Six Months Later and Still Trying to Cope

[qawifem]

Trigger warnings: suicide mention and self harm mention

Hello! I found this site and forum through my regular google searches for support and I felt it would be a good idea to register and reach out. I've talked to very fabulous and supportive friends about my recently failed relationship, but I felt that it would be best to talk to people with deep personal understanding. I've been doing amazingly since my relationship ended in August (moved back home, got a job and internship, applied to grad school and had a successful interview for it, made amazing new friends etc) but I still find myself with struggling to cope between bouts of depression, insecurity, dissociation, invasive thoughts and memories, the list goes on.

To paint a picture (and I apologize if it's long-winded!), my ex and I met in 2008 over a social media site for artists where we could draw blog entries and comments. We were both in high school and enjoying each other's company writing and drawing stories together and sharing music. I'm from Massachusetts and he's from California. The first few months of our friendship were for the most part easy, filled with goofing off and just chatting like teenagers do. But as the months went on I learned more and more about his difficult long distance relationship and abusive mother, causing him to lash out at both me and other friends in the form of passive aggression, silent treatments, possible self harm and suicide attempts (I only knew so much, I was long distance and we didn't start voice chatting yet). I developed severe anxiety and insecurities from his behavior towards me when he was having a bad day (bad days were frequent) but I still persevered for whatever good we had between us, especially once he broke off the terrible relationship he was in.

Fast forward to me being in college, and we decided to meet in person. He was able to visit me one summer for a week and we really enjoyed each other's company, to the point where he confessed he had a crush on me and asked me to be his girlfriend a month later. Of course I accepted because I felt so deeply for him, and the first couple of months-the first year felt like bliss filled with loving text messages, once a week skype calls for hours into the night, and watching movie streams together up until I was able to visit him in California one year later. I got nothing short of incredible compliments from him (now realizing he honestly put me on a pedestal) and despite any red flags that popped into my head over the course of our time dating, I accepted a surprise marriage proposal from him in the airport at the end of our second trip together.

I was in fiancé bliss through my junior year, but I would say this was the year where I noticed things starting to worry me despite forcing myself into denial. Purposefully giving me the cold shoulder when I upset him. Jokingly? saying I ruined food I would send him pictures of that I was proud to make because I added an ingredient he didn't like. Getting angry or upset or jealous when other friends of ours would be able to do things he couldn't or wouldn't ask his permission first. Subtly pressuring us to live together, putting me in the position of asking my dad about living in an apartment (obviously he said no, rather rudely, and I was forced to take the heat for it while my ex got upset that we couldn't live together instead of checking on how I was first). All the while I acted as a support system for when he was repeatedly depressed and down on himself (not that he was good at talking about his feelings with me anyways). Side comments that I could never tell were a joke or supposed to make me feel bad. Nothing but complaints when we would go on special trips together, resulting in me feeling guilty for even taking us. Our visits together were still nice, but soon started to devolve more and more into him ignoring me for the computer, eventually meeting another friend that he felt was similar to him in terms of personal experiences (we'll call this friend N) and beginning to idolize him.

Nevertheless, I persevered, going so far as to ask my parents to help him visit me for my college graduation. Afterwards I worked my ass off to secure an apartment for us on the East Coast, fly to him, and do a cross country road trip with him so we could finally lived together like he (and I suppose I, despite my gut saying otherwise) always wanted. But the domestic bliss only lasted for about a month before he started going more and more cold on me. Stopped greeting me when I came home for work. Mentally and emotionally couldn't bring himself to apply for jobs very often. Stopped wanting to be in the same room with me. Slept until the afternoon and stayed awake until 5 in the morning. He spent a lot of his time talking to N and caring for N and N's neuroses, giving off the impression that N was some angel he was so grateful to meet and deserved all the love in the world and should live with us someday. I went along with it to keep the peace. He started taking several showers a day. The worst part, the height of my time living with him, was discovering just how much he was self-harming. He never told me, but I could see hints of new cuts on his legs and arms when clothing lifted. And one day when I was having an exceptionally bad day, I discovered one of my exacto knife razors in a small jewelry box of his in the bathroom. It explained why I would sometimes see it randomly floating around on the counter, but I think I must've blocked out why it would be there. To this day, I'm still haunted by the bloodstains I would see on the shower curtain and the bed sheets, but I never said anything out of fear of making it worse.

