Broke-up and de-humanised

[onatalie]

I am in my late 20s. But I have had few relationships, as I concentrated on my career and social life in my teens and early 20s. I am good-looking and not shy so it was my decision. Then I met a man so lovely, kind and full of warmth and I fell in love with him. We really got on so fine. Connected intellectually and emotionally and sexually. Talked for hours. He sent me and told me nice things. 4 months later he said his child was born by his ex and he dumped me. He wasn't going back to her, but he said he was screwed up and didn't want another relationship, needed to sort his life out ets., didn't want complications [i.e. me].

 

I understood his baggage, but I cried for weeks.

 

In the months after that, while I recovered, he said he wanted to meet me, then he cancelled at the last minute. He did that loads of times. It killed me more.

 

Now, 10 months on I feel like an idiot - but I am still in love with him, miss him, and still think of him EVERY day. I have cried more. Every night and every morning. Now I am enraged about how he treated me and retracted his arrangements. Now, more seriously, I have de-humanised myself because the pain was getting to me so badly. I have reclused, stone-walled my heart and become a cynic - one thing I didn't want to become was a cold-hearted recluse - but I am. I am dead. I will never ever give my heart out again and I am weirdly happy about that. My girlfriends think I'm odd. I still cry - but it's more now about me than him as it's about my closure on romantic life. Of which I now detest and disregard. I have vocally pre-warned everyone I meet [that has an interest in me] that I am not into relationships, and I scare them off.

 

Is this a survival technique?

[lessy20]

It seems like a survival technique, but a miserable one at that. Have you even tried to put yourself back out there for other men without telling them you aren't about relationships? I have always felt, even though people say you shouldn't date again until you are over the previous relationship, that finding someone else is the only way I've ever been able to get over someone who I was in love with. You don't want to lead a miserable life, mad at the world because some jerk treated you poorly.

[Beec]

It's a scared technique.

 

It will take time, but work on healing. Then remember, that your heart is not meant to be locked away and protected. It may get hurt sometimes in loving, but without loving, it will surely weaken.

 

It functions the same as if you were doing cardio. The harder it loves, the stronger it will become.

[Crazyaboutdogs]

Think of it this way...by doing what you are doing, you are becoming like your ex...in other words, he shut down his heart from getting close and loving, and ended up jerking you around. No, you won't jerk someone around like he did, but by shutting off your heart, you are letting your ex get the better of you. You are letting HIS personality and HIS hangups influence how YOU conduct YOURSELF. Don't become walled off like he is...as you can see, that didn't serve him well...nor will it serve you well.

[Dako]

Beec's right.

 

It's not strength but fear.

That wall is a monument to that one guy.

[poloplayer]

That wall is a monument to that one guy.

 

Powerfully said and so true.

[itsallgrand]

I feel for you, yet, when I read your post (and I've read it a few times now), it makes me laugh a bit at the ballsiness in which you attempt to pull off your justification at staying in hiding.

 

Survival technique??!! For a break-up. You're dead??! Because a guy broke up with you.

 

Why are you so scared?

 

I don't believe that this guy "broke you" or put you into hiding. No. You are my age, I presume a fairly healthy and clearly accomplished woman. You must have had desires, urges, a want to get close to someone through these years BEFORE you met him.

 

Yet you decided to close off. You were busy with career and life - who isn't? - so you "didn't have a relationship." Your decision because you are not shy and you are good-looking??? And have a life??

 

I dunno. I think you are scared. And if you are scared - why not really truly BE scared.

Not some half-bottomed version of it.

 

Man, I'm being pretty rough I guess, but do you really want to waste your life over a man? One man, the one who really really got a try, I'd guess??

 

Survival! ptsst.

[JadedStar]

If you can stop this please do. I have met people who were shutdown emotionally and they are wretched, miserable souls. Don't do it. I feel it far better to take a chance on loving and be hurt then to never take that chance and be cold and bitter.

 

Being hurt is what makes us grow, and if you don't allow it to happen anymore, honestly you will stagnate and impede your growth. And i get this feeling you are too intelligent to allow this to happen.

[onatalie]

I am so inspired by all your comments. Crazyaboutdogs sounds like a man? that understands the man I fell in love with. I want to think that HE was messed up, and not me. His ex screwed him up so badly that he hated women and i tried so hard to convince him that we weren't all like HER. I think that works both ways.....

 

And I know where YOU are coming from, itsallgrand, and I agree with it all- but only in theory. I am a big businesswoman, hard, ambitious and cold 9-5. But someone opened up my heart and, even after several lost business deals, several family bereavements, kids being sick + hospitalised, family crises, I have never cried like I did when I fell in love. It is why the poets wrote poems. It is the most unexplanied human emotion we will ever know. Yes my heart is bruised. I want to recluse for the near future and I will - but I take inspiration from your replies that permanent reclusion is not a good thing. It's cowardly. It's fear.