Thanks to NC slowly feeling better, but......(Advice needed)

Hey there guys, (I apologize for any grammer mistakes, English is not my first language)

I've already written a background story about what has happened between me and my ex, so you can read it in my previous post. But here's a short summary:

I dated this guy in my class (4 months being friends and after that 5 months relationship) and he dumped me last year and decided to date a freshman who he seems to be really happy with. This is a bit of a vent story and I hope people can give me some advice.

School recently started again and I managed to go full NC during summer vacation, not even wishing him a happy birthday. The ONLY time I broke NC was when a mutual friend of ours sadly passed away in a traffic accident, it was really awful! I sent him a mail because I was not sure if he had heard the news. He wished me well, I said thanks and that was it.

I was a bit nervous when school started again. Me and my ex share mutual friends, so during every break I'm almost forced to witness him and his new girlfriend acting very happy with eachother, I try to ignore it as best I can, but it gets annoying really quick. The positive thing I noticed is that now, I'm more annoyed rather than furious, a few months ago that was a whole different story.

I had both of them in my friendslist on facebook (She added me and at the time I didn't want to come over as a bitter ex, so I accepted the request), but after seeing so many love stricken posts between them (my ex almost never posted anything on facebook before he was in a relationship again), I decided to throw her out my list and ban all his posts on my newsfeed. The final straw was when he dedicated a whole photo album to her and I was fed up with it. The reason I have not yet removed him from my friendslist is because we have some future projects coming up and he will surely notice if I delete him, but I really want to kick him out though.

What did hurt me most was that he never was this spontaneous when we were dating. I had to hear it through the grapevine how much in love he was with me and he was a pretty reserved guy. But that was probably because I don't like being a smoochy couple in public places. What I have noticed about his new girlfriend is how clingy she is with him. During every break she either leaning into him or hanging her arms over his shoulders, looking at him as if she wants to kiss the ground he is walking on. It's like he owns her and it's rather icky and I heard a classmate make a comment about it as well, after they left the group. (He has been known to make rather misogynistic jokes in class and I always told him I did not appreciate such comments. He would quickly apologize after that, saying he was only joking, but that's no laughing matter to me.)

Today I heard he treated his girlfriend with a spa weekend and they were talking about it during breaks how much fun it was and I could not avoid the situation since all my other friends were here as well. The last few days I have been ignoring him completely, only talking to him about school-related subjects. But full NC is not an option anymore. I have noticed that the butterflies in my stomach are completely gone. I'm not in love with him anymore, but ofcourse my feelings have not gone away completely, otherwise I would be indifferent to the whole situation. The reason I am so annoyed is because I feel very disrespected by him and I hate the situation he has put me in. I feel like a loser since I'm still single, although I'm actually not interested in a new relationship right now. My ego has been bruised and it's like he is getting rewarded for acting like an emotionless jerk. That's why I have trouble getting over it. I don't think there's much I can do other then continuing what I'm doing and hoping that karma will do it's job

If anyone has some advice about what else I can do or would like to tell me about their experience I'm happy to listen!

Since you're young, I wouldn't worry too much about it (I know you've heard that before and you're probably tired of hearing that). I am 26 and recently had my girlfriend of two years drag me along for the last three months before finally ending it (once she found another guy). We were even living together and planning on getting a house! Cherish the fact that you are so young. Live life for you and definitely avoid jumping into another relationship for the time being. You were alone before your ex and you can be alone now. Cry it out, be angry, and rid yourself of any of the negative feelings.

I understand you want to be back with your ex - we all do for a time, especially early on. We cherish the fond memories and our hearts can't accept losing the future we imagined with them. Someone who truly loves you wouldn't put you through the agony of heart-break like your ex did. Remember that there is someone else out there will be fully accepting of you and never hurt you. When you reach the point of being able to think of another in a romantic way and visualize how a relationship would be with them, then you have officially cleansed yourself of your ex. It will take some time, but hang in there! Focus on fun hobbies, write out your feelings, and post on this forum if it helps! You'll be fine!

Thank you Aeropro, I really appreciate it!

Oh, I forgot to mention that I am 23 years old. My bad! I'm in an art college. But I realise now that it sounds like I'm still in high school, haha. But yes, I consider myself to be still young

It must have been even tougher for you, two years is a whole lot longer than 9 months. So I do hope you have gotten your closure! But I never felt this way about a guy before. It just feels good to vent and strangers on the internet sometimes have better advice for me than people close by (But just to make clear: my family supported me all the way and helped me a lot. I'm very thankful for their help, but they do get tired ofcourse of hearing about it all the time and I can't blame them though.)

I'm already doing some of the tips you gave me, so it's good to hear I'm atleast doing it right to get some closure. This forum is helping me greatly as well.

