peaceofmind

You are right, any method of breaking up hurts, BUT I think the method they choose shows their true character, or in this case lack of it. This may be a bit too much, but going out and dating right away, at least for me, shows that someone may be trying to cram something into their soul that doesn't fit.

Hi there- I certainly can sympathize with you. I was dumped via e-mail after 7 months together. We talked about moving in and getting married and then I got the e-mail while I was at work no less. On top of that he had a secret confession that he told me about, again via e-mail. I was stunned, shocked and like you also I felt deceived and betrayed. In my mind it was hard to fathom how someone I spent 7 months with daily could turn around in a minute and send me a very cold and callous e-mail. I had no idea what I did to deserve that. And as if to make me hurt some more he immediately went back on link removed. If you interested you can read my post -"my boyfriend left me for a fantasy". But to get back to your question about when do you feel it is right to date again? I asked myself the very same question. It would have been so easy for me to go back on match and start immediately, but I knew I would be comparing the new guy with my ex and that is not right and I wouldn't be dealing with my pain in a healthy way, but instead just masking it. I was still hurting from what happened. It has been almost 2 months for me and it still hurts, but it is a less pronounced hurt. Every day gets me closer to him being a blur in my mind. What I need to do for myself is re-examine where I am and where I want to be. I don't want to behave like he did. I want to have respect for myself and others along the way. I have decided to see a therapist for a bit to help me get better in my head. He truly wounded my self-esteem and sense of self and I need to get that back before I start dating again. I don't know if you feel the same way. I think with a therapist's help and taking baby steps along the way I will get to that day when I do realize I want to date again. I think you will just know. I hope this helps. -peace

Part of me accepts responsibility for the dear jane email. I knew something was coming a few days before and we were planning to meet one night, but I accelerated things because I felt strongly that he was going to break up with me and I needed to know right away. It was too hard for me to go to work knowing what was coming. I called him the morning of the day we were suppose to meet and told him that if he was going to break up with me tonight he could just tell me now. He said " I don't know what you're talking about". He said he would call me later. He never did. I tried calling him that evening. He knew I was calling and chose not to accept my call or call me back. The next day I got the email while I was at work.

Thank you KellBell for listening and being there for me. I don't know why I am struggling so much with this. The words and support from everyone help so much. The fact that he made me feel so unwanted right after he made me feel so wanted is what I'm hung up on. It hurts to know that he has probably already found someone else and I'm still alone. I know I'm much better off, but that reality hurts. Thank you everyone! -peace

