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I had a great day at work on Monday, very productive and had plans to meet a friend for dinner later in the evening.

Somewhere between leaving work and arriving at my friends house, a terrible anxiety / depression hit me like a ton of bricks.

I arrived at my friends house and opened up about how I was feeling that day (my friend and I have always had deep & intellectual conversations)

After our talk, I felt a little better.

I have come to realize that the reason for my anxiety is as follows:

I had a good day at work and had plans to meet a friend for dinner, yet the thought of her (provoked by seeing a similar car as hers) put her at the forefront of my mind. The anxiety comes from the fact that even on a day where work goes great and I have plans with a friend, she still holds so much weight in my mind.

Since that day I have been reluctantly going over the facts; I have found it helpful to examine the facts, however much my hearts' continuous love for this woman wants me not to believe them.

Looking at the facts logically has been my only stability in this experience. If I was not insightful enough to look at the facts, I wouldn't be on this site, and I'm sure by now I would have bombarded her with texts, e-mails, phones calls... .Etc...

I am greatful for my own ability to see the facts for what they are, yet I believe my issues remain in the idea that I did not want these facts to exist, they were forced on me, not by choice.

I want to post some of these facts here to help get it out there, and maybe some of you can relate.

Here are the facts.

-She became distant 10 months into our relationship

-She seemingly had no interest in holidays with me past 10months

-She wanted space after a year, left me cold for a month, we got back together and she told me that she didn't want to help herself via therapy (I didn't push it, it was recommended by a health professional)

-She didn't want to spend New Years with me

-She broke up with me sighting that she "isn't made for relationships, and we don't work."

-She didn't go into any detail or give me any closure

-She didn't respect me enough to at least break up using her voice (she did it through text, I asked for a call but she refused)

-She has not once reached out to me in nearly 8 months

-She started flirting with my replacement one month after the break up

-8 months later and she is still with my replacement, changing her profile picture to one of the two of them 2 months ago

-She is pursuing love with another man

-Her and my replacement became Facebook official earlier this month.


Theses are the facts.



When I look at the facts, I feel sad, but more so just confused and disappointed.

After all of this, I am scared that one day she will reach out to me.

I'm scared because I still love her, I am scared because my heart wants nothing more than to feel her love again.

But mostly, I am just so sad that as a man, I cannot let myself get back with someone who has made these facts a part of my life.

I can't take someone back who has acted this way. But I am scared that I might if the opportunity arises.


Any way that I look at it, she holds weight in my mind. The facts hurt and the facts help. But nothing fixes how I feel.

I found what you wrote incredibly sad and relate to much of it. The facts for me, the reality of the relationship, helped me escape, yet like you, I’m still hurting and in danger and scared of running back if the opportunity arises. Only, I don’t think I could ever go back now because of my own list of facts.

It sounds like your heart needs to catch up with your head and reading on here this ‘will’ eventually happen. Until it does keep looking at your facts as they will protect you.

 

Hey Jeff, you're not alone. The relationship that you've laid out speaks volumes. It sounds like it was a very stressful experience.

It's only natural to feel sad, not just for the loss of the relationship but also for the loss of ourselves. Often times we end up grieving more than just the breakup. But it is a good chance to examine the thought patterns that kept us stuck in place.

As for your fear of her reaching out in the future and dragging you back into a destructive partnership, you do have say in that, and now is the time to rebuild your foundation in healthy ways that'll be less likely to cause you to enter another a similar situation again.

Right now the task is taking care of yourself. That means continuing to be open with people you trust and re-evaluating your true criteria for relationships, both romantic and platonic.

What do you think?

Hi Jeff26,

I understand where you are coming from. Facing the facts can be very painful and sad. It's almost like a death, isn't it? A turning point from which, deep inside, you know you can't go back. I've been there, and I felt full of grief and sorrow.  

Making the decision to move forward into the new and unknown, instead of backward into what you know, inevitably closes the door on some of your options—the bittersweet nature of choice. In my experience, it's very worth the effort to move forward. My life has changed for the better, and yours can, too.  

