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sickened by the thought of being with anyone else, even after months--i'm broken


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Ex ended things with me in December. He choose to be with someone else. Took him more than a year of indecision and back and forth but he choose her and they live together now and are seemingly in it for ‘happily ever after’. He and I had a couple encounters recently, after months of no contact. His girlfriend found out and the upshot is that he has re-committed to her and promised to never see me again. Our 2+ year emotional/erotic entanglement seems finally over, with a brusque "Goodbye. I wish you the best" email.

 

But I seem completely incapable of moving on (emotionally, actually), despite all my best efforts. And I was in the five months before we crossed paths again too. And the crux of it is very real possibility that I will never have another relationship, mostly because I seem physically incapable of it.

 

I’m on the cusp of 30 so I am very much running out of time. And I haven’t even remotely liked anyone other than him in 3+ years (not even tolerated enough to occasionally see), but almost the most frightening/discouraging is that I have no physical attraction to anyone else. The thought of having sex with anyone but him makes my skin crawl. Swiping through dating apps (which I started doing recently because surely I gotta try something and i'm running out of dating eligibility) is nearly nauseating: I keep thinking, "is this the person I'll have to settle with"? I just end up sickened with what I've lost (and what his girlfriend has). Things were exciting and sexy and heart-pounding with him. Even just meeting anyone else for a drink is stomach-churning and making do. The couple times I have reluctantly done so I have just been overwhelmed with dread and resignation that eventually curdled into revulsion and despair and I couldn't get away fast enough.

 

This is all complicated by the fact that this was my first sexually functional relationship, because most of my early sex-having years were hollowed out by rape. That trauma, and a bad ED (related), meant i was just completely sexually estranged from myself until I was 26, although very experienced and able to feign investment really well. That all led to me being in a 5+ year relationship where I had no attraction to my partner and never once wanted to have sex with him.

 

This more recent ex isn't the only person I've had present, non-dissociating sex with but he's the only person I've had that kinda sex with long-term, where it evolved and was emotional etc.

 

I want that and all the relationship stuff: the intimacy and the companionship and the future and the mundane watching Netflix in bed. He has that! ALL my friends have that. I want that on a primal and also just practical level. It’s the most basic human need and also just how most people’s lives are shaped. It’s mostly emotionally but also socially devastating to not have that, especially in your late 20s-30s. And I’m confronting the reality that not only will I never get that with him again, I will never get it ever again period.

 

I know myself: I will never be happy without someone to share my life with. I could be short-term happy single, but not forever—I don’t think this is unreasonable. I know lots of people, especially women, just accept relationships without physical attraction, but I have lived that, and it was horrific. Just years of resentment and emptiness and feeling trapped and sexual encounters that were not even tolerable—they were downright traumatising. My experience with rape means that kind of attraction-less sex and relationship is now impossible for me (both emotionally and but also physically—my body clamps up and will not let it happen) but also my only option now. I’ve had therapy for rape trauma--it worked!-- and I’ve considered going again. I’m just not sure they’e going to take me seriously if I’m like “please help me get over trauma so I can have sex I don’t actually want to have to so I can have a relationship and a future and not be alone forever please.”

 

So I’m wondering now how do you move on when there is literally no one elseever? When that was the last person you ever cuddled or confided in or had sex with? I’m really, REALLY trying to accept that my life will just have this huge crater in it and try to live around the edges, without love, but I don’t even see the point. The thought that I will never again have anyone to love and trust and touch is so cataclysmic I want to die every time it dawns on me. My entire life has been altered, decimated by this breakup and I don't see the point of occupying it anymore, fighting to eke out a few moment of lonely peace while others (ex and his girlfriend, mainly) enjoy these vivid, loving, life-defining relationships.

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You move on after you seek professional help not only from a therapist but also a psychologist. You have issues which need to be addressed professionally. You need to heal and become a work in progress. You're too negative and all doom and gloom.

 

Don't accept that your life is this huge crater. You sound very depressed. This is not healthy. Work on yourself and turn yourself around. You can do it with professional help.

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I'd focus more on you and less on acquiring a fulfilling relationship. The only relationship that should matter right now while you repair yourself and come back to yourself is that relationship with yourself and how you see yourself as a whole person, not just bits and parts that survived a break up. You should be rediscovering yourself, your interests and reconnecting with your hobbies, your friends and your family. Your self-esteem is very low. I agree trying to speak to someone or find a support group where you can feel safe speaking about your trauma and experience.

 

You seem bombarded by the relationships of others and measure yourself against the relationship successes of others and even your ex and what he's doing now with someone else. Try and let go of all that because it's not helping you achieve anything but wistfully long for what you don't have.

 

Go back to your career and what you do for work, find purpose in your life, speak with other like-minded people and be around people who are motivated. Be aware of the influences around you.

