No Contact is a Go

[WombatShadow]

My ex and I had a very long talk tonight. I'm actually fresh off the phone with him. Like always, I apologize for the longevity of this.

 

He and I left our conversation back in June with the same feeling, with one major exception: I believed that he was willing to give things another go, and he just wanted to be friends. He did admit to me that I am the best friend in his life, and he does not want to lose that, but he does not feel that I will find happiness with him as a boyfriend. However, he was talking things over with his mother (no shame there, I talk to my mom about this all the time) and she suggested a communication break.

 

He broached the idea to me, but seemed rather unsure that it was necessary. I actually started our very long talk with a long letter, in which I finally vented all of my frustrations about the way our whateverness has been going and laid out three options based on my observations of our wants and needs: 1) he wants to be just friends with me, and therefore we can be friends but only in the capacity of our group and not alone; 2) he does not actually want to be friends at all, and therefore we just need to cut things off entirely; and 3) he still has enough feelings for me that he wants to give things a genuine shot at a relationship. This all seems too close to an ultimatum for my liking, but it was the only way I was going to get him to define what the hell he wants from me.

 

Obviously I was gunning for Option 3, but he told me that he wanted...none of them. Instead, he really wants to be my best friend. He sees me as a better and closer friend than the other members of our group and wants to continue hanging out more often than the three to four times a year he sees the main group. I ended up completely spilling my guts even more than in the letter, basically telling him that I'm still in love with him and that every time I get a text from him I light up and every time I don't get a response or he lets the conversation die down without continuing it properly it kills a part of me. I also told him that I still don't understand what went wrong and why he won't let me try to fix it. His answer was that he genuinely does not know what happened. He was crying as he figured out what to say, and his voice broke several times as he tried to find the words. He's being honest and doesn't know why he fell out of love.

 

He knows specific instances where things went wrong, and puts the blame on himself, but he doesn't have any reason to dislike me and as such doesn't. A lot of these moments are times that I know I messed things up, thus putting a damper on the relationship (Black Friday shopping: I saw it as me blowing up at him for no reason, he remembers only that it felt like a chore; Christmas leadup: he lied to me about being busy so he didn't have to go to a party with me; I was demanding too much of his time during a busy time of the year). We were both at fault, but the difference is that I see that this is fixable and he sees it as insurmountable.

 

In other words, he sees deal breakers and I see TLC-necessitating. He sees it as us being incompatible, and I see it as us needing to just work a little. All relationships feel like work at times. His reaction to these feelings (to hide them and let them fester and then decide that makes our relationship inadequate) makes me angry. Angry is good, because I haven't been angry with him nearly enough and frankly, he deserves some anger for his decisions about our relationship.

 

So, once I got all that out there, he said that maybe his mom was right about us having a communication break, but he thought it would just need to be for a little bit. I pointed out that even throughout the conversation we were having, I kept expecting him to give a caveat that would allow me to have hope for a relationship in the future or for him to outright confess that he'd miss me too much to let me go NC and therefore ask me back out. It doesn't help that he literally admitted that our relationship may have been totally fixable if we had brought some of this out earlier and in a calmish manner like this phone conversation (I was much calmer than he was, but though we both had some tears we also got a lot said and accomplished). Then, when I tried to bring up the fact that any of our future relationships would either destroy our friendship or implode once our new SO found out that we were best friends as exes, he refused to even address the situation, saying we'd just cross that bridge when we come to it.

 

I hate that phrase out of him. He uses it to defuse situations in the here and now, just using it to put aside things that he doesn't want to deal with. Guess what, ex?! It IS a problem right here and right now, because I want to be clear where you want our boundaries to be.

 

Anyhow, he agrees that we are on two different emotional levels right now. In the interest of honesty (and again, he's being honest, but sometimes I wish he'd just lie and be mean about things!), he did tell me that he still has feelings for me because we were together for 3+ years (just not strong enough ones, apparently), and he also refuses to give a definitive yes or no to the idea of us being together in the future because he doesn't know what the future might hold. He just doesn't see this as that big of an issue to our friendship (how the tables of turned, eh?) and reckons that I just need a bit of time.

 

I told him that, much like he can't be the lover I need, I can't be the best friend he needs, at least not now. He wants to jump right back in to friendship after we've cooled off for a month or so. I don't think that I can safely do that short of a time, because I will just start getting salty when he doesn't talk to me as much as I want him to. He mentioned that I had promised that I would always be his friend, and I was ice cold for a moment and mentioned that less than a year ago he was telling me that he wanted to marry me and that two weeks before breaking up he had promised that he'd love me forever, so I didn't feel so bad about not being friends in the here and now.

 

So, he has left the ball in my court and will let me contact him when I feel ready to be a friend again. I told him to please tell me if something serious goes on with his family or if he realizes that he really misses me as a girlfriend and wants to try again, and that if he gets the group together he's more than welcome to invite me. There's still a big part of me that thinks/wishes that having absolutely no contact as he starts up the school year will make him miss me to the point that he wants to try again, but his pride is going to get in the way of that even if his feelings do regrow. I still maintain that we made a great couple and just need a little elbow grease on the hinges of things to get the relationship swinging once more.

 

I figure I'll touch base with him in October or so, once things have calmed down for both of us on the job front and he's finished with his best man duties and I'm finished with my play.

