Ex is all over the place - quite long and detailed

[myviolentheart]

My apologies for this being so long but I need to get it all out

 

Okay, so, I have known this guy for 5 years. We met when I was young and naive (I was 17, he was turning 18) and we dated via long distance. It was a lot of hard work and was my first "relationship" so I coped very badly. Safe to say, he was/is the love of my life. We dated for 2 and a half years and we were just about going to make "the move" when SHTF and we broke up.

 

Now, I know why we broke up. I know what caused it, etc. I know that he loved me with so much of his heart and I dragged him down (mostly because of mental health issues that had only just "appeared" then and I took it out on the closest person to me) but the hardest thing right now is understanding him at the moment.

 

So, we split in October 2010 and then we both took a while to date anyone new. I met someone when something awful had happened, my ex found out, and got so mad that he ended up breaking his fist. He was telling me he still loved me more than anything (little did I know, he'd started seeing a girl.. not that I ever wanted to know that, so I never bothered to ask him) and it was difficult. A lot of what contributed to us breaking up was the fact his band went on tour and he wouldn't be able to have a lot of time for me. I mean, he wanted me to be okay with it and that it was only for a few months (and I thought I was.. but my neediness at that point in my life was terrible.) so yeah. We broke up then and then both didn't start "seeing" anyone for a good 4 months after.

 

With my new partner, I thought I had "everything" until I realised one day I didn't. I had NC with my ex and I thought I was doing okay until I realised, well, I wasn't. I wound up hurting my most recent partner because a) we moved in together terribly soon and b) I still held most of my heart for the ex I'm talking about. Me and this ex had been texting, that boyfriend found out, lost it, and I spent the next year and a bit trying to live through hell to make it up to him. By the end of our relationship he had done things such as a) made me lose a job which had the potential to set me up very well, b) ridiculed me in front of people including my family, c) put me down and would I say I'd "constantly disappoint" him, etc. So, you can see why we broke up.

 

The only time I managed to kick him to the curb, so to speak, was when my ex had come back in my life. We had a good, long chat about what my current boyfriend was doing and he made me see. It wasn't because he was my ex, it was because he was the person who knew me best, and had been in a similar situation. It's hard because that first ex never put me down, never made me feel like **** at all. During our relationship the only thing that made me feel that way was me constantly going "you're not good enough for him/you should just kill yourself so he can find someone better, etc", and this took such a toll on our relationship.

 

Now, my first ex I am writing about and I hadn't spoken for months and months and months after that incident. I switched off my phone and never spoke to him again until one day I turned it on and I had a text from him. It just said "Miss you xx" and that's that. So, I couldn't take it, and e-mailed him. I was quite vague about what was going on because I didn't want him to think I'd completely moved on. We spoke as distant friends, which was weird, and then things faded (he was wanting me to text him and at that point I couldn't, the most recent ex would check everything I did, etc) and so I got a new cellphone number for another phone I had. Around the "end of" the relationship with my most recent ex, I text the first one and said I'd gotten a new number. No response. I freaked out. I e-mailed him with my number and how I hadn't heard from him.. no response.. until later that night. He'd put his phone through the wash and had to use another one and didn't get my texts. Naturally I was relieved.. and sort of shocked, because he never bothered to keep in contact with his other ex's.

 

So, I was a little bit cautious and we text each other at least once a day (I used to hide my phone for fear of my boyfriend at the time finding it) and my first ex was always sad when he would miss my texts by a couple of minutes (cause I'd only use my phone while my partner was at work). After my birthday, I got a new computer and started talking to my ex nearly every day after he'd finish work, and we got really close. It was odd because we would do everything we used to.. you know, watch movies, tv shows, etc together. He did it because he "loved doing it with me" and that nobody else liked what he did. We not only talked all the time online but would text for hours after we got off from talking. He'd text me until the late hours in the morning even if he'd get only a few hours of sleep. It wasn't just how are you type texts, more like, exactly what we'd say if we were dating but intensified. It wasn't just "you're cute" it was more like him telling me how gorgeous I am, how attracted he is to me, things he'd do, etc, even dirty texting.. which was odd at first because we'd just gone from nothing to being INCREDIBLY close to each other, and he didn't mind in the slightest. It wasn't all, you know, about sexy texting/how good looking I was, but he also about how he cares about me/how I mean so much to him. Everything just got so much "worse" after a text he sent me on my birthday saying that he wanted me to have an amazing birthday because I was amazing with some kisses. It just was too much.

