A change I never thought would happen: the past is...(almost) past

[Zapbasket]

Over the past several weeks, I've been feeling something that I don't think I've felt before in relation to the breakup with my ex (that happened almost 2 years ago now). It's been creeping up on me and suddenly yesterday, as I was hiking by a beautiful lake on a sunny day in the mountains, I realized what it was that I've been feeling.

 

My ex, who used to loom so large in my memory such that I have felt attached to him even as my life has moved forward, now feels to me to be...of the past. It's not complete; I don't feel indifferent, exactly (I don't feel indifferent at all)...but I do feel like my life has so much new in it that I'm in a different chapter now than the "post-breakup" chapter that seemed to me to run on like the longest and most painful chapter ever. It seems I'm in the "now" chapter and he's in the "then" chapter.

 

There's some sadness associated with that, and in my memory I still have a lingering attachment, and I do think of him often and compare my life "now" with how it was "then," with him, but I feel there's this...membrane...that now separates him from what my life is NOW.

 

It's so hard to describe, this change.... It's like...before so much of what I did was marked by this distinct sense of absence--I FELT his absence from my life in everything I did. Such that last winter, say, when I went skiing (my ex introduced me to skiing and we used to love to ski together), the whole time I was on the mountain I was acutely aware of his absence. This past weekend I went skiing, and the experience felt all MINE; there was nothing absent because what I do in the "now" is ski and part of my life is built around that hobby.

 

I still think about him a whole lot...but it's less emotionally charged now...or the emotional charge is so blanketed over with new experiences and emotions that it no longer FEELS as charged.

 

Anyway, I thought I'd share this because in the aftermath of my breakup (we were together 5 years), I felt positive I'd NEVER reach this place, even while some folks in my life and on LS assured me I would. I still feel love for him, deep down, but it's something that's defined and articulate-able more via the PAST, then via the NOW, if that makes sense.

 

It just goes to show, I suppose, that time heals and teaches; we just have to be patient and entrust ourselves to its work.

[EmperorR]

that's great, I can't wait untill I reach that point

[Surfer Dude]

Way to go

 

For me my ex is already part of my past. It still sometimes comes as a shock when I realize I'm never gonna see her again or talk to her again, but it's truly for the best.

 

I hope everyone here will be able to reach the point you have.

[Zapbasket]

Thanks, Surfer Dude and EmperorR. I posted this in hopes it might provide solace to people who are reeling from a bad and unexpected breakup and racking their brains wondering how on earth they'll get through it. When I was in that place, I was CONVINCED I'd never be able to let go of my ex enough to be able to genuinely live my life. I still have setbacks--memories that surge up and make me sad, or indignant, or humiliated, or remorseful or filled with longing--but they are increasingly fewer and less frequent and there is definitely a shift that could basically be summed up as:

 

My life no longer feels defined, every day, by the absence of my ex.

 

My life feels full again, and full of possibility and richness and not loss. I do miss my ex; I loved him a whole lot and the loss of him from my life is significant. But increasingly I see that my life is not necessarily paler without him in it. It's RICHER because he WAS in it, and when all is said and done I only feel lucky that he was in my life. There's a feeling of WEALTH I carry inside me now, rather than a feeling of deprivation.

[lofi_tokyo]

I really appreciate your post Greencove. A lot of the threads here lately (including mine) have been quite sad, with no good end in sight. Its nice to just hear stories of people getting over their ex's and moving on. I sincerely hope that someday, sooner than later, I can write so adamantly about my experiences with my ex as you have yours.

[9Lives]

I dont believe you are really over him which is not a bad thing. I think you have accepted that this is the way it is going to be and you are doing well with the change in your life. It sounds like u still love him.

 

I still love my ex but I am still working out the tough times in the emotions and absence that is in my life. I too thought this was my man forever. It is a shock and very painful when the show dont play out the way you expected. I just love him but he is not good for me. There is a lot of things I would not have been happy with in the long run but I was caught up so I couldnt stop from trying to make it work or letting go. When he told me that I should start dating other men....I knew I was heading for relationship crumbs and I dont eat crumbs. I changed my number and here I am today.

 

But you encourage me cause you thought you would never get back to yourself and I feel that way sometimes too. I have had alot of time to think and I know once my feelings are not so involved I will be better. He aint going to be able to hurt me anymore. I just wont let it happen.

[Zapbasket]

I really appreciate your post Greencove. A lot of the threads here lately (including mine) have been quite sad, with no good end in sight. Its nice to just hear stories of people getting over their ex's and moving on. I sincerely hope that someday, sooner than later, I can write so adamantly about my experiences with my ex as you have yours.

 

Thanks much, TV You will move on. From your posts it sounds like you've got a great head on your shoulders. This blow will make you a richer person down the line.

