One month since it was over completely

[SchecterGuy]

Broke up in October. Felt good. Wanted to reconcile in April to June. Didn't work. Feel miserable. She is with someone new. Here are my results after about 5 weeks in no particular order.

 

Still having major anxiety and unable to concentrate. Mainly filled with a lot of regret.

I have a decent appetite now. I lost about 15 pounds in the meantime.

I can fall asleep now, but I cannot stay asleep past 4am.

Started taking fish oil and a multivitamin to hopefully get some antidepressive properties.

I cancelled my summer class. I can't concentrate well enough to do calculus based economics.

Told my roomate I am moving out (he had a hand in our breakup). Have to live a month with someone who now hates my guts.

Have a new roommate lined up who is essentially my only friend here. He is very social and has quiet a few friends, but I do not want to be codependent on him. My other roomate is moving in with us and another guy in a four bedroom house. My other roomate does not like the person we are leaving either.

Failing at online dating.

I started throwing into the mix of my anxiety all teh bad stuff that has happened in the last year other than the breakup (there are a few). Adds to my anxiety. This is stuff I could easily deal with her around, now I just realized how many bad things there were relative to good other than the relationship. I worry the future will mimic the past and this time I will not have a support base.

Went to a link removed event to meet people. This made me more depressed. One I was the youngest. Two kind of depressing hanging with a bunch of lonely socially inept engineers. Three met a guy who seemed like kind of a sleazeball.

Considering rotating in my company because I work with 4 guys my age and we never talk at all. I was spoiled when I first got here because I was with a group that talked and socialized all the time.

Went to Synagogue for the first time in like two years. Here is some good. When I was there I felt great. Since this whole fiasco began I have not been able to cry. During the service I could not hold back the tears. And I am not even very religious. Before when I went I felt like I was just going through the motions. This time being there actually touched me.

Started seeing a therapist two weeks ago. So far he is still in assessment mode. Just asking questions and guiding the conversation.

In about a month I am going to Europe for 2.5 weeks. The trip was booked before I wanted the ex back. I am going alone for most of it and that is how I wanted it. Going to stay in youth hostels. I am staying with family in Italy for a few days.

Social life not a complete lost cause. I was invited to my other roomate's coworker's going away party. Should be a few people my age.

 

All in all I am an anxious wreck. I regret my past and I worry I cannot find someone else because a) we won't click and b) I do not have enough connections to meet girls. That which does help me (therapy, synagogue) are like narcotics. They help for the moment, but their good effects wear off pretty quickly and I am back to anxious self. Right now I am just very overwhelmed. Building a social life. Building a romantic life. Forgetting the wrongs of the past; the relationship and other life issues. Getting myself back into the mindstate to function again (no more anxiety and lack of concentration). Mainly feeling like myself again. If anyone cares for the whole story of my breakup I will post it. It maybe a little long and boring. Any single girls out there I got pics if you are curious.

[SchecterGuy]

I think it hit me so hard thatit worries me. I might be taking it harder than I should. The regret is so deep simply because I could have easily saved the relationship. But I did not know if I wanted to. The commitophobe hit me at the time along with a few other issues.

[SchecterGuy]

Oh forgot to mention. When I was in my not so bad phase immediately after I started talking to this one girl. She said my lack of Christianess and lack of Chineseness would cause a problem. She kept talking to me like we were going to hookup and she ended up hooking up with another guy at a get together we went to. Got lead on there. He ended up dropping her.

[deepthinker]

hi,

i would be interested in hearing about your relationship even if the story is "long and boring". Maybe i can give you advice based on personal experience if i knew the specifics.

 

i have only been in love(or atleast what I thought was love) once. I agree that regret is a "sinking ship" that can consume you but i also believe that it is important to learn from your mistakes. Then again, you never know what could have happened, so you should not think to yourself, "oh, i should have done this or that" because maybe it would not have worked out either way, maybe it wasnt meant to be. Still, you can learn to be more rational next time around.

 

I know how you feel when you say therapy and synagogue(church?) feel like narcotics, meaning you only feel good for a few hours or a day and then your back to how you felt before. I still havent made up my mind on therapy i feel good for a bit and then i just feel like its pointless because it doesnt seem to last or fix anything and i feel stupid for believing it would. But seriously, i think it does help in the long run because atleast it clears the fog in your head a bit and who knows, maybe your therepist will give you lasting advice.

 

Personally i have found that the best way to deal with axiety and stress is exercise. more specifically, heavy weightlifting and exhausting cardio like kickboxing. to lift heavy weight you need to put your all into it, this will clear your mind and release a lot of anger. afterwards, you will feel a short term high and a long term(one day) calmness. plus the added good looks wont hurt your confidence.

 

i agree with you about the work situation too. some of the best times of my adult life were made possible by my work situation. it is a good way to meet women and make friends in a relaxed and non-pretentious atmosphere. its like you "have to be there" so you might as well kill time by making friends and meeting women, right?

[SchecterGuy]

^Since you want to hear it I will tell you. It actually goes back to her childhood.

