough. And he just acts like he's so scott free, like we had this totally clean break, and I've never really lashed out at him and screamed like I want to, call him a heartbreaker, let him know he can't just feel like everything was okay because it wasn't. I feel very "You Oughta Know..." by Alanis... but since we're still friends, I've never exactly gotten to say any of those things to him, because I figure if I do, it'll just look crazy and desperate, and I'll just look even more desperate and controllable than I already was...

I guess, though, at the end of the day, making him feel bad for being a confused and fickle 18 year old wouldn't make me feel any better...

 

[Seasoned]

What would you tell your best friend if they came to you with this story? Please take care of your emotional health. It's easy to get addicted to a person. This may have happened to you. My advice for you is to stay busy and keep dating. But I know how difficult it can be when talking, texting, etc. No matter how much you might want him getting/staying emotioning hooked is not good for you. You need to take control and do what is best for you. You may have to find strength you may not even know you have to avoid him. Horny people sometimes make poor choices. His comment that sex was a mistake once he got his rocks off speaks volumes. Doing it again would mean you are willing to take table scraps. You need to be your own best friend and stay strong.

You don't want to pine away nor do you want to obsess over this guy. Take steps every day to move on. Remember what it felt like when, after sex, he said it was a mistake. Good luck and I'm sorry for your pain. I know it's real and I know you are hurting. It will get better if you don't reopen the wound.

 

[saymyname]

Thanks... that makes a lot of sense. The sex was both of our faults though... he kissed me so passionately and I kept saying, "I love you," silence, "say it back," "shh, no words." It hurt a lot. He said it was too weird to say that. It made it feel like all of that potential is still there but he doesn't want to reopen it. And you're right about being addicted to a person. I'm starting to wonder if maybe it's not that I miss him so much as I just miss being with someone. I liked that, it was my first big relationship, I'm 21 and I always imagined what love would be like, so maybe I just miss that companionship, but I know I deserve someone who treats me better and doesn't start to run around on me after a few months.

 

[saymyname]

RANDOM NIGHTTIME TEXT... UGH...


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNyRU0fKHAY[/ame]

 

[rareboy]

You need to accept that he's gone.

That means not hooking up with him or spending time with him unless there are others around.

I think it is great that you can still be friends and you should treasure that.

I think you need to agree that you need to really take a break and not get together or even communicate for a few weeks in order to allow each of you to come to terms with the reality of your relationship being over.

Because what you have right now is a sort of twilight zone relationship and i don't think it is healthy for either of you.

 

[saymyname]

He texted me today telling me he's dating someone... I am so livid... I feel so used... It hasn't even been 2 months... and half the reason we broke up is because he said he is not in a place where he can be in a serious relationship right now... it makes the whole thing feel so cheap... I feel so truly and completely angry... I want to delete him from my life completely, I want to delete him from facebook and delete his number and show him how if he can move on that quickly then clearly he didn't respect what we had or it didn't mean as much to him as it did to me... we got in a big fight... but I'm afraid deleting him will just look immature and i'll regret it later...

 

[modernaire]

Dude, delete him! He's obviously "deleted" you.

 

[Lefty]

Say WHAT my name...

Look immature?

Bubba, what looks immature is you holding on to something and you

won't let go.

When you have finished using the toilet, you wipe your ass and flush...
do you not?

Well buckaroo, this is the same procedure....now wipe your ass, flush
that toilet, wash your hands and dry them.

Come out clean...refreshed and ready for your next meal which may be
the Banquet rather than thhe all day buffett....

I don't know how to make it clearer to you.....Maybe...Clean the Fucking
House and get rid of the Fucking Louse.

It is a brand new Day and you need/want to play it that way or you will
stay in the shit sucking hind Tit..