I tried so hard to make it work and to make him happy. He was relentlessly homesick and missing his mom despite her own poor behavior. He would make comments like 'why did we even move here?' trying to make a teasing joke, but would get upset at me if I mentioned how that hurt my feelings. I even went so far as to apply for work in California to see if we could kill two birds with one stone. Although I don't think he genuinely wanted me to do well. One day I accidentally saw a chat window on his computer with N, commenting "I hope she gets the job because I miss California." Regardless, my plans failed and neither of our job situations worked out. We both gave up the apartment and returned to our respective homes to regroup. I got a part time job for the summer as a plant merchandiser in an attempt to make moving money to live with him and his parents in CA for myself and car money so we could both get a car (although HIS main reason for the car was so he could do a road trip to see N, despite any comments about how it was for jobs, also. He would tell me to hold off on applying for jobs until we had a car in Cali. A bit backwards, am I right?) But living with him in his own house, again, only provided temporary relief. I found another razor in his bathroom. I was constantly subjected to drama between him and his mother. His dying father was suffering from lack of home care and he wouldn't be passionate about my suggestions to seek help from veteran centers. He didn't hold my hand in public anymore, or compliment my artwork, or even me really. He even told me I was "fiscally irresponsible" at a dinner I bought for him and impatient with me while we shopped and got mad at him for things out of my control. The physical affection was next to nothing. All of his time was spent on the computer talking to N. The more I started to do things by myself and meet a bunch of new people online, the more he isolated himself but creeped through my blog and twitter feeds to see what I was doing. I didn't tell him much about my budding new social life because I know from personal experience that he's either extremely critical or apathetic towards all of my friends, and I knew he'd be looking for dirt. Deep down I knew this. But I also didn't talk to him about it because he never seemed interested anyways and I'm naturally shy with new attention.

Everything came to a head when I went on a trip to San Diego and him out East to hang out with N, with no kiss goodbye or I love you from him as we departed. He texted me asking me about behavior a friend of mine was exhibiting online he thought was "gross" (it wasn't). Unsure of what to do and exhausted from traveling, I told him I completely understood where he was coming from and that I'd discuss it with my friend that I was meeting up with in the city. The next morning, I got nothing but his cold shoulder and passive aggressive responses when trying to make light conversation. Any attempt to try and talk to him about it would result in him saying "I don't want to get into it while we're visiting friends" "we should discuss living arrangements after the trip." The day before I was leaving, he texted me to break up with me. On top of him coming out to me as a trans man and not telling me he was struggling with it for months, he told me it was my assumed attraction to mostly women why it wouldn't work out for us. He listed a good couple of paragraphs of things even from months ago when we were living together in an apartment that bothered him, but didn't tell me about until then. He mentioned his discomfort from me doing things with my new friends and not telling him all about it, despite his emotional neglect and not letting me in on much of his personal life. It all felt unreal. Everything he listed was me just being human. He apologized at least for dragging me out to California and not telling me about anything or doing the breakup in person, claiming his mental illness prevented him from doing so. (Little did he know, I was over him the second he started acting coldly again like he's always done, and I threw my engagement ring into the ocean the day before).

It's been over half a year of no contact and refusing to look at his social media, and even though I'm in therapy and recovering at an incredible rate, I still feel haunted and crippled by his emotionally controlling behavior, sometimes even feeling as if I have blood on my hands and that I was never good enough. I'm trying to work through the terrible memories of the insults and the silent treatments and the blatant ignoring for another person's attention. I've never experienced neglect quite like this, and I'm emotionally and physically exhausted still from just the sheer duration of it. I just need to know that I'm not alone in this and that my suspicions of a personality disorder are valid (he's admitted before he thinks he has BPD, and my therapist told me his behaviors are very narcissistic). I'm sure some of you are much farther along in the healing process and I wish it was easier to tell myself that I did the best that I could. I'm so proud of myself for making it this far, but sometimes I get so tired from still suffering to this degree. At the end of it all I just feel like a pretty, temporary fix to him that would tell him comforting words, not someone he ever genuinely wanted to know and love.

I'm very much aware that I was an enabler/caretaker who lost her drive to communicate out of defeat. And I'm glad I've come to terms with that! It'll prevent me from making the same choices in the future. It's just recovering from that that sucks the most. I appreciate literally any sort of outsider's perspective.

[roberto516]

Thanks for sharing! I honestly cannot stress enough the same sentiment. I feel like I played a part in our breakup and pushing her away with the "cold shoulder" but I honestly never saw it as me losing my drive to communicate out of defeat. But I think it was. In the beginning I tried to be the talker as we both promised we'd be. It would always immediately go to me supporting her as she feared I'd leave her; leaving my concerns and emotions completely untouched (building resentment).

