so why are they MEAN?

[kadvati79]

Rest assured, time reveals all truths. While a dumper may experience relief, perhaps lasting years assisted by dating others quickly - eventually they have to square their debts with the house before they can truly move on.

 

Well, I'm clean with the house. I paid my debts. And it sounds like you are well on your way too. I am confident the relationship ended with me putting my all into it. I am proud of the way I handled it, proud of how I handled the breakup, and really happy with how I bounced back. I noticed it. My friends have noticed it. His friend have noticed it. Hopefully his experiences with me, and how I have conducted my life and interactions with him, will inspire him one day as he grows wiser.

 

i can't help but feel the pangs of regret even as i gradually detach myself from him--wanting him back, and wishing none of this ever happened.

Very natural, I have no doubt your ex has gone through that, and will continue to go through it at various points in his life. My experience of being dumped, is that in the long run, I felt better for it. The one guy i dumped who truly loved me (and I crushed his heart), I thought of ALOT towards the end of the relationship, and during the breakup. I even tried too meet up with him but he wouldn't have a bar of it, even after four years. He was polite, but I had no doubt, he didn't want to see me again. Ever. And not because he was denying I existed, but because I was a bad apple.

 

i know he WANTED it to work, but FELT like it didn't.

Very true for my ex too. But I think when this is rationalised, they haven't delt with the relationship properlly. If you are feeling like it isn't working, then you raise the issues and talk about it. Once every month my ex would say "something isn't working", and I would ask "what is wrong? whats the problem" he would say that he didn't know. It left me a wreck because I would imagine all these things, like that I was unattractive, that I didn't provide enough for him... etc...

 

Considering all the cr*p your ex has put you through, it does initially sound surprising he is mean about the breakup. But then, factor in his lack of maturity with reconciling the problems in his own life (ie. travelling lots screwing up his relaitonship) and it doesn't sound so surprising.

 

I had a friend who was telling me about the string of hopeless relationships she had, and how they all ended in disaster. I challenged her to identify the "common theme" to them. What was the one thing that was common to all those relationships? My answer was HER. She was the common theme. The moral being you have to take responsibility for your own relationships. They are about partnership. I think your ex missed this. At best he was offering convienence.

[serenity25]

Wow icemoto- the situation and break up with your ex sounds so similar to mine. He ended up cutting off contact sounding so bitter and nasty, as if I was the one who dumped him. Three months after that last conversation where he cut off all contact (we had only spoken briefly a few times since the breakup about four months prior) he's engaged to marry someone this September... so strange. He chose someone that had been a 'groupie' of his band for years, gets trashed along with him opposed to me- someone that loved him enough to want him healthy and living well. It was odd to me why they need to pretend you don't exist in order to move on. That was one thing I said to him in our last conversation many months ago.

 

Of course our relationship was long distance so it wasn't difficult for him to ignore me altogether. However, when I've been the dumper, I wasn't so bitterly opposed to the slightest contact, even just wishing a happy birthday. He couldn't handle any contact whatsoever.

[joyce1412]

i know how you feel, my ex is a musician too! strange, strange lifestyle, eh?

 

but never be jealous of his new woman if she's a groupie. they're a dime a dozen. or a half-penny a dozen.

[joyce1412]

i have to say, though, my ex was/is a very sensitive guy. what do you make of someone like that going "mean"?

[kadvati79]

He chose someone that had been a 'groupie' of his band for years, gets trashed along with him opposed to me- someone that loved him enough to want him healthy and living well.

You challenged his attempt to escape through his lifestyle, a very noble cause, but ultimately it seems like he didn't want to see/live in the real world, and chose something that reinforced his fantasy.

 

Of course our relationship was long distance so it wasn't difficult for him to ignore me altogether. However, when I've been the dumper, I wasn't so bitterly opposed to the slightest contact, even just wishing a happy birthday. He couldn't handle any contact whatsoever.

My relationship, too, was long distance. In some ways it has made it easier for the both of us. But the true test will come when we meet in a social setting Honestly, I think it will be harder on my ex than me. I think I had really grown, whereas he has continued the same foolhardy tactics and choices that he made before he met me.

 

i have to say, though, my ex was/is a very sensitive guy. what do you make of someone like that going "mean"?

It could be many things. Part of it could be that he didn't like being the sensitive guy he was around you. Being sensitive was just too real. Someone people don't like feeling, and in men, feelings make them vunreable. Or it could simply be a reflected sense of his own feelings, in other words, he may internally blame himself for the breakup but in order to deal with that he expresses anger/cruelty at you in order to externalise the problems - to make you the target of his anger and cruelty that is really directed at himself.