A
male
age
36-40,
*oodstock54
writes:Hi, I went through an extremely bad breakup lately and it has left me reeling worse than any other breakup and has shaken my confidence, as well as my desire to date. But the worst is that I still contain feelings for the girl even though she did some nasty things and I don't know how to come to terms with everything. She was a sweet girl, very kind, loving, caring and expressive in emotions but she lacked a major character trait in that she did not know how to properly communicate or let things go in her past. This led to some situations in which she said she was raped by her ex-boyfriend and I believed her at first until all her friends were getting mad at me saying I caused drama by calling the police. I still don't understand why they would be mad but it started making sense in the long run as she continued to talk to him and when we broke up for a month, she even started dating him for a couple weeks until he demanded marriage. She declined and like an idiot, I took her back and the problems just kept coming, she avoided confrontation at any costs and I finally snapped at her when she told me she wanted to break up with me because she had problems with me and her best friend told her to break up with me. She told me she loves me and wants to be with me but her best friend thinks that she should break up with me because of her problems with me. The crazy thing is that was the first I was hearing about it and apparently she had been talking to her friend for months about this. Naturally I was upset that I was her boyfriend and she didn't talk to me about her problems with me, this escalated when another guy that pursued her for almost the entire year we were together befriended her friends and they were pushing her towards him. I told him I have no problem if they're friends as long as they don't do anything that crosses the line of friends. Needless to say it ended up as a nasty breakup, she told me she wants to have friends and I'm not letting her (never once did I say she can't hang out with that guy, I just said I was not comfortable with it and that if they are going to just to make sure that they do not together, standard relationship stuff). She also refused to admit her own fault in communication and started blaming me for everything when she wouldn't talk to me unless it was sunshine and unicorns and yet I sit here, 5 months after the breakup still thinking about her and caring about her. She was definitely a very nice girl but one that was inexperienced and did not fully understand what a relationship meant. I gave her the support and love that I could within reason, I pushed myself very hard as I had multiple concussions before we started dating, to make an effort to take her places and to events that she wanted to go to and she went along with it until I got upset at her. I said some nasty things when we broke up and she blocked all contact with me and refused to respond in any manner. Is there any advice for moving on? This girl was toxic and only attracted drama because she refused to tell people no (she literally had other people get on the phone with others to tell them what she wanted, I wished that she would just say no when she didn't want something but she refused to say anything that would potentially upset anyone else). I still care about her though because of the unflinching support she gave me, but I resent her for that too because I received no criticism and, well, I hate to say it but she was completely subservient to me and I didn't like that. The only times I got a positive response out of her and she would actually talk to me about how SHE felt was when I yelled at her due to frustration. I capitalize she because unless I was angry she would always deflect and talk about someone else whenever I would say something like, "What do you wanna do?", "Have you ever thought about xxxxxx", or "would you be interested in (xyz)". I never got a straight answer out of her and she told me she doesn't think she could ever talk to me again with how angry I got at her. I understand I shouldn't of gotten mad but I do care about her, even still, but I felt incredibly betrayed by her when she would talk to everyone else about her problems but the person she was having them with. She did this to many people, not just me. But she pursued me relentlessly even though she would not express herself to me past emotions of love. She also adopted the fallacy of "I saw my parents fight a lot when I was younger so if I am to have a good relationship I must never disagree with my significant other". Anyone old enough knows that this raises problems and I feel incredibly bad for having treated someone so sweet and innocent to the world so horribly and I know that with all the passive lies she told and her lack of willingness to give up anyone in her life (the ex she claimed raped her but kept talking to her, the runner that continued to pursue her even though I told her I was uncomfortable with it, an Egyptian man who kept promising her things) caused a lot of emotional turmoil for me. I feel like I should forgive her, but in all honesty I think I absolutely deplore her because she would never let me in but always tell me she feels safe and comfortable around me. (I've dealt with similar situations before in my dating life but nothing this extreme before. It was so bad she wouldn't even tell me whether she liked or disliked a food for fear of upsetting me. I gathered this was from her first real long-term boyfriend though that she dated for 4 years, I was her second long-term and she told me she never had a boyfriend that listened to her). I felt incredibly hurt that she blames me saying that I "wouldn't allow her to have friends" even though I never said it before or got angry at her when she would hang out with another guy, I just told her I didn't want them doing "couple" things. I felt incredibly hurt that she kept talking to her ex, I fully understand the desire to keep in touch but she would never tell me what they talked about unless I got