 

So basically when H was growing up she came from a broken home. Dad cheated on her Mom and he was in jail for awhile. They "reconciled" in her teen years. But she was never exceptionally close to him. This made H very close to her Mom and even though she did not get along with them, she was real close to her sisters. She also had a good friend back home that she was real close to as well as a couple of other friends. Add onto this as an adolescent she was extremely dependent. Examples would be when she went out to dinner people would choose what she ate and sometimes her best friend would come over to clean her room for her. She preferred it this way. She was extremely bright and did very well in school. She was involved with many things, but back to the dependency the only reason she did many things was because she was bribed. No personal motivation.

 

So she left her home of California's central valley to go to college in San Jose CA. She came from the Bakersfield area which is about 200 miles away. If anyone is familiar with this place it is known as the armpit of California. It is very dusty, very hot, and mainly just agriculture. Not a very pretty area. Well when she went to school she immediately became depressed. She would sleep 10 to 12 hours a day. Wouldn't go to class, etc. Part of her dependency was if she did not have someone to eat a meal with she did not eat. She had a good friend from home essentially living with her and she hung out a bit with her roommate. She got into a very short rebellious stage first semester of sophomore. She was a complete awkward goodie goodie in high school. At this point she really started caring about her looks and wanted to experience life. This included smoking weed, having sex, and drinking. This literally lasted about two months. At this time she had started taking lithium for the depression. I met her at the end of the first semester of sophmore year. She was just coming off of the lithium at this time. So the relationship started very quickly. Formally met mid December. Hung out twice. Sex about a week and a half after. She stayed over my parents house for New Years instead of at home and she came to my sister's wedding in Tahoe a few weeks later. We were an item at the end of January. To be honest I was pretty cold about the relationship at first. I just wasn't exceptionally attracted to her and she was very clingy. She would know when I got home from class and call me like five minuets after I got in the door when she would know I wanted to nap. This would eventually go away. My feelings for her would slowly and I mean slowly change. I did not see her as FWB, but I did not see the relationship as being too serious either.

 

So second semester of Sophomore year she says her depression was caused by her major. She was doing finance/accounting and it was not interesting or challenging for her. She hated it so she changed to math. This just caused stress to the point of making herself sick. So that summer we go to our respective homes. When she was at home all she did was complain how she did not like being there because it was hot, she just fought with her sisters, and there was nothing to do. Keep in mind at this point one sister is at Cal, one is about to be a senior in high school then go to college, and her best friend is in school at So-Cal. Her sisters would be hoe for the summer.

 

So we had our junior year and things were looking better for her. She had a normal sleeping pattern. Going to all classes. Her mood swings were not as violent or frequent. Maybe once every 5 or 6 weeks. She was never a mean mood swinger, she would just get sad or cry. At the end of the year she even on her own accord volunteered for campus housing over the summer.

 

So we have our first senior year because we both ended up on the five year plan. She fell back into a depression this year. We were living into two different apartment complexes at this time, but we saw each other very frequently. The effects of the depression were not so obvious at this point, but it was somewhat noticeable. This actually lead to a week long breakup at the end of this year. She told me things like during the year s3x had become a chore. She said she was depressed because she had to share a room. Something she did not really have to do for most of school. She needs space and was not exactly the cleanest person.

 

Final senior year and she seems to get better. Similar to the mind state of junior year. Maybe even a little better. We are living in the same apartment complex and coasting to the end of college.

 

So we graduate and she says she cannot do a roommate. So she gets a studio in the ghetto in one of the most expensive city in the country while in debt. At this point is when I start to decide whether I want to be serious. Also during this year her older sister graduates from law school and moves back to the central valley as well as her younger sister and best friend. I could not imagine so many people would want to converge on the Central Valley. This is when hr separation anxiety kicks in. She did not really have friends up here. As a matter of fact we pretty much just had each other.

 

Living in her own place was too much for her so I decide to try to get her to move in with me. This is the beginning of the end. For one the room we were going to get was small. And one of my roommates has serious OCD issues as well as other issues. We are about to have two temperamental attitudes clashing. I did not see any of these issues because when I was with H absolutely nothing bothered me. Everything rolled off my back. I knew how dramatic she could be so I did not give her the benefit of the doubt when living there sent her into a deep depression. She said moving out would clear that up. I though her separation anxiety was too much and she would move back home anyway. Plus I would be royally screwed if I moved out and she still moved back home. So I stayed and she moved back home.

 

I figured at this point I was a free man. Realized freedom was not what it was cracked up to be. It just meant getting drunk and throwing up a lot with a whole lot of loneliness. I also realized how crazy my roommate was and how much anguish he could cause. I also realized why the Silicon Valley sucks. So I got in contact with H to see how she was. She seemed to be in good spirits. Due to these better spirits I asked if she would like to move back with me in our own place while I finished grad school. At first she said it sounded like a good idea. Two months later she was with someone else, had a job and decided she did not want to be with me.

 

So my regret comes from not seeing how much our living conditions sucked and how much pain they caused her. I also did not see how compatible we really were since I was still pretty juvenile and going back to the lukewarmness of the relationship I did not care about compatibility. Some of her flaws like the clinginess went away. And the fact of the matter is the love was still there when she left. She loved me as much then as when she first said it. She just could not handle living there. So I let go of the person that was probably best for me for the ridiculous prospect of new women and partying. Kind of lame at my age.