 

I'm really becoming a believer in the adage, "Time heals all wounds." It may be a long time--someone posted on one of my threads a year or so ago that it took her 11 years to fully "get over" her first love. But I fully believe that if you do the work necessary to learn from the experience, the pain will subside and ultimately only augment you as a person.

[Zapbasket]

I dont believe you are really over him which is not a bad thing. I think you have accepted that this is the way it is going to be and you are doing well with the change in your life. It sounds like u still love him.

 

I still love my ex but I am still working out the tough times in the emotions and absence that is in my life. I too thought this was my man forever. It is a shock and very painful when the show dont play out the way you expected. I just love him but he is not good for me. There is a lot of things I would not have been happy with in the long run but I was caught up so I couldnt stop from trying to make it work or letting go. When he told me that I should start dating other men....I knew I was heading for relationship crumbs and I dont eat crumbs. I changed my number and here I am today.

 

But you encourage me cause you thought you would never get back to yourself and I feel that way sometimes too. I have had alot of time to think and I know once my feelings are not so involved I will be better. He aint going to be able to hurt me anymore. I just wont let it happen.

 

Good for you Yeah, I remember in the aftermath of the breakup, for a very long time I felt like every day was a slammed door, rather than an open door into an unknown. I dreaded waking up, because all the pain would immediately rush in, and I could literally hear a door slamming in my mind--the door to all the parts of me that were attached to my ex and our future together, slamming in my face, slamming on my heart.

 

And then the next phase was the "fighting phase." I would wake up, feel awful, and then bustle out of bed with, "No!!!! I will NOT let this get me down!!! I'm going to reclaim my life!" And even if I felt really bad, I'd make myself go out, try new things...and eventually, without realizing it, I'd find I was having fun more than feeling sad.

 

And somewhere after that phase, each day stopped feeling like a struggle to overcome the past, and was just a new day, with the past only softly murmuring in the background, sometimes causing a little sadness, but not a slamming, heart-cracking sadness. Just a waft of nostalgia and regret.

 

You're right; I do still love my ex...but not as a PRESENT love. I never stopped loving him; I wasn't the one who wanted to end our relationship; and so the love is still there--it's just sunk into the past like a precious gold coin sinking down to land softly on the sandy bottom of my psyche. It's no less precious, and no less real...but it's PAST. I definitely feel the change.

 

I hope you continue to heal...

[kizik]

Two years seems an inordinate amount of time to get over someone. How long were you together? Have you done things, or been privy to things, that have set you back?

 

I'm 6 months out and feeling pretty OK - still think of her every day though. I hate to think that in 1.5 years I will JUST be getting over, but then again, I went No Contact from the get go, got a new job, etc. Steps towards regaining my independence.

[Zapbasket]

Two years seems an inordinate amount of time to get over someone. How long were you together? Have you done things, or been privy to things, that have set you back?

 

I'm 6 months out and feeling pretty OK - still think of her every day though. I hate to think that in 1.5 years I will JUST be getting over, but then again, I went No Contact from the get go, got a new job, etc. Steps towards regaining my independence.

 

That's a pretty uncompassionate, narrowminded view to take--particularly as you've come off mostly as a pretty sensible guy.

 

There's no time limit to mourning; the work required to come to terms with heartbreak varies from person to person and relationship to relationship. The important issue is, Are you doing the work? The introspective engagement that enables you to move forward and even engage in a new relationship without the same old baggage that choked your previous relationship getting in the way? You can change jobs, move, take up 300 hobbies...and emotionally be exactly the same person who contributed to the failure of a relationship. I don't attribute my "moving on" to all the overt changes my life has undergone in the past 2 years (and they've been significant); I attribute it to really sitting down and asking myself the hard questions and working on myself from the INSIDE.

[kizik]

That's a pretty uncompassionate, narrowminded view to take

 

No, it's not. It's an honest question. You are coming off as defensive when I was merely asking logistical questions. The fact is, two years is a long time to get over someone. If you disagree, that's fine.

 

But, I will ask what you have brought up: have you been doing the work?

[Zapbasket]

I'm not defensive I just felt you didn't really read the thread. This thread is my attempt to articulate this change that somehow crept up on me--a change I kept pushing for but it just had to happen on its own. The change is the realization that while love has not died (which was what I once thought of as "getting over" someone)...and while I still feel it as part of who I am...it has shifted to something of the past. I always thought that "getting over someone" meant you become indifferent, or you forget. But at least for me, with this relationship, what instead it has been revealed to mean is that the love continues but it's not part of my present. It doesn't interfere with my being able to be fully in the present.