mad and normally it wasn't even a big deal in the first place. I also feel incredibly disappointed in myself for how angry I got at her the last time we spoke. I lost my temper when I told her it's been very attractive what she was doing towards the last couple weeks of us seeing each other, she started sharing tremendously over 2 weeks and even painted me a picture of my dog and when I told her I liked the picture and that she meant a lot to me, then thanked her for being so communicative over those last 2 weeks she fired back "I can only do this for you because you are no longer my boyfriend". It felt like a dagger plunging into my heart, like some weird twilight zone where she befriended and shared with everyone she knew and she didn't share or speak to anyone that had an important position in her life (including her dad, this created problems as well). Needless to say I am completely lost and don't know how to move on or even where to begin to think about putting my emotional state back together with the amount of damage this woman did with her backwards views of relationships. Her argument was always, in her own words not exaggerating here, "I just want to make you like me". Normally I would respond "I already like you though". And even this was met with problems as I could see the freeze on her face that she didn't know what to think, like she was trying to determine whether I meant it or not. A lot of this damage was done by her abusive ex-boyfriend and holy crap he did a number on her. I was patient and kind, supportive and given, and listened to her only to be betrayed by her and for her to deflect any criticism I yielded. For her to claim that the problem is all with me and that these "communication issues" are not true because "that's just who she is". I need to let her go and let the anger subside with all the blame she tried putting on me and the negative light she cast on me on all our friends. Most of them that know me and know her understand the situation and that I am not a bad guy, but she did such a good job at the end that it made me start questioning whether or not I really was.
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best friend, broke up, confidence, her ex, her past, move on, never had a boyfriend Reply to this Question
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male
reader, PJ Roy  +, writes (20 October 2017):
You are not alone. You are not the only one. Hang in there man.Make of what I will tell you next what you will, but for the past fifteen years, not a minute has gone by when I have not missed my 'the one that got away' too.You know that song that says"Every now and then I'd think you might want me To come show up at your door" ?...11 years after losing her, I did that, convinced I had good reasons. I showed up at her workplace!It was a trainwreck. She told me to my face "Excuse me... Do I know you?!... I'm sorry... I don't know you."Good thing I had told myself, no matter what happens, I know what I'm signing up for going there. She does not owe me any particular behaviour.She's adamantly refrained from responding directly to any of my letters/communications...For the past year and a half though, something has been going on with her Instagram being publicly viewable, and then temporarily private, only to go back to publicly viewable when she publishes some new pictures. Needless to say, I swallowed bait, hook and sinker, and kept writing to her, peering into every new picture for potential 'hints' meant for me.Bottom-line: carrot and stick. As genuine as my feelings might still be, I've let myself be nothing but a sideshow, a toy for her. And that has gone on for long enough. I can't claim credit for deciding that, because she did.After I've recently written for her the most creative experience I could write given our circumstances, her Instagram has gone private and silent, and she has all but simply fallen off the face of the Earth. It sucks. I just feel like unless something has happened to her and she's passed away, such a treatment of me is unbecoming of the calibre of woman I saw her as.Let's call her R H. I feel like I was meant to meet a R H, but I'm stuck with having met some R H in the wrong timeline.
A
male
reader, Woodstock54 +, writes (3 October 2017):
Woodstock54 is verified as being by the original poster of the questionI guess the real problem is that I do want her back and she is never coming back, nor will she talk to me. We got together during a rough time, shortly after we started dating a lot of people passed on both sides. I wish we could see each other now that things have calmed down, I'm realizing more and more how amazing she was and she won't talk to me anymore.
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A
male
reader, Woodstock54 +, writes (3 October 2017):
Woodstock54 is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThanks man, I think I needed to hear that. I still got a lot to figure out and its rattling around in my head and just having someone say calm down and figure it out has helped quell my anxiety. It's good to have someone give me honest feedback.
A lot of our problems stemmed from her being seen as "the perfect girl". She was super kind and sweet and a solid 10, whenever we had relationship troubles everyone told me to just shut it because she's hot.
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A
male
reader, PJ Roy +, writes (14 September 2017):
Try this... take this post of yours, for as long as it takes, focus on only one thing: rework, rephrase, trim down to the point that you are eventually satisfied a third party has every piece of *strictly* necessary *information* to help you; that point when you deem, "there's nothing more to _take out_".In your current state of mind, you have yet to have identified the problem(s) you're called to move on from, let alone being in the right frame of mind to solve them.By the time you're done reworking your post, I bet you you'll be 50% of the way to the enlightenment you seek.
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