kahlua07

I'm going through almost the same thing (no contact for a week now and havent seen each other for 2 weeks, since we live almost 2 hrs away now), but he is moving up in a week and we have plans to go to Seattle (its also his bday weekend!) which I hope is still ON. We're not broken up but he wanted space and felt confused, I was being too needy and would pick at everything, but this space has been good and lets me take a step back and focus on myself and what I need to do to be less needy and happier in general. If he doesnt contact me in the next couple of days I have a well-thought out email that I'm sending him just letting him know that I understand why he needed a time out and respect that, the things I know I need to work on and reminded him about the trip and gave him details on when we can check in and when the game is (baseball game, which i paid for as his bday present and we split the hotel bill). I hope he responds and does it in a positive way. I really hope he contacts me first but I doubt it, he has so much on his plate with moving up and finishing college and starting a real career that I might have to instigate a response with that email. Showing up at her place might be a little too much, unless you know you can act completely chill and not put a lot of pressure on her, can you email maybe? I can understand feeling pressure from her leaving for Europe...

ha ha, is that why i'm not getting many replies? I'm just in limbo right now and feeling anxious. He moves up in just under 2 weeks and I really want us to still go to seattle esp with everything paid for already. Right now I just am wondering when the hell he will talk to me again bc when he said he needed space I really thought it was just a few days and now its turning into a week and it doesnt seem to end, but I'm being good so far about the NC rule and thinking if i do contact him it will just push him away and delay the process. I wonder what he is doing all the time. I really miss him, if he doesn't talk to me before the trip that's already paid for (baseball tickets + hotel stay) that we need to leave for not this saturday but the next, should i contact him right before? And when I do talk to him again, how should I act? asking him about what he has been doing the whole time and getting mad is probably a really a idea, but I do want to know what he's been up to and let him know that I want to lay off the pressure and have him believe me....

Hey everyone, my bf and I have been together for 2 1/2 yrs almost and broken up twice for 1 month periods. We learned things every time but still have more to learn, its hard maintaining a relationship when you're young (just out of college) and going through lots of changes. I moved 5 months ago about 2 hrs away and we have seen each other every weekend but last weekend, some problems arose. He's not a phone person and I feel like I am too needy and want more details and ask him 20 q's about everything so he feels like he's reporting to me and said he feels 'claustrophobic', I now know that I shouldn't have to know every little thing about his life while we are apart during the week bc I should trust him, he's a great guy but he does let stress overwhelm him. Right now he is just finishing up summer school and college and moving up to where I am in 2 weeks. He asked for space about 5 days ago saying i was crowding him with my behavior. He said he would talk to me Saturday and I called that day before he might have bc I was impatient and he said he would talk to me later (he was meeting his new roommate to go apartment hunting) and then i tried calling, texting, etc hours later until I finally got a response saying he didnt want to talk, he needed more space sorry, and when i asked him if i should just give him more space and we'd see each other in good time... he simply replied 'yes'. He was being vague, I have not contacted him for like 5 days now as I said and am holding my ground. 8) I want to be a strong independent person and be the person he was attracted to in the first place and let him come to me. His bday weekend is not this weekend but next weekend and we have tickets to a baseball game in Seattle and hotel stay - pre-paid and all ready to go. I REALLY hope he calls me and wants to resume taking his space by then. He will also be moving back up. I remember before he said he didnt want to deal with relationship probs right then with everything that was going on in his life and almost just wanted to be with me when he moved up to where I am. He's going through a lot of change with moving, ending college, and starting his new career up here so I can imagine he doesnt want to deal with relationship pressures. I hope he comes around if I give him his space and wants to go to seattle for his bday (we broke up this time last yr for a month and missed his bday last year! ugh) and we can have a short distance real relationship again and be on the same page, as I work and just started my new 8-5pm career too. Let me know what you think. I keep looking at his AIM and wondering why he's not online and where he is and all that crap, it drives me nuts but I'm staying strong, I'm used to talking to him a few times a day. I just miss him and wonder what he's been up to, but know it will be much more rewarding having him come to me when he is ready and misses me enough. I'm also scared of the worst case scenario, that he will want to break up, but we really do love each other so much and have a lot of amazing times together so I'm hoping it's not going there this time. I hope that if I really do hold off until he contacts me, he will respect me more for it and want to continue our relationship. I definitely want to stop being so needy and I know I can, with the right attitude, not being long distance and being on the same page in life, will help a lot. Thanks for listening and let me know what you guys think, it helps to vent.

