Yeah... I feel your pain... I am also following your story...

I think you are having a worse time than me. Because at least my ex isn't feeding me with false hopes. She is trying to get me to be her friend again, but things are weird and she isn't really pushing it... I feel like she is trying to get to know me again and see if she can try to love me again or something but I know that just won't happen because I don't feel like being all nice and caring as I was when we were together so I don't think this is going anywhere apart from a friendship with time. I don't even feel that NC would do me any good... when I tried NC I started daydreaming about the day we would be together and all... but now that we are talking, reality bites me and I am remembered that the real person I used to have plans with doesn't love me anymore. Which helps me moving on.

I am taking vacations on the end of this week. Going home. Man, that will do so good for me.

I wasn't even going to write anything today but I felt like maybe someone might be interested... I mean, I love reading other people stories' but it seems they never come back once they are feeling better and we are left without knowing things got better!

Today was an interesting day because, for the biggest part of it, I didn't think of this whole thing. Which is actually amazing if I compare to the past few days. It was the whole "I just want it to go away" I was looking for. Maybe tomorrow won't be as good, but I am happy to see there is some progress going on.

And on the only short time during the day any tought crossed my mind - I was purchasing glasses and I remember she liked picking up frames for me - it wasn't bad. It was actually a sweet memory. I remembered what were her tastes and how she hated my old pair of glasses that were a bit too geeky. Then I forgot about it and chose glasses that made me look nice. It didn't feel bad at all. I only had that fuzzy warm feeling of having been loved once by a wonderful person and the hapiness that now I was having fun picking glasses by myself. I was proud.

However, at night I felt like I wanted to talk with her... about the progress made. Which seems really absurd, right? I liked how we felt proud of each other achievements and that was one achievement, albeit a weird one...

It wasn't that obsessive urge from the past few weeks, though. It was just a thought that crossed my mind while I was waiting the rice to cook. And I called my parents instead to check up on them.

I didn't talk with her today, not even on IM, like in the past few days... She hasn't showed up on IM, or maybe she did and I wasn't paying attention, 'cause I'm not checking up all the time anymore, just open it when I need to talk to some other friend... Plus, even when she's online I don't start a conversation... I'm not ready for that yet...

I hope I am in the right track here. I really hope my heart isn't playing tricks with my mind and building silly hopes on the background based on these sweet memories, hehe. But I honestly don't think that's happening. It really feel more and more like looking at childhood pictures, you think about how happy you were as a kid, without the burdens and difficulties of adulthood but you never really hope you'll be a kid again.

Quote:

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but you never really hope you'll be a kid again.

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Speak for yourself!!


On a serious note, glad to see its coming together for you.

Just keep moving forward. I can't tell you how many times I would get cocky, and think I am getting over it, and I am cool to try and be friends with my ex... WRONG! I would talk to her and come tumbling down again. Carry on! You are doing great.

Hey guys... It seems that the rollercoaster is really gone...

We returned to our hometown and I had to return her t-shirt... Since I am "afraid" of looking at her face again, too soon, I decided to leave it with her grandma last week, with a christmas card, basically telling her I don't regret a thing. Got a polite e-mail response, with the similar emotional dettachment she has been showing in the previous weeks.

Ironically I got her e-mail when I got home from a very fun night out with some high school friends... It's funny that I haven't had this pure irresponsible fun in such a looong time.

And reading that e-mail actually made me contrast these two lifes... It seems that now that it's over I am realizing I was too young to be tied in a relationship, specially a long distance one. No regrets at all. But it feels good to be free. 24, grad student... I'm just too young for all that. Not that I regret what happened... but I kind of see that it was all for better.

Not to say all is well. Christmas night was awful. And I am sure New Year will be even worse. But it's a part of life, right? At least I can say with all honesty that, for me, this chapter of my life is over.

Among the things I did back home was to look at old mix tapes. I found an old Cranberries cassete and while listening to it, I just re-discovered "Daffodil Lament":

"... I have decided to leave you forever,
I have decided to start things from here,
Thunder and lightning won't change how I'm feeling...
... and the daffodils look lovely today..."

I don't know what's wrong with me.

I am focusing on work. I am engaging in new activities and meeting new people. I am trying new things. I am going out and doing things single people do.