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On top of what others have said, see if you can source out a good EMDR therapist and use that to maybe help deal with the trauma that is trapped not only in your mind, but in your body memory also*

 

Also 30 is not that old. I doubt you’ll be alone forever because you are open to being in another relationship. A lot of people start on that path of ‘I’m never doing that again!’ and if that’s the narrative they run then that is probably what will happen...

 

Although, I have known people like that who still end up in a relationship :)

 

Give to others. Give to animals and the planet. Be selfless and grateful.

 

You now have a great opportunity to do some inner work and learn to love yourself. Don’t waste it coz soon enough you will be with someone else*

 

Carus*

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You now have a great opportunity to do some inner work and learn to love yourself. Don’t waste it coz soon enough you will be with someone else

 

Great advice, this, if you can see it this way. Your other post on this forum, almost two years ago, was also about being alone forever, feeling very similar thoughts in the wake of a breakup, right down to being upset that your ex had moved on faster than you. Shortly after that, by the sounds of it, you were with someone else, the man you're now mourning. I'm sorry. I know it hurts. Been there, more than once, as have most people.

 

But the past is a pretty good indicator of the future, which is to say the odds are you're going to be with someone sooner than you think. So the question becomes: Who do you want to be when that moment comes? Now is a wonderful—if hard, and lonesome—time to think about that question and take steps toward answering it as you'd like. Just taking those steps—moving forward—is often the best way to lighten the load of these moments, to dull the sharpness by harnessing it.

 

Thirty is so very young. Dating, romance, sex, swiping left, swiping right: none of that is a competition. I've had relationships end where I'm with someone, in some capacity, within a day or two. When my last one ended I was basically asexual for 6 months. Neither is superior, wrong or right, just states of being. Frankly, for me, having time away from romance and those urges has been some of the most rewarding of my life—time spent shedding husks, digging deeper, working out some psychic and emotional kinks so that when the next thing comes I can approach it at a different angle.

 

All the best.

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I felt kinda like you, although I don’t have the traumatic past that you do. But I grew up in a religious society and didn’t have an intimate relationship with anyone before my now ex, and that made everything quite hard.

 

And I felt exactly like you do. That I wouldn’t be attracted to anybody else, ever. I have always had a very specific look that I was attracted to, and my ex was all that. So I figured that if I didn’t want to be alone I’d just have to settle with someone. But I was 32 when I was dumped and I also felt out of time. AND I hated that f%$€big woman that he wanted instead of me. That got everything that I wanted.

 

My thoughts about not being attracted to anyone was partly confirmed after a handful of dates. Nice enough guys, but I didn’t want them to come near me at all. Not even to give me a hug. I thought that I’d never get over my ex until I met someone new, but I’d never meet someone new until I was over my ex... So I’d just be stuck in a never ending loop. I was a 100% sure I’d ONLY want him back forever. And that lasted for 6 months actually.

 

BUT...

I did meet someone. I wasn’t looking, I didn’t have any sort of faith that I’d like him, I only met him because I felt I had to do something other than wall myself in, and BAM.

 

And the best thing is that being with him, just the short few months that I’ve known him, has made me so much more confident. I’ve opened my eyes to things about myself and my past relationship that I never knew. And the thing is, I didn’t know it could be like this. And no matter if this one is the one or not, I’m so glad I met him!

 

And just to top everything of, my ex actually did make a turnaround and desperately wants me back now. That was all I ever wanted for so long, but now I’m able to be smart and strong about it.

 

I don’t know what the future holds. But I do know that things eventually feels better. Even though you don’t think so. And that we all have different timelines on the healing and moving on, and that the one thing you should never do, is feel bad for not feeling better!!!

 

I always felt that the whole “you should work on yourself” talk was a bit cr*p actually thought... Of course you should always do that, but yeah... I was happy with every other part of my life, my work, my hobbies, my friends, my family... So when I got dumped I just lost a pice of the puzzle. Rearranging all the good pieces wouldn’t help my situation. But crying over the lost piece forever wouldn’t help me either. So I just thought that I’d try to not focus on that piece and try to be happy with all that was good. And think that this is just a period of my life, it won’t stay like this forever! AND - you’re not alone! Not in the heartache and not in the “singledome”, even though it feels like everyone else is happy and together and having babies and getting married and blah blah blah! I actually made a list of people I knew or knew of that was single 😂 It helped!

 

All the best wishes!

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The guy was bouncing back and forth between you and another woman for a YEAR and you think you lost some wonderful prize worth giving up on love for the rest of your life for?

 

I don't see a wonderful guy who deserves the title "love of my life forever". I see selfish and egotistical.

 

There really is no need to go to extremes ("I'll be alone for the rest of my life!!!!"). You have no idea what's going to happen over the next 60 years.

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