Ending long relationship. Need guidance.

[MalachiX]

[FONT=&quot]Howdy,

 

I guess I should warn you guys that this is going to be one of those incredibly long threads where someone (i.e. me) lays out a brief history of their relationship and begs for advice/sympathy/mood-altering drugs/ect.

 

Anyway, I'm just coming out of a two and a half year relationship and am really confused.

 

For the last year and a half, it's been a long distance relationship which has been really hard. She's in Ohio and I'm in Louisiana. We didn't plan on it, when we started dating we had promised to end things as soon as she moved away, but we were in love and couldn't bear it.

 

The last couple of months have been had been hard. I tried to expand my business/career to a new city and things were incredibly slow. I got very depressed and lost a lot of my sense of self worth and kept depending on her to pull me up. She came to visit for a month on Christmas and, during this visit, we were supposed to discuss plans for how we could eventually be together in the same location (something that's been pressing for a while and I admit I've avoided).

 

Well, we didn't discuss it on Christmas. She never brought it up and neither did I, not entirely because I wanted to avoid the issue but largely because we both had several personal crises happen and really never got the chance (at least, that's how I view it).

 

After she headed back to grad school, I grew further and further depressed as things continued to go sourly in my own life. In early February, she suddenly grew incredibly distant. After a few days, I asked her what was wrong and she told me she didn't want to be in the relationship anymore. Feeling totally worthless (because of my own failures in my life), I didn't argue with her.

 

We didn't have any contact for three days. During that time, I was the most manic depressive I've ever been. I'd shift from being incredibly depressed (actually weeping for the first time in well over a decade) to being actually excited about my future. It's hard to explain but I was kind of excited because I felt I'd hit rock bottom as far as my life went. It was kind of like a ritual death and rebirth (sorry if I'm being pretentious). She was the last thing that seemed to be worth anything in my life and now, lacking her, it kind of lit the fire under my butt to make something of myself and redouble my efforts.

 

Three days later, she called me. I admit I was kind of unsure whether or not to answer as I'd been working hard to get used to the idea of not having her in my life. Eventually I picked up the phone and spoke to her. She was speaking in her, "I'm ready to forgive you voice." Unfortunately, she caught me in one my low moments and I didn't let her forgive me. I told her I was every bit the jerk she thought I was (like I said, it was a low point) and that she had every right to hate me.

 

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[MalachiX]

Now before I go any farther, I think I should be clear about why (I think) I've avoided the issue of us living together in the same city.

 

She thinks that I'm just afraid of commitment and I admit there might be some truth to that (however, I really like the idea of waking up next to her every morning and building a life together). For me, the real issue is my career. I want to be a filmmaker and, unfortunatly, there are very few areas where you can make that happen. New York and California definatly; Louisiana and Texas maybe; Ohio definatly not (just trust me on this). I didn't want to essentially give up on my hopes and dreams and move to Ohio with her. My father claims he did that for my mother and it's created a huge amount of resentment in their relationship and an incredible amount of fighting on their part that has deeply scarred me and my brothers (more on that later). On the other hand, as much as I'd love her to come live with me, I don't think I could live with myself if I asked her to quite gradschool and sacrifice what she wants to do. I want us to be equals. I also have to admit it's been very hard for me to think about moving far away from my family because my parents still fight like crazy and this really tramatizes my youngest brother. The idea of abandoning him to that while he's still young is something that's hard to bear. I've been told its not something I should concern myself with but I'm the oldest and it's my job to protect the kid.

 

Anyway, so I was very hard on myself when she called and didn't let her forgive me. She took this to mean that I'd never intended for us to move in together and that I was decieving her for over a year to keep her in the relationship (not true). She hung up apparently feeling totally used. Before she hung up though, she said that I'd never really made her happy and I would never find someone who loved me as much as she did. I found this kind of odd since it's hard to imagine her loving me if I never make her happy. I'd be tempted to dismiss this as just something said in the moment but, being the stuborn woman she is (something I usually love about her), I knew that she NEVER takes back anything she says during a fight.

 

Anyway, I didn't want her to end up feeling worthless. I had gotten it into my head that I was bad for her and just wanted to giver her some closure and let her feel that she was right. Instead, I apparently made her feel even worse about herself. So, I e-mailed her the following day, trying to explain what I had said and my real feelings.

 

She called again the next day but things didn't go much better. She told me that she'd "chickened out" about the break-up the last time we talked but I convinced her to stay broken up. I asked her why she had "chickened out" but didn't get a strait answer. She partly said it was because she was worried about me (since I've been so depressed) but I told her I would be fine. I really wanted to know if she was regretting it because sometimes I did make her happy or if it was just out of concern for me. To be honest, I highly suspect the former but I wanted to hear here say that I made her happy (totally childish perhaps). I guess I big problem we've often had is that the picture she paints when she's angry is so bleak that I wonder why she's ever loved me in the first place.

[MalachiX]

Anyway, it she seemed to be asking me to find a way to fix the problem but I didn’t know how. I’m still not sure where my career will take me, I only know that it won’t go anywhere in Ohio. I wanted so much just to say I’d move there and was so tempted but the idea of giving up my dreams coupled with the fear that I could never make her happy was just too much. That conversation ended poorly too.