 

We're still talking like this to this day (nearly 2 months later) but it's becoming increasingly confusing. I discovered that he has a girlfriend (without him telling me, we sort of had this "don't tell me about your relationships" type thing going on, until he dragged it out of me about mine) last week and I just sort of lost it. He was very busy one day and I sent him a message saying I was so confused/upset about something that I had a panic attack and needed his help, so he got online because he was concerned and I said to him how I had a situation with 2 "friends" that I knew. Friend A lied about something to friend B and things like I wish A would see how B really feels about him, like she'd do anything for him. A couple of days after that, he ends up feeling like **** and I ask "why?" and he says about how confused he is, about how people are effecting him, and he doesn't know how to deal with it. Now, he usually talks to me about EVERYTHING but this.. and I couldn't get it out of him. But I did manage to stay up all night (until about 5am) talking to him about how I wasn't going to leave unless he wanted me to and that he was super important to me, etc, pretty much confessing that I still loved him without saying "I still love you", like, "your happiness is the most important thing to me" and when he said "you don't need to deal with this ****, I am so sorry" I just told him how even if he felt like everyone was leaving and things were falling apart that he'd have me and I wasn't going anywhere. I know I'm not going anywhere because he needs someone who can understand him.

 

Now, I don't know what's going on with his girlfriend, but I have this "feeling" it's not going very well. It was the same feeling that told me "he has a girlfriend" even when he'd never spoken anything like that, and after some research, I was right. I don't know if I'm the cause of it but I know when I had my most recent partner, that even though he loved me so much and we were "happy", that nothing took away what I felt for my ex. Even after finding out my ex is "cheating", I guess, on his girlfriend with me.. I haven't fallen out of love. Sure, what he's doing is bad, sure, it's nice for me and sucks for her, but there's just something I cannot shake about this situation.

 

Me and this ex are INCREDIBLY alike. We have the same taste in everything (movies/music/tv shows), same humour, we react the same to everything, similar backgrounds, we both have the same morals/values in life, etc. Just everything is so much the same. We even look a like in a lot of ways.

 

The way he's reacted to things with my most recent ex (I had to have police here and so scared, the first ex was so stressed/worried about me and he ended up being in such an awful mood until we spoke and I managed to cheer him up.. he didn't admit it until we were texting in bed about how much it actually effected him) says something but I don't know if the way I am thinking is just because of how I feel. I know the heart shows what it wants to show but right now.. I don't know.. I feel like I'm right about something in this situation.

 

He's not the type of person to open up/keeps themselves very guarded. It took him a few months after I told him I was in love with him for him to say it back to me and even then he rarely said it, until after a while and he would just say it all the time. He hates showing he's vulnerable and being in a position of rejection which is what my hunch is about this whole situation. Because, he acts SO MUCH like what he did while we were dating (apart from saying I love you) and it's just confused the hell out of me. I have asked the universe for signs about if I'm doing the right thing in terms of what's happening with him and they are pointing to yes. I also know that he is the type to stick with someone who treats him like crap out of needing love/having affection given to them (prior to me, his ex spent 3 years with him and she did nothing but hurt him but he stuck around) so it's like I have this feeling with his current girlfriend maybe that's happening.

 

Now, I get he is "a guy" but just in what he's said to me makes me think otherwise. He told me that if his attraction to me was just sex it "wouldn't be like this" in which he means so strongly. I am the exact same way with him. He knows that I am so attracted to him because of how gorgeous I think he is - inside and out - and he said it's what he thinks of me/feels about me. He sends text upon text of this nice stuff and I reciprocate the feelings; you name it and he's probably said it some point in the time we've known each other, even now. I think when the two of us dated it was a bit different because we fell in love so hard and we both grew up/he seems really cautious about things between us. Like I said, he's afraid of seeming vulnerable/doesn't want me to think he's stupid so I've known him to hold back on some things, until I get him to admit it.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that am I reading his "signals" wrong? The two of us broke up because of distance and it being too much of a strain on me, and I feel maybe that he's also with his girlfriend because it's easier to have someone close to you than far away. It also doesn't help his girlfriend looks like me either, which you could say is his taste, but I don't know. His previous girlfriends to me were blondes, etc. Now I'm completely different, dark brunette with glasses who reads Sylvia Plath and loves cats. Ha. His girlfriend is dark brunette with glasses, who doesn't read Sylvia Plath, but her facial features are a lot like mine too. It's just so confusing!

[TaraMaiden]

TL;DR.

 

 

You can't get inside his head. if he's blowing hot and cold, ditch him.

 

it's the sign of tepid commitment.

 

If I got it wrong, apologies, but really, you need to abridge and leave out the irrelevant stuff....