saluk

"There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. Its knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Hitchiker's Guide I think you have fallen into a trap a lot of creative people fall into. They start to care much more about the outcome of their creation than in the creative process. It is all well and good to aim for greatness, but there is a fallacy in placing too much emphasis on the product. The fallacy is that you cannot predict what will work or whether something will be relevant if you are doing something new. There is an inherent uncertainty there. You can feel your way through that uncertainty as you build, as you see it come together, in order to course correct, but you can never know if there is actually a coherent puzzle that will be formed from the pieces. This line of thinking, about what the product will be, is one of the reasons there is so much bland entertainment that you rail against. It is a lot easier to build well if you know exactly what you are building, and the best way to know what you are building is to build something that you have built before. Just take that formula, that says X happens at 10 minutes into the script, and Y happens at 22 minutes, and plug in your nouns. It may be bland, but you know it will work! Good luck, I struggle with this as well.

Happy valentines day! I'm not even sad today, I'm in a bubble of happiness. I'm not sure it will last, but I hope you have that too.

I want to see my friends at church again. Will you please treat me with some respect when I am there so I can come back? I can't stand the way you treat me so cold, when you once looked into my eyes and told me how special I was, and how good we were for each other. I am so close to moving forward, but there is one thing holding me back, and its being so invisible to someone I've known for 20 years. Stop being so afraid to work through whatever it is you need to work through. It's not as hard as you think. Everything will turn out alright for both of us, I know it will. I told you as much when we were together, and I still believe it. The future can be bright, and we don't need to be enemies for that future, just because we tried this little failed experiment.

Happy would be 1 year anniversary. I wonder if you are feeling that tinge of old feeling bubbling up like I am at this moment? If so, I hope we both can find a way to move past it and see the beautiful life that lay ahead of us, even though that beautiful life does not include a relationship between us. I do hope that you can find a way to deal with your emotions enough some day that we can talk once in a while without it being so awkward. The way you treat me makes me feel like you have unresolved feelings for me; even though you are the one who wanted to break up. By choice we have not altered our lives in a way that we won't see each other fairly often, and if we are to move on we have to find a way to talk. Maybe not today. Maybe not next week. But someday. Thank you for what you gave me a year ago. Even though breaking up has hurt, it was the best experience of my life. Whatever comes after will only have been possible through the gift of love we shared for that brief time.

I miss you. Do you miss me? We had something real. Just because it felt like a dream, and at times we didn't really know what we were doing, that doesn't mean we weren't sincere. We were our first loves - no one expected us to get it right the first time. But why did you give up instead of seeing if things could work out? Quitting when you are ahead is worse than trying and failing. You wont find happiness if you never stick through the hard times. You didn't even stick with me long enough to get to the hard times, leaving me with a ton of wonderful memories but no answers as to why you are no longer with me. When you broke up with me you told me you thought I was more invested in the relationship than you were. If that is true, what is wrong with you that you stopped investing? Whatever it was, we could have worked through it. You know, like you said we would if we ever had problems. If you hadn't broken up that night, if you had waited a few weeks and let us go together instead of apart to your brothers wedding, and let me stay there to comfort you as your niece was born and then 2 weeks later went on to heaven, I promise our relationship would have grown. Your love for me would have returned. We would still be together now. You were too hasty, reacting to your confusing feelings instead of giving yourself time to sort them out. If anything, it is yourself you shortchanged more than me. I still think we have something. Some of the top layers have been shaved away, but we can go back. Go back to the foundation we were working on in the beginning, before we added on superficial pressures that we didn't need to take on so soon. We can wait a year or two before worrying about getting married. You can go to school and I will support you like I said I would. We'll take it slower this time. Don't worry so much about if it will work out or not. I know if we just take our time and don't rush things it can work out. I can forgive all the pain I've been through - I can't even attribute the pain to your actions because I've already forgiven you. We were happy. We can be happy again. Please come back, and give it another shot. We will both regret it if we just slip away without at least one more shot. This time, we don't wear the armor. This time we don't act like we think we should be acting - we act like ourselves, like we did every so often in our best moments. We can say "I feel safe in your arms" and this time actually mean it. Open your heart and let me in. I won't hurt you. Don't be afraid of anything baby. Don't be afraid I wont love you any more once I really get to know you. I love you for who you are, just as you loved me for who I am. You once said you would love me forever. I hold you to it. You didn't even say in the breakup that you didn't love me, you used other words that implied it, but couldn't actually say it. Can you say that? If I ask you point blank "Tell me you don't love me" will you be able to say that without lying? I know you still love me baby. I know you need me right now. You think you did the right thing, but I see how sad you look and know you made a mistake. But it can be fixed. Just come back. It's not too late.

