KeSoze2
May 23, 2010, 11:27 AM
Here's my deal. In fall 2004 I met the girl of my dreams. Beautiful, funny, brilliant -- getting her Master's at MIT -- and just a little crazy. Just my type. We start going out and stay together for two years, constantly surprising and delighting each other. It was the best time of either of our lives.
But then in September 2006 she had to leave the country. She was from Germany and her visa was expired. She had tried to do everything she could to stay in the country, applying to all the schools she could think of but didn't get into any of them except one safety she had applied to in Europe. I applied to a ton of jobs over there but didn't get a response from any of them, probably because I don't speak German. She needed to pursue the PhD she needed for her next step, so I told her she had to take the opportunity with the school in Zurich, Switzerland, it too good to pass up. Marriage could have let her stay here, but she'd be unemployed and not able to pursue her PhD. Somehow we convinced ourselves we'd make it work.
So she leaves and I continue my job back here in the states, and she starts her program over there. She was depressed, miserable, and started having panic attacks. We couldn't afford to visit each other more than 3-4 times a year, and even was adding to already significant debt. I spent Thanksgiving 2006 with her, she came to stay with me and my family through Christmas 2006 and New Year's, we saw each other in Paris in May 2007.
We both started to suffer serious anxiety. Normally someone who's completely confident, I started having this deep, crawling utterly distracting feeling. I couldn't sleep. I had night sweats. I had my first real panic attack and ended up in the hospital in July 2007. That fall she and I saw each other again and we were both okay, but there was a confidence and passion gone, and both of us were not well.
And there was no end in sight. She came up with the rather brilliant idea of me getting an MBA program over there so we could be closer, but I had $50K in credit card debt from all the traveling, and it would be a few years until I could have paid down enough to secure a student loan.
Christmas 2007 I went and stayed with her and her family, and it was okay but we were both still stressed out and frustrated. Not knowing what else to do, I suggested maybe we should try splitting up, maybe it was too much, and we should stop until we knew when we could physically be together again. She was furious. She felt like I was betraying her. On getting back to the US I went to a doctor, who again said it was all anxiety and prescribed me Klonopin, an addictive anti-anxiety drug.
Two months later, in February 2008, after a long night out with my sister's family in California and having just run out of Klonopin, I woke up feeling great, and knowing what I had to do. I got the first connecting flight to LAX, called her from there and apologized deeply, saying she was the only thing in my life that mattered, and that I never wanted us to be apart, and that I was going to make the business school in Europe plan happen no matter what.
She was suspicious but ultimately gave in. She said she too needed to make it work. Elated, I got on the plane for a 6-hour flight back home and on the way my euphoria began to wear off. Later I learned it was likely caused by withdrawal from both Klonopin, but I was hit by wave after wave of the worst, immobilizing panic I’d ever felt. It lasted six hours and didn't go away until the flight crew paged the plane for Xanax. But she and I continued talking almost every day.
I stayed off the Klonopin but a shrink I started seeing instead put me on Paxil. She came to see me for a friend's May wedding that goes okay, and except for a minor attack the next day, was overall a great time.
On June 1, 2008 she flies back to Europe. This is the last day we would officially be together. We make plans to see each other over there in July for a short trip. By the end of June the Paxil has really started to take full effect. Thinking back over how much pain each of us has gone through, and knowing how much she hurts, how lonely she is staying in every night where she’s living, and completely devoid of all emotion thanks to the Paxil, I decide we really do need to call it quits. We can’t keep going on like this, as it’s destroying both of us. I call her, and tell her as much, and she spends two hours fighting the idea.
She says we’ll make it work somehow. We need each other. That I love her and she loves me. That we’ll get better. That I’ll get into school soon over there and it’ll be all better. But still significantly in debt and not yet accepted anywhere, I know it'll still be two years at a minimum, likely more, and tell her we need to stop trying until we know it’s really, absolutely possible – that it’s killing us. She says if we break up we can’t ever be together again because she won’t be able to trust me – I need to be absolutely sure that this is really what I want, because if we break up, that’s it. It's over forever. And not feeling anything like my normal self, I say yes, we need to do it for both of our sanities. Crying endlessly, she finally agrees.
I start taking KAPLAN classes to prepare for the GMAT, and just having a concrete plan on what to do next seemed to help a great deal.
She and I both briefly date other people but it doesn't go anywhere, and at the beginning of November my girl leaves on a trip to rural South America with some friends and is out of contact for a few weeks, and I realize the deadening effect the drugs had had on me is starting to wear off. I miss her like hell.