And sometimes (once every 10 days or so... ) I even talk with my ex, the whole "being friends thing" which seems to be working well for me... I even feel bad for her because she doesn't seem to be going out that much... I mean, she broke up so why am I the one having the fun? I wish she enjoyed her single-ness too...

So basically I feel like the whole situation turned out to be good. I had an amazing relationship with a wonderful person, and now that is over I am having fun being single again and I got to keep that wonderful person as a good friend and I don't regret anything in my life.

Then, why the hell there are sometimes I still feel bad about the whole thing?

Like all storms this will pass.

More venting...

Oh man. Never in my life I felt so lacking control over myself like in the past few days.

Now I am actively trying to move on and trying to forget and not thinking about anything. But it's like my brain is possessed by a very evil spirit that keeps telling me that I didn't fight enough, that I should call, that this whole situation is just wrong.

Oh, how I wish my ex had told she found out I'm not the right person for her or given the "it's not you, it's me" line... I think it would be so much easier to move on. But having to move on with a "it's just the distance and we might try again in the future if the distance is gone" sucks.

It's ironic but being dumped by someone that still wants you is awful. It's good in one sense because I never lost that feeling of having someone that cares about you, and my self-esteem didn't suffer any significant hit... however there is just no hope of having a honest understanding of what the hell happened... It feels like I'm sweeping these issues under the rug and moving on with my life.

It's a cliché... but I feel your pain. She is the one that threw away your relationship... there is no point beating yourself up about it. No matter how hard you fought, it was her decision. There is no amount of fighting that you could have done which would have made her think other wise.

I'm struggling to realise it myself... but her decision was a blessing. I am lucky that this happened only two years into our relationship... and not 5 years or 10 years or 20 years... because it surely would have happened eventually. As it says in one of the stickys... we are going through this for a reason... this is all prologue for something great which is going to happen in the future.

At the beginning for me it also felt better being an "amicable breakup" due to long distance... but in some ways I would rather it had just ended because she had cheated on me, or she just told me up front that it was over... its so much harder to move on when there seems to be no real underlying reason for the breakup.

I remember one week into our break up she sent me a text saying "Even though we are broken up I still love you just as much as I ever have". But then it all changed so suddenly for her... whereas I never really lost that feeling. It still astonishes me that she can go from that to complete indifference in no time at all.

You are doing really well ITL and you are an inspiration to me as I battle through this. Keep up the good work! We will both get there :-)

I didn't really fight for the relationship... and I think I was the only one among her friends/family to say "if you don't have the energy to make this work anymore, then you should break up with" rather than the "he's such a wonderful boyfriend, and you might end up lonely in the future" she had to endure. Yeah, she had a rough time, specially with her mom... Maybe I was already aware that there was no point in fighting for someone that lost that feeling and is tired. Or maybe it was my way of showing how frustrated I was about the way she was behaving in the final month...

In the end, what matters is that this was her decision and I just have to live with that. But there's nothing that tells me this was a good decision. It's just that there's nothing I can do about it, you know? Feels like having your candidate losing an election. I think the bad candidate won and while I disagree with him I'll just have to live with the elected government. And enjoy the freedom of being in the opposition.

Something funny happened. Now that we aren't together, this "being friends" thing is sort of weird. Because when we talk, I feel bored... but for some weird reason, I also feel a bit happy when I'm talking to her, even though I don't feel bad afterwards.

So Sunday night I started wondering why was that and I think that's because I am over the relationship but I still consider her to be a possibility in the future (yeah, it's weird, sounds like the zen on the "getting my ex back"). Feels like I am in an open relationship... but since she's surely not looking at this in that way, I don't think that's too healthy for me because I could easily get hurt.

But since I feel she is sort of relying on me for destressing (she always talks to me before a hard exam) I asked her if she would be OK if we didn't talk. That's how the dialog went:

"I feel I should do this 'cause I don't know what we are doing right now".
"Why? You talk with me. I talk with you. You said you weren't confused about us anymore".
"I am not confused about us breaking up. But I don't know if I talk to you as a friend or if I'm trying to win you back. Which is ridiculous because we must not go back. So that's a bit confusing."
"Oh... Look I have to go now, can we finish this at night?"
"If you want to say something, call me tonight. But I already told what I had to."