Yeah you don't owe her anything. She thinks and comes accross as mad at you, but really she is mad at herself. Let it be.

See, this is different than what most of us are going through. There's a huge difference between a BU that's mutual or almost mutual. Yes, you would still be sad, but it sounds like you had started to lose the fire roughly when the other party did. They just managed to pull the trigger first. It's a lot different when the BU is not at all mutual, when the fire left them but not you, and you're left with feelings that have nowhere to go anymore. NC is to give you that space to bandage wounds and hopefully get to that point that you managed to get sooner. I mean in my case, my passion for her was basically at it's peak at BU. I think she was more into me at the beginning of our relationship, but her love faded as mine rose. When we were at the same level halfway in, it was really the best. I wish I had seen her love fading and adjusted my expectations instead of allowing my feelings to continue to grow, unknowing that she was about to break my heart. I hope to restart NC again when it makes sense, and rejoin the challenge. The last 2 days of NC have been great, but I know I will see her again on Saturday at a memorial. I'm dreading it so much. Emotions are going to be running wild. Going to be so hard to see her crying and not be able to be there for her. After that I think I will have a period where I can try NC again.

It's important while healing to be active and not reactive. Give it a couple days at least and see how you feel then.

Rollercoaster here for me. Had to sit and try not to look at her for two hours in church. Wasn't always successful. I did catch her glance in my direction a few times. How can she not? I got a sweet haircut and shaved differently, I look way hotter now than when we were dating. I think I'm on day 9 of the no contact challenge, but I did say hi to her today, I mean we crossed paths. Giving each other a cold shoulder is worse I think than at least acknowledging we still exist. But I don't know. I felt crappy again, pretty much all day. Tried to show my mom a good time but moped almost the whole time. After last night almost getting to the point of not even wanting her back, I feel like I took quite a few steps backward today. I will be seeing her in the hospital some time this week, and can't really avoid it. It's going to be a really stressful time, with my friend having to choose whether to take his newborn off life support or not. Strict NC is not really appropriate. I will think about going back to NC after this week, but damn it's so messed up right now. I still believe with all my heart that she never stopped loving me, merely got cold feet, and made a huge mistake. I just don't know if she will see that.

Day 8, 22 since BU Seeing, by chance, that she was hanging out with her friends at the beach (some of whom while dating I considered my friends as well) sent me into a bit of a tailspin. I think it was almost as bad as the days following BU. Fortunately, after spending the day with my mom, listening to 2 lovely breakup songs my sister wrote for me, and then hanging out at the movies with some other friends and not talking about the relationship at all, I feel like the plane has recovered quite a bit. At this very moment, I am not sure if I would take her back if she changed her tune. We had some great times (some of the best of my life), but part of the reason it was so great was how innocent we both were. Anything now, even if I can forgive her for breaking my heart, will be colored by what she put me through. It's not even that I wouldn't be able to trust her, but more that I wont be assuming things are rosy and more likely to look for problems. Any doubts I have about my own feelings now I will pay more attention to. Not that I think reconciliation is that likely. I did at one point but now I'm not so sure. It's strange. It seems as though in order to get over someone, you almost have to convince yourself that it wasn't as great as you thought it was. Once you do that, the whole affair loses a lot of its appeal.

Communication has already broken down after a break up. (Or more likely a bit before the breakup) One side is neither talking nor listening. NC isn't about repairing the relationship, it's about getting space to separate yourself from needing the other person to make you happy, and not giving them any ammunition during the phase of not listening to you which pushes them away further. Getting yourself free of needing them gives you a stronger bargaining platform when the other side of communication opens up, and having not been annoying during the separation makes it more likely for them to listen to you when they are ready to. Good communication, like good relationships, only happens when both parties are trying.

Ran into this article: link removed Basically, thinking about someone who broke up with you is identical in your brain to pouring hot coffee on yourself. You can't stop the thoughts of her from coming, but you can control your actions when they do. Think of something else every time you have a thought. Don't approach lookalikes on the street, in fact turn around and walk the other way. Over time this kind of training WILL lower the amount of times you pour hot coffee on yourself

Day 7 I am doing a little better every day. I am spending my time reading other peoples issues on here, which in a way is still obsessing about relationships, but it helps keep me from obsessing about my own. Thanks forum! One thing still haunts me. The comments she made the night before she broke up with me, saying she has waited her whole life for a man like me, and that she was still looking forward to our wedding. How could someone who didn't love me say such things? What could she have heard or done that changed her mind in such a drastic way?

