Mack05 Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 (edited) I think that's often the case, but I don't think the statistic is that high. I had one ex break up with me, and then I heard through a mutual acquaintance that he spent the rest of the summer posting facebook statuses saying how lonely he was. That really cut me up. I would actually prefer my exes left me for someone else than leave because being with me was so uninspiring they'd rather be alone. As it stands, the trend for me every time is: 1. Someone meets me, tells me how lonely and miserable their life has been. 2. We get together, they're crazy about me, don't know how they'd ever live without me. 3. Their feelings evaporate at some point, and they go back to being single for a while. Maybe enter a new relationship 1-3 months down the track. And to be honest, a couple times I've had feelings disappear as well. There was no one else. I may have taken advantage of my feelings disappearing and the ensuing break up to try something with someone else fairly soon afterwards, but that definitely wasn't the catalyst. I do think a lot of the time feelings just die. Nothing more, nothing less. We all want to project the cause onto "factors" - other men/women, G.I.G.S, etc. but sometimes they're just not there. Good Post. I think nearly every relationship I have been in since I was 18, I focused on the girl's issues post breakup. It's easier to project the cause onto "factors" then accept the fact her feelings have gone or more importantly focus on your own faults and failings. Focusing on your ex 'seems' the easier way to move on but it's not the best way. I have seen so many posts on this site like 1) "Why did he/she not give me closure" 2) "How can their feelings go so quickly" 3) "How can they move on so quickly" 4) "Why did he/she treat me so badly" etc etc etc. The main point here is it doesnt matter. If you focus on the other person, that can turn to obsession which means you are stuck in a rut for the longest time, while your ex moves on with your life. Eventually you come out of the rut but you haven't actually learnt anything, except that your ex is a moron. Here (post breakup) is where you should be focusing on yourself (physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually). Go over the relationship but don't analyze your ex's faults. Analyze your own faults and mistakes. Work on them to ensure you never make them again. Sure it's natural for anger and other emotions to come and go. That's ok. Feel them and when the time is right forgive your ex and move on. That is the healthy way of moving on. Is it easy??, F@£$$ no!!..But if you want to improve yourself as a partner and attract the right people going forward that is what you must do. Otherwise you will find relationships not much different from previous one's.. Time to break the vicious cycle. Focus on you, not him/her.. Edited July 1, 2011 by Mack05
Leftie88 Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 Good Post. I think nearly every relationship I have been in since I was 18, I focused on the girl's issues post breakup. It's easier to project the cause onto "factors" then accept the fact her feelings have gone or more importantly focus on your own faults and failings. Focusing on your ex 'seems' the easier way to move on but it's not the best way. I have seen so many posts on this site like 1) "Why did he/she not give me closure" 2) "How can their feelings go so quickly" 3) "How can they move on so quickly" 4) "Why did he/she treat me so badly" etc etc etc. The main point here is it doesnt matter. If you focus on the other person, that can turn to obsession which means you are stuck in a rut for the longest time, while your ex moves on with your life. Eventually you come out of the rut but you haven't actually learnt anything, except that your ex is a moron. Here (post breakup) is where you should be focusing on yourself (physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually). Go over the relationship but don't analyze your ex's faults. Analyze your own faults and mistakes. Work on them to ensure you never make them again. Sure it's natural for anger and other emotions to come and go. That's ok. Feel them and when the time is right forgive your ex and move on. That is the healthy way of moving on. Is it easy??, F@£$$ no!!..But if you want to improve yourself as a partner and attract the right people going forward that is what you must do. Otherwise you will find relationships not much different from previous one's.. Time to break the vicious cycle. Focus on you, not him/her.. Agreed to a large extent and thats the stage i hope i reach very soon. But sometimes if you don't know what went wrong and why that person's feelings for you stopped, how can you identify what you did wrong and grow from it? I think subconsciously we all know our parts in the break up but we can only assume what we did wrong? For me its the biggest BS excuse, that feelings fade away, just one day you wake up and you realise its not the same.. there has to be a reason. If they did fade, why didnt that person communicate them at the time otherwise a) we could try to improve it or b) we could have got out of the relationship faster. But like you said... its frickin hard but we get there.