 

As for whether I've been doing the work--If I hadn't been, I wouldn't have brought it up. I had to do a lot of work to feel I'd "mastered" the challenges brought about in my life by my ex breaking up with me. I'm still working; the work never ends; there is no final "getting over." It just gradually melts into the fabric of your experience, and like all past experiences, rouses feelings from time to time that give you new "work" to do. It's about living introspectively rather than attempting to deny experience.

[kizik]

I hear you. I'm not being dismissive. I have read the thread. I am quite glad for you that you have hit a milestone of sorts. Congratulations on everything you have done to get further along this terrible road.

[orangehose]

I always thought that "getting over someone" meant you become indifferent, or you forget. But at least for me, with this relationship, what instead it has been revealed to mean is that the love continues but it's not part of my present. It doesn't interfere with my being able to be fully in the present.

 

Interesting. I'm beginning to think there are different levels of "getting over" someone. Some people do get over ex-lovers completely, and quickly. For others, it's not much different than say, getting over the death of one's child.

 

As in, you don't "get over" the loss completely, you still can stir up sadness if you think about it thirty years later. It's just that you just reach a point where the pain of that loss isn't - to paraphrase you, Greencove - a defining part of your daily experience.

 

Anyway, personally I feel somewhere in between the two categories. I'm over the bulk of the pain and am reconciled to a life without him, but still feel somewhat nostalgic and wistful for the lost connection. I wonder if I'll meet someone eventually who captivates me as much... right now I just take it on faith that I will.

 

Love is strange. We don't love the people who most deserve love, or who show the greatest moral rectitude. It's an irrational beast.

[Zapbasket]

Interesting. I'm beginning to think there are different levels of "getting over" someone. Some people do get over ex-lovers completely, and quickly. For others, it's not much different than say, getting over the death of one's child.

 

As in, you don't "get over" the loss completely, you still can stir up sadness if you think about it thirty years later. It's just that you just reach a point where the pain of that loss isn't - to paraphrase you, Greencove - a defining part of your daily experience.

 

That makes a lot of sense to me--that there possibly are different "levels" of "getting over" someone. It makes most sense to me that if you ever really, deeply cared for someone, you never cease to care about them--you're never "indifferent"--but perhaps that caring is alloyed with great disappointment (in the person's character, say), or it changes to a different level of caring--as in nostalgia, latent love, wishing the person well in your mind and indulging in curiosity about them without necessarily seeking them out....all where the caring is passive rather than active. Our active caring is reserved, as it must be, for the people currently in our lives...but that doesn't mean that we have forgotten or become indifferent to those about whom we actively cared in the past. Nor does harboring a latent love for someone from the past indicate that one hasn't fully healed from the broken relationship...but I acknowledge that that's a fine line; after all, when you've truly "moved beyond" a tragic event, it means the event has ceased to have active, daily emotional salience for you.

 

For me, my ex really meant a lot to me. I truly saw him as a real love, my number one, my best friend...and at least at some point I know he saw me that way, as well. The relationship meant so much to me on so many levels that it really was earth-shattering for me when it ended. For me, the breakup was tragic--as tragic, almost, as a death. Not so much so that I suffer from permanent "damage," emotionally, from the breakup...but definitely so much so that I have emerged a changed person as a result of it. I will never be "indifferent" to the demise of our relationship because it will always be salient as the circumstance that forced significant changes to my life and my outlook.

 

Anyway, personally I feel somewhere in between the two categories. I'm over the bulk of the pain and am reconciled to a life without him, but still feel somewhat nostalgic and wistful for the lost connection.

That's exactly how I feel. I love my life right now; I feel very fortunate; but I do miss having my ex in my life. He brought something entirely unique to my life, something I can't recover anywhere else, or with anyone else. And it was that uniqueness for which I valued him most--it was what I loved him for, far more than any "need" of mine he happened to fill. So I do often find myself, still, feeling nostalgic, wistful, regretful that things between us turned out the way they did when at one time it all seemed limitlessly promising, ideal, wonderful, real. I have just reconciled myself to believing that just because that all ended, doesn't make it any less real or special or meaningful. People say, in the aftermaths of their breakups, that the whole relationship was a "waste of time," or was "rendered meaningless" by its demise. But I don't think that necessarily is the case at all. Even though it's done and forever-nevermore, it's still meaningful. My ex will always be meaningful, even while I'm actively loving and having a relationship with someone else--someone who also is meaningful to me, special to me, etc.

 

Love is strange. We don't love the people who most deserve love, or who show the greatest moral rectitude. It's an irrational beast.

Ain't it the truth, Orangehose!

[sumdude]

That's a pretty uncompassionate, narrowminded view to take--particularly as you've come off mostly as a pretty sensible guy.

 

 

ehh... I'll cut him a break. He's pretty young and has a lot of life's travails to still experience.

[kizik]

Yeah, cut me a break, I am so young and naive.