mcnani Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 I'm still struggling with this one... what i want to do is let go, and move on--and i'm sure that part of it is completely forgiving my ex... has anyone been here, at the verge of forgiveness? how'd you get there? does forgiveness mean i have to condone his behavior, and if not, how do i forgive it as well as myself? Link to comment
numbhead Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 mcnani, im in the same situation as you, apart from wanting to be friends,,, i could never do that. it would hurt too much seeing her with somone else.... i hate her for doing what she has done, but i love her at the same time. its been 3 months for me,, and i just feel pure jealousy! letting go is a thing i can only dream of! i find myself mostly being over her. but at numerous points in the day and night i remember how great she is. and i realise that i have lost her forever... REGRET is the big problem,,, if we could have done things differently everything would be fine now!! that i think is what the big problem is here! i know that it as mostly my doing (as my life revolved around hers) i stopped loving myself and she fell out of love with me for this reason.. and the fact that she was/is away at uni! i keep trying to see her bad points,,, the only one she had was being abit selfish... and hating being on her own,,, she made herself stop loving me! i think in order to move on we need to get our priorities and goals in order.... but i still dont know how this will help eliminate the jealousy i have! Link to comment
numbhead Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 ..... and ill just say.... deep deep down if i really think about it,,, i dont know if im pyschic,, i had a feeling that i wouldnt get married to her etc... its weird... i dont know if you had the same feelings!!? 1 Link to comment
trash mail Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 Time heals all wounds. Give it Time 1 Link to comment
Caterina Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 Honestly, nothing helped me to forgive my ex until I asked God to help me. I don't think I could have done it on my own. 1 Link to comment
lizziebee Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 I have discussed this forgive and forget thing right into the dirt and I can tell you without one you cannot have the other...The only relief (for me) can come through turning it over to whoever or whatever your spiritual belief is... 1 Link to comment
Me and myself Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 mcnani So sorry for your feelings right now. It is pefectly natural for you to feel this way. After everything we've made for another person, we would like to be, at least, recognized by our efforts. And it seems he didn't do it. It doesn't mean he's not feeling grateful for what you did. Comparing your experience with mine, I'm going through the same but as if I was your ex. I've told her "If you want me, I'm here. If not, please imagine I don't exist anymore." It was really hard for me to tell her this but I had to do it to let it go, if not completely, a big part of it. I asked her specifically not to send me e-mails, phone textes, call me, and so on. I need this time to look for myself. She might be thinking I'm angry at her, that I don't want to see her never again, but you know what? I think she's one of the most beautifull persons I've ever met. Fortunately, with a big help from some people in this site, I was able to tell her this. And I feel very good about it...I feel very good for not throwing my anger towards her...If you send them love, you will receive love from them. If you send them anger, ander is what you give to yourself. Did you had a final talk? Did you had the chance to tell him your feelings? Did he told you his? Maybe this talk is what is missing here...If you feel confortable (I don't know why did you broke up), write him a letter or write it to yourself and keep it in your draft folder. Hope you the best 1 Link to comment
mcnani Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 thanks for your responses... to answer your question MeandMyself, we had a final talk, but never really did i ever express how i felt about him b/c i was hurt and angry. i thought about writing a letter, but i will not send it because i can't go through being rejected by him again... i've made too much progress in my healing for that. and you're right Superior, he's not suffering for this, i am, so i'm the one who needs to be forgiven (by myself) maybe at that point i won't worry about him as much? my main thing is that i dont want to carry around negative energy, and thats what i get whenever i think about the things i went through after it was over. let's hope this time thing does the trick. Link to comment
caro33 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 Another poster had this concern a while ago, and she also suggested she needed to forgive herself maybe. I'm not so sure. Have a read if it helps: Like I said then, I don't think this is about forgiveness of anyone, it's probably still about grief. You're going through the stages of grief still, you're still in pain. Time will keep making this better, I don't think you can make it go faster though, there is no magic "forgiveness" pill you can take and know it's all over, you're ambivalent now. Hang in there, you'll be okay. It takes a while that's all. 1 Link to comment
kate111 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 I spoke to an ex recently and he said yoou know you have moved on when you fall in love with another. Perhaps that is when yoou forgive as well. I know with my exex I didn't properly forgive him for more than a year. Even now I don't trust him. I wouldn't get too close to him again. Link to comment
caro33 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 I dunno, what do we all mean by "forgive"? Feel no pain, no anger? Think everything that happened was okay? In that case I have never truly forgiven. Or it has come and it has gone. My forgiveness is flexible! I just don't even know if the concept is relevant because it implies we can choose to feel 100% better about something that had a deep effect. Forgiveness seems to be an action we can choose to take to make it all better. I wonder though if in believing that it's that easy we are setting ourselves up for disappointment in ourselves. I rather think that people hurt us, and over time we eventually stop living like it was the biggest thing to happen to us, it drops off our immediate emotional radar, the hurt and anger dissipates. I see it more as a process, where we become more ambivalent. Perhaps we forgive, but more as a by-product of the other choices we make to get on with our lives, to stop blaming... Link to comment
kate111 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 Yes I think Caro is right. Also you stop seeing the person in love and hate terms. You stop thinking about it as other things in life seem to become important. I think the other persoon apologising properly or explaining things properly, in time, when you aren't hurting, could help. Link to comment