 

I got depressed again of course and quit the crappy part time job I had (something which was actually really good for me since now I’m at least working in a very menial roll in the film industry down here and getting paid a bit more to boot). Two days later, she called me again and we started talking again. We didn’t talk about our issues or the break up. It was almost just like before wither her discussing typical relationship stuff (food she wanted me to try, the next time she was planning on visiting) and almost everything back to normal. The only difference was that we were no longer saying, “I love you.” At first I thought the talks were just because it was my birthday but they continued for another week and a half. I knew I should broach the issue of where we were at and why she was calling me but I was afraid that would mean that we wouldn’t talk any more and honestly I couldn’t take that. She wasn’t just my girlfriend and lover but my best friend as well and the loss of that as well as too much to bear.

 

Her birthday came up and since she had been so sweet on my birthday I really wanted to do the same. I didn’t know what it meant to the relationship, I just wanted to do something to show her I cared about her even if she didn’t want to be with me anymore. I stayed up late making a birthday video for her (it’s what I do) but she never spoke to me on her birthday and hasn’t since. I called and called with no answer and finally e-mailed. She sent me an incredibly brief e-mail back saying she was very busy since she had to take over the classes of a fellow grad student but there’s been no contact for almost two weeks now.

 

This really hurts. I’m especially frustrated that a day when I thought I could really be there for her as she was for me so often was ruined. Now I don’t know what to do. I obsessively look up her facebook profile and think about her constantly but that’s it.

 

I guess to some extent, the no contact is good since I still don’t know how I feel about the relationship. In some ways, it was crazy it worked as long as it did considering movies are my life and she doesn’t like them and I have no interest in her field. On the other hand, that was part of the charm. We clicked on a more…spiritual level and I was always amazed how much I loved this girl despite how different we were.

 

She’s been there for me in so many ways over the last few years and I feel terrible that I havn’t been able to be there for her in the same way. On the other hand, the birthday thing and other issues sometimes make me think she hasn’t let me be there for her like she has for me. I no doubt havn’t put as much into the relationship as she has but it also feels like all the times I have killed myself over it, it hasn’t meant much to her. All the times I’ve cancelled plans with friends and family or times when I even re-aranged my work schedual just so I could be there for her phone call when she got done at school and was ready to go to bed seems to count for nothing. All the times I avoided opportunities because I new they would make it impossible for us to be together don’t seem to mean much I either. I don’t know if I’m just trying to rationalize the fact that I’m a self absorbed jerk of if there’s something there. Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I’m incredibly selfish though so I’m willing to take that on faith.

[MalachiX]

I don’t know what I want to do. Being out of the relationship has allowed me to re-focus my goals but, at the same time, even without it there’s a huge chance I won’t succeed. It’s an incredibly hard field I’m trying to break into and only one in a thousand make it. The idea of giving up the best thing in my life for a dream doomed to failure is kind of hard to stomache. On the other hand, I’m only 24 and it seems like if this is the last chance I have to go for broke in this field before I give up on my dream and try for more realistic goals. I constantly fantasize about becoming a big success after a few years and going back to find my girl afterwards and letting her have the relationship on her terms but I know this is a fantasy and nothing more.

 

It seems like either option sucks. That I could end up being an old man living with this girl and blaming for his failed dreams or end up a old man, having once again failed at his dreams and blaming himself for the one he let get away. Jesus, I feel old right now! I have for a while actually.

 

I speak about this like I have a choice when perhaps I don’t. I don’t know if her decision to break contact on her birthday means it’s over for good and I’m simply torturing myself for now reason. On the other hand, I was in love with this girl for over two years so I don’t think I’d be human if I didn’t toss and turn over this for a while.

 

Thanks for anyone who actually had the strength to get through my several pages of ramblings (something that used to drive my ex nuts). If anyone has any advice or useful points of view, I’d love to hear them.

[sedgwick]

Whoa...I didn't make it through all of that (I mean, I made it through the original post, but not all of the subsequent posts.) There are two things I have to say:

 

1. You have to decide if you want to be with her or not. If you do, you have to take steps toward building up the relationship and building up your own personal life.

 

2. I have an MFA from an art school in Ohio where I studied film. Made several films while there. One of them got me to NYC. Now I'm here and I'm getting ready to go back to Ohio to shoot a film in two months. Before I lived in Ohio, I was in Arkansas, where I grew up. I spent my life there carrying a Super 8 camera around with me. I was in Arkansas when I made my first film and wrote my first book. Now I live in NYC and I make films, write books (have a major publisher and also a cinematographer from NYU Tisch with whom I am currently collaborating), and bellydance (in a regularly-performing company.) Everything I'm doing now in NYC I was doing before in Arkansas and Ohio.

 

Unless you have already gone to film school and have a few short films to your name, there is PLENTY you can do between Louisiana and NYC or LA. Just coming to NYC with no experience and wanting to be a filmmaker will get you nowhere. It's EXTREMELY competitive here and you need to have as many credentials as you can before you arrive. You also have to be willing to bust your ass day and night and be broke for years. The upside of all this is that if you're willing to do that, and you have the talent, you'll make it. It's just a matter of time. I lived here for 8 years before I sold my book, and for five of those years I was working on the proposal like a slave. But eventually I sold it. And now, having the book to my name, I have been able to get a very talented cinematographer to work with me, and my literary agency is accepting donations in my name for the film. They are also very keen on my writing a companion book. I moved here in '99, and it was in '06 that all this finally started to happen. Oh, and I'm still poor.

 

It just seems that you have two separate issues here: the girl and the career. Don't mix the two together. Follow your passion, throw yourself completely into it, and if the relationship is meant to happen, it will. It might be that she'd be willing to move with you to a more filmcentric location if she saw that you were really serious and working hard. That's attractive, you know.

Edited March 6, 2008 by sedgwick