 

[saymyname]

Dude, delete him! He's obviously "deleted" you.

yup. i was going to, and i sent him a message continuing part of the conversation we had on text earlier, and he deleted me. he was right. we cannot be friends this summer. it's too volatile. i also realized that the guy he said he was dating... i'm pretty sure they hadn't even met by the time he said that - he was just trying to get a rise out of me. as a friend explained to me, if he was actually concerned for my emotional well being, he wouldn't have texted me saying that the way he did - he did it in a way that he was looking for a reaction. and he got it. i deleted him from my phone too after leaving him a pretty nasty voicemail.

in a way i feel like i totally over reacted, but the emotions that were fueling it were totally legitimate. part of me feels like i should at some point apologize for overreacting, but all my friends said not to, because he's the one who has made the final move, and if he has any sense about him he'll know that my emotions were legitimate (even if the reaction was a bit much), and he'll make some kind of amends once it's cooled off, and if not, he's pretty much as nasty as i've always thought he was.

 

[Lefty]

No cowboy,

You did not over react. You may have over emoted...thats your evaluation.

Some "bastard" (for want of another term) just kneed you in the nuts...

then came back with a baseball bat to make sure he finished off the job..

Get on your pony and ride there are lots of corrals out there that need

attention and one of them has your name on it.

 

[saymyname]

Thanks guys. I guess I'm going to do what rareboy said to do in the beginning - go at least a few weeks without talking. Everything is just too fresh right now, and I think since he's taking it easier than I ever did, whenever he would send me a friendly text, or whenever we'd be on skype or call, or fuck, whatever, it was a way for me to get a fix of how addicted I am to him, whereas for him it wasn't as hard. So maybe he was innocent in keeping up that contact, although I'm sure it was comforting to him to know that I still love him, but for me it was very damaging.

What bothered me the most was how whenever we'd get in a fight, he'd never want to hear it. He never wanted to talk about the break up, he'd get angry if I brought it up, his excuse always being that I "agreed to it," as if when someone is about to dump you, you can... disagree to it? That's what my last message to him said: I only agreed to it because what else was I going to do, beg you not to? So you can stop using that as some kind of excuse to let yourself feel less guilty for totally wrecking us and then start 'dating' someone not even 2 months later. I also told him that if he wasn't happy in the relationship, which he said in a text, along with how we weren't good for each other, that he certainly never, ever said that to me during the relationship, he never communicated about any problems so that we might have been able to work on them, and it actually really offended me that he said the relationship itself was shit (If I ruined it, I ruined shit, he said) because last summer was pretty amazing, and parts of this winter too, and he knows that. Some very romantic things happened. But he's the one that fucked it up and here I am picking up the pieces of my heart. I never thought someone could hurt me so much. I wish I could just turn off my emotions like him. I think I just need to realize though that the good was a long time ago, and he's changed and become pretty vapid and cruel, but I can't make him realize that, and I just need to take care of myself. Maybe in a couple weeks or months we'll be able to try and be friends again, but there's too much right now. He'd send me some random text because who knows, maybe he was lonely or still saw me as a comfort zone guy, and I'd get the text and have this little flicker in my heart every time that he still is thinking of me, and I think about how hard we kissed the last time and how he was rock hard the moment he laid down in bed, but then I think of how he slept on the couch "because" and how he probably didn't realize all that communication was keeping me on the brink.

 

[StlKj]

You're not trying to get over him. You're still dating him. The problem is, he's not dating you. He's using you. And you just keep investing more time and energy into him, weaving fantasies of the conversations you'll have some day, obsessing over what you still want to say, in the hopes of getting some kind of rise out of him. You're spinning chaos here because you don't want order. Paragraphs and paragraphs of analysis and "shouldas" and "still coulds." And what is it getting you? Nothing.

Cut him off. Don't contact him to cut him--just do it. Stop taking his calls. Stop taking his texts. Delete him from facebook. Delete from your life.

Then, mourn his loss. You have to let this die--if you've seen any zombie movies at all, then you know that trying to keep something alive beyond its death always ends badly. He's figuratively eating your brains, and you just keep letting him. This has nothing to do with what he's doing to you--it's what you want him to keep doing to you.

You're going to keep picking at your wounds, and they're going to stay infected. They need to scab over so they can heal.

 

[saymyname]

You're right. I know. Thank you for the insight. Very true about him using me - when we got in the big text fight yesterday, one of the things I said to him specifically was that he was a user.

