Orgy of emotions....

[Arielle]

Glad to hear the news! I have to hand it to you. I had my doubts, but you didn't give up on your girlfriend. It looks like she's going to give it another try.

 

You worked very hard to keep this relationship going and hopefully everything will work out well for you.

[HardShowingAffection]

Arielle, I am strongly thinking that she is not willing to give it another try. She still has ALOT of resentment built towards me. In conversations with two of our mutual friends now, she has told them that.

 

Although she loves me more than anything, and I am the love of her life, she feels that she cannot be around me now because of those feelings. She is sticking to her guns, as she has come back in the past and we ended up in the same situation after some time. I did what I knew at the time, but it wasn't what we ultimately needed.

 

She is not willing to let go of those past hurts right now. While my friends and family marvel at the changes that I have made, she is still not convinced that if she came back things would be different than any other time. I don't think there is anything that I can do to show her different, except to continue what I am doing, and that is working on myself.

 

For now, I will just continue to give her space. I do not want to take another shot at the relationship if she is going to still hold past events over my head. It is not fair to me. I have made changes for the better and have learned so much. I need to continue to practice this and make it a natural part of my life.

 

She needs to work on herself now. If she can see the strides I have made, and takes the time and effort to improve herself, and realize that it takes two, then maybe we have a shot. Until then, I have to continue to look straight ahead. She knows I am working on improving myself, but until those feelings of resentment subside and forgiveness is achieved, it will be a long internal struggle for her.

 

Why is it that she focuses so much on the negative? Why does someone let those feelings of anger and resentment stir within themselves? I don't believe there is anything I can do but continue to be positive. Is there anything that I can do to help her get over those feelings of resentment and anger?

[Scotcha]

Follow your own advice above! Honestly, you seem to have a pretty good handle on your situation. No one will be able to tell you how it's going to turn out but you have been working on youself and that's what is important.

 

ps- I have a doggy looking very much like yours!

[HardShowingAffection]

So, I had a conversation with the ex again on Tuesday. Lasted about an hour, of which I did alot of the talking.

 

Anyways, she was able to open up to me a bit, and vent on one of the issues that bothered her. I intently listened, and when I sit back and put myself in her shoes, I can totally see where she is coming from. When I had some time, I sat down and wrote down my thoughts, and how I see things from her perspective. I guess the bottom line is that we never sat down and talked about this stuff, so it just brewed inside of her... along with alot of other things I am sure.

 

Soo... I have a bunch of thoughts on paper... and I would love to share them with her, however, I don't know what to do. I have been really good about not calling her, as I don't want to push her away, but I would really like her to know what I am thinking, and how I would like to discuss and work at resolving some of these frustrations and concerns of hers. Should I just sit on my thoughts? Let her call me again? Then maybe bring it up?

 

I mean, I am always willing to listen to her, its just that in the past, I closed her up. I have totally worked on that, and see things totally differently now. If we would have ever talked about this stuff in the first place, I am sure 99% of it would be non-issues, as we both want the same thing, we just didn't communicate it effectively.... errr.... back to being confused and a bit frustrated.

[hurtingrl]

I think that communication is key and congrats for opening it up. But I think one of the main things for it to work between you to is for her to be able to forgive the past (forgetting is hard) and really try to start over...

 

I had an ex-bf where we had a very similar situation. He would mess up, I would get disappointed, we would fight about it, something else would happen, and the cycle would start all over again. He would get frustrated because he was trying and I would get frustrated because he just wasn't getting it.

 

Anyway, things didn't work out between us and here are my thoughts as to why

1) I wasn't concentrating on any of his efforts in trying and just pointing out the bad things

2) He just wasn't changing

 

So my advice is this, if you truly want things to get better, tell her that you will communicate and try your damndest to change to keep her, but she needs to understand that it won't happen overnight. There will be setbacks, you need encouragement when you are doing things right.

 

I'm not sure what your issues are, sorry I didn't read all of your links but another thing to think about is this:

Is it an issue (that can be worked through by both parties), a flaw (that you need to work on yourself), or just who you are?

 

No one is perfects but sometimes instead of trying to change someone and look for the perfect relationship, sometimes you just need to be willing to accept the things that aren't......I don't know if it is applicable for your girlfriend but something that I figured out after a couple of hard break-ups. The one that I am talking about was really a flaw of his (if he did it one time it wouldn't be in issue in isolation but it just kept on building up after 30 instances or so over 3 years) and I realized it wasn't working for me.

 

Of course possibly the truth is that you just weren't meant to be and that is what happened with my ex and I

 

Good luck either way!