searching1951

It's been 5 months since I ws dumped, she returning to her ex and getting married next month. I broke NC 2 weeks ago, and actually felt better..it put an end to my fantasies and it also made me realize I had pedalized her. I've met someone new. She is a lovely girl, beautiful, with a thousand times more common sense than the ex. We have a good time together, but when we are apart the ex thoughts come roaring back with a vengeance. This AM I stumbled accross old ex photos on my computer (I thought I'd purged them all) and am now flailing and in grief. I don't want these thoughts anymore. I want to move one. I had dated this new girl for a while, then stopped, and then missed her. I know this has potential..she is attractive and really nice..the ex is sinister, deceitful, a smoker, an alcoholic..the outcome here is sensible and the way it should be... But I am a mess... I am even missing my ex before my ex and tried contacting her..she has moved on too. HELP... how do you get control? I am 55 and have gone thru a hellacious divorce 10 years ago, recovered,etc., but this break-up of 5 months ago has been like nothing else.. I was so in love and so deceived by her. It was a shock. I know if I was with her that it would never work...a far greater hell if we got back... she'll be on an oxy-bottle in 5 years...or worse..but she is the most attractive woman I have ever been with and our love, to me, seemed resonant. Yet it must have meant nothing to her. I feel like I am grieving her death as well as the shock. This is insanity. I don't want to blow this. I am so confused..worse than ever in my life.

I just want to share, briefly, my recent experience. I was dumped last March and suffered the horrible experience of finding out that she was marrying her ex from a third party two weeks later..she never gave me a clue. I was a boy-toy to her but she was my true love to me. After one confrontation at which I returned all the ostentatious stuff she had given me, I went NC. Mutual friends talked about what was happening on her side, so I pulled away. I flailed. I grieved. I tried dating too soon... but I kept strict NC for 4 months, and I didn't seem to be getting better. A week ago I contacted her. She was gracious. She wanted to be very good friends, but was firm about her committment to her ex. We talked and laughed a bit. I confined this exchange of a phone call and several emails to one day..last Monday. Remarkably, this encounter gave me a great sense of relief and closure. Mainly, it dispelled all my fantasies that she and I might rejoin. I think these fantasies retarded my getting over her. It was painful, and I even said to her in an email that day that it was clear I loved her and she not me. She dodged it, seemed a bit defensive, but didn't really deny it. I did sense of twinge of sentiment from her, but mainly our relationship never existed in her mind based upon her communications to me. Also, she was a heavy smoker and I could hear her cracked voice and the sounds of her puffing as we talked...it conjured up the images of the oxy-bottle that awaits her, or worse. The past week I've had little of the pain, little of the ruminating. I've felt a whole lot better and freer. I think this was therapeutic breaking of NC. I had created a boogey-man of my ex in my mind that was ever-present and terrorizing me with rejection. The breaking of NC seems to have ended that..it really wasn't worth it all. I can't say what will work for the rest of you, but it is really a matter of mental dissociation that we face..just getting certain thoughts out of our heads. That's all ex's are..thoughts in our heads. Whatever works is the solution.

Sorry to hear it. I've been fighting with GAD post break-up. People who haven't had it have no idea how awful it is. It is imperative to get diet under control..absolutely no substance abuse, coffee, smoking, drinking, etc. Get regular strenuous aerobic exercise..an hour a day. (And you might try dark chocolate). I think that if you attack the GAD problem the break-up pain will subside. The two are directly connected. GAD is depression. Get off of substances that make it worse, and you may have to get onto zoloft, or some other drug (yecchh). I guarantee that if you get rid of GAD you'll get rid of break-up pain.

Hey..tonight I met a gorgeous woman with a brain....I may be in love soon...won't that be a kicker..after agreeing to be "very good friends" with the ex who treated me like a turd, I'll just blow her off. The best NC comes when you've found someone new.