Day 6, day 20 of BU I don't know what to say. I'm coming to the realization that this horrible world I find myself is the real one, and the wonderful world I used to now has passed on. Knowing you, believing that we were in love, feels like it was a nice dream I had. A dream I want to have again, but a dream just the same. It's funny. One time when we were dating I told you it felt like a dream, and was afraid of waking up. You responded that you would still be there when I did wake. But of course, a dream would say that, wouldn't it?

What happened was the only thing that could have happened, that it happened proves this to be true. There is no such thing as could have been, there is only could be. You were too naive to see the warning signs, so why are you blaming yourself for not seeing them? You were not capable of seeing them and could not have done anything different in that state. Now that you have lived through it, you are more aware of what warning signs could be for next time. You have improved by leaps and bounds just by being able to recognize what went wrong now. You had to hurt to learn that lesson. Also, he left you, not the other way around. If it was a mistake, it was his to make. While true that you were in the relationship too and may have made some mistakes, his is the only one that really matters now. Remember those kids names for when you have them with a man who recognizes what an amazing person you are and doesn't quit on you.

Day 5 Another day of counseling, it helps so much. I also talked to a friend and went over the whole relationship with him. He hadn't realized we had broken up, which was kind of funny. But he hadn't realized when we had started dating either. Even though it's over, I'm really glad I had such a great relationship with a wonderful woman. I want her back, but I wouldn't trade those 5 short but bright months for anything. I am pretty sure I felt better today than any other day since BU. There were moments that I smiled unironically! I think I may have actually had a few brief moments of some kind of happiness. I wonder if NC is broken though. She commented on a friends post on FB, and when I went to comment on the same post, I accidentally liked her comment. Whoops! I'm not counting it because it was an accident. If she reads stuff into it that's on her, just like pretty much everything else is on her right now. I'm not going to count it.

As nice as it might be the dude to try and get closure from the ex, real closure can only come when YOU choose to close that door.

I know what you mean HopefulNessie. I was actually a bit unsure about my own feelings prior to the breakup, but the more time away I get the more I miss the qualities my ex had. I can't even look at other women.

Day 4 I really wish I had finals or something to distract me through the day. But I don't have the motivation to sign up for anything that will pass the time. I'm a big gamer, and in the last 2.5 weeks since BU, I haven't even been able to force myself to play anything. I work from home, only meeting for a couple hours a week with coworkers, and motivating myself to work in my lonely box apartment room while I feel so crappy is nigh impossible. Today I actually woke up not feeling like a ghost. I was dancing and singing to music, had fun shaving and showering, and actually payed attention to my surroundings as I walked to my meeting. I didn't feel good exactly, just didn't quite feel like I was being eaten alive. But then at the meeting, when my coworkers asked me how I was doing, I kind of lost it. Second half of the day up till now, I was almost as depressed as the day of the BU. My family told me I was better than that day, but when you are in enough pain, you can't really remember what it feels like to feel worse. Even worse than that, I am starting to forget what it was like to actually be happy. I don't know if this is really working. I came close to breaking NC today, typing a dozen text messages to her before deleting them unsent. I guess there is some improvement in my behavior: while I was obsessively checking facebook, I have her blocked and didn't take the extra step to go to her profile page like I do most days. I didn't even feel inclined to go to her profile page. But even though she is blocked, while I scroll through other peoples posts, something in me is hoping that her name will come up anyway.

tiggertigger: it takes 2 to make a relationship work, and 1 to make it fail. If and until he is willing to put in the effort that you are, the situation is doomed. Use the pain you are in to grow stronger and see that you can come out of the situation a better person, and you don't even need the man who rejected you to help you do that. You are a strong independent person on your own, you don't need a man to validate who you are. If you forget each other, you can become a better person and prepare yourself for the next man. There is not only one person in this world for each person, there are 7 billion people on the planet (predicted to be 9 billion by 2050). All it takes to find love is to find someone who really fits you who is willing to put in as much effort into staying together and loving you as you are for them. Compatibility and effort matter more than the feelings of love you are having for the man you thought was your soul mate. Maybe he will come back, maybe not, but you have no control over his actions. God does not even have control over his actions. God didn't take this man away from you, the man is the one who walked away. People are free to make the wrong choices, and do so all the time. But what you can do now, is work on making the right choices, the right choices for yourself to take you where you need to get in life. What you need to do now is choose healing. You can be free to accept this mans return without holding out hope or expectation that he will do so. He has already forgotten you, what is left is the question of if time will make him remember. But if you sit around waiting and putting your life on hold, you wont be emotionally ready for another relationship, whether that is your loves unlikely return, or someone new. Your best option is to get yourself ready for another relationship by embracing full healing. You may find you are happy to be free of him and able to find someone better.

