How should I feel knowing this?

[yonderkthx]

Hi all,

 

It has been almost five months since I broke up with the woman I felt was the one. In the aftermath, I have a lot of looming on my shoulders besides the breakup: Crohn's disease flare-up, post-surgery recovery, financial straits, medical bills, associated health issues, job insecurity, etc... In the past week, I've decided to see a counselor to sort of these things, explore them, and develop strategies so I can keep myself afloat. I will be seeing him tomorrow, but I wanted some perspective on something that happened this past week.

 

We went halfsies on rings for each other. Not indicative of marriage, but moreso a sign of our bond and trust. Post-breakup, she returned her ring back to me saying I'd have to lie to another girl to ever use it again. It's likely not worth anything in raw metals / gems either. So I just held onto it in a box with the rest of her mementos. This past week, she decided to break NC after a signficant period, asking if I wanted to keep it. It has no use to me, so I let her know where I live now so she could pick it up.

 

I asked her how she was doing. She told me she was in the process of buying a house, in the area we had talked about buying a house in the future should I ever become financially stable. She said over the winter break she rented a cabin with friends, and would make a yearly tradition of it-- something we did every year, just the two of us, around our anniversary. She said she was earnestly practicing her musical instruments now-- something I encouraged her to do while in our relationship while I worked on my own personal projects. She reconnected with old friends and made amends to others, again something I encouraged for her to do, etc. Put simply, she is doing all the things I had, in the relationship, hoped and argued for her to do on her own while I was otherwise preoccupied / needed to be alone. Just judging from the way she spoke about her future, about her current life direction, about the friends she holds dear in her life -- she seemed genuinely happy, like how she was when I first met her. She was pleasant to speak to again, like she reached some kind of inner Zen. And this is emanating from one of the most intolerant, petty, and elitist person I've ever met (she always had trouble identifying the qualities in things and people she could change / had to accept). She is not seeing anyone either, so this is more of the internal happiness I had always hoped she'd find.

 

We broke up due to an overwhelming trust issue I could never resolve. She was not okay with my pornography habits, and I sought to change those, but ultimately failed, not before lying to her face and saying I was doing fine and it was no longer an issue. She kept finding out, kept prying into my privacy, kept getting hurt. And I kept violating her trust because I felt she couldn't accept me if I failed and couldn't resolve this issue. So, that sense of mistrust, of needing to pry into my inner turmoil and struggles, likely fueled her unhappiness to the point where she couldn't focus on herself. It was absolutely destructive. I see now that she was very unhappy. Towards the end, she lashed out at me without really ever explaining the complexity as to why--she would internalize these issues and refuse to openly talk to me, letting it subside in a few days. I just tried to take it the best I could, marginalizing the glaring issues that would just keep reproducing if we didn't address them. So we broke up-- it was the only solution I could see to end this cycle of unhappiness and frustration.

 

What I'm trying to address now is how I should feel regarding her happiness. I want to be happy for her, because I respect her and feel she deserves the happiness she's achieved, but I also can't help feeling like I was the main source of her insecurities and misery. It doesn't help that I'm doing pretty poorly myself, and she's flourishing in the wake of our post-breakup. I can only say with absolute veracity that I'm happier knowing that she's doing well instead of assuming the worst (rotating guys, persistent trust issues, placing inner security in other people). I just don't know. I'm wondering if anyone else has been in this situation, where they may have had to confront that they were the toxic influence / impassable barrier in someone else's life without really intending it. I'd also love to know what I could do in future relationships to nip these sorts of cycles in the bud before they ever spiral out of control and I end up hurting the ones I love.

 

Thanks in advance for hearing me out.

[Wiseman2]

Do you think she used the ring as an excuse to come by and showboat all her supposed recent accomplishments?

[angrythoughts]

I truly don't understand why women would have an issue with their man watching porn... its so strange to me.

 

Anyways, try to find your inner happiness. You can't be happy when you're focused on how you believe she's better off without you. You did break up for a reason. She was making you unhappy too. Do things that you never got the chance to do and create a better you.

[Dahl]

Do you think she used the ring as an excuse to come by and showboat all her supposed recent accomplishments?

 

I had precisely the same curiosity.

 

With exactly the same keywords.

[rosephase]

Sometimes relationships allow us not to work on ourselves. It sounds like that is what she let your relationship do. Instead of working on her own insecurity and unhappiness she took it out on you. She believed that if she was unhappy it was your fault. It's a really regular pattern of thought folks get in to. We were promised, by our media, by our culture, by our art, that love would fix everything. That once you are partnered you should be happy. You have your other half. You have the person who will fix you, that will ALWAYS make you happy... and when that doesn't pan out? When a partner can't always fix our hurt, our shame and our fear? We blame them. We fight. We say: If my partner could only do x, y, z... I wouldn't feel so bad.

 

But the only person who can heal our hurt, shame and fear is ourselves. If we are lucky we will have some helping hands along the way.

 

You personally weren't holding her back from happiness. She was. And now that she is on her own she has to take responsibility for her own unhappiness. Will it last if she gets into another relationship? Who knows. Sometimes we need to lose people to grow. And that sucks. The feeling of: "So now your growing into the person I always thought you might grow into" is hard. In time when your healed, I hope you can feel glad you helped her.

[yonderkthx]

Do you think she used the ring as an excuse to come by and showboat all her supposed recent accomplishments?

 

No, thankfully. I took the initiative and asked her how she was doing. We've met up in the past to pick up belongings etc. and it's been far more terse. I suppose there are those who would do that though