Pride driving me nuts!

[EmmaB78]

Have you ever done something in a relationship or after it's over that just eats away at you? Maybe confessed certain feelings toward your ex only to have them ignore you? Shown that you weren't as indifferent as you were pretending and then had it thrown back in your face?

 

I'm going crazy thinking about some things I said/did recently and in the past that are now really hurting my ego. It makes me think about these people more! How do you get over this? I want to go back in time and slap myself, lol. And I just HATE that there are these douches out there who will always think of me as someone who was just sooooooo into them, but I can't do anything about it! I just want to stop thinking about this! Argh!

[ForumGuy]

This is one of the big reasons to just go NC when someone dumps you and stay that way. It is rarely worth the risk of having your heart thrown back in your face. You are setback, but it will pass. Many of us have been there.

[meoww]

I have the same problem and I also have perhaps way too much pride. Just realize that these types are truly are riddled with insecurity. For example, my ex lied to other people about what he would say to me in private, so it would look like I was way more desperate than I actually was.

 

It's embarrassing that there is some person out there basically slandering you or making you look simply pathetic but if you don't give them any more fuel, people will forget about it. Luckily we all have pretty short term memories for this kind of thing. It's not too late to take control of the situation on your end!

 

Unfortunately, the douchebags will continue to think you thought they were the greatest thing ever...I guess you can try to find the humor in this. We have no control over what goes on in their heads.

 

Practically speaking, I think we get stuck in certain patterns of thinking that are initially hard to divert. Just do your best to get over the feeling of being victimized. It was totally unfair and of course disrespectful but in the end, it's so true that giving them the time of day, in person or in your head, is more than they deserve.

[sophie274]

Oh yes, absolutely. Honestly when my ex and I broke up, I had a few crazy ex moments that I should be ashamed of. And when I still cared about what my ex thought of me, I was ashamed and felt really disgusted at myself. Now, I can't say that I care at all. So what if he thinks I've got a screw loose? First of all, I KNOW that I don't. Secondly, we have no contact. Third, whatever he thinks about me ... well, I'd rather have had these crazy moments and acted a bit insane than done what he did to me, to be honest. And finally, I can't and don't respect him anymore, so by extension I don't value his opinion.

 

Now, that's for the times when you acted crazy. If you just were WAY into them and they did not respond - you should never feel embarrassed about that. I think it's better to be the kind of person who has the courage to declare their feelings. And honestly, if they still chuckle at the thought of having rejected someone who really liked them, feel sorry for them. That's just cruel and sad. I had to tell a guy who confessed that he was in love with me that I was not interested in dating him (we had previously dated when we lived in the same city and were then several thousand miles apart, that was the first time he had told me he was in love), and I felt awful. I've never thought back on that moment with any sense of superiority or self-satisfaction, and I can't imagine that any nice, well-adjusted person would.

[furiouspsych]

I'd think most ppl have made this mistake at least once. You just have to have that last calm, reasonable talk and if nothing comes of it, that's it...go NC with a vengeance.

[catfeeder]

I've found it helpful to declare perfectionism a bore. We've been learning from trial and error since the cradle, and beating myself up for a natural learning process makes no sense.

 

Just as I wouldn't get frustrated with a 6th grader for not grasping grad school material, why should I get mad at myself for sticking my neck out to learn how to recognize and walk away from bad matches? Isn't that a pretty valuable thing to learn?

 

When I keep pressing button A and B pops up every time, and I hate B, then eventually I'll learn to stop pressing button A. No reason to get mad at myself about that.

[nutbrownhare]

Don't let pride eat away at you once there's nothing you can do about the situation. Don't feel ashamed that you were open and vulnerable with someone who threw it back at you - that's their loss, not yours. Above all, don't wish away your ability to be vulnerable and having the courage to express your feelings - you will need it when you meet the right person.

 

If you maintain your poise and dignity when some guy's trying to make out that you're desperate, chances are that others will think he's indulging in a lot of wishful thinking, and feel sorry for him. Let these guys think you were soooo into them, if that's what they want to think. Others will see through that quickly enough. And if a guy's really arrogant about it, too, that will be really off-putting to potential partners.

 

Years ago, I had a male friend who used to go on about this ex-girlfriend who still really had the hots for him. Absolutely desperate, she was. As it happened, he, I and his then girlfriend all went to the same university. It was the same university as the ex-girlfriend. Not only did she clearly NOT have the hots for him, but was living happily with another guy.

