How do I Say No?

[LW4E]

Yeah, I post a lot, but it seems like everyday something new comes up.

 

I was having a good day today, I spent the day inside playing video games, went to my grandmother's to move mattresses and boxsprings over to my house... mostly just family stuff like that.

 

At close to 7:00 PM, as I was helping my brother drag an old box spring out to the garbage I got a call from my ex. My mom picked up and told me to take the phone, when I did she asked me if I wanted to go out for a walk, having barely been out all day I said yes. I was expecting just to go for a walk with her. When I met up with her she was dressed weird, she was wearing a gray long sleeved, fancy looking shirt and black dress pants. I'm thinking to myself "Okay * * * is going on?" I couldn't stop thinking to myself how much of a change it was from her regular black band shirt and blue jeans and began to wonder to myself why she was dressed up like this.

 

When I met up with her she said "I'm taking you out for coffee" As usual I contested it, telling her not to (I don't like her buying me things.) After a while I just figured "What the hell? It's about time she bought me something." On the way to the coffee shop we had a good conversation about our days, what we did, who we talked to etc. On the way there she was poking my arm, she does it all the time so i'm never sure exactly what to make of it.

 

When we stopped at an intersection she moved closer to me and brushed her shoulder/arm up against mine, I figured someone was beside her but when I looked over I didn't see anyone.

 

Once there, she bought me an iced cap, even though I was still telling her not to. We sat down and had a short conversation before hitting a wall of awkward silence. I noticed that during the conversation and even during the silence she would randomly stare at me for long periods of time. I only looked back a couple of times, but I could tell she was even when I didn't, I have great peripherals.

 

After we finished our drinks we went accross the street to a drug store and she just kept asking me "What do you want? What do you want? I'll buy it for you." Luckily this time she listened to me when I said I didn't want anything.

 

After we left we walked back to the area where we live. When she said "bye" to me I remembered all the other times we parted ways and I hugged her and it would feel awkward because she'd barely hug back, so this time around I said to myself "Okay, no hug this time." So I kept true to that, I didn't hug her. But she shook my hand... I couldn't believe it lol.

 

Although today was a great evening out with my ex, no arguments or anything, I want to be able to say no to her when she calls me. I feel so rude just saying "no" to someone who wants my company, even if everybody says it helps. Being with her is no longer affecting the healing process for me, I've accepted the break up and am hoping to either move forward or work things out with her, but to do either I have to learn to simply say no.

 

Can anybody tell me a good way to avoid these encounters with an ex? Like I said, just saying "no" doesn't work, and I can't ignore the calls because I live with other people who pick up the phone when it rings. My friends are often busy so on weekday evenings i'm usually in by myself. I could go for evening walks, but that would probably get boring fast for I live in a really crappy (And boring) town.

[lillybee1982]

Do you want to get back together with her? If you do say that to her, but if you need space before than tell her that too and that you want to take it slow. If you do not want to get back with her I think you should tell her that and also mention that you need to have NC for a while because treating eachother like friends when feelings might still be involved is not helping either of you heal. It's clear she is still interested in you and if you are not interested in her than do not lead her on even if you do not mean to.

 

Ohh... and stop her from buying your affection by telling her she does not have buy you things to make you want her. That's just lame to say the least.

[LW4E]

Do you want to get back together with her? If you do say that to her, but if you need space before than tell her that too and that you want to take it slow. If you do not want to get back with her I think you should tell her that and also mention that you need to have NC for a while because treating eachother like friends when feelings might still be involved is not helping either of you heal. It's clear she is still interested in you and if you are not interested in her than do not lead her on even if you do not mean to.

 

Ohh... and stop her from buying your affection by telling her she does not have buy you things to make you want her. That's just lame to say the least.

 

I definitely want her back.

 

About her still having feelings, I think I forgot to mention that I am the dumpee in this situation. If I was the dumper and she was acting like this with me I would be sure that she still wanted to get back with me... but she broke up with me and when I posted on here the other day about her possibly being jealous and doing things like asking for pigyback rides, I got one response saying "She's playing games with you." Right now I fear that she's trying to play games with me and that's one reason why I want to say no to her whenever she calls.