Yes, all the points you brought up have crossed my mind. I do believe that there is more to the story than what he shared with me. It's a gut feeling. I will never contact him. It was his decision to break up and I will respect that and not try and change it. I don't want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with me. I have to look down the road at the big picture and if we still were together I would not have that trust level there anymore. I went from being so trusting of him to now, not at all. He kept this secret very hidden. I would always wonder when the day would be that he found someone more appealing than me and would leave. He was very loving, romantic and that is what I miss, but the reality is that he still has 1-1/2 years of law school left, no money (mainly because he spent it on his unhealthy habit), no job, a car that's about to break down and he lives in a tiny, crappy apartment. When he does graduate he will be in debt for years to come. I will end up supporting him and between this and his fantasy I will be dragged down so low. But why do I still care? My head knows what is going on, but my heart needs to catch up.He offered no explanation for sending me this email other than wanting to explain where his head was at. There was no mention of him going for help. He jumped immediately back to the online dating sites. When I confronted him about being on there his comment was: " you made me realize what was I thinking doing that". He took his profile down for 2 days and then up it went again. It seems that he isn’t happy with himself and each relationship he has just makes it worse because it makes him feel more unable to cope with normalcy. It doesn’t even sound like he knows what he wants… first he wants a well rounded person and then says that this fetish is no big deal, then why does he write 3 pages about it. It’s like he’s trying to convince himself he is normal. That's why I think he hung in there so long. He was trying to make it work and be "normal". The part that I didn't share yet from his email is below. Pretty much everything else I cut and pasted from his email into this post. The below is exactly what I got from him word to word. When I was growing up: - I was not sexually abused (that I remember) - I was verbally and somewhat physically abused by my father - We were sexually extremely repressed by our parents to an extreme degree. This meant a lot of disinformation on my part. - I did try to kiss my sister as a way to practice kissing and I feel extreme guilt and shame about that - I did have some homosexual thoughts but never really acted on them (came close): I no longer have those at all - I do have certain sexual fantasies and those are what I want to talk about to say where they came from: Along with the extreme sexual repression, 2 initial things happened around puberty that have shaped my sexual fantasy since then - I was a paper boy, and once a week this couple would get what was a very risque lingerie catalogue/soft porn type thing. I would look at it and the way the women were dressed was a major turn on for me. Also while learning French we had a French magazine called Elle that we used to learn. It had this one picture where the women were wearing stockings/garters/high heels. The women in the other catalogue were similarly dressed. The Elle magazine was what I would use when I first learned about masturbation etc. So that image of those women was forever ingrained in me at time when talking about sex in my house was very taboo. I was very shy as a teenager, but inside had all these feelings that were unable to come out due to my shyness/upbringing and so these images became powerful ones in my head. Then in 1986 (age 15) I really got into Prince. I loved his music, and his sexual style and tastes through the music and videos came at a time when all this was still forming and getting into my being. Again an outlet for my sexual awareness. He also liked women who dressed and acted a certain way, and so this was important to me. I did not have sex until I was 18 in college, and the first time was one of those drunken things that was not really worth it. Meanwhile, I was into techno/dance music and really into dancing. That meant I went to clubs a lot where the women would dress a certain way, but even though I was coming out of my shell, I did not have the "it" to get those women I thought were hot. I did have a couple of girlfriends from 18 to 19 but I was unable to act on any fantasies and I was still sexually very amateur on the outside. I did finally meet a girl who started to bring out some things but we had been friends before and we never really got going (she was also a big Prince fan). I still never got to date a woman that would fulfill some of those fantasies, and this continued with my ex-wife. Let me explain - my fascination with a woman who looks good in heels/boots/lingerie etc. is not a fetish per se. I don’t require it to be turned on. Ultimately I would love to have someone who can or does dress that way, but in an elegant way. It would be part of her makeup that she likes to be able to dress that way at the appropriate time (not all the time). She would be sexually self-aware enough to want to do that because it makes her feel good, and not about someone else. Maybe dressing in sexy lingerie etc. is something she wants to do for her lover because she would like as much as he would. I have had the opportunity to experience some of these fantasies with a few women a few times. But too often, the women I meet don’t have that innate sexual nature about them that they want to do those things, and then I have hard time asking for it in case they say no and I am stuck looking weird. So I don’t say anything when I sense its not in their nature, and then I get frustrated. When I get frustrated is when I turn to other sources like certain kinds of pornography to fulfill those needs. It has become very unhealthy, and I want to explore my sexual fantasies in a healthy relationship setting where both partners want the same thing. I have actually wasted an unhealthy amount of money and time on these activities, and so just kept everything repressed while in relationships (including with you). I am not able to talk about deep feelings that I should be able to, and thus the relationship ends up being killed over time due to this. Thing is I am very romantic, love sex, love intimacy and I am very good "in the sack". But not being able to talk about these things with a lover has been killing me as I am letting myself down, and eventually the relationship suffers as well. One day I keep thinking I will meet a woman who wants to do those things and carries herself in the manner that matches with me, and I will be able to talk to her about it as we both feel comfortable about it. Funny thing is I see women out and about all the time whose look is what I would go for that way, but I never seem to talk to them. I want that special personal connection, but with the bonus that I can feel comfortable and able to talk about what I like. There has to be a healthy way for me to act on this so that I can have fulfilling relationships built on intimacy and open communication. It is clear that these desires have deep roots in my sexual history, and so I need to be able to talk about them, but in positive situation. Let me be clear - I don’t expect to be with a woman who dresses in high heels/lingerie etc. all the time. That is not what I want. I want someone who is well rounded, classy, intelligent, passionate, deep etc. but who has that side to her that wants to turn on that style at the right time. I hope this helps you figure out where I have been at, and what goes on inside my head. I want to be able to break free from all the negative sides to this and someday be in a wonderful relationship. This is everything as he wrote it to me. -peace

KellBell and Blender, Thank you so much for your words. It definitely helps to have outside perspective because I feel I am taking this too personally. Some of those words in his emails hurt so much. First in the cold, callous way he broke up with me and then with the knowledge he shared about being attracted to others and not to me. I wonder if any part of our relationship was real. His actions in our relationship would never have lead me to believe this about him. He was very good at keeping this close to his vest. There was only one instance when he came forward and proclaimed that he really wanted this to work after a small fight we had, but I wonder, as Blender pointed out, if he is capable of having love and sex co-exist together. I think he had the love from me, but when the sex wasn't up to par then that need took over. I don't want to devote alot of my time to this and I am seeking help from a therapist soon because I want to be more aware of patterns in me and signs I should be seeing about others. But in the meantime because I can't get into to see a therapist until January I want to thank everyone for their support and guidance. This forum has helped more than you know. -peace

By the way Annie, I'm a big LOST fan also! Is it February yet?

