Addictive relationship and infatuation - how to get out?

[ophelian dreams]

I basically need help coming to terms with the rather unhealthy, almost addictive relationship I have been in for the past two years.

 

There has always been an imbalance between how much I emotionally invested in the relationship, and how little I got out of it. He has always been - and probably always will be - emotionally unavailable, unable to completely open up, and scared of commitment. No matter how close we got, there was always a feeling he was holding met at arm's length. And he treated me horribly, a lot of times. He stringed me along by saying he wants a relationship, but didn't feel ready for it now, and by refusing to, once and for all, settle for friendship. At one point he didn't know whether he still loved me, but then he said he still did, after which he said he wasn't someone who has sure of his feelings anyway, after which he again said he felt in love with me. Also, there has always been another girl, whom he wasn't intimate with, but whom he had feelings for anyway. He wouldn't talk straight with either of us about where our relationship is heading. He used me as a shoulder to cry on when things went really rough for him (and I was more than happy to help him), but fled from me whenever I had issues in my life and needed someone to talk.

 

All this left me feel more than insecure. Although I tried my best to hide it from him, and managed to do so, I was jealous, panicky, out of control. I stayed up a whole night without sleep because he said he would call me late in the evening, or because that was his sleep rhythm at the time. I mistrusted him, was paranoid about where he was and who he was with when he wasn't around. I neglected every other person in my life. When talking to him, I forgot everything around me, which started having negative impact on my university work. I grew depressive, unable to get out of bed for days in a row, lost interest in everything that was important to me. All I thought about was him. And the fact that our relationship was not exactly what I want or expect made me even more sad. I tried to end it several times, but always ended up back with him. Don't get me wrong - I wasn't clingy, or obsessively contacting or pressuring him. I mostly kept this to myself, and he didn't know much about how bad I felt. I was too scared to make a mistake or to push him away. He knew I felt bad about our situation though.

 

Before, I have never felt as attracted to a person, intellectually, emotionally, physically. I have always been strangely fascinated by him. He has so many negative sites which I don't like, and actually can't accept (his values, his habits of taking drugs, his politically extreme views), nevertheless, I idealised him to no end. I guess I projected something onto him, but yeah, how do you stop? But before, I haven't been such a fool for anybody either. No matter how much I loved my boyfriends, I always thought that I had to be happy with my me as a person and with my life on my own, regardless of others. Now, it felt as though my whole life, sanity and happiness depended on one single person, one single relationship, a relationship which I knew wasn't gonna work out anyway.

 

Having read a bit on forums like these, I believe what I felt and feel for him is more infatuation than love - all this insecurity and acting like a madman is not what love is all about, and it doesn't feel good at all either. Also, rationally, I know that he is not "the right one" or the person I've always dreamed about, and I know that I expect different things from a relationship than he does. But my feelings tend to always defeat my thoughts.

 

I have the suspicion that I act so insane about him because somehow, he reminds me of my father. I have always had a horrible relationship with my father, because he neglected me as a child and to this day has failed to pay any attention to or grow interest in me, and what I'm doing. My father and him are immigrants from the same country, have gone through the same problems in their childhood, and have had the same difficult biography. I never really associated him with my father but when, a few months ago, he showed me some photographs of his childhood, I immediately felt fascinated yet disgusted because this reminded me so much of pictures of my father. This might be stupid, but it was an idea I got.

 

So about two weeks ago, I decided to end it. There were certain events leading to it, but I don't want to go into too much detail. I refused to go NC though, as I didn't feel ready for it. I suspected (and still do) that I would feel bitter and hold a grudge against him if there was a clean cut - I preferred to slowly wean myself from him and work on getting over him anyway. I have already made the first step - namely to realise all this and decide that I don't want it. I'm still hurting, and I still grow all weak in my knees thinking about him. Since I ended it, he has been really really sad, apologising, admitting that his behaviour was cruel. He asked me if we couldn't try to talk about it, and work on it. I'm not sure if I should, and want to it.

 

What do you think is the best way to go about this? Should I continue evaluating everything and trying to get over it while still being in touch with him? Should I establish NC? Should I give him a chance? But I'm scared that I'm just again being fooled by my emotions, and that nothing at all will change.

 

I know this is a rather long post, but I didn't really know where to shorten it. Any advice, insight, comment, will be appreciated.

[dhcp]

First of all, you write really well and articulate yourself nicely.