Ah, okay! My apologies. In that case our situations are a bit more similar which makes it easier for me to relate. I have closure in the sense that I know our relationship is officially over and that she is entertaining someone she has only known now for three weeks. The hardest part, for me, is accepting that she was so willing to discard two years, an apartment, and a future together for someone new and fresh. However, by coming to this forum I realized this is normal behavior.

Your family is a great source of motivation, but it definitely is good to get some outside opinions (family members tend to soften the blow at times). I am relatively new here as well but I absolutely adore this forum. Post, post, and post some more when you're feeling bad. That isn't to say I recommend just becoming a forum sloth by any means (haha), but during your times of feeling alone post here instead of checking out what your ex is doing or sulking in your bad thoughts. Check out threads posted by other users, too! I have found that looking forward to responses on this forum substitutes that feeling of being in a relationship when you'd eagerly wait for a text from your significant other. Little things like that make the healing process easier.

P.S. You're welcome!

It sounds to me like your ex was having one of those (as I recall people here saying it) The Grass is Greener on the other Side syndrome. The new and fresh will eventually become old and routine for people like her. I don't think she will last as long in this relationship as she did with you. Sounds to me like she is just looking for some adventures, rather than a serious relationship and that truly sucks! But you can also think of it this way: perhaps you dodged a bullet there. People tend to show their true colors when a break-up has happened and most of the time, it's an ugly side.

I know from experience that it doesn't always have to be that way. My first ex (whom I only dated a month) insisted on having a face to face conversation before officially breaking up with me. He was very clear on why he thought it would not work out and I agreed with him. A few years later we happened to bump into each other and I was glad to notice that he was really happy to see me again. Recently we started talking again, he just got out of a 4-year relationship with a girl that came after we split up. I made it clear to him that I was not looking for a new relationship and he was cool with that, but still we decided to chat every now and then and he was just very polite about it and respectful. A huuuuge difference with the ex I was talking about in my previous posts. Never ever had any bad feelings about my first ex.

I just noticed how immature my second ex is and how I did not see that before. I have to admit that he was a nice guy and he treated me with respect when we dated, so it was not all that bad. But the aftermath showed his ugly side (and mine as well, never thought I could be so angry with someone.). I have a feeling that even though he is very much in love with his new girlfriend, that too won't last forever. They are in the honeymoon phase and when that wears off you have to work for it to keep a relationship healthy, and he has a habit of not talking about his emotions or keeping his worries and doubts to himself until it's too late.

And I agree, chatting with other people about it does help. My mood has already gotten a bit better now!

Oh, believe me. I could not believe the person she had turned into during the latter stages of our relationship. From May to August she turned into an absolutely selfish individual. People really do show their true colors during break-ups. I remained strong and willing to work things out, while she resorted to cruelty, lies, and deceit.

With regards to your second ex, don't feel too bad. When emotions are high even the best of us do things uncharacteristcally. I said and did things that I regret, but honestly I feel okay for standing up for myself. The honeymoon phase truly does exist. With my ex, her lies eventually were her own un-doing. Since she had the nagging feeling that I was a better person with her (because I was always honest and did nice things for her), she felt that she was losing footing in the relationship. You see, some people want control. She felt that she couldn't control me, which was entirely true. For instance, during our first year together I stayed at her apartment about five days a week. She was absolutely fine with that. However, once we got an apartment together and it was BOTH of ours, she started feeling, again, that she was losing control and footing. I was my own person and didn't put up with her nonsense. With her new person, she won't tell him anything. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. She wants a clean slate because the guilt of the things she did to me were too much for her to cope with while seeing me everyday even though she loved me.

It's idiotic when you think about it. Why on earth do people want to control someone? That's not love, that's owning something and you like the power you have over someone. Stuff like that sends me in a rage! She is someone elses problem now, atleast that's how I see it after reading your last post. And beginning with a clean slate, sounds a bit like what my ex is doing now. I remember him saying, when we dated, that he did not like talking about his previous relationships with me. Only that he had one ex that he absolutely detested because she was acting very nasty (according to him and his parents.) His new girlfriend found out I was an ex of his because a friend of mine accidently blurted that out to her one day. I noticed she was being extra friendly to me, but I try to ignore her as much as I can, without being rude ofcourse.

Speaking of control, I guess that probably played a role in my relationship as well. Every time he said something rude about someone else or women in general, I immediately reacted and told him something along the lines of: 'Excuse me? What did you just say?.' and he quickly apologized. I even did that one time in front of his family and they all laughed with me about that.

Guess he didn't like it that I frequently stood up to him and was not having any of his bullcrap.