thanks you for sharing... it feels good to know other people have gone through the same thing. I pushed him away before by giving him a hard time about nothing and it led to him breaking up with me and doing something meaningless for a breath of fresh air. I'm not going to make the same mistake and lose a perfectly amazing relationship because of the past. I don't bring it up anymore since time has passed but i do think about it here and there. I just need to remember it was nothing and i need to focus on NOW so i dont hurt the relationship even more, it was really hard at first but when i'd keep asking for details and reassurance after we had mulled over it many times it just made things worse. thanks again.

yes, we are back together, and we have a wonderful time together. I think most people have things they could work on, and we've decided its worth it for us to make that effort. I've stopped giving him a hard time about it and don't ever bring it up, but i did for quite a while after we got back together. I guess i'm just trying to get the right mentality and he still works with her sometimes and I see her car around (i think i have hawk vision for it) because we live in a college town and its small and things are compact. He says he doesnt talk to her except for work-related stuff and I trust him completely, he has proven that he is 100% committed to me when we're together. My issues stem from a general distrust bc of my childhood which really annoys me and i wish i didnt have it but i really am working on it. I have looked within and am re-directing that negative energy by not blaming him for my insecurities and umm... using online forums to express any possible thoughts on the subject? lol i think i just like to vent, its healing for me... what i really want is for people who can relate and tell me how they learned to forgive. I know we were broken up, so should i just take it for how it is and accept it and drop the subject completely? anything to get me to that right mentality so our relationship can be healthy from now on is always helpful....

my bf and i had been going out for over a year and then broke up for a month and a half because of some problems we were facing and within that time we saw other people, they were meaningless shallow relationships. mine was a one night fling with this guy i met, and we had hung out a few times with our friends. As for my boyfriend, this girl pursued him once knowing he had broken up with me and they hung out for his bday after 2 weeks of our break up, they just went out with a bunch of friends to the bars but she gave him attention and he was mopy and sad about our relationship and really liked that attention, it was an ego boost. not long after they started sleeping with each other, it happened 5 times and then he cut her off... telling me it didnt feel right and came running back to me, he said he realized that life isn't as meaningul or fun without me. I think him seeing her and having it not feel right as well as the space away in general actually helped us get back together. He only went over to her place at night to just watch a dvd and then have sex and never spent the night, he'd leave right after. he told me he loved me and he was fed up with the probs we were having because they were re-occurring but he wanted to make it work, that i was wonderful and beautiful and can see himself marrying me but we have to work on my jealousy issues bc they pushed him away and kept happening making him feel that i would never change. i admit to having jealousy issues but am working on them and things are definitely better, its bc my parents cheated on each other when i was young and i have a general distrust for men though my bf has never done anything wrong to me. We actually have an amazing relationship otherwise. He broke things off with the girl, not that he was ever very into her anyway (said he would never want to date her) and it was only a few times of going over to her place late at night for sex and some companionship. Shes just a cute nice girl that he worked with, he stopped calling her back when realizing he wanted me back and told her that he loved me and they couldnt keep doing anything. She was always the one calling him and he would give excuses when she wanted to get dinner or doing anything that might be more meaningful. I think she was stupid for going for someone who still loved someone else and had just broken up with them and the fact that he didnt want to do anything with her besides what they did, but oh well, that's her problem. My problem is how to get the right mentality now for a healthy relationship. I pushed him away at the time, we were officially broken up, and he saw this girl but it was meaningless sex/companionship. I'd like to know how to stop thinking about it and not feeling hurt/annoyed by it and letting my wild imagination envision the two of them together.... please advise....

you're right I shouldn't make him feel weird for having a routine and just let him do his thing, guys definitely are different creatures he hasn't broken up with me and we're very serious about a future together which is why this is so important. He's just upset right now and i know him well enough to know he will get over it... it just takes some time. I just really want things to improve and think that even though I can give him an unecessary hard time, which I am aware of and am going to try hard to work on, he also needs to learn how to handle things better. so i hope he apologizes for that part, i certainly have said sorry for the way i've made him feel, and we both want to be with each other but if we keep hurting each other too much it might just make us resent each other and make the relationship go sour.... i think it will be fine, it helps hearing different perspectives though and definitely a guy's perspective, so thanks!

no he definitely loves me... and he is definitely trustworthy and has been open and honest about everything in our relationship, bad or good. i guess i can't expect you guys to know everything with just my description, but now that we're back together we've exhausted every subject and the passion and intensity of how we act towards each other is mind blowing. He had childhood problems, he was taking things for granted, he started off thinking that my insecurities were the main thing for our break up but through the time we were broken up he realized he had many issues of his own (character issues) that he had to overcome. He was used to being selfish but he knows he loves me more than anything and wants to marry me now and wants to put me first, and Im the only girl he's ever felt that way for before and it scared him. I really look forward to our future together and this newfound excitement and passion and commitment that we share - breakups can be good - the whole "setting free" theory makes sense, but I just wanted to get some advice from people that I could think about to stop from bringing up stuff we had to work on in the past - bc we both have to forgive and learn from this experience.