She gets back from her trip and it seems she’s been feeling the same way, missing me terribly, and begs me to come be with her for the holidays. I’m still almost dead broke from the trips in May and July, determined to get into school there, and can’t afford a round trip ticket to Europe in addition to needing to pay everything down all my debt entirely in order to be able to be with her in school the next year -- I’m aiming for a January 2010 start date at a school in Paris.
I tell her we just can’t afford it right now, that we need to skip any trips for just the next 12 months and then that’ll be it and we’ll have finally paid it off. She says she’ll pay for it all, we’ll make it work, anything, but I hold fast that we have to just try to get through the next year so I can be living there as soon as possible.
Just before Christmas she says we need to take some time off, that we need to practice really being apart, and she wants to go just two weeks without contact. Willing to give anything a shot if it might help, I agree, though call on Christmas and try again on New Year’s. But she holds to our deal and doesn’t call back until January 2, 2009.
From then on things are different. She’s changed. She’s bitter, but in anger she’s found strength, and it’s clear that while she’s doing better emotionally, she’s going to continue to be resentful of the two years of pain we shared and how I didn’t do more to get over there and be with her sooner. On my end I now feel almost like my old self again, though a someone who’s now losing the person he cares most about in the world.
She starts dating one of coworkers in February 2009, and then one of my friends from Paris -- a girl I was good friends with in college – invites me to come over to Paris to become her first son’s godfather. I agree, and ask my ex to join me there for the weekend. I was considering buying a ring and going over there and trying to resolve all our issues at once with a proposal anyway.
While she was at first shocked at the suggestion that I wanted to just be together again and said she’d have to think about it, she talked it over with her friends who of course all advised her to refuse. I still had this idea that if we could see each other, now in better health and with finally a clear plan on how to be together, we would both feel it and come around. Deluded? Yes. Still hopelessly in love with what we’d had? Absolutely.
While I couldn’t get her to agree to come to Paris, I offered to fly into her city, get dinner with her, stay at a hotel and then take a train to Paris the next day. She agreed. At the end of April I flew into her airport on a Friday while she was at work, and walking to the cab stand she appeared out of nowhere. She walked up and clung to me, saying over and over “I love you. I just have to get out of here. I just have to get out of here.” It was hot out but her bare arms were covered with cuts she'd made on herself.
She took me to her place so I could crash on her spare bed. The new boyfriend was out of town for the week. We got dinner downtown and talked about nothing. She discussed the guy she'd dated briefly the fall before, I mention the girl I saw briefly. We don't discuss her boyfriend. She goes to the bathroom for 30 minutes, comes back and apologizes, saying "I've sorta developed a little bulemia". We go home, and I want to stay up and talk, but she heads outside to leave her boyfriend a voicemail, then comes back in and wants to sleep, and we do.
The next morning she takes me to get the train to Paris, and we head almost silently to the station and I get on. I look outside and see her just standing there looking miserable. I dash outside and pull into my arms, telling her that it’s all for the best, that it’s all going to work out. “I love you”, I say, “More than you’ll ever know”. “I… love you”, she stammers, and I turn to get back on the train.
Two hours into the trip I get a call from her. She’s crying, saying she’s just so sad. That she thought she’d be okay, and was doing fine, but she didn’t realize how hard it would be until I left again. She said she at least would always have all the great memories we had of us being happy together, whatever else happened. The phone breaks off.
I wrote her an email back telling her we had to try to make 2009 the best year it could be. She had the potential for a new, great relationship, we both needed to focus on our work and probably get some serious therapy, but that if at the end of the year I got into school over there and we were both still unhappy, we would stop messing around and stop trying to be together but just do it – and let me spend the rest of my life making the only girl I ever really loved happy. Her reply: "DEAL!! :-) I love this idea." She called me a few times in Paris over the next few days but ran hot and cold, and I flew back to the US a week later.
We didn't talk for a month, then she called and we both almost broke down at hearing each other. But it was just small talk, and we hung up again after half an hour. We talked two more times that summer but nothing important was said.
I got my application in for the one program that started in January 2010 and it looked like it was going well. I had two good interviews but last October I got waitlisted. I heard nothing and finally in December 2009 I learned I was rejected. I forwarded her the rejection email and she called immediately, ecstatic, thinking I'd gotten in, but then realized I hadn't and said "Looks like you just f%#&ed around all fall like you did when we were together." We hung up a short while later.
I sent her a Christmas present that she called to thank me for this past January, and I began applying to seven programs that all started in September 2010. Work has been going well and I've been able to pay down most of the debt over the past year, and a few weeks ago I received notice I'd been chosen to interview at Oxford.