So from then on I just wouldn't really communicate. I would kind of clam up which would send her into the overdrive of feeling like I was mad at her. At times I was; at other times I just needed to recharge (I'm an introvert). But it's tough to communicate when the person has already made it clear they will either flip it so they are supported, or they will get defensive and aggressive.

I might be rambling. But I can empathize with you. I felt like I was always putting out fires, and there wasn't much time for me to do me (unless she was doing something then I was allowed to do things). I'm glad you have gone 6 months. We have officially been broken up for close to 2 months and I am probably just over 30 hours of NC. With my longest period being maybe 80 hours or so. So your story, albeit emotionally draining for you, has given me hope that I can do it too.

[qawifem]

Thanks for sharing! I honestly cannot stress enough the same sentiment. I feel like I played a part in our breakup and pushing her away with the "cold shoulder" but I honestly never saw it as me losing my drive to communicate out of defeat. But I think it was. In the beginning I tried to be the talker as we both promised we'd be. It would always immediately go to me supporting her as she feared I'd leave her; leaving my concerns and emotions completely untouched (building resentment).

So from then on I just wouldn't really communicate. I would kind of clam up which would send her into the overdrive of feeling like I was mad at her. At times I was; at other times I just needed to recharge (I'm an introvert). But it's tough to communicate when the person has already made it clear they will either flip it so they are supported, or they will get defensive and aggressive.

I might be rambling. But I can empathize with you. I felt like I was always putting out fires, and there wasn't much time for me to do me (unless she was doing something then I was allowed to do things). I'm glad you have gone 6 months. We have officially been broken up for close to 2 months and I am probably just over 30 hours of NC. With my longest period being maybe 80 hours or so. So your story, albeit emotionally draining for you, has given me hope that I can do it too.

Thanks so much for your response and I really appreciate the empathy! The communication I think was one of the hardest points for the both of us. I would only often know he was mad with me if he would "vagueblog" about me on his social media without actually confronting me with any issues he had, and I rarely spoke out about anything he did to hurt my feelings from personal experience of him acting out in various ways when people were upset with him. So I just stayed quiet and did all of the apologizing in the relationship and told myself he'll come to me. And of course he never did. So when he broke up with me out of living my own independent life and keeping things to myself, it truly threw me for a dang loop.

It's awful when we feel like we can't communicate with our partners. That's one of the most vital parts of making things work. It's especially hard when our exes/partners give us plenty of reasons to actually be fearful of being honest with our feelings. It's so backwards-feeling. Here's hoping you can keep up the healing and NC! I assure you it is so, so worth it.  

[qawifem]

I feel the need to add to this about some of my NC methods. It was actually a lot harder than I would've liked.

My ex is the type of person to lurk on people's profiles that he doesn't talk to for whatever reason he deems appropriate. He goes onto people's blogs to see what they're doing and then talk poorly of them to his new friend N.

Our breakup was calm enough, but I knew he'd be looking at my social media even though I quit looking at his cold turkey. I installed an IP tracker on my tumblr to find that he had been visiting my page repeatedly almost around TEN times in just a half an hour. I blocked him and changed my url to something difficult to find, and I still have the tracker.

I also made a private twitter to talk to friends on. My public twitter is moreso for my art, but he also knows he can look at my replies and comments that way if he's logged out. So now he can't see what I'm saying to other people like he could before.

In a way it sucks I had to go to these lengths, but I simply can't stand the thought of him trying to lurk on my life when he should be getting over me like he expressed that HE wanted to. Whoof!

[roberto516]

I guess I'm lucky at the end of the day. She has blocked me on facebook and some of our mutual friends who probably would have tagged me in stuff. And she got rid of her snapchat which we had a group chat. So safe to say I am all black to her. A definite control thing in my opinion.

[qawifem]

I guess I'm lucky at the end of the day. She has blocked me on facebook and some of our mutual friends who probably would have tagged me in stuff. And she got rid of her snapchat which we had a group chat. So safe to say I am all black to her. A definite control thing in my opinion.

Oh dude very relatable. I was blocked on facebook as well even before we had broken up. I'm painted black right there with ya. At least we can look at it in a way that it's them doing US a favor at the end of the day!

[roberto516]

Oh dude very relatable. I was blocked on facebook as well even before we had broken up. I'm painted black right there with ya. At least we can look at it in a way that it's them doing US a favor at the end of the day!

Same! She blocked me. Unblocked me. And then when I got mad that she got concert tickets to a show after I asked her to please at least ask me after she did it before she blocked me again. And that was it. I guess it's humorous because it just shows how she isn't growing from the control issues, resentment, and not being able to cope with emotions