Trying to give up and move on, but dont want to shut the door completely

[Dutchviking]

I figured it would be a good idea to write down all my experiences and feelings and attempts to recover from my break-up earlier this year.

 

First some details

- I'm a 28 year old strait male

- The ex is a 22 year old bisexual female

- 3 year old relationship ended early august 2011

- Cause of break-up: GF feels guilty over making me move to her country and specific phobias that delay and hold back our relationship, after seeing me chat with another girl who lived in my country she felt she wasnt special and broke up.

- She really wanted to stay friends as it meant a lot to her. The thought of losing me as a friend made her near suicidal at one point. Unknown how strong her wish for this still is.

- Post break-up i spent about 2 months actively trying to get her back and about a month LC.

- 3 months post break-up she started dating a girl.

- 1 or 2 weeks after she started dating this girl she told me about it, this was the 9 october 2011. (last sunday at the time of writing this)

- During the talk where she announced she was dating someone, i asked her if she still loved me and she confirmed this and that she still had romantic/sexual interest in me.

- I told her that i couldnt be friends with her now that she's dating someone else, especially if she says things like not remembering if she and her new GF may or may not have had a threesome with a random guy when they were extremely drunk a few days ago. Granted she was "possibly" drunk again when she told me this info and was too dumb to realise what it would feel to me.

- At the end of the conversation i told her i hope she will want to try again with me some day but that if she goes down this path she'll lose me completely.

- Yes i still want her back, but going NC and trying to tell myself it isnt going to happen.

- NC started 9 october 2011.

 

9 october 2011 - 14 october 2011

Now then, i went NC from that moment on. I realised i didnt explicitely say she wasnt allowed to contact me, oops, but she does respect my need for distance it seems as she hasnt attempted to contact me since then. Of course this is probably helped by the fact that she's extremely busy with her uni courses and probably also her new girlfriend. And she probably hasnt gotten the chance to miss me yet and feel the effect of losing me not just as a BF but also as a friend. In hindsight, which is always 20/20, i should have gone NC far sooner than when she started dating another.

 

I'm having a tough time this week, actually it's been worse than the week following the break-up. I find myself wondering if i am special and if she misses me or will miss me. At first it looked as though maybe this girl she's dating is a fling and not a long term option for her, but appearantly she's a very nice sweet girl like my ex-GF herself so it might work out between them. Though my ex-GF can be a handful and this new GF of hers she described as "doesnt take crap from anyone", so i see some possibly problems there for them.

 

Today thoughts of maybe being friends with her surfaced, though i know that the coming months that will be impossible, especially if she slips and say something like "owh, got to go now, my GF is waiting". I've been there, done that, with a previous girl i was in love with.

 

Every day this week i cried atleast once, about 5 minutes or so at a time. Cried more often than i had in 5 years before that, makes me feel weak. But i also know it's because of how strong the feelings still are and how happy and blessed and lucky i felt to have her when i did.

 

Oddly enough, yesterday me and a mutual friend were discussing how she changed a lot. And i actually thought to myself "if i met her for the first time now, would i fall as deeply as i did 3,5 years ago?" answer is: no, she was 18 back then and a really bouncy-happy girl, now she's 22 and more mature but also more serious and less lovely.

 

As for moving on, heh, when i started dating her i thought she was out of my league when it came to her looks, absolutely stunning body and curves, she'd make porn stars jealous with both her looks and "skills". Now i look at myself and realise that the chance of me getting a girl of the same physical caliber is going to be extremely unlikely. My ex-GF thought i was sexy even though i was chubby and hairy and short, she loved it because it felt nicer to cuddle me. Every other girl seems to prefer the stereotype spartan body from the movie 300 though.

 

On the emotional/personality side, i currently find it unlikely that i will find someone as friendly, compassionate and lovely as she was 3 years ago. Typing this i realise i said 3 years ago, not 3 months ago. It's kinda hard to tell, it seems that when she interacts with "new people" she still has a lot of loveliness remaining as everyone in her class and circle of friends seem to adore her. But me and a mutual friend of ours agree she has changed her attitude and seems to be less interested in talking to either of us the past year if it wasnt a subject she liked and kinda fickle with her attention giving.

 

She can be extremely jealous though, and me and our friend noticed that if our friend, who is bad at talking to women and spent loads of attention on my ex-GF the past 2 years, starts talking to other women my ex-GF would feel passed up. We thought it would be quite possible that my ex-GF would be very jealous and miss me loads if i were to become friends with her but spend time with other girls.