Im in a similar position in the sense that my ex and I are getting back together but trying not to rush into it... and I think that you should wait it out. Don't pressure the situation. He obviously really cares about you but maybe he isn't quite ready to go there yet. You said it yourself, be the way that made him fall in love with you in the first place, but make sure that you can handle it if and when things get more serious. You broke up for a reason at some pt, so make sure that you've both learned and realized things since then....bc something had to change for the better. good luck

Ok so I'm in the process of getting back together with the guy I love, we went out for a year and a half and took our 2nd break for a month and a half... we still talked and bumped into each other and in the past weeks he's been so attentive and letting me know that he loves me and he's a wreck. He broke things off bc he was scared bc he knows i'm the one he wants to marry, so all the little things mattered and we would fight over stupid things that we needed to work through... at the time he wasn't sure if he could give himself as much as he needed to but now he says that i'm all he thinks about and knows he needs to improve and has already made the first steps to and we can continue that improvement together - bc I had some things like insecurity issues that I have really gained perspective on. He loves me and wouldn't want to think of being with anyone else, but the thing is weve both slept with other people. He did about 5 times with his co worker who took an interest to him once we broke up and he says that it definitely doesnt mean anything and he wouldn't even spend the night at her place or do anything like get dinner or watch a movie. She convinced him once to stay at his place bc she had to get a new bed or something dumb but that's all and he's avoided her and her calls for almost 2 wks. I slept with a new friend about a week ago and it was just a fun flirty thing that could happen again but not now that my guy and I are working things out. Just last night we had this 4 hr talk about us and how we need to forgive each other and start fresh. He wants to put in 200% into us and I think we've both learned and realized our petty faults and are stronger bc of this. We know we need to ease into it and not rush a good thing. How do I/we overcome the fact that we've been with other people and not let it keep coming back into the relationship, we both want to do everything right this time and focus on us bc what we have is really special and beautiful.... we know that we cant break up again unless its for good bc it's not healthy and we've realized everything we need to. Does anyone have any advice of how to not bring up past mistakes and really be positive when getting back together with the person you love?

hey girl, you're worrying too much, some people aren't so serious about aim as others - its not usually anything personal. dont force him to talk to you, if he seems busy, he might just be busy! he's talked to you before and had nice conversations about personal things. if he knows something is up and is trying to avoid you, you know... it is a possibility, but is he really worth your time then? just play it cool and if hes free i'm sure he'll have no problem talking to you, just realize that he might really be preoccupied with something or even somebody else.

My bf, now my ex, of 1 yr and 3 months broke up with me over 2 wks ago and it feels like months. I've got great friends and managed to move on and just be able to talk to him casually if i bump into him and once in a while online. Then the other night, he ims me (oddly enough) and asks me what i'm doing up so late and tells me his friends saw me go up to my apt with a guy that i'm going on dates and all this BS that isn't even true, i've been hanging out with pple but they weren't dates. just platonic. and he told me he didn't see my car by my place and basically has been checking up on me, he lives down the street which doesn't help. I just saw him be so vulnerable and was a little taken aback, it turned me off, and i told him it sholudn't matter to him and he said i was right but he knew and he wasn't dumb. Hmm... yyeah. So what was up with that? The next day I learn he kissed, held, danced with this girl (his co-worker) on his bday like 3 days before he im-ed me and i know now that it was partly his guilty conscience that made him accuse me of things. I know his co-worker and he never thought anything of her, they've always been friends, but being his bday and at the bars with plenty of drinking.. i think it ended up in lots of flirting, dancing n making out. i'm hurt. i know this is part of being broken up, and maybe that's what he needs but its driving me nuts. it makes me sick to think of him and how he lowers his standards to do meaningless things and would choose that over being in love. We still love each other, which is what makes it so hard, and there was so much good but he couldn't get past the bad - the petty fights relating to my insecurities but i just wanted reassurance and it built up over time. he's not ready (confused and figuring out his own life, wishing we met at a better time in our lives with me graduating after htis term and him having a yr more, and with him being in back-to- back serious relationships since he was 16 and not really knowing what it's like to be single) but you know, when he is, i dont think i will still be around and he will regret it. he already said that he knew he would but i dont know if he thinks he can get me back, he is leaving for vegas for his friends bday tomorrow for 4 days -- he just wrote me an e-mail saying "i'm leaving in the morning, if i die, i'm sorry for whatever i have done to you" and called me by my nickname and signed off with his. It's so hard not to hear from him or bump into him and just still have him be so present when it just makes it hurt more! I'm trying to move on but things keep happening!