I know you are right. Everyone in my family and all my friends say the same thing. 10 intelligent people could not be wrong. His actions with me are not matching up with his actions now and that's the part I'm tripping over. He was very intimate, romantic and attentive, which I will admit I craved at the time. He interacted with my family, was my neice's soccer coach, went to church with me. Why do all of that and as you say be so superficial. Although he was cocky and talked about himself and law school all the time, which was a turn off for me.

Hi Annie, I'm new to this posting stuff, but needed to turn somewhere to make sense of this. Actually, my head sees things clearly, but I'm waiting for my heart to catch up. No, I don't want to talk with him. I just don't think he gets it although he is determined to keep plugging away for that fantasy until he gets it. I think he will be disappointed when he doesn't match up to her in other ways. I told him I wasn't a mind reader and that he needed to communicate his desire, just like I would communicate mine. I could pull the same trick on him. I'm looking for a JCrew kind of guy, which is not even close to what he is, but he thinks he is quite stylish in his own head. Here's one other things he said: "thing is I'm romantic, intimate, love sex and very good in the sack". True, but who says that out loud? My flaw is that I can't stop thinking about the great sex and the way he made me feel, eventhough ultimately I don't think we would have been good together in other ways. He is 35 and law school is his second career now. I'm 43 and pretty much set financially and I like to think emotionally. I do have together most days, just not so much now.

My boyfriend very callously sent me a dear jane e-mail telling me he could not longer be in the relationship with me because it was clear to him that he couldn't be in law school and in a relationship at the same time. Let me also preface that he mentioned he had a secret related to sex but could not tell me what it was. Although he immediately went back on to an online dating site. A week later I get the details of the secret in an email. The just of it was he has a fantasy of woman wearing heels/boots/lingerie. It stared in puberty when he was looking at soft porn magazines of women dressed this way. These images have remained in his head and he enters relationships not being able to talk about theses fantasies if he feels the other person is not sexually self-aware and doesn't have that innate "way about her" to want to dress this way for herself and him. Now, he has not mentioned one word about this to me the entire 7 months we were in the relationship. He just wanted me to be that way innately. He said his fascination with a woman who looks good in heels/boots/lingerie etc. is not a fetish per se. He doesn't require it to be turned on. But ultimately he wants to be with someone who can or does dress that way, but in an elegant way. It would be part of her makeup that she likes to be able to dress that way at the appropriate time (not all the time). She would be sexually self-aware enough to want to do that because it makes her feel good, and it's not about someone else. He said he had the opportunity to experience some of these fantasies with a few women a few times. But too often, the women he met didn't have that innate sexual nature about them that they want to do those things, and then he had a hard time asking for it in case they say no and he is stuck looking weird. So he didn't say anything when he sensed is was not in their nature, and then got frustrated. When he got frustrated is when he turned to other sources like certain kinds of pornography to fulfill those needs. It has become very unhealthy, and he wants to explore his sexual fantasies in a healthy relationship setting where both partners want the same thing. He has actually wasted an unhealthy amount of money and time on these activities, and so just kept everything repressed while in relationships (including with me). He is not able to talk about deep feelings that he should be able to, and thus the relationship ends up being killed over time due to this. But not being able to talk about these things with a lover has been killing him as he feels he is letting himself down, and eventually the relationship suffers as well. One day he keeps thinking he will meet a woman who wants to do those things and carries herself in the manner that matches with him, and he will be able to talk to her about it as they both feel comfortable about it. He said he sees women out and about all the time whose look is what he would go for that way, but he can't seem to talk to them. He wants that special personal connection, but with the bonus that he can feel comfortable and able to talk about what he likes. He wants to find a healthy way to act on this so that he can have fulfilling relationships built on intimacy and open communication. He says it is clear that these desires have deep roots in his sexual history, and so he needs to be able to talk about them, but in positive situation. He says he doesn't expect to be with a woman who dresses in high heels/lingerie etc. all the time. He wants someone who is well rounded, classy, intelligent, passionate, deep etc. but who has that side to her that wants to turn on that style at the right time. Ok, here's the problem I have with that. First, I can't read minds. While he wanted me to be that way naturally about myself, I feel hurt because I was never given a clue or the opportunity to bring that out in myself. How was I suppose to know that high heels and lingerie were going to be a turn on for him as opposed to the French Maid look? It seems very one sided. In the 7 months we were together we talked about being in love with each other , moving in, marriage. He said he never met anyone like me and didn't want to be with anyone else and then 3 weeks later my dear jane e-mail. It just seems to backwards to me that he would go for a "look" first and then hope the personal connections comes after he has fulfilled his fantasy. The worse part is that he couldn't explain this during the relationship but he can in an email to me. Can someone think clearly for me.