 

It's hard to pass judgement without knowing all the nuances of the relationship, I'm going through something similar in ways, breaking things off with someone (4 years) that I can provide a laundry list of reasons that they are a bad person or don't align with my future desires, yet I'm still drawn to them, perhaps out of habit. The idea that they are currently spending time with someone else is driving me up the wall and giving me major anxiety.

 

The only thing I can suggest in the NC thing. I'm trying to do it myself and holy crap, it's really difficult. The reason why I determined it was the right thing for me is something I heard you say - because I thought that the NC _shouldn't_ apply to me, that somehow weaning myself off of her like a smoker trying to quit would somehow soften the pain.

 

The reality is that keeping any sort of contact it's just keeping my foot in the proverbial door and I'm rationalizing the need to keep any contact at all and like most of us, I'm good at rationalizing my own behavior when such emotions are involved in a connection with someone important to me is at stake, which sounds the same with you.

 

If you really want to break that cycle and it sounds like you do, NC is going to be the only way to do it. I've been struggling with it for a few weeks and admittedly have sent a few random texts out that thankfully went unanswered, likely seeking any sign of life or connection to keep that wound open, but the best thing to do is to just freaking stop all contact. The forums here are an excellent source of distraction when you are thinking about reaching out and you can spend hours reading about the plight of others and their struggles with NC - sometimes knowing that you aren't the only one suffering makes things just a hair better and more tolerable.

 

Eventually you make it through the day and to bed at night and tomorrow is a whole new day and you are in slightly better shape than you were the day prior and you just have to string days together like that until you start to realize that you have made some progress, which will help you keep yourself together during some darker moments.

Edited November 25, 2012 by dhcp

[Exit]

I knew I'd relate to this situation the second I read the thread title. And sure enough, it was like reading about my past relationship, expect with the gender roles reversed. Totally idealizing someone and projecting what I wanted her to be instead of seeing the reality of her as a person, letting her become my absolute entire world, etc. Except I never found the strength to ever be the one to attempt breaking it off.

 

First, your theory about being drawn to him because of certain parallels to your father is not all that crazy. As a matter of fact, I've heard of situations like that quite often. Whether or not the parental relationship was good or bad, girls can gravitate towards father figures, and we've all certainly heard of guys who want to date a replica of their mother. Even putting aside the parental aspect of it, I have heard before that we can become drawn to people who are not good matches for us because they can either represent an issue we had with someone in our past that we never managed to settle, or even an issue within ourselves that requires an external influence to work against. And despite how disastrous these types of relationships can be, some people can be drawn to the same type of person over and over again until they finally learn whatever lesson it is they need to figure out.

 

Everything you wrote made sense to me, but then I got to the part about your reasoning for not going full NC, and let me just be honest, it struck me like one big excuse. Especially in your case, here you are choosing to title your entire post "ADDICTIVE RELATIONSHIP AND INFATUATION", and then you go on to attempt to justify why full NC didn't seem appropriate to you? That seems contradictory to me. I think you've managed to justify it to yourself and dress it up under the nice excuse that you need to "wean yourself off" of being involved with him. Not all that different from how you would see an alcoholic insist that they will have a better chance of sobering up if you just let them have a few beers for the time being. You are making excuses to let your addiction continue. You put all the time, effort, thought, and courage into finally telling him you were done with this, but you let all of that work fizzle out and fade away when you didn't insist on going full NC.

 

The only thing I ever ask people when it comes to something that might justify reconsidering their decision, is whether or not you made your problems with the relationship known to your partner ahead of time, in clear terms, not with subtle hints or body language, and did you give them an opportunity to try to fix it. Basically, how much effort did you put into communicating with him before finally pulling the plug on this. Too many people storm out of relationships without ever having communicated how unhappy they were and without giving the other person a chance to do anything about it. Not to generalize, but in my experience is has most often been women who will end a relationship, and in the process of the breakup, suddenly they have no problem detailing every little thing that bothered them about the relationship for the past few years, yet they never bothered to mention any of that before.

 

If you feel that you can say he knew what bothered you about this relationship and he knowingly had the information and the opportunity that he needed to improve it, and he didn't, then there's no point in reconsidering. Everyone can offer a sincere apology and a request to try again after they've been dumped, because they finally see that there are real consequences to them not trying harder. But you don't need to be with someone who didn't care to make an effort until they realized you were finally kicking them to the curb.

