Fear of Missing Opportunities and Fear of Losing Friends

[fiftyofsomethin]

Hey guys,

 

As you may know if you read my story/journal here, I have been finding it quite difficult to just forget about my ex.

 

But I have finally noticed a common theme in all my thoughts: I am afraid of missing opportunities.

 

When we were together, our mutual friend, we will call her Carly, was probably one of my best friends as she was my ex's best friend too. We spent a ton of time with my ex's friends, really got to know them, etc. I basically found myself in the inner circle of her friend group, and unfortunately, found myself inching out of my old friend group A BIG MISTAKE. So it should come as no surprise that when we broke up, I sort of lost my central social group. I lost my new friends.

 

So now, after almost a month and a half of being apart, I have slowly drifted from being a good friend to Carly, to being just that one acquaintance. This is really unfortunate because I have had this constant drive to raise my social status and in large part I accomplished it. My ex and her friends were slightly higher than me on the imaginary high school hierarchy. So now that I see Carly every day in one of my classes, it is just painful to hear her talking with other people about how she and my ex are doing all these fun things together and they are really happy. And of course, now that it's been a sufficient amount of time, the awkwardness of me and my ex's breakup has lifted and we are fairly friendly now. Of course, that could simply be because maybe my ex found someone... who knows, that's not the point.

 

The point I suppose I want to make is that it has been very hard to see myself drifting farther away from certain friends. Every time I see her, or even my ex for that matter, I obviously will just ignore them the way my ex ignores me. But I always have this feeling like I am missing out on an opportunity to fix something or to not lose these friends.

 

I basically just seem to have found that I am afraid of missing opportunities to not lose my friends. I don't want to graduate and just never see them or talk to them ever again. I want to be able to still be friendly. I'll be honest, after writing out the nonsense above, I am not entirely sure WHAT I want. I just know that I am always kicking myself after seeing my ex or her friends for not doing or saying something that might make the situation less hostile and more friendly. I am already making great advances towards moving on and finding other people and such, but yet, it still kills me that these people who were so close to me simply are not in my life anymore. And on top of it, my therapist encourages me to confront my ex about how she has been treating me which is completely against the rules of NC.

 

Whatever. I must stay cool and keep moving.

[swiftly333]

I just wanted to pop in and say in feel you.

 

2 ex's ago this happened. We actually met because we hung out with the same group of people. We has best friends with my sister and her husband. The group was semi large and was basically 3 ffamikies of siblings all close in age that hung out ball the time. Most of them I started being friends with in Jr high. He and his brother cane into the group only a few years before we started dating. When we broke up I lost more then just my relationship with him. I ducked out of the group and didn't go to any group events. I also became close with his family and lost that too. And he kept the dog who I was in love with. It was hard.I felt so alone. But I reached out and made new friends. My saving grace was that I changed Jobs. It was the best thing i did. Most of the employees were other women in my age group and I just had to go through the awkward situation of asking for invites. Some responded, some didn't, but I did make some new friends, even if were not close, I have people to do things with. There's also meetup.com, volunteer work, girlfriend circles, even some dating sites you can say you're looking for friends only. Get involved in organized group activities. Even womens groups/support groups/group therapy just to talk about things. You'll meet people and make new friends. You can also try reaching out to old friends. If they are good friends they'll forgive you if you say hey, I known I haven't been the best at keeping in contact but I now see that your friendship means a lot to me. Some people I did thus with responded positively, others did not, but its worth it to try I think. You are not alone. So many people out there would love spend time with you. You just have to put yourself out there, which I understand is scary. But you do need to reach out right now.

[fiftyofsomethin]

Wow. I honestly believe that seeing other people have gone through/are going through the same thing as me actually really helps. It's comforting to see that I am no the only one, others DO share in this struggle.

 

And I am actually very grateful that my old best friends actually invited me to go out the day after me and my ex broke up. But now, a month and a half later, I still am frustrated at how easily feelings keep coming up.

 

Every single time I see my ex in the hallways, I almost freeze. I can either ignore her awkwardly and act as if I have moved on or whatever and MAYBE she might realize it and stop ignoring me. Or I go up and say something to her about all of this. It's just crap. I see all these people with problems a million times worse than mine and I can't get over a girlfriend of 1.5 months who dumped me without reason (after being very happy) and now ignores me?

 

Like I seriously need to get my priorities straight. I have stopped doing homework and leisurely activities because I have been thinking about this so much. It's like I always feel like I'm on the verge of finding a solution to this.