 

I'm also very sure that if i had started dating another girl before she started dating another, she would be in the same heartbroken state as i have been in the past week. Though since she broke up with me to "let me go" and be with someone that she feels isnt "holding me back" it's perhaps more likely she will just say "see, told you you could easily replace me and be with someone better", but on the inside she'd likely be hurt and jealous because out of the 30+ people she dated regularly, she loved me the most and our relationship lasted 3 years insted of the 9 months of her 2nd longest one, and i think that would make me special to her even now.

 

Owh, yesterday the NC almost got broken, she was online talking to our mutual friend and he checked if she was drunk when she told me about not remembering if she had a threesome last week or not. She appearantly was in an angry mood because people were asking her questions why she broke up with me etc to which she appearantly replied "I told him 500 times already! I'm not going to say it again. It doesnt matter, im dating someone else now".

Appearantly she thinks i sent someone to ask her about it, but i never did, i already knew why she broke up. I almost wanted to readd her to MSN to tell her that i didnt send anyone to bother her. But my friend told me she already threatened to block anyone who didnt leave her alone about it so i decided not to.

 

I asked my friends to not poke or prod her for info regarding me unless i ask them to, which ill likely not do anyway. I also asked them to atleast keep me informed if she asks about me or says something about me. Because i'm kinda curious if she is angry at me for how much i tried to hold on to her after the break-up, or if she will miss me and wants me as a (boy)friend, or if she simply doesnt care about me anymore dispite her confession last week that she still loved me and was sexually/romantically interested in me.

The break-up was kinda messy because of all the guilt and bad feelings and heavy emotions. I personally would be very happy if she and i could have atleast a very tiny chat to clear the air, promise to remember each other fondly, and understand she currently cannot be my GF and i currently cannot be her friend, and that we do hate each other for those facts. I think she will likely not (yet) want to talk with me in this fashion though, knowing her she might even resent me for not being able to be the friend she wanted me to be, she sadly can be difficult like that.

Perhaps in time when i'm more stable and she has had a chance to miss me we can have such a talk, though being in regular contact with her would be bad for me if i havent found a way to properly get over her and find someone else to put my feelings and interests into.

[MK9]

Why not have a three-way relationship. Two lesbians, you in the middle. win/win.

[trellabor]

Why not have a three-way relationship. Two lesbians, you in the middle. win/win.

 

Only if you can remain emotionally unattached entirely, which obviously he cannot. You need to remove the hooks she is keeping in you so you are 'on demand' for her, just in case whatever she has going on doesn't work out. You are giving her exactly what she wants and hurting only yourself in the process. For your own good, you have to shut it down.

[MK9]

She's a lesbian, she can't never truly love you exclusively. You have to adapt, man. If you really like her then you have no choice but to accept her as it, or run away and cut off all contact--that way, years from now you won't remember a thing.

[Dutchviking]

Doesnt matter if she's currently with a girl or guy. Fact is that she's DATING this person and feels she has ruined my life with her mental issues and that i'm better off with someone else without those issues and closer to home. That's why she broke up with me 3 months ago and why she currently feels she cannot have a relationship with me dispite still having all those feelings for me.

 

She had any sort of sexual activity with 25 girls and 50 guys between age 14 and 18, yes that's a staggering amount. Most relationships she had only lasted a few weeks/months and she has had one night stands and threesomes before.

 

Her only other meaningful relationship, and the only other person she loved aside from me, was when she was around 16. This one lasted 9 months and was her longest lasting one till she met me. This relationship ended when the guy she loved was killed and she started serial dating one person after the next quite rapidly to try to find a suitable "replacement". She hasnt been single for longer than a week since age 14. After we broke up she was single for 3 months which made her feel very lonely and depressed.

 

It remains to be seen if this new relationship of hers will turn into something meaningful or if it turns out to be a fling and she will return to her serial dating lifestyle.

[trellabor]

It sounds like she has a lot of signs of BPD...I can't diagnose, but to me it has a lot of similarities. You might want to go over to the BPDfamily-dot-com website and read about some of the other people's stories there, you might find a whole lot of help and answers which I did and it has helped me a lot to recover from that relationship.

[Dutchviking]

Thanks for the replies, time for an update. Maybe the last one for the immediate future.

 

@trellabor: Is it possible for BPD to be impossible to detect in someone for 3 years and only kick in after a person breaks up? She's been diagnosed with multiple mental issues, but i am unsure if BPD was among them. Her behaviour during the 3 year long relationship did change from a "happy-bouncy" girl with sad depressed moods to a more stable but less expressive young woman. But radical changes like these didnt happen.