 

The girlfriend and I looked at each other and shook our heads. "He was very young when it all happened", she said!

 

Don't let your past actions, which were born out of honesty and integrity, cloud your present. Congratulate yourself on being able to do this in the first place, and then choose more carefully in future.

[EmmaB78]

Hey, you know what might be fun? Anyone want to share their stories of their most pathetic moments? Seems like laughing at ourselves might make it better and also help other people who have been more recently pathetic. I have been slightly pathetic recently, but it's been more like two or three, "I'm sorry"s and "I miss yous" to someone who didn't deserve it - nowhere near the following story, which I will tell to kick things off:

 

Back when I was 24 (I'm 33 now), I met a friend of an acquaintance at a party. He pursued me hard and practically begged me to be his girlfriend, only to tell me a few days later that he really meant he wanted to see me casually. Naturally, my initial hesitation was dispelled at this point, and now I was pursuing HIM. Things wound up getting really rocky, really quickly, and we didn't speak for a month. Then, he got back in touch, and we spent a very intense month together - he still said he didn't want a gf, but he very much treated me like one - we spent almost every day together, he had a little nightstand set up in his apartment just for me, I hung out with all of his friends, and he even invited me to meet his entire extended family for Christmas (I was away from home in grad school at the time and couldn't afford to visit my own family that year).

 

But throughout that month, he would also do/say the most disrespectful things, going from sweet to mean at the drop of a hat. I remember one night, we were lying in bed talking about our "relationship" and all of the sudden he said he had to go to the bathroom. He got up, and then he went into the bathroom and proceeded to take a shower for half an hour, then came and laid back down with his back to me as if nothing happened. When I was like, What the hell?, he pretended he didn't know what I was talking about! Another time, we got into a snowball fight outside of his apartment building, and I ran around behind some cars to try and surprise attack him. I came jumping out and he was no where to be found. I went wandering around (this was around midnight, btw), looking for him, and then finally buzzed his apartment. "Oh," he said. "I thought you left." ?!?!? Yet another time, we were out with a group of his friends and wound up meeting these two girls and bringing them to a party with us - and then he left me with his friends to go hit on one of the girls, and when I called him aside and said he was embarrassing me, he said, "We're not exclusive - YOU'RE embarrassing ME!" I would forgive this behavior again and again because he always just acted baffled, "Oh, I didn't realize it bothered you. Ok, sorry. Blah blah blah." Several of this guy's friends actually pulled me aside at different times to tell me what a jerk he was, but then they would proceed to hit on me themselves, which I now realize must have been because he probably told them he didn't care either way, but at the time I took as a sign that they were all just liars. Yeah, I was not the brightest bulb.

 

Well, in spite of this, I was completely falling in love with this guy, but I did have a LITTLE self-esteem, so I stopped seeing him. For a while, we were still talking on the phone, exchanging emails, etc, until one night, a couple of weeks later, I called and he had some girl over who was giggling non-stop in the background and he started telling me all about her, etc and how they were in the middle of a chess game (which was the thing we had done on one of our first dates). I freaked out and sent him the nastiest email I've ever sent anyone, and I later found out that he said some very, very horrible things about me in return, telling all of his friends that he'd just been using me for sex all along and didn't care even a little what I thought or felt.

 

It took me months to get over this guy, but I finally did, met someone else, and had a 4-year relationship with the new person. But when that ended, I immediately thought back to this guy. By this point, we lived on opposite coasts so I knew we weren't going to get together or something, but I actually wanted to be FRIENDS with him sill - * * * ? I'm quite certain this was a product of my other relationship ending and me wanting to go back in time and get back the years I felt I'd lost, but nonetheless, sheesh. So I tracked down the jerk and sent him an FB request, which he didn't accept. Not having had enough, I found his new email address and sent him some dumb little thing about us getting back in touch - it wasn't super pathetic - I kept it like, "Oh, hey, was thinking about you recently and wondering what you're up to," but come one, ugh. Anyway, he wrote me back and said that he was well, he hoped I was well, but he didn't think we should be in touch given what had happened, and he hoped his email gave me the "closure" I was looking for.

 

So, in sum, I tracked down a guy who I dated for pretty much a month, who treated me like crap, who told all of his friends how much he didn't care about me, and I did it FOUR YEARS LATER. Try and top that for patheticness! lol - (cringing lol). Weirdly, though, it actually did give me closure as I finally stopped thinking of him as "the one that got away" - unfortunately, I still think of him now and then as "the one I made a complete and utter crazy fool of myself over." Anyone else?