I broke NC after a horrible 4 months. It wasn't great but it wasn't altogether bad. Time will tell. Here is what was positive about it.. (1) Over the past 4 months I had developed fantasies that she may be unhappy with her plans to marry her ex and may want me back. These fantasies create expectations and they slow down recovery. I found after talking to her that she is definitely committed to him and has no regrets. So, now I have the reality check I needed. it hurt, but it dispelled the fantasies. (2) I was always getting a creepy crawly feeling when I would enter her town (just north of mine) that I might bump into her. Now it doesn't matter because I broke the ice (3) We agreed to be "very good friends" (she added, but I'll always be committed to xxx). OK, but I have no intention to build on that. She treated me like a dog... I still have my dignity. I now have the choice to be her friend or not. Before I had no such choice. My choice will be to quietly stay away. (4) I heard her voice and she was smoking while we were talking on the phone. She sounds worse for wear. Her smoking (and drinking) will kill her. I could picture her in my mind as aged and decrepid. She also sounded callous and crude, as I had forgotten her to be. So there were negatives about her that resurfaced, and this helped. The negative about breaking NC is that it agitates you in ways you weren't agitated before. She refused to acknowledge that we were ever in love or happy, other than to confirm that we laughed together a lot. I think this is so as not to betray her new commitment, and she's always been paranoid about info getting back to other parties. But it stung. On the other hand, I was thinking about her constantly anyway, so it probably hasn't changed anything. I don't know what to say overall. I think this experience may help me to let go and move on. Time will tell. I certainly don't feel that I have any access to her heart anymore. This has dispelled the fantasies. Reality checks are sometimes needed in this process, though they can be painful. I am not an absolutist. NC can be destructive, but still the only recourse in most cases. Frankly, bad breakups are destructive. You don't want to go thru too many of them in your life. This is one of my worst, and I don't understand why. Maybe it's because I am 55 years old and aging effects have begun, and you realize that the clock is ticking. Hope springs eternal. I have a date set tonight for someone new..maybe she'll be interesting and kind. I am going back into NC with the ex today, hopefully quietly it will slip away..

Are you that strong at 6 AM? I respect you for that post, but the dark days are oh so dark.

It's been 4 months to the day since I discovered she was marrying her ex after shutting me out two weeks earlier (a 4 year friendship that developed into a relationship). I confronted her then and she wanted to remain "very good friends" (does that mean friends who still have sex?) but I politelye said I didn't think so and "Au Revoir." The past 4 months have been brutal. Absolute NC. I know she has asked about me (at least as recently as 2 months ago) but nothing else. I've told mutual friends not to tell me what is going on. Her ex relationship was very unstale, and she'd sworn she would never marry him, and was just maintaining friendship (he is 10 years older and has recurring prostate cancer and is impotent; I think she bears a lot of guilt at leaving him to be alone). In recent weeks I've been feeling better, but I still think of her constantly, but in a less toxic way. We always shared politics, and our mutual disgust with Bush. This AM I almost sent her an editorial against Bush's vetoing the stem cell research bill with a little note "This made me think of you." I had it all cut and pasted in and had typed her email address for the first time in over 4 months. I was so close to hitting the send button...but somehow I just couldn't do it. I halted myself by thinking about how I've used these 4 months to recover my dignity. Sh dealt me a real blow. She handled it in a very immature, almost vicious way. She owed me an explanation, not jut walking out and putting up a wall and then letting me find out from a 3rd person what she was doing. I think she was very confuse, and in many ways she is a decent peson, but 4 months of being an NC dumpee has made me see her in a negative light...she is also a self-centered and selfish and impulsive person. I know I still have feelings for her, but I also know I have moved some distance away from her. Throughout this my mantra has been to forget her and move on. I would have violated that principle if I had sent the email. Have I done the right thing? Should I have sent a simple icebreaker email? Just to sort of say "hi" ? Or did I do the right thing? I sort of think this is the watershed...if I don't now send this, I will never even think to do it again. And, afterall, my birthday was one month ago and I heard nothing from her. I think I did the right thing, but wanted to hear your opinions. Thanks in advance.

