The evenings and nights are the worst.

[maggieMAE]

I wake up and the day seems bright. I try to force optimism and it actually works. But by 5 PM I'm depressed.

 

It's been 4 months now without her, 1 month since she broke NC and freaked out on me. She's been silent since.

I just can't let go. I keep thinking of her, happy with her new girlfriend. I hate her for all the crap she put me through. I'm angry and sad at the same time.

I don't know if it's ever going to get better. =/

 

I've done my best to keep my dignity through all of this. That's the best thing I can say. I left with my pride intact. But now I feel like I want to set the record straight with others. She was so consumed with what others thought, almost to an obsessed level. She even calculated how long she'd wait before making it public with the new girlfriend. Truth is, she was cheating on me emotionally, if not physically. And I feel like an embarrassed doof for having all of this happen to me. In a way, leaving with dignity sucks cuz you can't tell people how you really feel. You can't get it out. Of course my best friend knows, but other than that I refuse to speak about it. Now I have mutual friends of ours who think I'm just fine. They don't know how ugly she was to me. How she broke windows at my house in the past, and rung up $200 cell phone bills on my end cuz I didn't have unlimited texting and she liked to use that to her advantage when I'd try to take a few hours or a day of space. She even did that when she was leaving me for someone else! They don't know how she treated me. I was unhappy and shy, so they labeled me the bad guy that she happily got away from.

 

I just feel so stupid for all of this. I had about a month where I was feeling good again. Then she broke NC and flipped out on me at the bar and afterward on the phone, saying she loved me, missed me, was crazy about me, that I have all of her heart, but that she isn't in love with me anymore. Makes no sense. Now I'm right back to square one.

 

It's been so bad lately that I've been having suicidal thoughts. I'm out of work right now, I'm in between semesters with school, I don't have a ton of friends to keep me distracted and I'm also embarrassed to show my face to the mutual friends of ours who were my friends first. We were together for 3 years, so I don't have many friends who aren't involved with this situation. They've seen her side play out on Facebook. How happy she is with her new little girlfriend. I don't want to give explanations. I really just want someone to hug me and tell me things are going to be okay.

 

I'm done complaining. I just needed to get that out. I'm mad I took a big step backward in my healing. I feel like crap.

[Hennie]

If I could hug you, I most definitely would. I could use a hug myself. Just try to be strong and hopefully the suicidal thoughts will pass. Take one day at a time, it's what I try to do. *shrug*

 

Sorry I don't have much advice, but I know how crappy breakups make you feel. I'm on day 15 of NC and it's been just about 3 months since she broke up with me. Things have not gotten any easier really.

 

PM me on here if you want to talk.

[maggieMAE]

Thank you. I just can't understand how this happened. I keep replaying in my head how everything played out. She was so consumed with me not even having a day without her when something was wrong, as recent as days before she left me, yet she had time to find someone else. Ugh. It makes me want to give up on love. I'm sick of really being as selfless as I can and looking at my own actions as objectively as I can in order to make a relationship work, only for it to blow up in my face. I really tried with her.

[sparrow]

I hear you on the leaving with dignity intact thing, though it is cold comfort when people like you and I are left in the dust, for inexplicable reasons. I, too, bent over BACKWARDS to make my relationship work for 8.5 years. It's nuts when I think about everything I compromised, all to make him feel free to do whatever he pleased. Problem was, I should never have compromised on some of the things I compromised. What I've learned is that I was WAAAY too nice and WAAAY too much of a doormat in my relationship and I should have put my foot down a LOT sooner.

 

Also, I would LOVE to tell me and my ex's mutual friends exactly what the world's cutest, most popular bartender and band-dude did to me. I would love to tell them about all the cheating, deception and sneaking around. I would love to tell them how nasty and cold and awful he could be. But I haven't and I won't because I guess I'm classier than that. But I really, really wish they knew, because then maybe not everyone in town would be rallying to HIS side right now. And I can relate to the embarrassment factor towards mutual friends. I basically dated the most popular, best-loved person in town and feel like there is a GIANT black mark against me. Even though HE was the one who was awful and cruel and did the dumping. I would have done anything to make him happy. And maybe that was our fault, MaggieMae. We shouldn't have done so much.