Orlander Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 I spoke to an ex recently and he said yoou know you have moved on when you fall in love with another. Perhaps that is when yoou forgive as well. Why does this need to be? It's not the healthy way out. My ex latched onto the first cute guy who showed interest in her and got over me pretty darned quickly. She'll probably just repeat the same mistakes. In fact, I'm sure she will cause she did the same thing with me. I think you should definitely spend some time being single and liking it before moving on to fall in love. There's a difference between falling in love with someone and just transfering your love for one person to another. Anyone see this pattern in their exes too? Orlander Link to comment
kate111 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 Why does this need to be? It's not the healthy way out. My ex latched onto the first cute guy who showed interest in her and got over me pretty darned quickly. She'll probably just repeat the same mistakes. In fact, I'm sure she will cause she did the same thing with me. I think you should definitely spend some time being single and liking it before moving on to fall in love. There's a difference between falling in love with someone and just transfering your love for one person to another. Anyone see this pattern in their exes too? Orlander The ex who said it to me hadn't been in a serious relationship for years. His point was that he was not able to fall in love until he had healed. It is apparently a sign of being healed that yoou can love another. You can't love again until then. in relation to your ex transferring attention, perhaps she never really loved, or else she had gotten "over" the relationship (and thus healed) before she called it quits formally. Sad but true. Link to comment
caro33 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 Or she wasn't over you Orlander, but she threw herself into the next one to forget the past. I think that sometimes we assume people are over us because they don't seem to want the same thing as us, but it's often more complex than that. Anyway, I think many people hold on to the memory of the past relationship while they are alone and in between relationships - you can heal and feel better over the time, but the most recent person you were with was still the ex. In that situation I agree with kate absolutely - many people that I know (including me) keep thinking about the ex until they replace that "last person I was with" vibe with another person. I wasn't technically "over" the previous ex when I got together with my husband, and he wasn't "over" his ex either. But we were both mostly over the exes, and pretty much healed as people. I think people rarely compartmentalise experiences neatly; "healing" depends so heavily on a range of variables, such as time, esteem, what actually happened, one's belief about others out there, age & experience, emotion invested...etc Link to comment
mcnani Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 how long had it been between when you brok up with your previous ex and when you met your husband, caro? Link to comment
caro33 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 Hmm, 7 months? But I dated a couple of guys in between. No real connection with them though, so they never overlaid the memories.... That particular ex relationship was a messy thing where we were kind of casual, so although it formally ended in October 04, it had been problematic and really hurtful for months before that. But I was so into him - he was a complete jerk but I was into him. He was my big comparison point and the person I had identified with the most since my 10 year relationship ended 3 years before... (It took me a year after my 10 year relationship ended -I was in shock for months and totally went to ground for a year before I met anyone I fancied.) Link to comment
Orlander Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 Well, I cant speak for my ex, but three weeks before she met and fell in love with the her now fiance she was sleeping with me and telling me she was falling in love with me again. She also started calling him pet names she called me pretty soon into the relationship. So, I'll let you be the judge as to how healed she was. Orlander Link to comment
caro33 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 [leading from my previous post...] Actually it was only 5 months before I met him, but it took another couple of months before we started dating. There wasn't immediate chemistry first off, but we had mutual friends and got thrown together a couple of times. The interest flared pretty quickly the second time we met and it went from there . Link to comment
caro33 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 Well, I cant speak for my ex, but three weeks before she met and fell in love with the her now fiance she was sleeping with me and telling me she was falling in love with me again. She also started calling him pet names she called me pretty soon into the relationship. So, I'll let you be the judge as to how healed she was. Orlander Yuck. Not sure "healed" is appropriate here hey. She sounds mighty confused. Link to comment
kate111 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 10 years. That's hard. Link to comment
kate111 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 Well, I cant speak for my ex, but three weeks before she met and fell in love with the her now fiance she was sleeping with me and telling me she was falling in love with me again. She also started calling him pet names she called me pretty soon into the relationship. So, I'll let you be the judge as to how healed she was. Orlander Sounds like she didn't know what she wanted to me. You don't want someone like that. you want someone who loves yoou and only you. Link to comment
mcnani Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 how wonderful, Caro (you and your husbands story), i hope that will be me someday... i think you pinpointed something (and i read that other thread you linked)... i'm really still grieving. i am grieving because the person that i knew him to be is no longer, and it's hard to piece together that that person is completely gone and replaced with someone who has no heart for me. it's like now i have to live as if he never existed... Link to comment
caro33 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 10 years. That's hard. It was excruciating. We started when I was 19 and relatively inexperienced. We got engaged in the last couple of years. Then one day, he announced to me that he didn't want to be in a relationship anymore, it wasn't my fault, and he wanted to concentrate on his mountain biking . I asked him to leave to think about it, and he went the next day and never came back. Or rather, he came back 3 times to pick up his stuff but never explained any of it to me or talked to me at all. I was destroyed - he was family to me - and I always assumed I would find out "the truth" one day and that he would come back. Never did, and in hindsight am incredibly grateful for it. But you get through, you get better. I have now married a man 1000 times better than that ex (or any subsequent ex) ever was. Link to comment
kate111 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 how wonderful, Caro (you and your husbands story), i hope that will be me someday... i think you pinpointed something (and i read that other thread you linked)... i'm really still grieving. i am grieving because the person that i knew him to be is no longer, and it's hard to piece together that that person is completely gone and replaced with someone who has no heart for me. it's like now i have to live as if he never existed... Very true. Link to comment
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