 

14 october - 16 october

NC was broken by me yesterday, but for a proper reason i think. The past few times we talked, things were kinda messy with her being drunk, or grumpy, or me being sad and missing her. So i had a 20 minute 'upbeat' online talk with her to clear the air, thank each other for a wonderful 3 years, i wished her happiness, and agreed not to let the messy break-up taint our memory of our relationship, which she said was most definitely a positive lasting memory in her mind. It was a friendly enough talk and i ended it with saying she might approach me in the future if she wants to talk about our situation. She seemed a little bit "sulky" when i ended the conversation but i felt good about it. I think it was a far better way to get closure for me than a drunken talk and leave a positive last memory of myself in her.

 

Also, during the talk she explained she heard about my concern about her behaviour and she said that this was "normal behaviour" for her back before she dated me and was serial dating people, clubbing/drinking 3-4 times a week and more promicious. And that the only reason why she developed interests in videogaming, movies and TV series, and reduced clubbing to twice a month, was because she wouldnt be able to date me properly otherwise because of the distance meant half the stuff we did were online things and i wasnt the clubbing type.

(Interestingly she did not seem to get into videogaming just because of me, but get pretty fanatic and VERY good at it, and genuinely enjoy it and prefer to game rather than club. Our mutual friend who saw her as his best female friend was really sad when she said she no longer has any reasons to be online often anymore now that she stopped videogaming. I feel sorry for the guy, she told him months ago nothing would change in the time they would spend together and do together so he kinda feels kinda abandoned as he thought he was a special friend and enjoyed having a female gaming buddy which helped him with his anxiety. B'aaaawh )

 

So i told her she's probably happier now than she was during when we dated because she can club more often, but she said she isnt happier. I also told her i hope she doesnt end up serial dating again, and she shared that hope but that if she ended up doing that "so be it, the wheel of life keeps spinning..". That last philisophical addition was odd and something i only heard her say if she was depressed and sad but resigned to it.

 

I asked our mutual friend not to talk about her or what she might say about me unless it's a positive thing that could make me feel good about myself. (IE: her missing me or wishing i was still her friend, etc)

 

The change she'll ever approach me is probably very low, but this proper closure will probably shave some weeks/months off my healing process and be proud of myself that i walked away with the power to decide what to do if she ever wants to get back into my life, and that i ended our relationship/friendship like a gentleman, not a simpering boy or childish jerk.

[trellabor]

I can't really say, I'm not a professional but some of the things you were saying sounded similar to my own situation, and the changes in personality sometimes are not immediate and will occur over time sometimes getting 'worse' then seeming to get 'better'. There is a strong 'push and pull' effect that seems to be concurrent with most people who are in relationships with a BPD partner, pushing you away when you get too 'close', then pulling you back in afterward. This was something that happened a lot and became obvious when we had arguments. There were times we fought and she would tell me to 'get the F out of HER house', which I took seriously. So there I would be packing my things and she would come home and say 'What are you doing, don't leave. This is OUR home, we're soul mates' as if NOTHING had ever happened. My brain still hurts from the constant back and forth. There's also an extreme 'enmeshment and mirroring' that BPD's will do, to the point they really have no identity other than that of the person they are with. Mine took on all my hobbies and interests, all my favorite foods, everything. I seemed to be looking at my perfect partner, and I was because she was being exactly like me, a virtual personality clone. Never did see anything she was interested in other than what I was.

[Dutchviking]

Ouch! that would sound like a terribly scary relationship. No, if my ex-GF told me to "go f yourself and dont talk to me!" she would be doing that just out of anger and regret it 5 seconds later and apoligise. And that sort of thing only happened twice in 3 years, in the two actual heavy fights we had.

Her commitment to our relationship has always been extremely solid, until about 10-12 months ago her guilt for holding back the relationship and making me move to her country actually started to sink in and make her feel bad about it.

[trellabor]

Ouch! that would sound like a terribly scary relationship. No, if my ex-GF told me to "go f yourself and dont talk to me!" she would be doing that just out of anger and regret it 5 seconds later and apoligise. And that sort of thing only happened twice in 3 years, in the two actual heavy fights we had.

Her commitment to our relationship has always been extremely solid, until about 10-12 months ago her guilt for holding back the relationship and making me move to her country actually started to sink in and make her feel bad about it.

 

Indeed, we must have broken up and got back together 6-7 times over 1.5 years, each time her saying 'We always find each other again'. The amount of hurtful things said between us could keep censors busy for years. That's one thing that makes it hard to view our recent separation as 'final', because I could have sworn it was over every time prior also. Your situation sounds a lot more normal, especially if it happened only a couple times over 3 years...so feel good about that at least lol.