 

I, too, have had some thoughts approaching suicidal, and I have never really had them before, and then I remember that I have an elderly cat who I love clearly more than life and who would be around to take care of him if I checked out... blah blah. I wish I could give you a hug tonight and tell you that everything is going to be okay. Your gf sounds like a kind of a nightmare. I know you loved her so so so so much and honestly, you sound like such an intelligent, self-aware, loving gal, this is HER LOSS. Seriously, I feel sorry for her that she missed out on someone like you.

[tryharder83]

im sorry for how you are feeling now OP. i kind of understand the kind of pain that strikes whenever you are reminded of how everything went down and how it was just under your nose and been played a fool.

 

its been more than a year for me. but i made a mistake of being around and in turn made it easier for my ex and harder for me. in mid-feb it'll be a year since i started really distancing myself. because i know that there is someone else.

 

there's that certain pain i feel whenever thoughts come rushing in. i dont cry as much but it still stings.

 

gets better though.. it just had to be.

 

bless your heart maggimae.

[maggieMAE]

Thanks so much for reading and sending me your well wishes. It helps a lot to be heard online when my pride and brain tells me to keep quiet in real life. I know it's for the best to not put the ex on blast and air our dirty laundry. It sends a bad message about my integrity which would only strengthen others' ideas about me. Class is important.

 

The patterns of how she acts in relationships are very apparent even though she's only had one ex other than me. The long term friends of hers will realize this eventually though. But putting my focus on that is wrong and I know it. What others think won't change a thing. Even if she gets the cold hard truth from one good friend she won't change her behavior. She did once, a few months before we split. Her best friend and her got into an argument, and the friend told her that she's a fool for how she treated me the entire time. She admitted that she did this to cut my ex a little deep. The ex has a way of only hitting people where it hurts during an argument, so the friend did the same thing. She then called me and tried to take me out for a drink to spill how guilty she felt for sitting by while my ex treated me like crap. I declined, but it was kind of surreal. I just remembered this now, and I think I should have taken the offer. Maybe she would have told me about the other girl to save me all of this pain.

 

This certainly is a process. I was doing very well until she tried to come back last month with more drama and to put more baggage on me. But hopefully it's the last of it. I got far ahead of myself before in thinking I was doing very well. Really, I think it was just my pride and defenses protecting me.

[maggieMAE]

Tryharder, has your ex tried to contact you at all again? If so, how did you deal with it?

 

Goodness, being left for someone else is the worst. It's taught me what not to do if I ever find myself in my ex's shoes. I'm happy she followed her heart and deep down I'm relieved the drama is over, but jeesh.

[tryharder83]

just keep strong maggie.. i fully understand what you meant by thinking why not let her have it?. give her a piece of your mind, esp when you get so frustrated that you know you deserve better treatment than that. but at the same time your logical mind tells you.. you are better off not get all emotional and raw with your ex because it just aint worth it.

 

i realize now its what's weighing me down in my way to moving on and healing. its the pity party i throw myself in whenever i think of things that i felt cheated on and betrayed by. that's just me, i felt like i've sacrificed alot and given so much and this happened. whenever those thoughts are playing in my head i get lost and get depressed more. trust me till now im still taking it day by day, and its really hard i had no idea how to get through in the early months but im trying and i survived those hard times. it helped that i stopped obsessing on wanting to know things about my ex, which pushed me, to snoop before. now maybe i just had enough of the pain of it so i know better not to, for the life of me.

 

and being on ENA when i was hyperventilating with frustrations really helped. friends can only take so much of the drama. after sometime its going to be too much for them. i didnt realize strangers can help. reading on here offered me some relief and i was really desperate for anything before.

 

so just write in here.

 

about the ex reaching out. yes twice.. and i ignored and a mutual friend told me that my ex mentioned that she reached out and didnt get any response. i didnt tell anyone. all i said to our friend (more my friend but both our coworker)was i had nothing to say. set me back though.., had some nights waking up crying after that.

 

this really turn my whole world upside down.. but at the end of the day you just have to keep on right?

 

best of luck.

[maggieMAE]

Indeed. I hear you on the pity party bit. I need to really start focusing on other things. It'll help when the new semester starts next week.

 

Lately I've been wanting to go on dates again. Nothing serious, but I just want to hang out with someone or a few someones. I'm debating on it. Maybe I'll wait a little longer. I don't even know how I'd begin. Haha.