Mack05 Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 Agreed to a large extent and thats the stage i hope i reach very soon. But sometimes if you don't know what went wrong and why that person's feelings for you stopped, how can you identify what you did wrong and grow from it? I think subconsciously we all know our parts in the break up but we can only assume what we did wrong? For me its the biggest BS excuse, that feelings fade away, just one day you wake up and you realise its not the same.. there has to be a reason. If they did fade, why didnt that person communicate them at the time otherwise a) we could try to improve it or b) we could have got out of the relationship faster. But like you said... its frickin hard but we get there. Good post. I think though, if you look at yourself honestly and objectively you can pinpoint where it went wrong. Ok sometimes some people haven't a clue what happened (and the ex won't let you know truthfully what is was) and those breakups must be very hard to move on from. I agree you can't blame yourself totally and say you are 100% at fault when the relationship fails, because that's simply not true. There are things you can learn from your ex's behaviour that should show up as red flags going forward. There is however only so much time that you should focus on your ex, before bringing things inward towards you. I made the criminal mistake of not learning from previous mistakes in my last relationship. There is no chance of that ever happening again..
Leftie88 Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 For sure! Exactly like you said, looking back there were definitely some red flags there. I think i hung on for closure because i hoped yeh he would go damn i made a mistake, but that hardly ever happens. If anything i've learned what i do not want from my next relationship and when to say enough is enough. And its so important that we focus on ourselves and not them, because at the end of the day when we move on to our next relationship its going to be a new us and the new partner, not us, the new partner and the ex.
radrluv72 Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 (edited) I haven't ever had the true reason arise but I have a question for you just out of curiosity... you've had break ups where the reasons were pretty obvious and now you have this one where you're not sure of the reason. Did you find it easier to move on with the definite answer? or is not knowing easier? I find that in either scenario the dumpee will be asking themselves Why? or if they get an obvious answer would ask How could they do that to me? When the answer is obvious it is far much easier to move on & put the relationship behind you, but the pain of when it happens isn't any less. I've had a multitude of short-term male compainions where things just fizzled out because the chemistry wasn't there or I just wasn't that interested...no major losses there. But I've been in other more serious relationships where I was cheated on, taken for granted or was just incredibly unhappy because the person was just so toxic. But this last one I was in...it's been a real test to get past. I still think about him almost every day at some point, still love him, still want him back...people say that there's no such thing as a breakup happening out of the blue, but what happened to me ...sorry, I don't care what anyone says, it literally hit me like a mack truck. It was his last weekend before he deployment to Afghanistan, we went out that night, had a nice romantic dinnerm downtown, he took me to the Officer's Club for a holiday party, then introduced me to his best friends...we went back to his place that night and later on in bed, he starts telling me that he doesn't want me to wait for him while he's gone for the next 4-6 months because all of a sudden he doesn't know what I am to him, he doesn't know how he feels about me, he didn't think I'd move with him to Texas in 2 years when he's due to be stationed at a new base, he thinks of other girls, I never talk about getting married, he didn't get to see me often enough...I mean, imagine getting slammed with all THAT at once. And literally 2 weeks before, he was telling me that he cared about me, he didn't want to lose me, I made him happy, I made him forget about everything that drove him mad, and even went as far as talking about taking me back to his hometown of Portland when he returned from his deployment, as well as taking me to NYC in the fall because I told him I'd always wanted to go. I've been in NC with him since 12/31/10, although I will admit the occassional cheat. About 5 days before I implemented NC, I blew up at him and ripped him from stem to stern, telling him not to contact me again unless he was willing to have an honest discussion about what was really going on with him. He defriended me on FB, but never blocked me--he actually manipulated his privacy settings so I couldn't see his friends list, but left his wall & messaging public. I would check his wall now & then to see if he was okay while he was overseas. On his birthday, I did send him a quick message to tell him Happy Birthday, but I was very careful not to expect a response...and I didn't get one of