Anyone Else Had This?

[TheUnthoughtKnown]

I finished work to be greeted by my gf, who was in the area to meet a friend of hers going through a rough patch with a girl he was madly in love with. I agreed to join them for a few drinks and offer a perspective.

 

The next three hours were something of a revelation.

 

He was crazy about this girl, his "best friend", whom had been sending him severe mixed signals. I won't go into details as that's not the point. The point is his story mimicked my own! It was almost exact, detail for detail. I saw him making the same mistakes I made some two odd years ago, mistakes I made which led me to this site. I tried to talk sense into him, explain that he was seeing things through enamoured eyes, that it wasn't as romantic as he made it sound. He said I didn't understand.

 

It was frustrating, believe me. I couldn't make him see he was chasing a woman who was leading him on because she wanted his attention. Just as my friends couldn't make me see.

 

I believed my own situation was different to everyone else's, because it was love, a love no one could understand because she and I alone shared in it.

 

These things we deal with are universal. How do we make them so personal, so isolated and insular. We turn these comparatively little things and make them the centre of our existence.

 

If my gf's friend can go through exactly what I did, it means anyone can. And suddenly I'm not alone. If only I could have realised this 2 years ago when it mattered. I wish I could go back in time and tell that fool to stop acting so self important.

[gamman]

Yes. It's amazing when/if you're able to step back and look at yourself and own situation at a distance or when your able to see yourself in other's situations -- usually how crazy you were. Almost like an "Oh my God!" moment. The sky opens up. Your eyes get bigger. Time stops for a moment. HaHa!

 

I have a good friend who would always say, "You can't see the picture when you're hanging in the frame."

 

Think about that. When you're acting crazy, you don't realize your acting crazy. When your involved in a crazy situation it's hard to see until you're able to let at yourself from outside of it. When your caught up in something it's so hard to look at it honestly and you don't even realize it.

 

So many different ways to describe it, but it's really all the same -- You can't see the picture when you're hanging in the frame.

 

And yes, everyone's story is pretty much all the same -- like almost ridiculously so. The same thing over and over.. But, they each belong to a different person. I kind of think of it as being uniquely the same.

[Exit]

Yeah, definitely true. I had to have this revelation for myself a while ago. I remember the times I used to come to this site and hated the advice everyone gave me. Same with family and friends, I just felt like nobody understood. Now I understand how brainwashed you are when you're the one involved in the situation. It is frustrating to try to give other people advice, because I know they're stuck in that same tunnel vision, and all you can do is try to state the truth over and over until eventually they are ready to hear it.

[River Rain]

These things we deal with are universal. How do we make them so personal, so isolated and insular. We turn these comparatively little things and make them the centre of our existence.

 

 

Because of our emotional involvement. Yes, they are universal and happen to everyone, but we are all unique and affairs of the heart more likely than not outweigh logic and reason.

 

Hindsight is wonderful and I personally have learned a lot about myself from the last breakup. But I guess each of us has to learn from our own mistakes. Even here on this forum, we all give advice to each other, but who knows if the advice is even heeded? Sometimes we have to go through hell in order to see things more clearly and not make the same mistake the second time around.

[TheUnthoughtKnown]

Because of our emotional involvement. Yes, they are universal and happen to everyone, but we are all unique and affairs of the heart more likely than not outweigh logic and reason.

 

Hindsight is wonderful and I personally have learned a lot about myself from the last breakup. But I guess each of us has to learn from our own mistakes. Even here on this forum, we all give advice to each other, but who knows if the advice is even heeded? Sometimes we have to go through hell in order to see things more clearly and not make the same mistake the second time around.

 

I suppose it's like anything else - we learn from our own mistakes as opposed to others. If we could go back in time and tell our younger selves exactly where they would go wrong and how to fix it, they probably wouldn't listen anyway. It's just amazing how deeply personal it feels to go through a break up, despite it being done every single day by someone, somewhere. If we, when coping, could take our minds away from the personal things and look at the bigger picture, maybe we'd deal with it better. Who knows?

[River Rain]

I suppose it's like anything else - we learn from our own mistakes as opposed to others. If we could go back in time and tell our younger selves exactly where they would go wrong and how to fix it, they probably wouldn't listen anyway. It's just amazing how deeply personal it feels to go through a break up, despite it being done every single day by someone, somewhere. If we, when coping, could take our minds away from the personal things and look at the bigger picture, maybe we'd deal with it better. Who knows?

 

Yeah, but that's the thing, it is personal because it's between two people. Eventually we see the bigger picture though, I mean, I have, but it took a little time!

[Exit]

I suppose it's like anything else - we learn from our own mistakes as opposed to others.

 

Yeah, that's a major part of it right there. We don't want to believe that certain things are true until we actually get burned ourselves. Then the lesson is impossible to avoid.