I did all the wrong things, now what?

[mimiam]

Here's a story: it's mine. It's a classic tale of what NOT to do. (btw, first post – and I want to thank everyone for sharing their stories, their wisdom and for being just plain awesome for caring. I hope I can be as helpful in the future) It's complex like all break-ups and I hope the length isn't scaring you already. I've tried to find answers in other people's posts, but no situation seems to be quite like mine.

 

Guys, imagine this:

Your GF of 2.5 yrs, whom you love but had some common relationship problems with, broke your heart in a heated argument and said to pack up all your things and leave your apartment. But as soon as she calmed down she realized she had made a mistake, apologized and took the statement back. You agree to try again and to come back that evening, but because your friend was already on his way to help you move, you couldn't stop now.

 

You call her later and say tonight might not be a good night and that we should take some time. Shes in hysterics and can only talk about how much she needs you back - and in typical defense, you start to realize how much you DON'T need her. With those thoughts brewing and the support of the friends and family that you neglected while being with her, you decide and know that you two shouldn't be together anymore. But you continue to call and e-mail her. You've hung out together almost daily since the break-up nearly three months ago and she's been ever diligent about telling you how she feels. In more than a few occasions she's made you feel very uncomfortable.

 

After a weekend of not speaking to each other, she apologizes through an e-mail and she explains that the breakup caused lots of emotional knee-jerk reactions and that she has since taken control of her emotions and now feels so much better and doesn't want to confuse either of you with the past. She also apologizes for putting her feelings about yours in any situation.- You respond by thanking her for coming to a level playing field and seeing eye-to-eye on the situation.

 

Since then she stopped calling and e-mailing. But you continue to contact her every day. In e-mails you'll tell her what you've been doing, who you've been hanging out with and elaborate on your joint interests. When you call you ask if she wants to hang out for a little bit. She agrees, and you two meet somewhere and talk in her car, but it only lasts about an hour. You talk about random things and she appears very happy to see and spend time with you. You laugh, tell jokes, and when she asks "do you need to get going?" you say yes. She drives you home, and then you hug, say bye and she drives off.

 

** Meanwhile, the EXGF wonders, what is he thinking? (is he really over it?) and what more can I do, if anything now, to get him to want to be with me in a relationship again?

[DN]

What were the problems in the relationship that caused the arguments?

 

One thing to remember when you kick someone out of their home - it is very hard for them to think of that place as home again. It becomes the home of the person who stays there.

[mimiam]

we were both not ready for the apartment. it was mostly money issues since he couldn't find a steady job. and he doesn't have a car so he didn't have his own life. i've since moved back home so we're both in the same city living with our families again.

[iamteddybearfeelmecuddle]

I think you should not have gotten your friend involved immediately after a fight, that action caused the situation to escalate immensely. Or is it that you are not able to carry boxes by yourself? In short, I think you overreacted. Fights happen in relationships (yes even bad, 'I want you to move out' fights), what you should not do, is involve outsiders, especially at the first sign of an ill wind. What you should have done is just gone to stay with a friend or a in hotel for a day or two, not divulged much of your personal business to your friend, and then she probably would have had you back and you two would have worked it out.

 

Obviously if this was the 8th time she'd kicked you out in as many months then that would be time for you two to reconsider your relationship, or at the very least your communication.

[nottoogreen]

In a way it is over and you both seem to cool down to let go.

 

Bad arguments/fights remain on peoples minds for(ever) a long time.

 

You are young, what would be your/his arguments against moving on?

[mimiam]

thanks for the incite

 

to clarify something that may be misinterpreted...i'm the EXGF

 

i'm speaking from his side in hopes that it gives a better understanding of the situation since i'm desperate to know how he feels and what his actions mean.

 

i've asked him how he feels and it's gone from "not right now" to "i don't know" to "we're not good together" to "i don't feel the same way about you"

 

these answers i believe are in part to my relentless emotional displays, so i can't determine if he's sincere about it. does he really feel the way he says he feels or are his actions indication of something else?

 

i mainly don't know if i should keep responding to his e-mails, if i should be more or less available, if i should initiate contact or let him miss me by being unavailable?

