Stange how you go from intimate lovers to total strangers...

[leftme]

It's quite alarming in fact that you can be so 'in-love' and then completely cut-off from eachother. But then again, it gives you some solace in the fact that you now know it happens and you can see that your ex is sharing the same feelings of love again, you have first hand experience that the fairytale romance you're observing may not turn out all so well.

 

This video is quite good:

 

 

[beatlesfan123]

Holy crap, that video was amazing. Cheesy as hell but I loved it.

 

Was talking to my friends about relationships earlier today and I said I wished I knew what was really happening but was blind to it all as it was my first serious relationship and my ex had a few before, so it was a shame I wasn't on the same level as her. They said don't be hard on yourself, everyone has to learn these lessons from a first relationship at some point... wish I had watched this video beforehand!

 

Sad thing for me is, I was stuck in stage 3 for months after my ex was going through 4-6. Then I went from 3-6 in a matter of weeks and wanted the breakup but was too scared to do it. Then it happened and all I can remember is stage 3 and wish I could have another go at preventing 4-6 from ever happening.

 

I really wish I was winning my breakup

[leftme]

I guess we all feel that way, the ‘winning’. I’d say I am – because rather than competing against her I’m competing against who ‘I was’ with who ‘I am’… I’m a far better person for it and by that I don’t mean I don’t need her or anyone else… but that every other part of my life (apart from love) has excelled my greatest expectations…

 

Plus

Career

Friends

Education

Cons

Sex

[divequeen89]

This was excellent!

[einsteins_girl]

The video made me cry so much.

[DepthOfField]

TV/Movies/Clips have never made me cry. Ever.

This one did.

 

Wow. So true. 100% accurate.

[Strung_Out00]

I struggle with this daily. It's just unfathomable to me that you can spend years sleeping beside someone, knowing everything about them, where they will be, who they talked to, being a team to one day just being strangers again. In one instant everything is shattered and will never be as it was. Our paths have divided. She has her life and I have mine. It's just like it was before we met, only different.

 

It was a good video. It's so very true.

[Robin2904]

I watched that video a long time ago- my best friend sent it to me after my break up and I remember watching it and BAWLING! It's an amazing video but really hits deep. It is a sad fact how someone can go from being so important, a constant in your day to day life to being absolutely nothing. I think that's one of the things that makes me most sad. But it does help to know your not alone.

[leftme]

I watched that video a long time ago- my best friend sent it to me after my break up and I remember watching it and BAWLING! It's an amazing video but really hits deep. It is a sad fact how someone can go from being so important, a constant in your day to day life to being absolutely nothing. I think that's one of the things that makes me most sad. But it does help to know your not alone.

 

That's exactly why I posted it. We aren't alone, we didn't do anything so wrong we caused it... it often just happens. It's the most important thing to understand. It wasn't our fault.

 

I wish I could go to NYC

[sportsguy9981]

Its hard not being able to share memories anymore with somebody that you were so close to.. honestly I dont understand how people can live with the fact that their significant other is not in their life anymore at all, after years of being with this person, talking every day, to absolutely nothing.. makes me wonder just how much this affects the dumper, anybody know how the dumper really feels about this??

[beatlesfan123]

Again I'm not the most reliable source of relationship information but a friend once said to me you learn who your ex really is after they break up with you. The advice on the forums about the person you fell in love with being gone the minute they break up with you is the truest I've read. Personally I was in love with the perception I had of my ex rather than the actual person. The quicker you step back and stop looking with love-tinted goggles the easier it becomes because it seems the dumper takes those goggles off long before they actually break up with you.

[rattenkrieg]

This must be the hardest aspect of breakups. This is the question we constantly ask ourselves, our friends, random strangers on the street, God, the Universe: How? How could someone so close, so intimate, could just turn, in a flash, into a stranger? Someone who is so distant, like nothing ever happened to begin with? I still ask this question. It seems like a serious deviation for me. I cannot explain it. It just happens. So I choose to accept it because I really have no alternative. She's somewhere else.

 

Reflecting on this question (I have and do a lot), I think of a term the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger used: "Ableben".

Like many other words in German, Ableben can be interpreted in a lot of ways. Generally, it means death, but one of the interpretations is "Demise", "Coming to an end", or how I interpret it - The death of an idea, the death of a concept.

 

I think this is why heartbreak is so overwhelming, encompassing and so hard to fathom. It is not a biological death, it is the death of an idea. In a way, a biological death would be easier to grasp, because of its finality, because it is a rock solid fact, because it makes sense, in a way. But when an idea dies, it's much harder to understand, it bears the same finality that comes with biological death, but it's different. When feelings die, when hearts grow cold, it is something that most of us are less ready to deal with. The person lives on but the feelings died (and it seems to us always, oh so sudden). The idea is dead. It has reached exhaustion. And we are left in a void. Oh such a big void.