Facing the facts is essential to recovery. And so is feeling, which you have so eloquently expressed in your post. The fear of being vulnerable to a recycle is so understandable. And it doesn't have to mean that you will act on those fears. You can just feel them and do nothing about them.

One "fact" that I've been learning is that feelings don't always demand to be acted upon. They only demand to be acknowledged and felt. If we can practice that without judgement, we are well on our way to not only recovering from the huge losses we have experienced, but changing our lives for the better in every aspect.  

heartandwhole

I think I am doing as well as I logically can.

I've improved my excercise routine, I have been walking my dog about 3 miles everyday since April (Almost every day) and started being far more healthy with my choice of diet. This has lead to a 25-30lb weight loss since the break up. The weight loss has been steady and healthy, I feel like I'm going to be successful in maintaing an "ideal" weight.

I must rewind to say that I was never considered fat, I've always been comfortable in my body as far as confidence, but I was certainly as heavy set as I've ever been before this weight loss.

As you can tell, this has been an ongoing self project of mine that I am proud of.


I also, as I mentioned in the original post, have been doing well with work.

I work at home 2-3 days a week and I am usually at the facility where I work for 1 or 2 days a week.

Really, the only time I don't think about her is when I am working. I take my job very seriously and hold my profession close to my heart. My mindset for what I do taxes out my brain so that nothing else can interfere. (At least most days, I'm only human)

And I have been hanging out with my friends at least 4 days a week.

One thing that I should stop doing is hanging out with her sister every week or so, I know... .I know. But listen; I have been close friends with her sisters husband for nearly 5 years now. In fact, I helped her husband pay for the ring a few years back (he paid me back haha)

I worked with my ex's sisters' husband for a couple of years prior to meeting my ex.

Him and I were and are still to this day, good friends. And the same goes for his wife (my ex's sister).

As I think I mentioned in another post, my ex's entire family did and still do love me. Except for her closest sister, I believe that her closest sister has played a small part in my ex's thinking but who knows. (My replacement was met through her closest sister)

All of this stuff just adds to the pile of confusion. Aside from having BPD, or the ridiculous possibility that she actually never loved me in the first place... .None of what I have experienced is even close to normal.

The amount and strength of love that I have for her and her son, coupled with the love that I have for her family and friends... .Added with the genuine love and interest I received from all of them, just simply confuses the heck out of me. Like, she has to have BPD regardless of any other diagnosis that can be given to her.

At least that's the only thing that seems to make perfectly clear sense in a situation where Ive literally dropped my jaw more times than I can count.



So in a conclusion of sorts; I am doing fine, but I think about her every day still and it's been 8 months.

Jeff,

I can really relate to what you wrote in your original post. I'm only 2 months out from the discard but I've started to have those days like you mentioned, where everything is going great and I'm legitimately not thinking about her until some little thing triggers me and puts me into a negative frame of mind for the rest of the day.

For example, I had a few really good weeks with more ups then downs but then on Monday of this week, she sent a group email to me and my old landlord about trying to get money out of me. The subject matter wasn't what bothered me, it was just seeing her communicating with me albeit slightly indirectly. I have had strict NC and I think I know why it's such an important thing now. After reading the email, I didn't really feel much of anything but later that night, it hit me like a ton of bricks and then I couldn't sleep that night and woke up every hour with her on my mind in the exact way that I did for the first couple weeks after the discard. Sometimes I wonder if maybe we're spending so much time trying to make ourselves forget about this that in the process, we go out of our way to ignore certain triggers which just makes their impact even more powerful when they occur? During these 2 months, I've basically felt as though I'm in survival mode, doing anything and everything that I can to just make it through the day and not be a complete mess at the hands of never-ending thoughts about her. This survival mode has probably led me to developing many subconscious barriers / disassociations that were put there to protect me without me even realizing it was happening. Perhaps because these walls that our subconscious puts up are just natural barriers being built by our mind to stop us from hurting, it causes us to unknowingly be avoiding things that will at one point or another become unavoidable and we will not be prepared to deal with them?

I don't know, I'm just speculating here but again, I can totally relate to how you're feeling. I can't wait for a time when these thoughts no longer dominate my mind and even though that seems like such an impossibility right now, all I can do is have faith that the time will eventually come.