Making the final step away

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

Hi
   My ex left me last year (abruptly and out of the blue) and I have made some progress in insight, but I stilll feel a bit of jealousy and anger over his cheating and lying.
   I am NC and I want to detach once and for all... .in my mind.  I want to let go of the anger hatred and envy and I want to forgive... .I have read the lessons and they help


I am looking for any feedback re: how people made the final break?

[shatra]

Hi
   My ex left me last year (abruptly and out of the blue) and I have made some progress in insight, but I stilll feel a bit of jealousy and anger over his cheating and lying.
   I am NC and I want to detach once and for all... .in my mind.  I want to let go of the anger hatred and envy and I want to forgive... .I have read the lessons and they help


I am looking for any feedback re: how people made the final break?

[rfriesen]

Hi shatra,
First, it's great that you've reached a point where you feel you've made progress and would like to detach once for all. That alone can be a difficult place to reach, and it's worth taking a moment to be both proud of and grateful for the insight you've gained and the extent you've managed to detach.

As for a "final break", everyone's experience will be unique. Speaking for myself, I'm not a big believer in final breaks. Like you, I still carry some anger and jealousy from my ex's lying and (I suspect) cheating. I also still remember the good times fondly and sometimes wish I could relive those highs. I think of detaching as learning to carry the whole range of emotions more lightly. Maybe some day I'll find that I don't have those feelings at all any more. But that's not necessarily my goal. When I think of other major relationships in my life, I can recall both good times and bad, and I can still feel a lot of love and sometimes a little hurt for the good and the bad. But with all those other relationships, I feel like closure came more easily and I carry all the memories and associated emotions lightly. They don't intrude on me when I don't think of them.

With the most recent relationship, finding closure has been a lot more painful. I'm sure you can relate. I've tried to let go of that longing for a clear final break, because that longing is itself a little oppressive. I'm eight months out from the final break-up with my ex, and I'm steadily finding more enjoyment in all the things that I used to enjoy. Steady progress, trying new things, continuing to learn about myself and those in my life ... .that's enough for me right now.

I certainly don't mean to discourage you from finding that final break. Just sharing my experience and thoughts on the notion

[beggarsblanket]

I did not intend my final break to be a final break. When she tried recycling the relationship, she was all smiles. This confused me. I had all sorts of difficult feelings mixed in with yearning and hope: grief, fear, anger, guilt, shame, vulnerability. I didn't understand how she could have no difficult feelings.

She reappeared in my life a few days before she broke up with her boyfriend. She also had a new guy on the go. I didn't understand why she wanted me in her life under these circumstances, let alone after such a harrowing break up the first time around. I wanted to have a long talk about our relationship. She knows how much I value intimate talk, but she flatly refused. I told her that I wasn't willing to compromise my need for talk. I haven't heard from her since.

The final break was therefore an accident. I now realize that she refused to talk because she felt threatened. At one point after the first break up, she contacted me while drunk and said out of the blue that she would never consent to talking because it would give me "control." I empathize with her. She has a passive communication style, and assertive communication could very well seem like a strategy of control or manipulation. It's a pity that she couldn't talk. On the bright side, my insistence on talk saved me from the worst of BPD that I unknowingly faced.

[Mutt]

Good for you that you have detachment as a goal, you'll reach it eventually, I think that what rfriesen is trying to say is that everyone has pain in some way and it's how you carry that pain, you may also find that you'll thrive and become a stronger person from these hardships.

You have been broken up for a year, it's not a long time, you can be in your mind a lot when you're grieving, you can find yourself distracted and don't have as much enjoyment. You need more time behind you, grieving and loss is eventually not going to be at the forefront in your mind and you'll find enjoyment out of life again. That being said, anger is also a normal stage in grieving, you may go through a stage more than once.

I stilll feel a bit of jealousy and anger over his cheating and lying.

Are you worried that you're not going to be able to move forward?

[Grey Kitty]

I want to let go of the anger hatred and envy and I want to forgive... .

Detaching, moving on, forgiving, whatever variant you want to do is its own process and you can't really force the schedule on it. It may surprise you either by how long it takes, or how quickly it shows up when it does. And it may come and go as well.

One thing I'd draw your attention to is feeling anger. Anger and hatred are secondary emotions. Hiding behind them is something else, usually hurt/sadness or fear. You have to feel the anger and hatred, and process them to get onto the next layer underneath.

I'm currently two years separated from my wife (of 20+ years). For ~six months we were working toward reconciliation, so perhaps it is less than that. Anyhow, I've been through quite the emotional roller coaster. A year ago, I felt over it and ready to date again, but only had a couple brief forays, and kinda lost interest.

Today I'm trying to move forward on negotiations/paperwork for divorce, and feeling more stuck, even wistful for something that I know I don't want to go back to, and suspect my wife doesn't want to go back to either. 'Tho over the last year, there have been 2-3 times she appeared to be floating a trial balloon about trying yet again. But not in a vulnerable way, actually putting herself out there and putting me in the position where I had to clearly reject her.

It is a weird process... .no doubt about it!

[valet]

Hey shatra, good for you. It sounds like you're really taking ownership of your happiness.