 

All of you struggling now, I don't need to say how bad I feel you. I still ache myself. But think about it like this: the idea is dead. You are in a void. Do you have anywhere to stay? The thing about breakups, it seems, is that they are just so ABSOLUTE, that it seems like nothing could ever change, that in this universe - this person will never love you again, this is the "total" factor of breakups, and it breaks you apart. And that means, for the heartbroken mind, that everything else is allegedly tasteless. It takes us time to accept this thought does not correspond with reality.

 

I think that, based on my own experience, sometimes it takes us so much time to ACCEPT it, because we are, in a way, just so used to being in that void, this void which we were forcefully, maybe out of the blue, were thrown into, the day they walked away. And this void is so strong and encompassing that it just becomes what Heidegger would call, our "Sein", our existence. Sure, we try to move on, we hit the gym, we take a run, we go out, talk to friends, write on the forum. But the void, it is always there. We stare at its ugly dark face when we are alone in our bed where we used to lie with our best friend. When we wake up. When we go to sleep. When we stare at the screen in gloomy, depressing lonely evenings.

 

I realize this is a function of time, and again it's only my humble opinion, but I think that we could better ourselves and our condition if we were to:

 

1) DIAGNOSE that we are in this void, that it defines us. This void is a function of us loving someone else so fondly, recognizing them as an integral part of our "Sein", and this part suddenly vanished, rocking our world completely. We are left shattered, actually, physically feeling extreme emptiness, in our hearts and bellies, TO THE POINT WHERE WE ACTUALLY LOSE OUR APPETITE! Our appetite is what keeps us alive, it is the fuel of our biological self. We lose that, temporarily. I think the singer Johnny Mathis beautifully described this with simplicity in his song "She's gone": "It's a mystery I cannot explain / All it feels I got are heartaches and pain [...] I cannot sleep at night / got no appetite / Everything is wrong that used to be right / Since she's gone, gone, gone, gone".

 

2) ACCEPT that we are CURRENTLY in this void, since we have our justifiable reasons.

 

3) ACCEPT that this void will bring us nowhere, we are in a place where nothing happens, where nothing could ever possibly happen.

 

4) DECIDE that as comfortable as it is to stay in the void, we are better off deciding internally to GO ON. To walk onwards to the unknown scary future. Telling ourselves that whatever it holds for us, it sure is better than staying in the never changing void, pining for an idea that has come to its demise.

 

Once I likened this idea to the image of kids learning to swim in the local swimming pool. We hang on to the sides of the pool so strong that we forget the essence of our presence in this pool: to swim. Swimming from side to side is just so frightening we just freeze. Swimming is deciding to go on with life within the new conditions the world has set for us, or like aforementioned Johnny Mathis sang in his song: "I just cannot seem to face reality". It is catching on with reality. We need to accept reality.

[Snow93]

That video hit me pretty hard. But I am emotionally unstable as all hell just now. It's really true, I went through those stages and that video kind of made me realise that there were things in both sides that made things go as they did. I'm coming to terms with it a little. My ex contacted me after a couple months NC and it's the same for her. She told me she misses it too. Even for the dumper the signs can be there too. I asked her please not to contact me unless she wants to work things out and attempt to get back together.

 

It's not nice, becoming a stranger like this again after so much history. She told me I can always contact her when I need to. I don't know if I will. Maybe in 6+months if I'm healed. For now though, this becoming a stranger process has to be the way. At least I'm not alone.

[leftme]

Its hard not being able to share memories anymore with somebody that you were so close to.. honestly I dont understand how people can live with the fact that their significant other is not in their life anymore at all, after years of being with this person, talking every day, to absolutely nothing.. makes me wonder just how much this affects the dumper, anybody know how the dumper really feels about this??

 

You can still share your memories... with friends, family etc. Your time will come with someone else... and when they see how 'independent' you are, they'll be more than impressed.

[LonelyGirl10]

Even looking back on my relationship now, I still don't see that I ever went through the bad stages. We dated a year, but I was still in the honeymoon phase. I still got butterflies when I was around him. And then he just left, with no warning. It's so hard to understand how a person can do that. And it's hard to understand that he saw the relationship much different than I did (I guess).

[einsteins_girl]

I was thinking about this video some more, and now I'm left wondering: How does a relationship NOT end up like this? How do any of them stand the test of time?

[1Life2Live]

It's not easy but some couples have figured out how to balance the "comfortable" stage. They know how to be comfortable with each other and yet maintain all the love and excitement that brought them together in the first place. They continue to value each other and accept each other for their differences and the things that make them unique. They learn to keep the peace when challenges in the relationship arise early on by communicating and listening to each other effectively, and by making changes in their behavior or lifestyles when the significant other has begun to feel that particular things are effecting how they view the relationship. The problem that I have experienced in several recent relationships including my 15 year marriage that ended is that sometimes the significant other doesn't have it in them to compromise or communicate effectively when they are having doubts, issues or problems. When that happens its hard to resolve things that could easily be fixed and puts us where we are today. Writing in this forum.

[gardnergirl2]

Video made me cry too