[iamteddybearfeelmecuddle]

So you were writing this as a story from his perspective? Ok well, let me rephrase this and still say the same thing. I think he messed it up by involving his friend. This is a BIG RED FLAG. You should probably move on....unless you want to live with a guy who rallies every one he knows against you everytime you express your displeasure about an issue, rather than dealing with it, with you, as a mature adult might.

[mimiam]

nottogreen, reasons for not moving on?

 

he's my best friend. the only person that has even understood me or cared enough to take the time to try. and our relationship was great...until we ran into problems with the apartment.

 

i just wish there was a way to make him feel safe around me again. but maybe you're right and he is just cooling down to let go. i wish it could go the other way. warming up to being together.

 

 

teddybear,

i wish i could agree but he was the one trying to deal with it maturely. i couldn't let go of my anger until i realized he was really leaving.

 

i unfortunately was the immature adult at the time. now, if there was only a way to fix this, though with what everyone has been saying i'm starting to have my doubts. maybe that's what i need. i don't know.

[gaiden]

Ahh, ironicly, I am in the same situation. I had a fiance which was living with me and we had gotten into a fight about her not being honest with me.

 

After a while of this dishonesty going on, I threw her out of my house. I did the same things as you; I immediately realized that tossing her out did some serious damage to an already damaged relationship. I started to backpedal to try and cushion what I had done.

 

I told her how much I wanted her and that I was wrong for what I did but it made no difference. She was happy where she was now and wasn't coming back.

 

One big difference between your situation and mine is that the ex you rejected still communicates with you while mine doesn't. She does call, but it is nowhere near as often as yours calls you.

 

A few things to try...

 

Firstly, cut the communication down. The less you talk to him the more he will WANT to talk to you. Remember, most people prefer quality over quantity any day.

 

Act indifferent about the relationship. The more you percieve a need for something, the less chance you are going to get it. While there are some men out there that dig needy/clingy girls, he's already shown that abundance of your reassurance is not something that's comforting to him.

 

Pay attention to how he responds and keep doing what works but stop doing what isn't working. This always amazes me how people keep making the same mistakes. You've already noticed if you overload on the emotions, he pulls away. Don't do that.

 

Now I'm not saying to go do a complete 180 and give the impression you just dont give a rats nest anymore... I'm just saying if you stop trying to make it work, you might just find out that it does.

[iamteddybearfeelmecuddle]

teddybear,

i wish i could agree but he was the one trying to deal with it maturely. i couldn't let go of my anger until i realized he was really leaving.

 

i unfortunately was the immature adult at the time. now, if there was only a way to fix this, though with what everyone has been saying i'm starting to have my doubts. maybe that's what i need. i don't know.

 

Well, If you're pretty sure you've behaved too immaturely, then, don't beat yourself up too much. Just learn from it, acknowledge it, and pick yourself up and keep moving on. Everone makes mistakes. And everyone is immature in one way or another. The difference is willingness to accept responsibility and to learn, which by the way is a mature quality

[mimiam]

thanks gaiden. it's good to know i'm not the only one whose done this before.

 

How do you think i should go about cutting communication? i haven't called him once in the past two weeks though he's contacted me every day during that time.

 

I don't want it to appear that if don't care enough to not return calls. he's been upset before when i avoided his calls so i started to take them again. I'm afraid that we're becoming just friends, and i know that i'd be hard to reconcile a relationship once he's comfortable with that.

 

teddybear, you sound very wise and thank you for taking the time to help. i will say that this entire situation has really pushed me to mature in many many ways.

[onmyownagain]

What were the problems in the relationship that caused the arguments?

 

One thing to remember when you kick someone out of their home - it is very hard for them to think of that place as home again. It becomes the home of the person who stays there.

 

DN, You are so right on this one, my wife kicked me out in September and I went back in January. Feels like home again now, but took a long time to feel this way and I own the house!

[nottoogreen]

nottogreen, reasons for not moving on?

 

he's my best friend. the only person that has even understood me or cared enough to take the time to try. and our relationship was great...until we ran into problems with the apartment.

 

i just wish there was a way to make him feel safe around me again. but maybe you're right and he is just cooling down to let go. i wish it could go the other way. warming up to being together.