Day 3 I went through the entire range of emotions today. Hating her, loving her, wondering what I saw in her, remembering Oh yeah, that's what I saw in her. Spent a lot of time trying to think of other things and not think of her, but she still comes up way too often in my thoughts. I watched one of her favorite movies, cried my eyes out, and felt strangely better after. How can someone mean so much after such a short time? I guess that since I knew her basically her whole life it makes it a little different. How can two people mean so much to each other and then mean nothing? Breaking up feels so artificial. Like, you are no longer my life partner, so the perfectly natural relationship we are having which currently has a "label" on it must be cut short so that the "label" can change. What's with that? Why can't we just keep the exact same un-forced relationship we had? Why did we put a label on it in the first place? But no contact is definitely better than when I am forced to interact with her. Can't even describe the feelings that go through me just hearing her say something, or even worse, saying something to her. A potent concoction of every emotion possible I imagine. Hopefully soon those situations that I haven't been able to escape will be limited. I really don't want to switch churches, my whole support group is there.

Day 3. Even though she was at church. Having to see her at church was awful, just awful. I felt as I left that I was just going to fall on the ground and stay there. But then I ended up having a pretty good day, hung out with my family, and while I still thought about her it wasn't all consuming, and while I still missed her, it wasn't every second. I almost texted her and broke NC, she is going through a lot of stuff right now, which is probably high on the list of reasons she dumped me (I don't know why it makes logical sense to cut off your strongest life line right when things are getting difficult in your life, but it does). I wanted to just send her a nice text saying that I was sorry her life is crap. But then, someone talked me out of it. Why should I feel sorry for her life being difficult right now when her dumping me is one of the reasons. Why should I feel sorry for her life when she ruined mine?

Day 2. Not having to go to the hospital and see her is a blessing. My friend though is still there and his baby is still in danger. I wonder if she left me partly because there are just so many crazy emotions in her life right now. But I definitely feel better each day, as long as I am not in contact. I can't cut her out of my life completely, our circles were too shared, but I hope to eventually get to a point with NC that I no longer need NC.

Back to Day 1. Another day spent at the hospital with her brothers newborn. I wish I could get out of these visits, but her brothers friendship is too dear to me. We are friends for life. So I grin and bear it, making in jokes in the group knowing that she will hear it and remember what it really means. When we all ended up at dinner, I sent her and the rest of her family to sit around the corner, so I could talk to my friend alone. That felt pretty powerful, and I know she received the message. Still, its hard to be in such close quarters with her, and see her getting hugs from her family, hugs that she used to get from me. I feel like she is cheating on me with her mom. I honestly don't know what I feel right now. It's an emotional train wreck. Between the baby that may not make it home from the hospital, and the deep pain of having someone who said they would love you forever decide overnight that forever doesn't actually last, I am barely hanging on here. Everything is too overwhelming.

Love Forgetting Sarah Marshall! Sorry Danzman, know exactly what you are going through. Stay off facebook, that's kind of breaking NC. You don't want to know what she is up to if you can help it. That way you can just assume her life is as empty without you as yours is without her, instead of analyzing every little thing. Day 2 now. (13 days since break) After the whole thing with her brothers baby yesterday and feeling probably the most rotten since breakup, today was a bit better. I kind of was supposed to go back to the hospital to be with her brother some more, there are tons of tests for his baby, but I decided not to go. Made it to work, and had moments in the day where I felt OK instead of like I was constantly hyperventilating. I think it might have been my best day to be honest, which is weird coming right after my worst day. Her mom invited me to the Avengers on Sunday. She's trying to keep me in the family even though her daughter broke my heart. I can sense many many NC lapses in the weeks to come. Can I go with everyone and still have NC with the x? Especially when a few weeks ago we were so looking forward to going to the Avengers together. It's actually something we've been looking forward to throughout the relationship, spending time to watch all of the movies leading up to it. It doesn't help that I feel like the only reason we broke up was that she had a momentary bout of confusion and that she still could love me. I don't know if she actually knows herself well enough to realize what a mistake she made. That feeling that the relationship was perfect, that feeling that lasted right up until she did a 180 and changed into a different person, makes it so hard to accept that it has happened and let go.