One year on: liberating places from the bad memories they hold

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

It's been almost a year since I was discarded. My dominant feeling is gratitude for the progress I've made, but I'm struggling a bit with vivid memories from this time last year. I am relieved that the crushing pain didn't last - back then the only moments of relief were the fleeting seconds between waking up and the knowledge hitting me all over again - but I am aware that I'm actively pushing back certain memories and avoiding certain places for fear that they would be too much to cope with. For me memory is very intimately bound up with place and just being in a particular place is enough to make the emotions crash back on me in waves.

One of those places is a whole country, my ex's home country. I met him there and I lived there for years. I loved it but now I can't be there or read the language without thinking of him. I visited in January, thinking I would manage fine, and I didn't - even though I had no contact with him, the memories there were still too strong. I think my goal for the year to come will be detaching things I love from the memory of him and what he did. However, I know this process can't be forced. Some things just take time. Does anyone have suggestions for how they helped themselves with this aspect of detachment and moving on?

Another problem I'm struggling with now is the itch to check his Facebook and that of his flatmate (he discarded me when he got together with her) to see if I can tell if they're still together. So far I've resisted. I know it will do me no good to know. I'm just putting this here so I can keep myself accountable and jump in here for support if I get the urge to check on them.

[balletomane]

It's been almost a year since I was discarded. My dominant feeling is gratitude for the progress I've made, but I'm struggling a bit with vivid memories from this time last year. I am relieved that the crushing pain didn't last - back then the only moments of relief were the fleeting seconds between waking up and the knowledge hitting me all over again - but I am aware that I'm actively pushing back certain memories and avoiding certain places for fear that they would be too much to cope with. For me memory is very intimately bound up with place and just being in a particular place is enough to make the emotions crash back on me in waves.

One of those places is a whole country, my ex's home country. I met him there and I lived there for years. I loved it but now I can't be there or read the language without thinking of him. I visited in January, thinking I would manage fine, and I didn't - even though I had no contact with him, the memories there were still too strong. I think my goal for the year to come will be detaching things I love from the memory of him and what he did. However, I know this process can't be forced. Some things just take time. Does anyone have suggestions for how they helped themselves with this aspect of detachment and moving on?

Another problem I'm struggling with now is the itch to check his Facebook and that of his flatmate (he discarded me when he got together with her) to see if I can tell if they're still together. So far I've resisted. I know it will do me no good to know. I'm just putting this here so I can keep myself accountable and jump in here for support if I get the urge to check on them.

[WoundedBibi]

It's been almost a year since I was discarded. My dominant feeling is gratitude for the progress I've made, but I'm struggling a bit with vivid memories from this time last year. I am relieved that the crushing pain didn't last - back then the only moments of relief were the fleeting seconds between waking up and the knowledge hitting me all over again - but I am aware that I'm actively pushing back certain memories and avoiding certain places for fear that they would be too much to cope with. For me memory is very intimately bound up with place and just being in a particular place is enough to make the emotions crash back on me in waves.

One of those places is a whole country, my ex's home country. I met him there and I lived there for years. I loved it but now I can't be there or read the language without thinking of him. I visited in January, thinking I would manage fine, and I didn't - even though I had no contact with him, the memories there were still too strong. I think my goal for the year to come will be detaching things I love from the memory of him and what he did. However, I know this process can't be forced. Some things just take time. Does anyone have suggestions for how they helped themselves with this aspect of detachment and moving on?

Another problem I'm struggling with now is the itch to check his Facebook and that of his flatmate (he discarded me when he got together with her) to see if I can tell if they're still together. So far I've resisted. I know it will do me no good to know. I'm just putting this here so I can keep myself accountable and jump in here for support if I get the urge to check on them.

I know what you mean, I have the same thing about places... Or food for that matter. Last August friends were going to take me out to dinner for my birthday but the majority of the restaurants that were on the list to choose from, serve food from my ex's home country. So I didn't want to go there.

It's gotten less over time, but I would like some tips too to not have a whole country, it's cuisine and language be tainted just by one mentally ill person.

[patientandclear]

Second question first: two years ago my ex reached out to me with a dramatic gesture for my birthday (a month late--he was still with another woman on my actual birthday). There had been three months of silence before that after he responded to me telling him my feelings about him being with another woman. He got mad, denied there was anything going on, and pretty much told me we were done for the foreseeable future. I was SO SAD, endured near catatonic dissociation, worked on embracing the pain ... .And I began to heal.

When he reached out after three months, I wondered what it meant in terms of his new r/ship. I had religiously stopped looking (the looking is what had caused me to raise my feelings with him in the first place--I knew everything I needed to know to realize how much his decisions hurt me). A friend of mine checked his FB and that of the woman I knew he had been seeing. She saw evidence they had split. So I felt it was safe to look. When I did look ... .when I typed in the URL and was waiting for the pages to load -- my body started involuntarily and violently shaking. It was amazing. My body knew that through that portal came danger. No other way to understand the reaction.

As it happened, they had split. (She was devastated--it was evident. I knew the feeling.) No doubt that is why he was reaching out. When I did not joyously welcome a reunion with him, he tried to get back together with her too. Eww. (Then he hurt her AGAIN.)

But the thing my body was reacting to what not the chance I would see they were still together. It was the idea that it mattered whether they were still together -- THAT was the danger to me.

I've come to see that if I need to check, I should not be checking. If that makes sense. There may come a day when the answer doesn't mean anything to me, at which point it won't be necessary for me to stay away from such information (and of course when that happens, I will no longer be interested in checking). But I am not there and may never get there. This all hurt me a great deal.

We've been through a few loops since that moment two years back. I'm needing to let go of caring about him. I religiously do not look at his stuff because I need to not care, and this is my way of testifying to myself that It Does Not Matter.

Plus, I know what I would see. I would see that he is fascinating and compelling to me; he is intensely engaged with some people at any given time; he does not take care of those connections; they get broken; he moves and finds new ones. He'd be in some part of that cycle.

On your first point, about the traumatic associations: that was deeply true for me. I still live in the city we met and inhabited together for a while. Nearly every block has a memory. Street signs, buildings, terraces, parks, elevators. It's fading. But only because I've relentlessly occupied the places and overlaid those memories with new associations.

Traumatic betrayal and loss does a lot of damage. You're not mismanaging it or missing some shortcut to healing the repercussions, I don't think.

I can recommend body-based (somatic) trauma therapy though. It has not made the pain go away but has greatly strengthened my ability to deal with the pain, if that makes sense. You might look at lifespan integration or sensorimotor psychotherapy, if either are available where you are.

[troisette]

I live in the same small gossipy town as my ex. My house is six streets away from his. It's ten months since we split, six months since I went no contact.

For the first few months I had to force myself out of the house for necessities. Always fearful that I would see him or his friends.  It gradually became easier but it was very difficult to visit our usual haunts: fear of seeing him and the memories it evoked. It has gradually become easier, not there yet but it's easier.

Rather like an allergy treatment, when given tiny doses it gradually builds a defence. Big doses can do great damage.

[Feelinstronger]

YOu sound like you have made such tremendous progress! Yes, of course there is your curiosity to check FB - but if I were you I would resist the urge.  I am only 3 months out, and after two months, I checked his FB only to see he was back with a woman he dated before our 5 year relationship.  My heart sank.  I have not been back on his page since and hope never to be.  We MUST control what we can-and this is within your control.  Be good and kind to yourself.  Hang in there.