So I booked a flight to the UK, stopping over in Zurich to see her on the way back. I hadn't heard from her in months and realized things were probably pretty good with her new boyfriend, and they'd just had their 1-year anniversary. But I needed to see her to be sure she'd really moved on, and when I called her she agreed we could meet for dinner again.
So I flew over there a week ago, interviewed at Oxford (I think it went okay), then flew to see her. Checked in at the hotel and called her, and she said she really didn't want to come into town, that she had lots of work to do later, and maybe I could just come to her school's bar for a quick beer. I did.
Getting there, we meet up and it's very awkward. She's extremely thin, and I'm pretty sure she'd continued to be bulemic. Her shirt is unwashed with multiple stains. Her pants are ripped. She's obviously been cutting herself again a lot more. And she begins throwing jab after jab at me, at everything I say. She begins listing all her new boyfriends great "qualities", such as "he plays many instruments", "he's part Italian, so you know he's very romantic", "his place is so amazing", and so on. Nothing about how he treats her or how in love they are.
We get a beer and she begins describing this bizarro version of our past where I was only a , and maybe we weren't in love at all but she just liked hanging out with my friends. And then in the middle of the insults she throws out "If we did ever get back together, how can I know you wouldn't just leave me again the next time I'm depressed?"
I had a thousand answers but I tell her that it's because I adore her, and would not be able to go through the pain of losing her again. That the only reason we broke up is because we couldn't be in the same country -- or even know when we could -- and that if we got back together we would be living with each other, and there would be no more fear of being apart. I remind her of our deal.
But she dismisses it, saying she doesn't remember any deal, that I need to get over it and move on, that she only hopes her new b/f doesn't leave her, and that she needed to get back to work. She wouldn't listen to any more attempts at discussion, and she walked me to the bus. We hugged without really touching and said goodbye. When I get back to the hotel she IMs me, saying she's sorry, she's just bitter and bored and hates everyone and only really cares about her cat right now. She rambles for awhile about nothing, and I finally wish her the best and cut it off.
So now I'm in a place where I clearly need to move on, and can. She's a mess right now but it's not my place to help her anymore. Yet I can't help but think she's repressing all her emotions, and it's coming back out in harmful ways. I don't sense that he's treating her well, and that they are really deeply in love, but it's not my choice.
I don't know what to do. I should probably just shut up, do NC, and let her go immediately. But I still love her and want to find a better way to apologize, to let her know I really never wanted to lose her for good.
I don't know anything now except that I've gone on way too long, and appreciate the feedback from anyone who's had the patience to read all this. Many thanks in advance.
But then in September 2006 she had to leave the country. She was from Germany and her visa was expired. She had tried to do everything she could to stay in the country, applying to all the schools she could think of but didn't get into any of them except one safety she had applied to in Europe. I applied to a ton of jobs over there but didn't get a response from any of them, probably because I don't speak German. She needed to pursue the PhD she needed for her next step, so I told her she had to take the opportunity with the school in Zurich, Switzerland, it too good to pass up. Marriage could have let her stay here, but she'd be unemployed and not able to pursue her PhD. Somehow we convinced ourselves we'd make it work.
So she leaves and I continue my job back here in the states, and she starts her program over there. She was depressed, miserable, and started having panic attacks. We couldn't afford to visit each other more than 3-4 times a year, and even was adding to already significant debt. I spent Thanksgiving 2006 with her, she came to stay with me and my family through Christmas 2006 and New Year's, we saw each other in Paris in May 2007.
We both started to suffer serious anxiety. Normally someone who's completely confident, I started having this deep, crawling utterly distracting feeling. I couldn't sleep. I had night sweats. I had my first real panic attack and ended up in the hospital in July 2007. That fall she and I saw each other again and we were both okay, but there was a confidence and passion gone, and both of us were not well.
And there was no end in sight. She came up with the rather brilliant idea of me getting an MBA program over there so we could be closer, but I had $50K in credit card debt from all the traveling, and it would be a few years until I could have paid down enough to secure a student loan.
Christmas 2007 I went and stayed with her and her family, and it was okay but we were both still stressed out and frustrated. Not knowing what else to do, I suggested maybe we should try splitting up, maybe it was too much, and we should stop until we knew when we could physically be together again. She was furious. She felt like I was betraying her. On getting back to the US I went to a doctor, who again said it was all anxiety and prescribed me Klonopin, an addictive anti-anxiety drug.
Two months later, in February 2008, after a long night out with my sister's family in California and having just run out of Klonopin, I woke up feeling great, and knowing what I had to do. I got the first connecting flight to LAX, called her from there and apologized deeply, saying she was the only thing in my life that mattered, and that I never wanted us to be apart, and that I was going to make the business school in Europe plan happen no matter what.
