Life After Death (Long)

[Nyack]

Well, as the title suggests this will probably be a rather long post to explain exactly the situation with which I am faced. My entire life has been to a large degree been spent in Brussels and Luxembourg, I moved to the UK to go to university four years ago, September 2002.

 

During that summer I was on holiday in the south of france and had a summer romance with a dutch lady. It was short lived as she was suffering badly at the time from withdrawal from cocaine and as such her feelings were somewhat dangerous. In any case, we proved our mutual affection and started a long distance relationship while I was at university. This did not last long as my male nature allowed me not to resist temptation despite loving her even to this day.

 

During Freshers Week (first week of university where you drink a lot!) I met my ex and subject of this post, let's call her H. Anyway, H didn't think much of me at first glance, (and had a boyfriend anyway) but I struck up conversation as back then I was a generally very sociable person. It was only three days into knowing each other that under the influence of alcohol I made the first move, knowing she was miserable in her current relationship. I stroked her hand under a duvet while we were watching a movie with mutual friends.

 

Her not removing her hand from my caress indicated what I had hoped and that night, I "forgot" my hoodie in her room when we all retired. I returned the next night to recover this hoodie which commenced a week of the worst stomach aches and extreme sexual frustration I have ever experienced. Not willing to cheat on her boyfriend, nor I on my girlfriend we spent night after night talking until dawn.

 

Eventually one thing lead to another, we both broke up with our partners and started seeing each other. The important thing here is that we met and started dating during freshers week, which is generally where you make most of your friends.

 

Unconcerned we continued our relationship, lacking foresight, for the next three years. My longest to date (I am 22 and my previous longest non-long distance relationship had been three weeks long). What inevitably occurred is that we befriended, together or individually, very few people. Preferring each other's company we started living in each other's pockets. An unhealthly state of affairs, of which we were somewhat aware of at the time.

 

For almost a year we had discussed the terrible nature of our relationship, mutual distrust, jealousy, consistent arguing, amongst other things. The one most terrible thing was that on any night out drinking we could not, despite our best attempts, avoid arguing.

 

In any case, eventually I broke up with her one night at her house in the early summer of this year (2006). A purely rational process where I ignored my heart and feelings because we were slowing destroying each other. We had no social life to speak of and I could visibly see her skin colour fading, her smile diminuishing, and her temper becoming more erratic. It was unhealthly to the extreme, less for me than for her however.

 

So, despite her previously having told me to leave the decision of her happiness to her, I made the call. I ended it with her, because I knew we needed to start again at a later date or simply end it forever. In any case, given a few days of NC I couldnt avoid my heart's desires, and contacted her saying maybe a break-up wasn't the solution, but simply to have a small break from one another.

 

She did not concur and said the break up was for the best. Later that summer, we had tickets to V-Festival, where I had planned to go with her alone, she however had friends she knew went every year for many years.

 

I refused to be beaten, refused to let my life end despite my mental vulnerability. I insisted I was still going, and H was being very difficult about me hanging around with her friends during the festival. I had at first thought this was because she might find it difficult to be around me.

 

The day before the festival she broke the news, she had started seeing one of her close friends, a bloke I had met previously on several occasions. It would make the festival difficult to enjoy to say the least.

 

I am a stubborn brute though, and I needed to heal and deal with the situation. In the two seconds of silence on the phone after she told me, I had made my choice.

 

"I'm really happy to hear you found someone else" I was, he is a genuinely nice guy, and I was strangely enough happy that she would not experience the suffering I would endure. I really found very little problem with it, but both she and him were deeply concerned.

 

I made plans for my brother to join me at the festival but I neverthless refused to miss a single act, I attended the friday, where my brother could not come until saturday. I travelled with my ex and her friends to the festival and pitched up right next to them.

 

Hell she had a new boyfriend already, I didn't feel like making life easy on her. I was rational, reasonable, and friendly, in fact I think we all quite enjoyed ourselves that first night.

 

This is where it is interesting, I had not let my feelings get to me at all, stubbornly bottled behind thousands of layers of denial. In any case I was aware of this, and allowed the entire group to attend a band I had very little interest in seeing. I sat alone in the tent and forced myself to tears. I thought of every good moment I had spent with H, all of it. I cried and cried and cried (and I never cry). Then at the end of it, in my head I said to myself, "Bye H"

 

By the time they returned I had composed myself again. For some reason assailing my feelings by witnessing her with her new boyfriend and forcing my emotions to release had left me happier than I had been in the three years I had been with her.

 

Although that wasn't the end, of course for many months now I still sometimes think of her and what went wrong, it isn't half as bad as it should be. I can honestly say the summer romance aforementioned hurts me more still now than the break-up with H. I think I still love that partner of the summer romance, I dont think I ever dealt with that because I jumped into another relationship. That is besides the point however.

 

Enough background information. Now to the point! During our relationship, I didn't make any friends. In fact, paranoia or not, I think I actually managed to offend my housemates by hating them for who they are. To be fair, I might have tried more, but if Im honest with myself, I didnt have much in common with them anyway. Irrelevent though, because through them I should have met other friends with whom I would have struck up close friendship. This did not happen. So what is the problem?

 

I am now 7 months on from my relationship, and I am starting to feel extremely depressed. I have found a "friend with mutual benefits" with whom I enjoy myself very much, and in fact she is one of the closest friends I have. I met her via the internet shortly after me and H broke up, and we started seeing each other as friends and eventually sleeping together on the right occasions (by no means every time we see each other). So in terms of male physical sexual frustration I am not suffering. The problem you see is since I've come to England I can count my friends on one hand!

