true love?

[penelope13]

Deleted for privacy reasons

[spazmy]

Hi Penelope,

 

I read through what you wrote. You need to force his hand. Eight years is a long time. This has gone on for too long. Something needs to be done to break free from this. You have to make a strong move -- what that is, is entirely up to you. Only you can figure out the right course of action. His being silent etc. is going to continue, unless you ask him point blank.

 

Do you want to waste another eight years of your precious life trying to figure out how this pans out?

 

You need to force his hand. And be ready to accept the results and move on. From what little you say, it is his silence which is keeping you waiting. Get him to open up and declam, and you will finally have the answers you need to be with him, or to move on.

 

Good luck

[penelope13]

Hi Spazmy,

 

thanks for your reply.

 

On one side I know that this shouldn't go on like this anymore, but on the other side it feels like giving up on him and love. How can i expect anyone to truly love me unconditionally if I am not willing to do it myself? - I am not giving up on life. I have a fulfilling job, I have friends, I am not cutting myself off from other guys - I just haven't met anyone else in the meantime who has evoked the same/similar kind of emotions.

 

If I really love him, shouldn't I give him the time he needs to grow up?

 

Of course if he would be in love with someone else, that would be a totally different story.

 

I know I should maybe just tell him how much I still love him, but I don't want to do that while I think he is not ready to hear it;

[spazmy]

Well,

 

I am no expert but all I will say is that both of you have had eight years to grow up. How old are you? Also, look, it is important that you do not sacrifice your career. But if the two of you genuinely want to be together, you need to work harder on finding ways to be together. Professionally too, this is not entirely impossible. I would say you can do one of two things.

 

1. Speak to him directly about how to make it work LDR or in going over to meet him or him coming to meet you. You need to confront each other with your fears and apprehensions and your love.

 

2. Look more carefully into your professional opportunities. Try and explore harder and find ways of taking yourself closer to him.

 

It is not entirely clear to me that you know what he is thinking. A lot of what you write indicates that you do not yet completely know what is on his mind. Which is why, meething him for closure or at least some sort of a future pep talk is essential.

 

I would say doing these things is anyday better than pining away for another eight years without any hope.

 

cheers

[penelope13]

you are right.

 

at the next opportunity i will have to talk to him.

 

and we are thinking of the future; regardless of our relationship status, in a few years we would like to start our own company together;

 

for the time being i have decided to go on with my life as if he wasn't in it; despite that i will still love him and be a friend to him

[spazmy]

In the meanwhile, try and open up to finding somebody else too. You are now professionally secure. The long process of studying and doing your PhD. is well past you. Be open to other possibilities. This way, you will be fine no matter what happens.

 

Take care and good luck with him. I sincerely hope it works out nicely for both of you in the end

[penelope13]

thanks for the good wishes.

 

I will definitely make an effort to go out and find someone else, even if for a short while, life is just so much more fun in a team

[penelope13]

UPDATE

 

 

boy oh boy, reading through my own post with a different perspective makes me realize in what kind of emotional mess i really was with this ex!

 

it took me really ages to realize that i had a rather worbed sense of reality about this relationship. I am not saying that my feelings were not real, but in some ways it was more like an addiction than a healthy feeling.

 

for some reason (into which i don't have time to go into right now, but which i recently figured out), i was of the opinion, in order to be in a relationship i had to do everything in my power to make the relationship work, sacrifice everything necessary and only look at myself if things were not working out the way i was hoping for. giving up and walking away, was never really entering my mind as an option, because i somehow believed if i would give up, i wouldn't deserve love. this twisted state of mind made me enter and stay in relationships where i emotionally never got back what i really wanted and was seeking, where I never set boundaries. and the physical distance between the ex and myself only furthered this train of thought.

 

maybe at some point during our relationship we had true love and in many ways of course he is a wonderful guy and that maybe we could have had a wonderful relationship if circumstances had been differently, but given the circumstances, he is just not the right guy for me.

 

and finally i am able to admit that and walk away from it and forgive myself for hanging on to this dream for so long.

 

Reading through my original posting I now see so many red flags, that I can’t even believe that I never saw it before (as said, it took me also quite some time to forgive myself for my own weakness): I was so busy trying to understand him and his feelings, that I never really took time to look deeply inside myself what my needs where. I totally ignored and disrespected myself, I didn’t; set any boundaries - all in the name of “unconditional love”. Maybe you can love someone truly unconditionally, but it doesn’t mean that you should allow yourself to giving up your own self in the process.