She didn't call at night, which I assume it means she's accepting this decision. Than after that I just sent a very short mail saying that if she really needed to talk to me, she could call, but to avoid that.

So now it's day one of full NC.

I'm feeling like crap today.

Hang in there buddy... I know how much it sucks... but it will get better. No good can come out of keeping in contact with her. Not for the mean while anyway.

Keep venting on here if you need to.

Yeah. Tsc. I agree. Though I didn't feel bad while talking to her since after the new year, I must know I can live without her before I can have her again as a friend. For my own sake.

I'm from abroad and I moved to the US for grad school and since I was already with her when I moved (didn't move because of her alone, though I didn't mind living closer to her!) I didn't make an effort to make really good friends around here... I mean, even in my home country, I was a loner before starting dating her, and I should say she's the only real friend I ever had... Funny, eh? I never had a local real friend!

So now not only I am having to get over her as my girlfriend, I am having to get over her as a friend and making connections here in this country. Yeah, sucks to be me! But, hey, work is great!

Well this makes it an even better reason to put yourself out there and meet some new people and some maybe even a new girly... you will be fine.

Yeah... right now I don't really feel like meeting women for relationships, you know? I like going to bars, flirting and doing the whole "courtship dance" because it boosts my ego, but I don't feel fine... and for some odd reason I'm finding hooking up so shallow... I wish I could have that undergrad "ah, just do it" attitude back hehe.

So right now I am doing my best to get my f**ing PhD as soon as I can and get the hell out of Ann Arbor, move to a big city again! And just relax until this is over.

That doesn't sound like fun, but flirting does, but that's just me.

What doesn't sound like fun? Doing the PhD? It sort of is... now that I am able to use my brain for thoughts different than "boohoo, I'm alone again", it is sort of fun...

Yeah I know what you mean... I definitely don't feel like meeting girls for a relationship either. But I am starting to enjoy my newfound singledom... and enjoying the shallowness of the meaningless hook up. Today I even caught myself going for a quite a few minutes without my ex popping into my head. Still a long ways to go though...

I think you guys are going to throw rocks at me after this but...

When I woke up today there was this IM message from my ex... she was talking something about a ski trip she went to yesterday with some friends... Since I asked her to talk to me only if she actually needed to and I had to walk to my lab today anyway, I decided to call. It was the first time we had a voice conversation since mid-December... I think this bothered her... I could tell her by her voice and the fact she still doesn't call me by name... now she just doesn't call me anything, just gives a pause... yeah, it's a bit awkward.

Anyway, the conversation was totally trivial, just catching up with my life and telling me what's going on with hers. So it didn't fit in the "if you really need to talk to me" category. So I basically don't know is wrong with her. Maybe I wasn't clear enough when I asked for space... but I'm not going to ask that again so I guess I'll be getting more of these IMs until she finds a new boyfriend or gets over me or whatever. Maybe she already did because we don't talk about that stuff with each other. But srsly! I didn't know I was that good of a friend for her to want to talk to me about trivial stuff even with our whole history surrounding every conversation.

So here's the thing. I would be lying to myself if I said I wouldn't go back to her if she wanted. I wouldn't jump, but I know I wouldn't resist giving a it a second try.

However, I am not doing anything to get her back, and I am not exactly holding my breath. Really. I am letting her live her life alone. Since the last phone call, in December, there was only once I started a conversation with her and that was last weeks' "please don't talk to me" one. And I am making myself busy, either with my equations, my guitar, the swimming pool, bars and clubs. And talking to her doesn't affect me any longer... it just makes me remember she exists and that silly "maybe one day" pops up in my mind, but now I just laugh at this thought every time it occurs.

So I was wondering... is keeping this situation really bad for me? I feel bad sometimes, like Thursday, but I think it has more to do with a bad day at work and when you start thinking god hates you, it's sooo easy to remember that your single again, haha. I am also concerned about her, though it shouldn't really be my problem... isn't it bad for her to keep talking to me? Should I cut her out for her own sake? She's a good person and I don't want to learn down the road that by letting her talk to me, I held her... well, it's her problem, right?

Geez. I might be the only dumpee here in this forum to say this but... How I wish she found a rebound or a new boyfriend!