 

And the key here is to be honest with yourself about whether or not you did make him aware that you were unhappy. Because I see the addiction still has a hold on you with the way you defended not going full NC. So now I'm asking you this question in relation to whether or not you should think things over, and it would be all too easy for you to say "hmm, yeah, maybe I didn't communicate and I didn't give him a chance to fix things". Don't use the same loopholes and false logic that you used to justify not going NC. You know whether or not he could have tried harder before the breakup. Be honest about it and don't try to create a reason to go back to him if there isn't one. Again it would be like an alcoholic saying "gee, do I really need to quit cold turkey, or couldn't I just give my addiction a good talking-to and hope that it will be better this time and make sure I limit it to only a few drinks on the weekends". If you know you already tried everything else, then you do need to leave the door closed this time and move forward.

 

I think you've done a good job with identifying this relationship for what it really was. It was some type of toxic infatuation or a relationship with addictive qualities to it, and not truly based in love. And once you thought these things through, you decided it was best to leave it behind. But like walking away from any addiction, you can wake up the next day and think "do I really want to be doing this? Maybe I should go back". That's the addiction talking again, not the logical mind that you used to choose to leave in the first place. So I think you just need to remind yourself that any second thoughts you might be having are coming from the same place where the unhealthy infatuation was rooted in the first place. And I think you need to realize that your justification for not going full NC is another excuse in disguise to not fully sever ties with your addiction.

 

You left out a key bit of information when you said you weren't going into detail about what finally made you end it 2 weeks ago. That's perfectly fine to keep some of this information private, but if we knew for sure what that final breaking point was, we might be able to give you an even clearer idea if you've made the right decision. Maybe it doesn't matter what exactly happened, the point is again that at some point your logical mind won out over this addiction and infatuation, and any second thoughts you're having now are just trying to pull you back in. Something made you upset enough to finally end it. And you don't sound like you acted impulsively and made a split-second decision to end this without giving it any rational thought. It sounds like you were thinking this over for a long time and finally got the last piece of evidence you needed.

Edited November 26, 2012 by Exit

[dhcp]

 

I think you've done a good job with identifying this relationship for what it really was. It was some type of toxic infatuation or a relationship with addictive qualities to it, and not truly based in love. And once you thought these things through, you decided it was best to leave it behind. But like walking away from any addiction, you can wake up the next day and think "do I really want to be doing this? Maybe I should go back". That's the addiction talking again, not the logical mind that you used to choose to leave in the first place. So I think you just need to remind yourself that any second thoughts you might be having are coming from the same place where the unhealthy infatuation was rooted in the first place. And I think you need to realize that your justification for not going full NC is another excuse in disguise to not fully sever ties with your addiction.

 

This is an excellent point and excellent advice. We all like to think we have a good grasp of ourselves and are somewhat in control, but being able to step outside yourself and recognize that those feelings or rationalizations are the addiction speaking and not rational thought is the real challenge and the real key towards getting better. I don't say this from some superior standpoint, I say it from someone that went through the exact same thing.

 

I also found another clue was that when I was downplaying some of the things she had did to me when talking to others as I didn't want to "taint" them even it was the truth, it was the "addiction" talking and trying to protect itself and prevent people from telling me I was crazy to stay with her.

 

Nobody likes to hear the suggestions they don't want to hear. Especially if deep down you know they are true.

[ophelian dreams]

First of all, thanks to both of you for your honest advice, it's greatly appreciated. I have been deliberating things the past few days, in order to know where my head is and where my thoughts are.

 

You are right about the no contact bit. Rereading my post, I had to laugh at how all my reasoning seemed to collapse when it got to that part - I sound like a junky, it's true. I was making excuses, and I guess deep down, I always knew that the only way to solve this problem is turn away and cut him out of my life, completely. That is the only way to get a clean cut and to no longer let it consume me.

The problem I have with NC, still, is just that I'm not sure whether it will solve this problem, rather than just cast it to the background. Can I fight feelings like anger and resentment with NC? I don't want to end up feeling bitter about him, or holding grudges against him, or wanting revenge - even if I only notice this feelings once I am reminded of him. I'd rather manage to feel indifferent about him. Is that impossible? And I am feeling angry. Even when I distract my mind the whole day, I can feel the anger inside me like a virus or something.

Edit: You know, I am just scared that with NC, my image of him will never be demystified. Although I know better and no matter how much I know that I am being deceived by my emotions, I still catch myself thinking of him as the most attractive person to have walked this earth. I just want to completely destroy this image, not only in my head, but with all my senses, and see him for what he is. Will NC do the trick? I have heard so many stories about people who still think nothing compares to their ex, no matter how horrible they were, and no matter how long ago it was. I don't want to end up like that.