She was suspicious but ultimately gave in. She said she too needed to make it work. Elated, I got on the plane for a 6-hour flight back home and on the way my euphoria began to wear off. Later I learned it was likely caused by withdrawal from both Klonopin, but I was hit by wave after wave of the worst, immobilizing panic I’d ever felt. It lasted six hours and didn't go away until the flight crew paged the plane for Xanax. But she and I continued talking almost every day.
I stayed off the Klonopin but a shrink I started seeing instead put me on Paxil. She came to see me for a friend's May wedding that goes okay, and except for a minor attack the next day, was overall a great time.
On June 1, 2008 she flies back to Europe. This is the last day we would officially be together. We make plans to see each other over there in July for a short trip. By the end of June the Paxil has really started to take full effect. Thinking back over how much pain each of us has gone through, and knowing how much she hurts, how lonely she is staying in every night where she’s living, and completely devoid of all emotion thanks to the Paxil, I decide we really do need to call it quits. We can’t keep going on like this, as it’s destroying both of us. I call her, and tell her as much, and she spends two hours fighting the idea.
She says we’ll make it work somehow. We need each other. That I love her and she loves me. That we’ll get better. That I’ll get into school soon over there and it’ll be all better. But still significantly in debt and not yet accepted anywhere, I know it'll still be two years at a minimum, likely more, and tell her we need to stop trying until we know it’s really, absolutely possible – that it’s killing us. She says if we break up we can’t ever be together again because she won’t be able to trust me – I need to be absolutely sure that this is really what I want, because if we break up, that’s it. It's over forever. And not feeling anything like my normal self, I say yes, we need to do it for both of our sanities. Crying endlessly, she finally agrees.
I start taking KAPLAN classes to prepare for the GMAT, and just having a concrete plan on what to do next seemed to help a great deal.
She and I both briefly date other people but it doesn't go anywhere, and at the beginning of November my girl leaves on a trip to rural South America with some friends and is out of contact for a few weeks, and I realize the deadening effect the drugs had had on me is starting to wear off. I miss her like hell.
She gets back from her trip and it seems she’s been feeling the same way, missing me terribly, and begs me to come be with her for the holidays. I’m still almost dead broke from the trips in May and July, determined to get into school there, and can’t afford a round trip ticket to Europe in addition to needing to pay everything down all my debt entirely in order to be able to be with her in school the next year -- I’m aiming for a January 2010 start date at a school in Paris.
I tell her we just can’t afford it right now, that we need to skip any trips for just the next 12 months and then that’ll be it and we’ll have finally paid it off. She says she’ll pay for it all, we’ll make it work, anything, but I hold fast that we have to just try to get through the next year so I can be living there as soon as possible.
Just before Christmas she says we need to take some time off, that we need to practice really being apart, and she wants to go just two weeks without contact. Willing to give anything a shot if it might help, I agree, though call on Christmas and try again on New Year’s. But she holds to our deal and doesn’t call back until January 2, 2009.
From then on things are different. She’s changed. She’s bitter, but in anger she’s found strength, and it’s clear that while she’s doing better emotionally, she’s going to continue to be resentful of the two years of pain we shared and how I didn’t do more to get over there and be with her sooner. On my end I now feel almost like my old self again, though a someone who’s now losing the person he cares most about in the world.
She starts dating one of coworkers in February 2009, and then one of my friends from Paris -- a girl I was good friends with in college – invites me to come over to Paris to become her first son’s godfather. I agree, and ask my ex to join me there for the weekend. I was considering buying a ring and going over there and trying to resolve all our issues at once with a proposal anyway.
While she was at first shocked at the suggestion that I wanted to just be together again and said she’d have to think about it, she talked it over with her friends who of course all advised her to refuse. I still had this idea that if we could see each other, now in better health and with finally a clear plan on how to be together, we would both feel it and come around. Deluded? Yes. Still hopelessly in love with what we’d had? Absolutely.
While I couldn’t get her to agree to come to Paris, I offered to fly into her city, get dinner with her, stay at a hotel and then take a train to Paris the next day. She agreed. At the end of April I flew into her airport on a Friday while she was at work, and walking to the cab stand she appeared out of nowhere. She walked up and clung to me, saying over and over “I love you. I just have to get out of here. I just have to get out of here.” It was hot out but her bare arms were covered with cuts she'd made on herself.
She took me to her place so I could crash on her spare bed. The new boyfriend was out of town for the week. We got dinner downtown and talked about nothing. She discussed the guy she'd dated briefly the fall before, I mention the girl I saw briefly. We don't discuss her boyfriend. She goes to the bathroom for 30 minutes, comes back and apologizes, saying "I've sorta developed a little bulemia". We go home, and I want to stay up and talk, but she heads outside to leave her boyfriend a voicemail, then comes back in and wants to sleep, and we do.