 

There were many reasons why I got into this type of emotionally abusive relationship (I am not blaming him for this, I think I pretty much proved that I did that all by myself, considering we had been broken up for years and years), but I also realize now the reasons why I felt so incapable of stepping away from this situation, even though deep down I must have realized it on some level, that this was not the right relationship for me (again I don’t refer to him, but to my mental state in this). If I had truly believed that he is the one, no job in the world, even the most perfect one would have kept me from him. But in the state that I was in I used my new job offer as an excuse for not having to move there and having to risk facing that whatever I thought was between us might all be an illusion, the distance allowed me to hang on to this dream of an epic unfullfilled love without having to prove it. Once I had moved I felt terribly alone in a new country/ new culture, so hanging on to someone back home, even if in an utterly unhealthy way, made me feel less panicked than having to face all the new challenges by myself.

 

However, although I have moved on now, I don’t regret what has happenend, because in the process I learned so much about myself, my fears, where they come from, what type of relationship I want. Of course he wasn’t the active force behind it, that was all my doing, but he definitely was a catalysator, so I am able to forgive him as I have forgiven myself. Now I can be happy about all the wonderful moments and emotions that we shared and I am looking forward to starting a new, mature and healthy relationship with someone new.

[spazmy]

Good going Penelope. You seem to be doing the right things and are moving on in the right way. The only thing I would say here is be a bit more wary of epiphanies. Oftentimes, while feelings can be overturned, or we "come to the light," what also happens is that we internally end up learning how to finally drown out the past with a cacophony of new experiences, new insights etc. In the long run (and you certainly already know what the long run means in terms of feelings and love -- eight years in your case), it is not healthy to come to drastic conclusions, but to treat the symptoms as ongoing crises, ongoing reflections, rising and ebbing affections -- which are a basic core part of our human being and nature.

 

Short of that, we will end up merely moving from one deluded state to the next. Essentially, we need to make allowances for relapses, for feelings for or against people in our past -- and experience them periodically to know that yes, we are human, that we loved, and some part of us continues to love.

 

Just that some things in this universe are never meant to be.

[penelope13]

as usual, spazmy you give very good advice. in this case, the epiphanies didn't come over night, but it took really years till they surfaced in my conscious mind. but I know what you mean, about the euphoria with "seeing the light" making you blind for whatever else might be going on. at the moment I just try to enjoy and experience this huge relief, which is not only recognizable in my emotional state, but already has made an impact on my physical state as well: i sleep so much better than in the past years, i have lost a significant amount of weight over the past 6months, my energy levels have risen.

[spazmy]

Good for you Penelope. Yes, the fact that you buried these feelings for eight long years is an indication of how deep and painful the process of separation is. I am actually deeply saddened by the way I see people going from one relationship to another at this pace. I can honestly say that there is nothing wrong with your having harbored these feelings for so long (perhaps continuing to do so now may be hurtful -- but for now you are fine). I say this because honestly, no amount of time in this world is ever enough to get over a person. We can find other things to do, other people and toys to occupy our minds -- but the thoughts remain buried.

 

The better way of dealing with them is living with them. And by living with them I mean two things.

 

1. Living with the person (and not breaking up)

 

 

or

 

2. Honestly living with the thoughts about the other person after the breakup.

 

 

If intimacy and love has been shared, the presense of a person can never be entirely diminished -- only suppressed or set aside for some other purpose.

 

I feel you have found that purpose after eight years -- whatever it may be -- congratulations on finding it.

[penelope13]

I agree that in some ways there will always be a place in my heart for him, not because I am still in love with him, but for the role that he played in my life.

 

I also think you are totally right that it is sad, that people rush from one relationship to another without ever taking the time to sort our their feelings first and thus maybe hurting innocent people - which makes me happy, that i didn't do that, so in this respect it was much easier to forgive myself for the past 8 years.

 

Apart from the personal growth, I have learned so many things on how not to be in a relationship and how many mistakes i did, that it is really helping me with my current situation. In some ways (maybe this is also an illusion, but only time will tell), whatever happened in my last relationship was necessary to prepare me for my new relationship and the challenges I am facing there.