Another thing I suddenly remembered: When he broke up with me, a day before I was having my birthday party, I did not shed a single tear in his presence and acted very casual. I didn't start crying until I returned home. A friend of mine told me that he was hurt and confused that I did not cry, which I found to be very weird. I guess because I did not cry, he thought I never cared about him or something like that, but still I find it to be a very odd thing to say. My friend told him, and that was exactly the reason: You just broke up with her and shut her out of your life. Why should she show you what she is feeling at that moment? You have no right to it.

I think (almost know for sure) the reason he broke up with me was because I was terribly afraid of having sex. I'm still a virgin and no guy has ever treated me badly, but still I have a fear for it for some reason (Perhaps I'm semi asexual?). To me sex is part of a relationship, but not the most important part. Guess he disagreed on that. If he truly loved me, he would've helped me get over it, but he never did. He respected my boundaries, but never talked to me about why I'm scared of sex. And when I finally thought I was ready, he broke up with me. That's also the reason why I am cautious about starting a new relationship, because the same problem will rear it's ugly head.

Yeah control is a subtle, yet destructive aspect of a relationship. Once my trust was shaken, it was honestly just a slippery slope. Hindsight is 20/20, but I can see how, in her eyes, that I came off as somewhat controlling. For instance, because I didn't trust her with contacting others, I suggested that we deactivate our Facebooks to just spend some time focusing on ourselves. I also suggested that we show each other our phones when other people (being those of the opposite sex be it an ex or someone we knew was interested in one of us) text. While we had CONVERSATIONS about this and agreed to do them TOGETHER, she probably didn't really want to. She only verbally agreed to do these things because she felt if she didn't that I would never have any trust for her.

Little things like that she resented me for. She kept contacting people and hiding things until they all convinced her that *I* was the one being controlling when I really wasn't. I merely suggested things that could help our relationship, and the only reason I did those things was because she had lied, and lied, and lied for the longest time. She asked me for ways she could help "fix" things... and that is what I suggested. She just didn't want to fight for me.

When he broke up with you, your reaction hurt his ego. He expected you to fight and claw for him and when you didn't he was knocked off of his pedestal. That is why no contact is so important for A) having any shot of getting back with your ex and B) your own healing.

Sex is important, but not the end all, be all. Being realistic, our exes have probably already had sex with their new people. However, if that is all they rely on for their happiness they are in for a real shocker once the honeymoon period comes crashing down and they realize they left incredibily awesome people for nothing. The grass isn't always greener.

I can understand that regularly checking each others phones can come over as controlling. Have you had a bad experience before? Did someone cheat on you? I hope you don't mind me asking it, I'm just wondering. Her fault is that she wasn't completely honest with you even before she began to resent the small things. Communication is so important and probably the key reason for so many relationships not working out. You start to wonder why people are afraid of talking about their emotions. Like you are being weak or something silly like that. Not communicating enough can even make you mentally ill with depression and things like that. But I guess people will never learn. As for her talking bad about you behind your back is really the lowest of the lowest. You need to find someone who is just as serious as you are about a relationship. Sounds to me like you were atleast making lots of efforts for it and she didn't. I do hope those efforts will pay off for you in the near future. Keep your chin up! I'm sure you will find someone much better!

As for what you said about my ex being kicked off his pedestal, I felt really terrible when I heard my friend say that to me. I broke down in front of her and until then she had never seen me cry before. I felt like I was an awful person and a week later I had a conversation with him about this and I said that I did care for him and stuff like that. But I also told him that he should've communicated better with me. He said he was sorry about it and then the conversation ended. I felt better about it and I hoped that he atleast would try to continue to be friends with me. I tried my best and got really upset when I noticed he started ignoring me, only talking when I asked him school related stuff. I was really disappointed in him, since we share classes I though that he atleast could talk to me every now and then. But I guess that was too much to ask for. Now I felt really stupid for having that conversation where I said that I did care for him.

Before we broke up we were supposed to go to a musical together, but he asked me if I wouln't mind if he took his sister with him, since it was too painful for him to go with me. Although I felt sad about that, I told him that he could go with her. I'm not sure when he started hanging out with his future girlfriend, I bet it was somewhere around the month of april and their relationship took off like a rocket in a really short time. I messaged him, before I knew he was in a relationship, if we could go to the movies together and then he decided to spill the beans and told me about it. I acted like I didn't care and ended the conversation on a friendly note.

When he knew I knew about his relationship he suddenly started acting friendly towards me like he was relieved I did not fuss about it. And at first I was friendly to him as well. Until he decided to act so icky with her at school, even when I was sitting near them. I was so angry, I've never felt such a tremendous amount of hate and anger, but I did not let anyone on school notice how awful I felt. That's when I decided to go NC and I think he noticed it, because at a school BBQ I didn't say a word to him and when I left he looked at me rather awkward.