course, and that was fine. I just never understood that if he truly wanted nothing to do with me, why didn't he just plain old block me...but that's a whole other thread...lol... The whole thing with not knowing is that depending how how traumatized you are by the breakup, even when you know you did nothing wrong, at some point you start finding ways to blame yourself. I've struggled with it a lot during my 6 months of NC, even after the last time I held an actual conversation with my ex, he told me that I did nothing wrong. Well, if I didn't do anything wrong and I told you that I care enough to wait for you...then why do this to me? Eventually, even after something like what happened to me, you do get to the point where you stop asking why, because you wake up one day and realize just how exhausting it is, and you just want to stop being miserable. My road to getting back to feeling like myself again has been long & hard, but I'm now having more good days than bad. The bottom line for my situation is this: I was a 38 year old woman dating a 24 year old guy, and despite the fact that in so many ways he was beyond his years, he was still 14 years younger than me, insecure, not so confident, was carrying around "hurt" baggage, probably thought that I was too good to be true and didn't trust me enough that I would stay faithful--or just stay--while he was away. I was probably the best thing that happened to him given his prior history of relationships with some pretty screwed-up characters. To this day, I genuinely believe that he cared about me...but I just don't think he knew how to deal with it, got scared, freaked and ran. And as much as I love him & want him back, I'm not holding my breath for a phone call when his plane lands from overseas. His issues are not mine to fix, nor are they anyone else's. And it's when you have that moment of realization and you accept it, the letting go of everything else is much easier to do. Kind of a long-winded answer to your question, but at one point I was so down I honestly never thought I would be the same again after he broke me like he did. I'm happy to be wrong...I just hate that the road back to me was so much more longer this time. Edited July 1, 2011 by radrluv72
Author HeartOfAPhoenix Posted July 1, 2011 Author Posted July 1, 2011 Kind of a long-winded answer to your question, but at one point I was so down I honestly never thought I would be the same again after he broke me like he did. I'm happy to be wrong...I just hate that the road back to me was so much more longer this time. Long winded but I think I understand it better now. I'm not saying I disagree with my original post because most dumpees won't get a true answer when they desire it, But I can see how knowing would make the healing process shorter in a sense.
Wesker Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 Agreed to a large extent and thats the stage i hope i reach very soon. But sometimes if you don't know what went wrong and why that person's feelings for you stopped, how can you identify what you did wrong and grow from it? I think subconsciously we all know our parts in the break up but we can only assume what we did wrong? For me its the biggest BS excuse, that feelings fade away, just one day you wake up and you realise its not the same.. there has to be a reason. If they did fade, why didnt that person communicate them at the time otherwise a) we could try to improve it or b) we could have got out of the relationship faster. But like you said... its frickin hard but we get there. I completely agree. Waking up and all of a sudden their feelings for you are gone is just an excuse for giving up. Obviously must have commitment issues since they rather walk than try and work out the problem. Prolly why the divorce rate is so high too.
radrluv72 Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 Long winded but I think I understand it better now. I'm not saying I disagree with my original post because most dumpees won't get a true answer when they desire it, But I can see how knowing would make the healing process shorter in a sense. Exactly...since every breakup, in reality, are individual scenarios, getting to the point of acceptance can just take longer sometimes...I think some people are so full of flase hope that they truly believe that if they know the reason why they were dumped, then they can use that to try to get the person back. But the bottom line is that making an effort to try to get the reason, let alone get that person back will only push them away further. I did attempt to try to get the real reason 3 weeks after the split, and he just put up a bigger wall. He didn't want to cut ties in communication and he wanted me to keep everything he gave me as "momentos"...but he wasn't willing to give me anything else beyond that. Getting pissed off, letting him have it after trying 3 weeks of being cordial and implementing NC was the best thing I could have done for myself, because then I wasn't allowing myself to ask him why anymore. Being strong enough to create your own boundaries till you're better enough to remove them is a tough thing to do. But I care too much about myself not to have done it, you know?
Recommended Posts