I've been reading about psychological manipulation lately and it's all kind of coming together. It's really scary. During a conversation I had with a poster here, LoveIsNow, he mentioned that part of my ex never wanting to talk about the breakup or never wanting to own his part of it, and always refusing any feelings of responsibility (and hence guilt) is that he doesn't want to admit to himself that he's emotionally abusive and emotionally manipulative. I think he was right. My ex actually said to me last weekend, I don't remember what brought the conversation on, he said something jokingly and I believed him, and he was like, "that's the thing about you. It's so easy to manipulate. You're like a marionette. I could do whatever I want, it's like I had you attached to strings and you'd go in whatever direction I decided." And apparently, for people that are manipulative to that extent (psychopathic manipulation), once they get 'bored' with their victim, that's it - as the french say, ce tout. Zip.

 

[StlKj]

You're right. I know. Thank you for the insight. Very true about him using me - when we got in the big text fight yesterday, one of the things I said to him specifically was that he was a user.

I've been reading about psychological manipulation lately and it's all kind of coming together. It's really scary. During a conversation I had with a poster here, LoveIsNow, he mentioned that part of my ex never wanting to talk about the breakup or never wanting to own his part of it, and always refusing any feelings of responsibility (and hence guilt) is that he doesn't want to admit to himself that he's emotionally abusive and emotionally manipulative. I think he was right. My ex actually said to me last weekend, I don't remember what brought the conversation on, he said something jokingly and I believed him, and he was like, "that's the thing about you. It's so easy to manipulate. You're like a marionette. I could do whatever I want, it's like I had you attached to strings and you'd go in whatever direction I decided." And apparently, for people that are manipulative to that extent (psychopathic manipulation), once they get 'bored' with their victim, that's it - as the french say, ce tout. Zip.

He wasn't joking. You need to remember this every time you think about wanting to get back together with him. Basic rule: Those who manipulate and control others do not ever respect them. You lost yourself; it's time to take you back.

 

[saymyname]

He wasn't joking. You need to remember this every time you think about wanting to get back together with him. Basic rule: Those who manipulate and control others do not ever respect them. You lost yourself; it's time to take you back.

I completely agree. It reminds me of when he said to be back in December, when I asked him why he treats me badly, his answer was, "because I know I can treat you however I want and you won't do anything about it," and the next morning he admitted to how horrible that was and I asked him if he had any idea why he does that, and he said he knows that I'm a great guy and that he didn't know why he'd treat me that way. I guess for me, what I wonder is what's going through his head: why does he get so angry whenever I point out that he's manipulative and that he's kind of a nasty person? He gets very angry and I wonder if he has any sense of guilt or remorse for being such a prick.

By the way, I didn't mean he was joking about what he said, but that he said something jokingly which lead to that part about being a marionette.

 

[syoBsUtsuJ]

I wish the best for you ... breaking up is always difficult, but I am still friends with all of my ex-boyfriends. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad yet ... it just is. You ex sounds like an ass, so good riddance to him; you deserve better!

 

[saymyname]

With the information that keeps coming out about your ex, you'd be a fool to keep him in your life at all.

I know. His friend told me too that he's only known that guy since Thursday. He texted me about it on Friday. I'm sorry, but no one starts dating that quickly. Even me and him, we were "seeing each other" for like 2 weeks before we called it anything, and then another week before it was a relationship. I am pretty sure he was trying to push my buttons and he succeeded. And then I reacted in a way that allowed him to cut us out of each other's life. He said he didn't think we should be friends this summer anyways because it's too soon. I feel bad for some of the things I said to him, but then I just think of all the things he did to me. I think the best thing right now is to just let it rest, at least for a few weeks. And I don't even know why I think I should ever be the one to restart communication first, even if months go by - he should be the one to do it, because he's the one that caused all this pain. If I go back to him and start communication again first, it's just another case of me going back to get a little fix, overanalyzing everything, him treating it with a grain of salt. I should just focus on myself and finding a guy that cares about me as much as I do about him, cause this is not healthy at all.