We never spied nor took over each others' phones or anything. We basically had a verbal agreement that, as a courtesy to one another, that if someone of the opposite sex initiated contact with either of us that we would let the other person know. We agreed on this because, in the past, her ex would constantly text/email her and she never told me she was still in talks with him and when I was finishing up school I had class with a lot of girls and she got jealous, especially after one of my classmates asked me to go to her apartment to study and sent me a suggestive, flirty text. With regards to her being in contact with her ex, that almost caused me to end things shortly after we started dating because I didn't want to be a rebound. From then on out, I always notified her out of respect when girls would contact me. Did I have to? No. Did I know it would help build trust in our relationship? I did. That is why I did it - I truly loved her and she mattered to me a whole hell of a lot more than some random girl from class. She never, ever held her end of the bargain though. She was never a very outspoken person and always kept to herself. In the end, the little redflags in the beginning of the relationship caused it to end. C'est la vie.

Thanks for your kind words. I wasn't perfect in the relationship, but I definitely gave it my all and was EXTREMELY understanding of her "process" of growing up and I stayed with her until the end. She was always worried that I would leave HER when, in the end, I was the one who truly stuck it out and was discarded like trash.

Don't worry about feeling like an "awful person". Hold yourself to high standards and realize that you deserve someone truly perfect. You were the one who was dumped - not him. I know how you feel, though. In fact, I had a terrible thought strike me a week ago. I was sitting there having dinner with a beautiful girl who I have been seeing LIGHTLY (while she is attractive, I just don't feel anything for her... not yet) when the strange thought hit. I was sitting there, thinking, "my ex will never be spoiled by me anymore like this. In fact, knowing the type of people she is associated with... she will probably miss me one day". I truly felt BAD for her. I truly wanted to just go find her and give her a huge hug - not even in a romantic way, but in a "I am so sorry for the things you're probably going to go through". It's pity, I suppose. I don't know what else to call it. Good people have big hearts, but we have to have respect for ourselves too.

Well, today something strange happened at school. My ex was being really weird to me.

We we're having a class about how to use the program Flash. Now this is in a room with lots of different computers. The teacher had asked us to pick a computer nearest to her desk, so that we could see how she was using the program. I decided to pick a random computer since no one else was sitting there. Suddenly my ex walks up to me and says I'm sitting in his spot. Apparently last week he had decided that this computer was his, I was not at school that day since I wasn't feeling very well.

I told him I was here first and that he should go look for a different computer. I noticed he was in a particularly foul mood today for some reason unknown, perhaps things aren't going well between him and his girlfriend? It almost sounded to me like he was demanding me to sit somewhere else. I simply refused, repeating that I was here first. Then he tells me: 'Are we really going to fight about this?' I told him that I was not fighting, but simply stating that I had the right to sit wherever I wanted to. I guess you could say I was acting stubborn as well, probably because he's my ex, but I also think he doesn't have the right to claim a computer as his own and then simply order me to go sit somewhere else.

Eventually he gave up and walked out of the classroom, skipping the entire class! When we were having a lunchbreak I asked my friend what was up with my ex. She said she thought I was overreacting and it looked like I was mocking him. That felt a bit like a slap in the face for me. I'm not saying that she should've picked my side, but not for even one second was I mocking him and I felt a bit hurt that she was acting in his defense. I don't remember being rude at all, I felt like I was standing up for myself and I actually felt pretty proud that I stood my ground. And now my friend is telling me that I was acting rude? Pfff, I have a feeling that people aren't used to seeing me like this. Like they think I'm a pushover and when I stand up for myself I'm suddenly rude? Well, that's their problem. But I felt pretty hurt, still.

You did well to stand up for yourself.

However, there wasn't any need to talk about the incident with anyone else. And by telling her about his tantrum, it does sound like you were mocking him.

Thank you for your reply mhowe,

She saw what happened between us, so she already knew. I asked her opinion about it. I can imagine that perhaps through someone's eyes it looked like I was being snappy. But, I do believe I wasn't acting THAT rude.

Wow, another surprise today. Albeit it's a more positive one.

When I went to school, I found my ex talking to a friend of mine and I walked in on their conversation. He turned to me and said he was having a very rough day yesterday and that's why he was acting so weird to me. He did not say sorry, but I could see that he felt uncomfortable for acting so rude to me. A rather half-hearted apology, but I'm glad it did not escalate any further. I thought he was having trouble with his girlfriend, but during lunchbreak, she was just as clingy as ever. God, I hope I can get used to that. We have mutual friends, so it's difficult to avoid, but the last couple of weeks I've been making sure I'm not anywhere near my ex during breaks, or I would feel very, very annoyed. It's a bit like trying to stay NC during school and it kind of works for me.