 

Please consider: Why did loss of a rented apartment cause such big problems?

[gaiden]

How do you think i should go about cutting communication? i haven't called him once in the past two weeks though he's contacted me every day during that time.

 

I don't want it to appear that if don't care enough to not return calls. he's been upset before when i avoided his calls so i started to take them again.

 

I'm afraid that we're becoming just friends, and i know that i'd be hard to reconcile a relationship once he's comfortable with that.

 

 

If he get's upset that you aren't taking all his calls, you are on the right track. Tell him you were busy with friends or family, or whatever. Give the appearance that you DO have a life. It makes you look interesting. It wakes him up to the fact you have a life outside of him and If he wants to be part of that life, he needs to figure out what he wants. Think about how you would feel if the calls stopped from his side, if he wasn't taking your calls. You would probably freak out. Odds are he feels the same way by you not talking to him.

 

Now I'm not advocating a complete shutdown of communication with him. If the calls / emails / whatever are just less frequent, you have more to talk about when you do decide to talk. Like I said, quality over quantity.

 

You are going to have to make a choice, and it's a very difficult one. If he is leading down the path of becoming friends, ask yourself if you COULD just be his friend. And when I say be friends, I don't mean being friends with the hopes of someday becoming more. I mean just a plain old friend.

 

My ex and I talked a few days ago. She said that after she straightened out her life after me tossing her out, she would consider starting over with me again. If we did, she said it would be very slowly; we would just talk for now and perhaps a few dates here and there. She said worse case scenario, we might find that we make better friends then anything else.

 

I stopped her right there. I said, honey, I will tell you right now friends are not an option. If you have already come to that conclusion, you can just stop stringing me along right now and we'll just go our separate ways. I told her that after everything we've been through, she should understand why that's not an option. I was honest with her, I knew being her friend would never work so I wanted to address it right away.

 

Once you slide into the 'friend' category, it is VERY hard to move out of it. I've learned this the hard way. For some ex's, being friends is an option, for others, it is not. The girl I dated before this one I am friends with, I'm very happy that we are friends too.

 

Here's how I'm handling my situation, perhaps some of it will help you.

 

Regarding communication, I don't carry my cell around with me everywhere. I force myself to leave it at home or upstairs or wherever so that if she does call, I won't be tempted to pick it up. Everyonce in awhile, I'll go find it and see if I had any calls. If she happened to call, I ask myself if I'm in the mood to talk, if not, I put it back down and find something else to do. If I am, I'll call back. Of course you'll be sad to see if they don't call but with time, you'll start to see that you aren't looking for your phone as much as you used to. Sometimes, you'll forget to check it at all. Those are pretty good signs that you are moving on.

 

I might call once a week, but that's starting to turn into once every other week, soon it's not going to be at all. I'm starting to lose interest in working this out and she's realizing this. I have to be honest with myself, if I'm doing all the work, what type of love did we have and how happy am I going to really be? If she makes no effort to fix this than obviously this meant more to me then her.

 

When we do talk, I keep it short. I'm always upbeat and positive. I don't mention the relationship at all. Ex's are alergic to pressure. Even the slightest bit will make them run for the hills. Don't pressure. Don't talk about the relationship.

 

Trust me, they know how you feel about the relationship. If not, make sure they do during one and only one call. I just told her flat out, I want to fix this. I don't want to be your friend. I'll give you time to figure out what you want, but I will not wait around forever. That is a massive amount of pressure in one call but it tells them everything they need to know. You don't need to constantly remind them, that works against you.

 

Honestly, if that call drives them away for good, it's better off. You need to find someone else. Life is WAY to short to be wasting time, energy, and emotions on someone who isn't worth it.

 

I haven't seen her since I gave her the last of her stuff. All I know is again, I have to be honest with myself. I have an internal deadline. If she starts to come around, I push it forwards. If I see no change at all, I cut it down.

 

My case is bad because she took off with the engagement ring (and aparently doesn't know where it is) so if things don't work out, I have to take her to court to sue her for the cost of the ring. Nothing ruins a relationship faster then taking your loved one to court.

 

Good luck