So... my ex who broke up with me over 2 wks ago im-ed me tonight, he hasn't im-ed me since we broke up. I've im-ed him and when we bump into each other we've talked about casual stuff and then we had one big talk about how things were with us since the break up about 3 days ago. We talked about how he was fed up with my insecurities and questioning him, making him feel weird but it was so hard because there was a lot of good but he couldn't get past the bad.... and how right now, he wants to be by himself and needs his time and space. But ever since that talk 3 days ago, I decided I needed to back off completely to give him his 'time and space' and I felt like there wasn't anything else to talk about. It's hard bc he lives down the street and we bump into/drive by each other pretty frequently. When we talked casually, we talked about what each other did, like for example me going rock climbing with my friend and her 2 guy friends. He took it as a date and acted jealous, like he did when he saw me at the bars and guys were talking to me. Anyway, when he im-ed me tonight he asked me what I was doing up so late and I was like, its not even 2am and I dont have to wake up for anything. Then he got into how he didnt see my car most of yesterday (he can see it from his apt, if he walks outside tho), how he knew i was going on dates (which I haven't), how his friend april saw me walk up to my apt with a guy (when I never brought any guy to my place! my roommate is a guy though, and he showed her a pic of him and she said it wasn't him so he "knew" it wasn't just my roommate -- no idea what she is talking about, i swear) and was just acting jealous. It was out of character I thought, I thought I was the insecure one and here he is, the one who broke up with me, saying these things to me. I told him he was tripping and that it shouldn't matter, he said he "knew" and he wasn't dumb but that I was right, it wasn't his business. You know, we had a great relationship but it did have its arguments that built up over the same kind of petty issues mostly bc of my insecurities, I'm seeing this break as a way to deal wiht my insecurities and not have them or channel them somewhere else and think before I speak type thing, this space is good right now. He makes it sound like he wants to stay away from relationsihp stress yet he still loves me and cares about me, so I really dont know if things will work out or not, but I've already decided I'm going to be strong and let things figure themselves out. If we're meant to be we will be and he will realize what he's missing and we can work on the problems we had. I do want to be with him. I was the one trying to back off and then he ims me and does this?

It's funny how so many people go through the same things... I've bumped into my ex (who broke up with me over a week ago) practically every day even when I try to stay as far away as possible. I knew he worked out around 4pm, we used to go together, so I changed my work out to 6pm. He was just leaving when I went yesterday and he looked happy to see me and hugged and updated me about his life, while I kept my part brief. It's hard because he lives down the road, has the same interests, and goes to the same college w/ the same major. Summer school is over now though, so things will change up a little. In fact, I'm afraid of what I'm going to fill my time up with, this is a college town and there are limited things to do. Anyway, I just never bring up the relationship/break up when I do bump into him and I act cool and casual... it may seem like a front but it's the only way if you dont want to push the other person away when they're not ready to talk about it. I strongly believe that if he really loves me and sees what he's missing, he will come back to me and want to put effort into working things out... and if he doesn't come to this realization, it wasn't meant to be. I think that people can still love each other but not necessarily love the relationship, he would say he wasn't completely happy with the relationship but he definitely loved me very much. We're young, he's 23 soon and I'm 21... things are constantly changing and there isn't much stability yet. If things don't work out, there's someone else out there that's better for us, or maybe things will work out later but not right now. I was surprised when he broke up with me, but like Gilgamesh said, he was probably contemplating it before - I know why though, and I'm learning from it and trying to overcome things within myself that caused a lot of unecessary fights. Learn, grow.... so you can have a happy healthy relationship with this person or someone else when the time comes. Remember, be strong and you are your own person, things will work out for the best - good luck!

Reborn.... thank you so much, I have the same problems with insecurity and clinginess... I know that I should use this time to reflect on myself and how I can be a more secure, whole person. It doesn't make it not hurt and make the pain go away, but I know it's for the best. I hope things work out too, I am realizing things that needed work every day that I'm not with him - and I hope I can apply it to my relationship with him down the road, or at least to another relationship *sigh*