[Dutchviking]

Indeed, we must have broken up and got back together 6-7 times over 1.5 years, each time her saying 'We always find each other again'. The amount of hurtful things said between us could keep censors busy for years. That's one thing that makes it hard to view our recent separation as 'final', because I could have sworn it was over every time prior also. Your situation sounds a lot more normal, especially if it happened only a couple times over 3 years...so feel good about that at least lol.

 

Yes i look back on my relationship with her as extremely pleasant and not poisonous or unhealthy. I have no regrets about dating her, only very sad she ended it insted of fixing the problem. She was a different person before me, and as i mentioned she did become less "lovely" over the course over the 3 years as she toughened up and matured. Only time will tell for her if she is going to remain mentally stable and happy like she was during our 3 years together. She often mentioned she never was happy before she was with me and that the reason she was serial dating and not caring about casual sex before me was because she was trying to find a proper replacement for the first big love of her life who was sadly stabbed and bled to death in her arms when she was 16-17, and she felt worthless and sometimes only good for sex as appearantly that's all people wanted her for she thought.

 

That her brother says that "she's fine, trust me, dont worry" while he knows about these things is rather dissapointing, but she's no longer my "problem" so to speak. It's possible of course that this new girl she's with is currently already making her happier than i am currently aware of. On the other hand, that relationship is only 3-4 weeks old at the most and she did mention yesterday she hopes she isnt going to end up serial dating as before, so obviously it's not that serious yet. I do not wish to know, which is why i went NC and told our mutual friend not to mention her. "quit while you're ahead" so to speak.

[trellabor]

Stabbed and bled to death in her arms at 16-17?

 

Yikes...has she ever REALLY dealt with the emotions and repercussions of that experience? I would think a lot of therapy would be needed to really come to terms with that in of itself, and it sounds like her acting out in these ways is a means of distracting herself from those feelings. Could be she realized her feelings for you were becoming as strong as those she had for that partner that died, and it was too much for her to handle with all those previously hidden emotions coming to the surface again. Some people would rather 'sweep it under the rug' so to speak rather than face those emotions head on, as it's easier to try and ignore them or just 'move on'. Also, her trying to find a 'replacement' is off, because you can't replace someone with another only a new experience which I don't think she has come to terms with either.

[Dutchviking]

She has had therapy for it, as she had two half-serious suicide attempts following his death but trying to overdose on sleeping pills and booze.

Her therapist managed to get her stable enough that she wouldnt attempt more suicide attempts, she used to have weekly therapy sessions, then bi-weekly ones around the time we started dating when she was 18-19, then monthly ones and around 1,5-2 years into the relationship the therapy sessions were switched to "on-demand" ones, meaning that my ex-GF would have to contact her therapist if she thought she needed a session. It was also around this time that my ex-GF seemed to become stronger and more stable, but sadly at the cost of her loveliness and expressiveness as her once excellent communicative skills broke down and she sometimes acted a bit more like a 'female dog' to put it nicely.

 

This year i know she had a session in februari, and one in september. I do not know why she needed one in februari but when she broke up with me in july she did mention the following day that she wrote a suicide note but then destroyed it as she realised her suicidal thoughts were an illness. In september i backed away from her and started treating her like i do female friends, so no affection, intimacy or loads of attention. This sudden change made her go "cold turkey" according to her and made her feel worthless and justified that she wasnt special because i appearantly had gotten over her so easily/suddenly. The suicidal thoughts returned and she had a single 5 hour session with her therapist. Afterwards i returned most of the affection/intimacy/attention to help her stabilise as her therapist concluded she still wanted "my love".

 

She returned the affection for about a week before she started withdrawing, and i am guessing about a month ago when she started to come online or contact me and my mutual friend very rarely she started liking the girl she is dating at the moment because she seemed to feel awkward at getting affection from me.

 

So i guess she weened herself off of me so to speak. Kinda lame in hindsight.

 

She still grieves over the death of that guy she loved and as recent as august/september she was depressed for a day or two specificially because she missed him and visited his grave, something that happens a lot. She still has recurring nightmares about the corpse of her dead BF rising up and blaming her for his death. There have been a dozen nights or so this year alone where she was simply too afraid to go back to sleep.

 

As far as we know, there have been no more therapy sessions after that single 5 hour session in september. It seems to me the therapist is content with her wellbeing as long as she doesnt want to kill herself or thinks she needs help with her issues.