Pretty low... have I blown it for good?

[sarabeth34]

I’m low today, and I’m looking for any advice or consolation… I’ve been lurking on the boards for a while and have seen my story reflected in a lot of other posters, but I’m finally to the point where I’d like to get some direct feedback on my situation, if anyone’s willing to read what will no doubt be a lengthy piece.

 

I feel like I blew my shot at reconciliation with my ex. At the same time, part of me feels like he came back just to verify that I wasn’t the one for him. Either way, it hurts. I can’t help but feel like I’m the one who made all the errors.

 

We were together for over a year. Each other’s first relationship (we’re older for that to be the case – he’s 29, I’m 25), first everything, really. He’d dated in high school and a bit in college, I hadn’t dated at all. We knew each other as friends for years prior to dating as we have a mutual best friend (my relationship with her is now suffering too, but that’s tangential). Things were absolutely great for the first six or so months, almost too perfect… no fights or disagreements, spending a great deal of time together and enjoying it… and then things started to fall apart. I came close to moving four hours away for a new job, his dad became ill, he became extremely unhappy with his job and life overall, began drinking too much… and things just went sour. We went from no fights to what seemed like constant fights, constant stresses, constant drama. We stopped spending nights together, or he made sure someone else was always there with us. I got frustrated, but I really wanted to make it work. In typical fashion, however, as he pulled away, I pushed harder… probably harder than I should have. He said I was clingy. And then he ended it with me (though as a coward – I learned of his intentions from our friend and confronted him about it… he didn’t deny it. It sucked).

 

After that, I was so hurt that I couldn’t talk to him. I went semi-NC, in that we had no direct contact but I still was Facebook stalking him, obsessing, getting hurt by it, etc. I tried to move on… I saw someone else. It just made me sadder. I focused my attention on myself… tried to work on my health, my happiness, my future. I thought I’d done a pretty good job of it, but in the back of my mind I always knew it was in the hope that he would see and respond to the changes and we’d get back together.

 

Then I ended up running into him after almost three months of no direct contact. We began hanging out. He told me he’d made a mistake in breaking up with me. It was what I’d been waiting to hear. Because we were hanging out and becoming close again, and he’d said he thought he’d made a mistake, I assumed we were beginning to reconcile. We’d kiss goodbye. Then we slept together. Once. And then things got weird. He immediately pulled away and stopped contacting me for about two weeks. I asked him if something was wrong and he said no. Then again, he went to our mutual friend, and told her that he didn’t think we were going to work out and that we needed to just be friends. She told me. It broke my heart again. What did I do wrong?? She said he said he "didn't want a girlfriend, period."

 

I didn’t want to lose him in my life. I hated when we weren’t talking for those months, I missed him terribly, and I have so much fun when we're together, so I agreed that we would try and be friends until I felt myself getting hurt. It was going really well… we traveled to see friends together, hung out once a week or so, went to parties, etc. I even went on a few dates with other guys. But I can’t deny that my feelings for my ex weren’t still there, though I was very consciously trying to recategorize them and him as a friend. I could feel myself starting to get hurt when I saw him hanging out with people without me, seeing all the things I wasn’t being invited to. One night, about three weeks into the “friendship” phase, a friend of his asked me what the deal with us was, and I told her that I'd originally thought we’d been working on things, but he just wanted to be friends so that’s what I was trying to do. She apparently told him I’d said we were trying to work on things and he believed I said this and got angry and accusatory. She must have misunderstood, because I know what I said, but it hurt that he got angry… hurt that he put more stock in what she said than in what I’d committed to him to trying to do. So I’ve been NC for about a week now. I deactivated my Facebook, the whole nine yards. There’s no stalking this time.

 

And it’s hard. So hard. I’m afraid he thinks I’m mad at him… that I blocked him on Facebook, that I’ve escalated things, that I’m dramatic. I really do want him in my life, I feel like I want him as a friend if that’s the only way I can have him, but I can’t deny that it was hurting me. I know I don’t want just a friendship, if I’m being honest with myself. I wanted to reconcile. Even after everything, I still do. I just want to talk to him and clarify my recent actions, but then I imagine myself just getting hurt further. Part of me knows I need to move on, but part of me wants the original relationship we had back so badly.

 

When he broke up with me the first time, I thought in absolutes: “We’re never going to hang out together again.” “We’re never going to eat at this restaurant again.” “He’s never going to spend the night at my apartment again.” But then all these things happened. Now I don’t know what to think. I find myself thinking, “hey, anything could happen…” but I don’t know if that’s a healthy mindset. I don’t want to get bogged down waiting around for someone who is unlikely to come back to me. But I wish there were steps I could take to make him more inclined. I know NC is for me to heal and move on, but I hate being on bad terms with anyone, and it seems aggressive. Plus I never got to say that I was starting it, I just did it… and he hasn’t come after me to ask what the deal is. I just miss the way it was and I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to revive it at this point.

 

I just feel like maybe I pressured when we started to reconcile… I probably did. I’m so mad at myself. I feel like I blew my chance and am now looking for any hope that there could someday be another.

[TakingtheBlame]

That sucks, and I'm sorry to hear that you're dealing with it. If it's any consolation, I don't think, from what you wrote, that you pressuring him had anything to do with what happened. Why is it that he's 29 and hadn't been in a relationship before? I suspect he has some sort of issue with relationships in general and you are unfortunately feeling the consequences of his attempt at getting past it. I don't think he was able to, and I don't think things would have turned out any differently if you had passively awaited his decisions during the period of time that you call the start of reconciliation. I just think, for whatever reason, he is not ready for a relationship, at least an emotionally mature one where communication is key, at this point in time. Maybe, in time, he will be, and I suspect he may look you up when he is. But I would write him off in the meantime and move forward with the healing process as much as it may hurt.