Really hard time moving on

Hey Guys,

I am having a really hard time. Nothing like this has ever happened to me, and I would like to hear from others who have had a similar experience. How did you survive and find happiness?

So my situation is this:

2+ years ago, I met the love of my life-- or the person I thought was the love of my life. Prior to that, I had had boyfriends, lived with one of them, dated a lot, never really felt especially drawn to most of them, although I did love them in my own way and was close with many of my boyfriends (ie, best friends). Those relationships were highlighted by sharing hobbies and visiting with friends and family and traveling and enjoying each other. I never felt like any of them were people I envisioned living the rest of my life with, though.

Then I met someone who I fell in love with and it was like something out of a movie. The primary things that originally attracted me to him were his physical sexiness to me and our intellectual compatibility. We would talk for hours about anything and everything, and we had some of the same views on life, and we also had the same life goals and same lifestyle. I truly felt I had met my match. I deeply respected him and admired him. I was willing to do for him all the stuff I had never been willing to do for anyone else - move in and be more selfless about a lot of things. I know now in hindsight I was too self-sacrificing; that's not the point of my post and I don't need help with that now.

His interest in me was stated to be the same, and I thought we were starting a life together when I moved in with him after he got a job offer. We met each other at a point in his life which was transitional professionally, and a point in my life where there was a gap year between professional programs.

To summarize what happened after that, our relationship fell apart and I tried to leave on multiple occasions. We did a break up/get back together routine, as he would promise things would change, and then they wouldn't. He had a temper and I felt like I was continually blamed for both what went wrong between us, and for any problems I had. But, the facts are that he did things which were irrefutably abusive, and I did not make him do them. Examples include continuously destroying my property, ignoring my reactions to abuse, having a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde unpredictability to mood, blowing up at me angrily, constant belittling and insulting of me, my friends, my interests, and constant interrogation as to my commitment to him, with much painful jealousy, possessiveness, and routine intimidation through the use of anger, physical gestures, destruction of property, gas-lighting, lying, acting, emotional withdrawal, lack of support, etc. I had a lot of respect for, commitment to, love for, and generosity towards this person, which made it all the more bizarre and confusing.

Not once was responsibility taken for any of these actions - they were either flat-out denied, minimized, avoided, or blamed back on me, usually in angry and intimidating manners, so that I felt like I could not speak up about what was wrong, for fear of making it even worse. Another way denial was taken was by acting as if he is a paragon of goodness and it is beneath him to even relate to abusive people - because this is such an accomplished human being with golden morals. It was very confusing for me to have my reality so staunchly denied by someone I trusted. I started to feel a little crazy myself, and I was also rained on by paranoia, and a deep distrust lodged in my mind as I floundered around in cognitive dissonance trying to figure out what was happening.

Over time, my self-esteem was torn down and I became depressed, despondent, socially withdrawn, and I started to believe I could not accomplish anything professionally and that there was something chronically wrong with me that I had just been overlooking previously in my adult life. While I take responsibility of my reaction, I know that never in my life before had I doubted my professional abilities, my decision-making abilities, my social confidence, or ability to make intelligent insights. All this doubt was brought upon me by the abuse in the relationship.

I made the decision to stop making sacrifices and I started to pursue my professional development. I let my boyfriend pursue his professional development and I watched as he failed to compromise for my professional goals, and when push came to shove (no pun intended but I was also pushed on one occasion / shoved to the floor for "harassing" him, ie giving him a hug) and he took a job in another state and expected me to follow him (leaving my friends and family and job yet again), I did not. I saw it as a natural progression of things - in that if you don't put any work into maintaining something, it's not maintained. So I just let him go. At that point, though, he didn't let me go. He harassed me for months, and I am not even sure what he was trying to accomplish, for I was never going to move to where he had moved to. But I did try to see if he was willing to take responsibility for his behavior, CHANGE, and do right by me / treat me the way I deserve to be treated. I took an offer from a professional program accross the country, but I told him I was willing to work on things and then I watched to see if his behavior matched his promises, and whether or not he stopped blowing up at me. It did not - he continued to be pushy and selfish. When I moved for my program, he stopped talking to me and immediately started dating other people.

While his actions toward me are deplorable, and I was enraged for quite some time, I am no longer truly angry. I am struggling to not remember the good times, and no matter how I look at it, what hurt the most was having my heart crushed into teeny pieces by a person I so deeply loved, looked up to, and imagined a future with.