In my experience, there was never a 'final break'. The erosion of the friendship after the breakup mirrored the relationship itself, but this time it was me that had to do the walking. The decision was easy, but it took a lot of hurt to get there... .I had seen and heard enough. You're already there now, which is a major step considering the route you've chosen.

I want to stress the process element of all of this. We don't wake up one day and feel better about things and that's that. It is a slow drip. A year isn't that long, so be patient with yourself. I'm closing in on two years post-breakup and there are plenty of things that I haven't made full peace with. But as with any painful experience, it goes away if you provide the space for that to happen.

Try to honor your moments of anger and sadness when you can. A lot of recovery for me has been just trying to re-feel those things that I didn't feel or repressed during and after my relationship. Life was pretty miserable because I felt like I couldn't experience anything—I was always seeing things through removed eyes. This still happens at moments but they occur significantly less than they used to. These emotions are here to guide us. Listen to that side of yourself, and keep up the hard work!

[shatra]

Thank you for the feedback
  Mutt asked Are you worried that you're not going to be able to move forward?

---No I am worried that my fear (that he will wind up with the one he cheated with) will come true... .I realize that's something I can't control, but still I would feel very upset... .especially since that one is a narcissistic addict with a recent prison record!  I try to reassure myself with the facts that:
---He is now cheating on her too
---He broke up with her before and likely will again
---He isn't capable of true connection, due to BPD and substance abuse
---He told friends he regrets being with her and he misses me

   Aside from that fear, I feel relieved to be rid of him , and feel ready to accept and forgive it all

[shatra]

Grey Kitty wrote---
Anger and hatred are secondary emotions. Hiding behind them is something else, usually hurt/sadness or fear. You have to feel the anger and hatred, and process them to get onto the next layer underneath.

---True.  I am letting go of the anger and hatred, and feel beneath them was sadness and insecurity, as well as doubt. I felt confused and jealous that he would be with a narcissist, addict with a recent prison record, but then I realized that he is basically at that same level.  He feared i'd leave him since he told me I was "out of his league" and too high-functioning---and he was right!
  So I want to let go of the negativity, and forgive.  I don't like the saying move on, to me it sounds like what we are moving on from wasn't important, and it was. I had a mix of good and bad times with him, and a mix of feelings, but I accept that his mistreatment and cheating was about his disorder and I need to forgive that

[lovenature]

Hi shatra

I found that I needed to learn enough about the disorder and my role in the relationship to get far enough along in detachment to not ever want to go back again. In addition to the recommended books on here, and the great posts, I found the book "the search for the real self" by James Masterson to be very helpful in understanding how BPD originates in a person and just how serious of a disorder it really is.

[shatra]

Love nature wrote===
I found that I needed to learn enough about the disorder and my role in the relationship to get far enough along in detachment to not ever want to go back again  and understanding how BPD originates in a person and just how serious of a disorder it really is.

-----Yes I have learned a lot about the disorder, but since his "image" is more normal I have trouble remembering that it is truly a deep psychiatric disorder vs just some random troubling personality traits. He meets all the criteria for it.

----Ii have to keep reminding myself that I didn't cause himm to cheat, it was likely the disorder... .and he is cheating on the new/old partner too! 
---My role in the problem was that I was in denial about his disorder and how serious it was, I was not assertive enough about my  needs, nnot assertive about speaking up when he hurt me, and I was too passive. I thought if I just agreed with everything he said I'd never lose his love, but I lost it anyway and I feel upset that he is with someone else

[lovenature]

Hi shatra

I know how you feel, I tried to do what ever my ex. wanted, constantly putting her heart and feelings ahead of my own to the point I lost touch with reality and lost myself. The worst thing is the more we try to get along and make the relationship work, the more they cause problems and push us away. It truly is heart breaking.

[Duped 1]

Hi shatra

I know how you feel, I tried to do what ever my ex. wanted, constantly putting her heart and feelings ahead of my own to the point I lost touch with reality and lost myself. The worst thing is the more we try to get along and make the relationship work, the more they cause problems and push us away. It truly is heart breaking.

Wow I could have written that word for word to describe my situation. She actually said that just because I was busting my a$$ to make her happy and that I made her the center of my world didn't mean I was meeting all of her needs. Can you say self absorbed... .

[Grey Kitty]

There is more than one way to make the "final break"

When my marriage really ended, I went NC for a couple weeks to protect myself. (A few months after that, we started working on reconciling, but ultimately failed before we really got back together.)

It has been a couple years. I'm LC with her now. Once or twice a year, we end up working together on things. We were really good that way before, and it is easy to fall back into that. It also is weird and awkward in the background knowing what we aren't.

I can't see us back in a relationship again, or at least not in the foreseeable future. I still care about her. I still love her too. Honestly, I'd like to be closer more intimate friends with her someday, but don't feel safe doing that yet, and now I'm not having too much trouble holding myself back.

We have over 20 years of history, yours may vary; your intentions may vary, and your ex's ability to handle anything with you may vary.

Shatra, it sounds like you need to stay NC to protect yourself for a while longer. Do you have any thoughts or feelings on what you want next?