 

And here goes my heart saying that he just wanted to be friends the last time we did this whole "just us hanging out" thing, and then out of the blue he admitted that he liked me as a hell of a lot more than a friend in a forty-minute confession that culminated in him saying we couldn't date because of extraneous reasons. I'm not crazy, there really are parallels here, but dammit they're getting in the way of me healing.

 

So, yes. No Contact has turned out to be necessary, if only for a time. Hopefully only for a time.

[loip9114]

Wow this sounds so familiar, or at least in the base it should very familiar.

My ex broke up with me as there was so much psychological things going on in her life that she became distant, my immediate response was to try and fix that distance by closing it. But I eventually ended up being to clingy or needy, I believe (I am not certain). I also messed up a couple of times, always noticed it and apologized, but to no avail. It still ended two months ago.

We were also very close and good friends, also a long relationship of 3+ years. Both of us expressed that we always saw each other as very good friends as well and we do not want to lose that, however I kept up communication for awhile, but eventually we had a harsh confrontation in which she expressed to be very displease about me contacting her. After that I stopped sending message, that is more than a month ago.

But still it ended, I wanted to fix it. I fought for the relationship untill the bell rang and beyond, it mattered to me. So I will never regret that, which is definitely a good thing.

 

I just want to tell you one thing, October seems like a nice goal. Definitely keep that one up. For me it is September, but I actually move the date when I got close to August (which was my first goal). Because I noticed that my heart isn't healed yet. I always keep reminding myself that. I can only have contact again if I am healed. As you mentioned in your post, either you get this light up of hope or everytime the conversation dies out you die a little inside. I see this coming as well if I would have contact, which to me is a clear indication that my heart is not healed yet and to protect it I will not contact my ex. Not to say that a second shot is fully out of the picture, but that hope may be very painfull eventually.

It will be harsh, I still have a strong urge to get in touch. A small thing that helped me is that I wrote down the number and removed it from my phone. Making it a bit harder to get in touch, yet I know the number by heart. Also I physically distance myself from any forms of communication whenever I have the urge. I lay my phone on the table and go away from my laptop, then I walk about in a place where I cannot contact her and if need be I write down what I want to say on a paper (I have a small notebook for that).

 

And you are right, seeing your ex with another will definitely hurt you at this moment in time and later on it might also have a very determinatel effect on your friendship. As it would definitely be seen as a threat that the ex is hanging around your SO. But I do think that you need to let this rest a bit, get your heart strong and healed up first. Same goes for giving it another shot. That is what I keep telling myself the whole time, heal up first be in the present, think about the future when you are done healing.

 

 

Best of luck! You can do it, and I promise you (as I notice right now) you will feel better in September, and definitely in October.

[WombatShadow]

See, I'm actually in much better shape than I was. Like, I've definitely healed a lot since the breakup. My main issue is that he's asking things of me that I can't provide. He wants me to be his best friend, the person he goes to when he needs a hug, the number to call when he has a funny or sad story, the face he sees when he wants to cheer up, but he just doesn't think we'll work as more. Three years of love does not get downgraded to best-friendom. It can blow up, like it (sadly) did in your case, but even if it changes it doesn't turn back to just friends with a snap and the wrinkle of a nose.

[loip9114]

Good to hear that you are doing better. It seems as if he just desires the support system, which would normally be friends and family in this case. Some friends of mine said that was also a hard part of a breakup, the fact that you always had this one person you would go to with pretty much anything in your life. Especially the most stressful ones. Now you are in one of the most stressful situations you can think of, and they are not there seeing they are the source.

At this point I would rather have everything or nothing. So either a new shot, or nothing at all. Maybe waaaay down the line that idea might change, but not now.

 

Yeah, it was unfortunate, but it did give me a wake-up call. I asked her for one conversation in which I wanted to talk about what happened and also possibly express some of my feelings. But she didn't want that. It was a real slap in the face as I did not expected that to be the response. However, the breakup was kind of fresh just over 3 weeks. During those three weeks we only spoke a small couple of times to get our affairs in order and 1 time where I expressed some feelings just to get it of my chest. This was the only time it actually went south. But like I said it woke me up and it gave me the strenght to at least not get into contact for the first 3-4 weeks. Now I do not want to lose all that progress. So it kind of turned into my favor, also I forgave her for the lash out. Breakups suck for both parties and if you desire your time and space it gets annoying after a while, still could have been nicer. But well, it helped me out eventually (eventhough that was not her motivation).

[WombatShadow]

The worst part of it is that I want to be there for him. I genuinely think that there's a chance for his feelings to regrow if I stop exhausting him by getting overly emotional (as some others on here have put it, if I stop treating him like my boyfriend and expecting him to react accordingly) and if we're hanging out on the reg. After a long phone call with the bestie (which was much more effective than texting), I've decided I'm going to give him a fourth option. He can have me as his good friend, but he has to put work into it. He has to ask me to hang out, he has to talk to me, and he has to shoulder some of the burden. If he is okay with that and we actually start getting together more often, I think we'll be able to make this work.

.

[loip9114]

I understand where you come from so much. I would love to be there for her as well, to be supportive and helping out. It just means we still care for them. That is natural and I do think that 4th option has a healthy basis. Namely that he needs to put in the effort and get in touch. It may be so that that works out because both parties are working on it, instead of just one pulling the whole thing. Best of luck if that happens!

[WombatShadow]

Thanks lopi. Best of luck with your sitch too, whatever outcome you desire.