 

As for buying things. When we were still together she would try to buy me things all the time and I would tell her not to... telling her not to only worked about 20% of the time though... and I would always sneak money into her wallet afterward to make up for it.

 

Also, one reason I like going out with her now is because I have tried NC in the past and even though it was easy, it felt like I wasn't doing much because I started NC after a series of fights and arguments, I thought that if I was going to go NC with her, I would leave her with a good impression of me, and we haven't fought in a few days and now she's acting friendlier with me now.

 

I'll try to make myself more busy from now on, but it's not like she'll believe it, when I was with her I was always available, she'll smell something's up.

[The_411]

The more unavailable you are the more desirable you are. No makes them chase you. It's a sick law but it's how the whole shebang works.

[LW4E]

Yup, I know that, heard it a million times and have tried to put it to a few times as well.

 

The problem before was the fact that I always tried NC after a fight or argument... there's not much to be desired of me after fighting with me (Trust me.) So I tried hanging out with her a bit, do what I can to make her laugh and enjoy herself. I feel like right now i'm on pretty good terms with her and am ready to try NC or more realistically, LC since we're in school together again.

 

All I need to do is motivate myself to do it, and it's not hard to motivate myself, all I really have to think about is a diary entry she showed me last week. She wrote it on the day of our second anniversary (June 12, 2007.) It basically went through, talking about the entire day then at the bottom it said "Blake is so sweet, I love him to death." She showed me this just last week after an argument, I wasn't sure why though, but she did.

 

Dang, that's another point I just thought up...

 

She has three diaries and she told me why each one is different. She has a green and gold one that she writes all of her happy stuff in, an orange fluffy one that she logs all of her dreams in, and a green and white one that she puts all her miserable feelings in.

 

The entry she showed me about "Loving me to death" was in her green and gold one... and every entry about the new guy in her life is written in the green and white one. It's not like she just recently old me this either... it's been common knowledge for a few years, she even showed me all three once and I could see what she was talking about.

 

The green and gold one had things like "OMG today I found out that Blake likes me" and "I love Blake to death." On the other hand the green and white one said things like "My mom died today" and "I feel like such a selfish * * * * * today."

 

Again, I might just be trying to comfort myself... Okay, today I start my best efforts at NC. NC is really my goal but I know that i'm going to have to settle for LC since she's right beside me all day at school.

[PushingDaisies]

This is brilliently put. That last point is so important. Sometimes the best thing for us is to endure the immediate pain of NC and work through it to find something better for us. Good things fall apart so better things can happen.

 

Go NC now, hanging out with her is just confusing you and prolonging the pain. Leave her for a bit to figure out what she wants. At the moment she just has to call and your there. Work on yourself, and you never know, she might come back. If not, you know you are on the right road to heal yourself.

[LW4E]

Well, like I said... hanging out with her isn't affecting my healing process, i'm actually healing nicely and doing more for myself than I ever have before.

 

I really do want to go NC, I know it'll be hard, living so close and being at school all the time but I do want to do it.

 

I always think of real life experiences that can encourage me to go NC, like this one:

 

Last year my ex and I were involved in an absolutely HUGE fight with two former friends. Rumours and lies were being spread like wildfire and we were always yelling and screaming at each other. These two were saying nasty things about me and my girlfriend and I was constantly going head first into it and retaliating, we even found something written on Facebook by one of their girlfriends about my ex that we took to the police.

 

When the school year ended we didn't see these two and we got on with out lives, we went on a two week vacation to Calgary together and were just generally happy and didn't even notice that these two "Friends" of ours were out of our lives.

 

In February at the beginning of second semester, my ex and I sat together in math class and one of the two people we had fought with sat behind us. Eventually he started talking to us casually, now we all talk every day in class. We're by no means as close friends as we used to be, but the friendship is back to an extent. We went seven months without talking to him and he started talking to us again... maybe it goes to show that absense really does make the heart grow fonder (my grandmother told me that when she heard my girlfriend broke up with me.)

 

Anyway, she started talking to me on msn today and I really couldn't avoid it because it was right atthe moment I signed in, I couldn't pretend I wasn't there. So we had a short talk and I was the one to end the conversation by saying that I wanted to lay down and see what was on TV. I wanted to keep talking but at the same time I knew it probably wasn't doing much good.