 

Did I give him enough chance? I think so. I had more than one conversation with him about my feelings and his behaviour, and each time, he promised he would change, and each time, he didn't. I behaved foolish most of the times, as I forgave him everything without further thinking. When it got rough and his behaviour was unbearable again, I reminded him that he promised me he would try to watch out for it and change. His answer most of the times was, "Well, I am like that. I am an *******, and I won't change. I'm sorry". I was by no means a drama queen, or pushy, or clingy. I swallowed most of my anger down, and, as I said before, forgave him each and every time again, without even complaining much.

 

The beginning of the end was when, as I said, he did something he knew would break my trust, and knew would hurt me deeply, but did anyway. It's not the thing as such that made me leave - rather his behaviour afterwards. The thing he did was horrible, and that's not a matter of viewpoint or debate, as he agreed, admitted it and apologized. I basically told him then that I accepted his apology, but that my trust was broken, and that I felt estranged from him. He asked if he could fix this in any way, I said I didn't know, and he said he would try. After that, things turned bad for him - his mother died, whom he hadn't had a good relationship with. He was broken, and I told him I'd be there for him, and that he didn't need to worry about anything else for now. And I was there for him, and supported him, cheered him up, listened to him.

 

After the worst was over, we decided to continue our conversation - and out of the blue, he told me the troubles between us were putting him off. It was "too much drama" for him, and that wasn't "how things should be". And suddenly, it was all about him, not about me. The fact that he was the one who hurt me, and that he was the one who lost my trust didn't seem to matter anymore. This was what really made me realize it's better to leave. It was the first time that he needed to show some effort, that he needed to deal with my problems. And it was too much for him. I truthfully feel like this has shown me how much I am worth to him. He denies that, and says he just doesn't know it better.

 

I'm not sure whether all of this made sense, because I still haven't been able to get a clear head. I do think I am through with it - I doubt giving it another chance would do any good. Too many things would need to change, not only about him, or his behaviour, but also about the whole situation (for example the other girl). I guess he was just the wrong person, for me. Somehow I always knew that, that's why I (as I suspect) was and am suffering from infatuation, not love.

 

How do I go about this though? I haven't spoken to him in 5 days. 7 days ago, I told him he would need to give me some time to think things through, and that I would appreciate it if he didn't contact me until I have. He acted a bit panicky about it, and contacted me the next day, but I didn't reply - and still haven't. Should I write him and explain that I am moving on for good? Should I do nothing?

Edited December 2, 2012 by ophelian dreams

[pitseleh]

I think you already know that it’s over, and that you can’t give him another chance. It seems like he not only doesn’t care as much as you (meaning he’s unwilling to make the same effort) but you’re also holding on to hope that he still cares, thinking he will eventually wake up and be willing to put forth the same effort. (For instance, you described him as panicky that you weren’t responding to him—it seems like you’re thinking, ‘hey, if he’s upset about it, that’s a good sign!’ but that’s how someone is going to react no matter what when they think they’re about to lose a person that provides them comfort. Don’t read too much into it. It’s not a reason to contact him.)

 

 

No contact WILL demystify him, trust me. I had the exact same irrational fears before I started no contact and it’s just you trying to put off doing what you know is the right thing to do. You’re scared to face all the pain, fear, anger, what have you, that you will face alone during NC. Yeah, you’ll have a lot of time in your head to think about stuff, and you won’t have him as an option to throw out all of your thoughts and confusions at, but that’s a GOOD THING. In no way will NC keep you attached like you think it will. Talking to him, seeing him, allowing his thoughts and what he says to skew your perspective---that’s a bad idea. Because like you said, you’re infatuated, so you’ll take what he said a lot more seriously than you should and you’ll value his opinion even if you know it’s a ****ty one, lol. NC means you are taking the time to figure out how YOU feel about things without having him influence what you think or feel. And after being in a dependent infatuated relationship, I’m sure the idea of figuring out how you feel without worrying about what he thinks/feels is a scary concept, because it’s not something you’re used to doing. You were always placing too much information on how he thinks or what he wants. Giving yourself this space and time is the only way to get over it! I say this as someone who got dumped 2 months ago and just initiated NC a week ago. This has been the healthiest week I’ve had thus far, because I’m finally giving myself the space and distance from him to get my head on straight. It’s the only way you’ll see him “for what he really is”, trust me. And the people who still think their ex is “the one”, or “they’ll never find anyone else”? Are probably the people who haven’t fully let go and decided they want to move on. You seem so close to that moving on stage. Embrace it, and initiate NC. You can inform him of your decision or just inact it without telling him, but either way, you gotta do it girl.

 

 

Good luck, and let me know how everything goes.