 

I am feeling extreme loneliness. A feeling so strong and deep inside of me, despite being identified, I cannot resolve it. I know all the theory of joining clubs and interest groups, but I am in my final year of university, I simply do not have the time to spare. My one closest friend is a friend from Luxembourg who happens to have come to a university in the same city as me, and relying on him alone for nights out is tiresome at best.

 

At university I always returned home so fast to H that I never established anything but surface acquaintance with most of my course mates. The one good friend I know well is on a year out elsewhere. The other friends were all french female exchange students who are long since returned to france....

 

Everyone in my year at university knows each other really well, entering such social groups is possible but exceptionally difficult especially since my social skills are somewhat immature from lack of use for the past three years.

 

So, in summary, I dealt with the loss of my loved one, but am suffering from a destroyed social life, and I wonder if anyone here can suggest (and I have read a lot on the subject, hence my referrence to joining a football club or some other group) any way in which I can regain a social life with which I will be appeased?

 

Thanks for reading.

[robowarrior]

Ah the magical road that leads to the paradise kiss, how wonderfull. Well i understand your story completely, so lets straighten things out here.

 

Basically the problems are.

 

- no relationship

- no friends

- no time

 

So the problem in your life is with one word described.

 

Contradictions.

 

How so?

 

You can't sustain a relationship with constant arguing.

You can't have a social group if you need that time to study

You can't have friends with benefits, if you want companionship.

 

The problem is that you constantly go into (read) DISFUNCTIONAL lifestyles.

 

Your life needs a FUNCTIONAL basis. Imagine if you have a clock all the mechanical parts need to be adjusted in a proper way for the clock to work.

 

You cannot gain something without losing something. You have to present something with the equal value to gain the thing you desire. This is the code of equivalent trade and works pretty much in every situation.

 

There are many things we need to re-evaluate in the structure of your life. I will discuss the problems in terms of relationships, friends and time for you.

 

First and most important that you understand the meaning of life. Because the rest of the structure is derative from it.

 

The meaning of life is to love and help others. The idea that you are separated from other people is false, you are interconnected via others with love, and loving others and helping them creates a sustainable (read) functional environment for you to be happy in and lead a possible normal life.

 

Ask yourself the question, am i with her to make her life miserable? Is she with me so she can make my life horrible? Of course not, couples are supposed to make eachother happy. With constant arguing you are only bringing poison, darkness and hatred into eachothers lives. So ONLY bring love and light into the lives of everyone you meet in life. Even small arguments act as poison that slowly cause a BIG break up. A person isn't with you, and will be repelled if you make their lives miserable. People are attracted to happy factors, if a pool is full of dirt would you like to swim in it? Nope, well same counts for people who want to swim in a clean relationship without their partners shoveling cow dong into their faces. A relationship is all about being together but still letting eachother being able to do their own thing. Never go into a relationship expecting it to work out just because it concerns 'your' case. Reality is that a woman can pack her bags and leave any day.

 

Another thing that is disturbing that you go into a relationship with woman who are mentally unstable. A woman who has a cocaine addiction doesn't need a boyfriend, she needs rehab. So that in order for her to go from disfunctional to functional she first needs to get rid of her addiction. You DO understand that even if you where functional, but go into a relationship with a mentally unstable woman, that your relationship automatically becomes disfunctional right? Crazy woman + normal man = crazy relationship. So definitly watch out who you bring into your own life, isn't the one causing your life to go down the drain and into some mental havoc.

 

Another advice is break it off with the friends w/benefits thing, those kind of relationship are meaningless and have no value,nor future.

 

In terms of friends.

 

A real friend steps into your life, when a fake friend steps out. So be carefull who you call friend to begin with. Friends usually are just benefitting from eachother, a friend that would give his life to save you would be far more rare. And with friends you also have to watch out for the arguing thing mentioned before, its about having a good time and enjoying yourself, not about backstabbing and god knows what kind of awfull things they do to eachother, don't get into a situation where you say to yourself 'with friends like these , who needs enemies?', don't get friends who do drugs, (smoke and alcohol are also not that preferable) But how to make friends?

 

I also had a period where i was very unhappy and alone, when one night i had a dream( in that dream i was with family and i confronted my uncle with my lonelyness and unhappyness. My uncle said yeah well look 'if you don't want to be alone , you have to step towards the people' )

 

Best darn advice i ever had in a dream, then it hit me that. No action = no reaction, we often have the idea its a hotel kind of thing, where we expect people to ring on our doors like roomservice , then come in and make us happy. Although that thought is most enjoyable , its unfortunately how reality works.

 

We have to take a deep breath and step outside in the real world, with real people, and then kick our own but to make an effort to make friends. And stepping towards the people and intereact just like the dream stated.

 

In terms of time.

 

Time is a precious thing, we value our time and we need it for achieving our goals in life. And here's an important thing. We shouldn't go into a relationship if we don't have the time to pursuade one, we shouldn't have this huge friends group, if we never have time to visit them.

 

The thing about relationships is that. They demand TIME and as such they are an investment. And basically you have to make a concession in being honest to ourselves and say 'if i don't have time to invest in a relationship' then i shouldn't pursuade one.

 

So basically coming back to your current situation you are now in university, you don't have time for a gf or relationships, and knowing that equivalant trade requires sacrifice, you should in my opinion swallow this one year, just entirelly focus yourself on your university. If its just one year, and then after you get your diploma, then personally i (after that year) would make a strong basis for my house,future,carreer. Then i wouldn't go for the diamonds in my life, but settle for the brass, so i would have time to be in a sustainable relationship and could raise a family in a proper functional way.