[Hennie]

I've thought of trying to go on a couple dates - even created a profile on a dating site. I just can't bring myself to go any further than that though. I look at the profiles of girls on it and can't help but compare them to my ex. I guess it just takes a little longer for some than others.

 

Good luck maggieMAE!!!

[quirky]

Really sorry you're hurting maggieMAE, I love your avatar pic btw 8)

 

I have mutual friends of ours who think I'm just fine.......Of course my best friend knows, but other than that I refuse to speak about it......I feel like an embarrassed doof......They don't know how she treated me.......They don't know how ugly she was to me.....I just feel so stupid for all of this.....I'm also embarrassed to show my face to the mutual friends of ours who were my friends first

 

 

Sorry I selected all these bits out but I think something is holding you back here. It seems to me that you're not owning up to your feelings, you have a lot of pride.. And while this is cool it very likely stops your healing. You don't allow yourself the hurt you feel, you think it's stupid to feel this hurt?

 

Pride and denial and a twisted resistance is what kept me in pain for a long time. And anger. How little sense everything made.

 

You need to accept how vulnerable you feel and be open about how she was, you need to allow yourself to have the feelings you do, accept what you wanted, what you lost, accept it all and then you may feel more liberated. Not instantly healed but more liberated.

[maggieMAE]

That makes a lot of sense and I agree with you.

 

I don't really feel stupid for hurting. I guess I feel stupid for allowing this stuff to happen, and because of that I shouldn't be hurting. I should have taken the red flags more seriously and stuck to my guns when I wanted to leave her while we were together. I knew she didn't take me or our relationship seriously, but when I'd try to leave because of that, she'd call me nonstop for weeks on end and it's hard to leave someone you love when they do something like that. So I'd give in and she'd hit the reset button and we would never resolve our problems. This happened so many times and I feel guilty for breaking up with her so much. I'm sure in her mind she finally left a noncommittal relationship for something more stable. But she really did some horrible things to me that led to us breaking up so much.

 

I think what's holding me back from really accepting how I feel is my uncertainty of how guilty I am in the downfall of everything. I can't wrap my head around the situation, if I pushed her to do the things she did, how she could do all of that to me, etc. I dunno if that makes sense. My ex was a bag of drama, but she wasn't the only one. I should have known my limits and had better boundaries. I honestly wish I could talk to her about all of this because it would be so beneficial to me, but I don't want to seem like I'm begging to reconcile and it's just too soon/late. I think 4 months later is way too long to wait to talk about things and I respect her new relationship enough not to do that. I've come very close to breaking NC just so I could apologize for what I had done too, but it just hurts too much. People do stupid things when they're hurting, and there was a lot of pain during the relationship.

[quirky]

I understand what you say..It does take 2 to tango.

 

You really think it'd be stupid to speak to her? Or write even. It might help your healing. In hindsight I wish I had writen to my ex all these thoughts I had. I was scared and uncertain and I wasn't doing it because I didn't feel safe to express and share myself with him any more. I realise now that I was hesitating mainly because of how he'd perceive me. And because deep down I still wanted him to want me and think I'm proud and cool. If you reach a point where you don't care about that it might be good to express yourself..it might help you put a lid on it.

[maggieMAE]

That's what I'm thinking. I'm just scared she'll think I want her. I do. Deep down I wish she'd "come to her senses". But I fear feeding her ego (or her thinking I'm a good backup plan), feeding my own false hope, and if my apology would be excusing her of what she did in a way. Maybe I should hold out on saying anything until I'm done hoping, but I don't know which could come first - an end to hope or me finally speaking my piece.

 

I wish I could be stronger. Someone who says "their loss" and moves on once they've been replaced.

 

I'm going to write a letter and let it sit for awhile before I consider sending it.

[Silly Girl]

Thank you. I just can't understand how this happened. I keep replaying in my head how everything played out. She was so consumed with me not even having a day without her when something was wrong, as recent as days before she left me, yet she had time to find someone else. Ugh. It makes me want to give up on love. I'm sick of really being as selfless as I can and looking at my own actions as objectively as I can in order to make a relationship work, only for it to blow up in my face. I really tried with her.

 

I know how you feel. I don't want to become a cold person but I don't think I can survive like this.