The next morning she takes me to get the train to Paris, and we head almost silently to the station and I get on. I look outside and see her just standing there looking miserable. I dash outside and pull into my arms, telling her that it’s all for the best, that it’s all going to work out. “I love you”, I say, “More than you’ll ever know”. “I… love you”, she stammers, and I turn to get back on the train.
Two hours into the trip I get a call from her. She’s crying, saying she’s just so sad. That she thought she’d be okay, and was doing fine, but she didn’t realize how hard it would be until I left again. She said she at least would always have all the great memories we had of us being happy together, whatever else happened. The phone breaks off.
I wrote her an email back telling her we had to try to make 2009 the best year it could be. She had the potential for a new, great relationship, we both needed to focus on our work and probably get some serious therapy, but that if at the end of the year I got into school over there and we were both still unhappy, we would stop messing around and stop trying to be together but just do it – and let me spend the rest of my life making the only girl I ever really loved happy. Her reply: "DEAL!! :-) I love this idea." She called me a few times in Paris over the next few days but ran hot and cold, and I flew back to the US a week later.
We didn't talk for a month, then she called and we both almost broke down at hearing each other. But it was just small talk, and we hung up again after half an hour. We talked two more times that summer but nothing important was said.
I got my application in for the one program that started in January 2010 and it looked like it was going well. I had two good interviews but last October I got waitlisted. I heard nothing and finally in December 2009 I learned I was rejected. I forwarded her the rejection email and she called immediately, ecstatic, thinking I'd gotten in, but then realized I hadn't and said "Looks like you just f%#&ed around all fall like you did when we were together." We hung up a short while later.
I sent her a Christmas present that she called to thank me for this past January, and I began applying to seven programs that all started in September 2010. Work has been going well and I've been able to pay down most of the debt over the past year, and a few weeks ago I received notice I'd been chosen to interview at Oxford.
So I booked a flight to the UK, stopping over in Zurich to see her on the way back. I hadn't heard from her in months and realized things were probably pretty good with her new boyfriend, and they'd just had their 1-year anniversary. But I needed to see her to be sure she'd really moved on, and when I called her she agreed we could meet for dinner again.
So I flew over there a week ago, interviewed at Oxford (I think it went okay), then flew to see her. Checked in at the hotel and called her, and she said she really didn't want to come into town, that she had lots of work to do later, and maybe I could just come to her school's bar for a quick beer. I did.
Getting there, we meet up and it's very awkward. She's extremely thin, and I'm pretty sure she'd continued to be bulemic. Her shirt is unwashed with multiple stains. Her pants are ripped. She's obviously been cutting herself again a lot more. And she begins throwing jab after jab at me, at everything I say. She begins listing all her new boyfriends great "qualities", such as "he plays many instruments", "he's part Italian, so you know he's very romantic", "his place is so amazing", and so on. Nothing about how he treats her or how in love they are.
We get a beer and she begins describing this bizarro version of our past where I was only a , and maybe we weren't in love at all but she just liked hanging out with my friends. And then in the middle of the insults she throws out "If we did ever get back together, how can I know you wouldn't just leave me again the next time I'm depressed?"
I had a thousand answers but I tell her that it's because I adore her, and would not be able to go through the pain of losing her again. That the only reason we broke up is because we couldn't be in the same country -- or even know when we could -- and that if we got back together we would be living with each other, and there would be no more fear of being apart. I remind her of our deal.
But she dismisses it, saying she doesn't remember any deal, that I need to get over it and move on, that she only hopes her new b/f doesn't leave her, and that she needed to get back to work. She wouldn't listen to any more attempts at discussion, and she walked me to the bus. We hugged without really touching and said goodbye. When I get back to the hotel she IMs me, saying she's sorry, she's just bitter and bored and hates everyone and only really cares about her cat right now. She rambles for awhile about nothing, and I finally wish her the best and cut it off.
So now I'm in a place where I clearly need to move on, and can. She's a mess right now but it's not my place to help her anymore. Yet I can't help but think she's repressing all her emotions, and it's coming back out in harmful ways. I don't sense that he's treating her well, and that they are really deeply in love, but it's not my choice.
I don't know what to do. I should probably just shut up, do NC, and let her go immediately. But I still love her and want to find a better way to apologize, to let her know I really never wanted to lose her for good.
I don't know anything now except that I've gone on way too long, and appreciate the feedback from anyone who's had the patience to read all this. Many thanks in advance.