Yepp..my ex wife took me out with the garbage one day..she got the house in which I had raised my two children from ages 1 and 3, to 15 and 17. Then, she promptly moved the creepiest scumbag you ever saw in with his three kids and she married this dirtbag. One of them is a 5 time convicted felon. My daughter left for college, but my son had to endure life in that house with this set-up, so alien to what he had known. He was often blamed for the misdeeds of the psychopathic step-brother. My son had a nervous breakdown. This prompted me to buy a new house, and he moved in with me the next day. For two years I dealt with the trauma he had experienced, and finally, one day, he brightened and began to heal. In the meantime, the worthless pos ex and her new husband began to face severe financial hardship. They sold the old family home, and moved intoa shack somewhere on the other side of town. By this time there was only distilled hatred left in me for her, her new people, and what she had done to my kids and to me. I was actually relieved that the house I had bought for my family 20 years earlier was no longer occupied by these sociopaths. I love my new house, and I love my kids. I wouldn't give my ex the time of of day.

Go see all the best lawyers in your community. This marks them so he can't use them. Then pick the very best lawyer and start to develop a strategy. You have to start to prepare for what is coming....war.

Hey, you've described my past four years beautifully. I knew it was over at Christmas when she said to my Mother, "I am (your son's) very good friend." Very good friend? After f^&king my brains out for 4 years? How about not saying anything? Well..she'll be married to her ex in 2 months. She could never make up her mind... I wonder if she has made it up yet? I wonder if she has a mind?

Listen, chief, it's all biochemical. You are in a really bad fix right now. There's probably considerable drinking going on. And smoking. And no physical exertion.. Believe me, these are amplifiers. You are at a crossroads. You get up, dust yourself off, and walk out that door, and keep walking..and walk off the drugs and walk off this depression...maybe walk to a really good friend's house, or walk into a church and sit a while and talk to the man..if that works for you..or..get to a shrink..a real one and talk to that man..consider some Zoloft... I don't think sitting there and weeping indicates a situation that will likely heal by itself. You are the victim of external circumstances. You must, thereforeeee, improve those external circumstances... and you should seek some help. You really will need some help to convert the exo world, but you hav to get up out of that chair and walk. I strongly suggest that you turn that service revolver in..give it to your friend, or to the cops, or something. Get it out of your space. You need to find YOU.

Your strength comes from all of the time that has elapsed since you were together..the fact that you have gotten through 5 months of the worst pain in your life. It won't get worse..it will get better..but it isn't over. There will be crying moments in the distant future..there will be setbacks and ruminations. But the fact is, the worst is behind you. You have progressed. Don't beat your self up for breaking NC. But resolve not to do it again. Don't forget that you were betrayed by this person. Anyone who is the keepr of your love, who then discards it, like a tissue paper out the window of a car, has betrayed you. YOU don't deserve that. The worst is behind you..now move on.

All good advice. I suffer from the hope thing from time to time. It takes many forms..all bad. Yepp..it slowly..very slowly, too slowly, gets better.

Thanks..that's the kind of hopeful message I was looking for. I'm doing much better after 4 months, but a slight setback today. My ex will be married in 2 months. Nothing I can, or will, do about it. When I feel up thoughts pop into my mind that in her haste she may realize what a mistake she made. This AM, in a bout of depression, I think she has moved on and completely forgotten me. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between. I hope I get to the point, soon, at which I don't give a damn.

Just coming out of a relapse. It lasted several weeks. Thought I was back to square one..weeping..thinking of her nonstop. Now I am coming out of it and regaining my strength. I am still tempted to think about her..it keeps the relationship alive in a way. But as the strength come sback it becomes possible to **actively suppress the thoughts**. It's really important to use this time to actively **not think about the ex**. Frankly, it is almost impossible not to think about the ex other times..but right now I am so fed up with being where I was..a simpering, crying, namby pamby girlie boy who wants his squeeze so bad he can't stand it... well I say FU$K THAT and get on with life..be a man..build up your immune system..and flush that rotten POS out of your brain...be a man!!! YEEEAAAAOOOWWWSA!