That was about 4 months ago (and it's been about 3/4ths of a year since I broke it off officially). In the ensuing 4 months, I've been busy in my program but I have worked to overcome what happened to me. I am a bit of a loss, though, because I have trouble imagining building a relationship with someone else. It's not that I feel distrusting (I did for a while), I just feel uninterested. I feel sad. I feel very alienated and isolated. I don't feel like I would feel joy spending time with anyone. (This is not how I feel with my friends.) I do feel heartbroken still. I don't feel insecure or lacking in confidence. Overall, I feel like a different person than I used to be, which is alienating to me. I feel a dry humor or a dryness and I am not really emotionally expressive lately. I am not for lack of interest from men - I signed up on online dating just to see what is out there, and of the men who write me who I do want to talk to, we have nice chats but I feel no motivation to really get to know them. I feel listless. I used to want to get married and share a life with someone, but now I feel...dead to that. I feel tired. I don't feel enthusiastic about meeting people, even though I know I should. I decided to pick up a new sport and play that once the holidays are over; I think it will be good for me. I am a giving person and I find myself continuing to be helpful toward others, but not seeking out their help for me, and not seeking out deeper connections. I often think about my ex and I do miss him and what we had, that level of intimacy, I just don't have for someone else. But I'm not allowing myself to. Has anyone else ever gone through something so thoroughly depleting before? I feel like I lost someone through death, only it was worse, because some part of me died as well.

it takes time to heal from toxic relationships. i think you are being too hard on yourself and after only 4 months you seem to be doing quite well in my opinion. it's entirely possible and likely that at 4 months out of a 2+ year relationship you just aren't ready to open up your heart to another. don't try to force it, continue to take the time to heal. your heart will let you know when you're ready for love again. i had a very emotionally abusive relationship that left me completely heartbroken and depleted of any and all self worth/esteem. i was empty and had no desire to be involved in a relationship. it took me years to heal from that, mostly because i wallowed in my own depression for too long after the relationship ended. but you are taking all the right steps to a more healthy you. continue engaging in healthy activities, hopefully you have friends/family to spend time with as well, so you don't feel so isolated. i say give yourself a break. you are well on your way. in time you will feel alive again.

Yes, I did once. I had an LDR for a year with a man I thought was the love of my life. This was back 20 years ago. I finally left everything to be with the guy, flew 2,000 miles to his home and moved in with him. Only to find out he was an addict and a scary one at that who owed his dealers money and the whole Breaking Bad works. I fled, but it took another few years back and forth before I finally left him for good. I was heartbroken for a good year after that. I jumped into two other successive disastrous relationships and all in all burned through three bad ones in the space of about six months.

After that I took a couple of years off dating and focused on my life instead. I had an amazing two years of travel, of new jobs, of new friends and getting my head together. And I healed. And you will too, but four months is nothing. Don't be hard on yourself that you aren't over it now, the most toxic relationships typically do take longer to get over than the straightforward ones do. To that end if you need it some therapy or even journaling will help you process things along with going out, taking up new activities and just living your life.

You will heal. You will love again. You just need to give yourself time.

This interesting because i find myself on the other end of it. While it definitely wasn't to the level of your partner, it was still bad enough that my gf of 4 years left. Whats ironic is that our most intimate year together was also our worst, communication ceased and started to mirror each others fears/insecurities. Just like that she gave up, never gave me a chance to explain. I'm still getting clarity on all of it and i've also taken this as a chance to really better myself for future relationships but part of me feels a huge emptiness. That feeling of losing someone as if they had past, the person i knew doesn't exist anymore and took a huge part of me with them /:

Thanks everyone, for your replies. I am sorry it took me a few days to respond, I was away for the holiday.

I have actually started to feel better. Visiting with my family recently, and being back in my home culture, helped to remind me of who I am. As I come back into my own identity, which was stripped from me during my last relationship, I start to feel more and more like my old self. Because my old self had none of these problems - I am finding that I actually don't have problems as my recovery goes on! Before this happened to me, I was:

lively

trusting

happy

ambitious

funny

confident

I was all those things (and more) without question. I took them for granted because I had never been anything different. So I didn't need to dwell on what it's like to not have or be those things. I naturally attracted other people to me with ease, not because I was trying to, but because people find those qualities attractive. So I took that for granted as well - just being me.

Then all those things were taken from me, and I became more and more AFRAID. Even now, I thought about confronting my ex and my armpits started to sweat and my heart started to pound. This is not because I was nervous. It was because I used to be punished so severely for confronting him. Now that things have been over and I've started the inevitable process of recovering, I am working to confront that fear by realizing...you know what...there is no reason to be afraid of someone who can't hurt me anymore. I just had to reach the point where I no longer could be hurt. Isn't that nice? To all of you out there in a similar position to me, it makes ALL the difference.

And it comes from finding yourself again, from having the world righted (ie no longer living in a gaslit one). I am starting to feel happy again. I know it will take more time, but I am over the hump!