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I broke up with him and regret it, is he scared or should I give up?


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Posted

Hi,

I broke up with my bf in december after a really rough year together. We got together just after I'd moved to a new country. Shortly after I got a medical diagnosis that left me distraught and needing surgery, but we knew each other so little at that stage that I didn't feel like I could talk to him about it. Whenever I would bring it up he would shut down, but he later said that he was waiting for me to tell him about it and just didn't want to push me to talk. I was so upset about not feeling that I could talk to him that I ended it with him. A week later I asked him to come back, and he agreed, but he told me that he'd applied for a job in another state. Well we got back together but I knew he was going to get this job offer so I never fully committed to the relationship. Later in the year, I had my surgery coming up, and his job offer arrived. I broke up with him again, thinking he was going to take the job and i didnt want him by my side during the surgery if we werent going to be together long term. Later that day i broke down and told him i needed him. We got back together again. After agonizing over the job offer for weeks he turned it down, but I felt like the damage had been done, I was convinced he didn't really care about me. He told me he loved me but I didn't believe him. I broke up with him again shortly after that, in December. Now I am really regretting it. I think if we hadn't had all this external stuff going on we could have made it work. I see him regularly and he does all these thoughtful things for me. It really made me regret my decision. I've told him twice now that I want to try again but he keeps telling me that he needs to sort his life out and figure out what he wants to do, and he doesn't want to date anyone. My friend thinks he is just scared and I should keep trying. I don't know though, being rejected twice has really hurt me. I don't know whether I should try one last time or just leave it. Any thoughts? Should I leave him be or try to convince him?

Posted

Wow, don't take this wrong, but from what you posted it wasn't you who was rejected. He was accepting you back after breaking up with him only to have you break up with him again. He turned a job down for you and you broke up with him again?!

 

You should try counseling because it sounds like you are having a hard time with emotional intimacy. Don't bring him back into your life until you see that the issue is with you and that you are ready to truly commit to the guy. Otherwise you are just jerking his heart around.

Posted

Poor guy...I think you should just leave him alone until you resolve your own issues.

 

If a girl broke up with me several times I would be hesitant to try again.

  • Author
Posted

Thank you for your responses. I can see that it looks like I have issues - truth is I was struggling with the commitment last year. I'd just moved here and was homesick and part of me really wanted to move home, and I knew that if I stayed with him that would never happen (I'm from Europe, so moving to the US was a big move for me).

 

Over Xmas I went home and realised I need to let that dream go and accept that I have a new life now. I truly do want to commit to this person, if we got back together I would want to move in together and start our life together.

 

I know I've treated him terribly, and I really regret it. Part of me thinks I should just be patient, keep telling him how much I care about him, and hope that eventually he'll trust me enough to try again. The first time I told him I miss him, he said he wouldn't try again unless he was sure it was going to work out. That made me think, ok, yes, he is just scared that I'm going to break up with him again. However, my worst fear is that he's completely ok with this break up and has moved on. I'm finding it hard to be patient because I'm scared he'll lose whatever feelings he still has for me.

 

The second time I told him, which was Friday, we ended up sleeping together. I realize this was a mistake - there is no way to leave the next day, knowing the other person wants you to leave, without feeling completely rubbish and humiliated. I went home and spent the day in bed because I didn't want to have to think. Being awake was too painful. Behaving like such a sad loser makes me feel even worse - like why would anyone on the planet want to be with someone like that? This is why it's so hard to keep trying, because it makes me feel this way. On the other hand, walking away from someone you love seems like such a shame. Love doesn't come around every other day, I feel like I have to make the effort to save this.

Posted

Leave the man alone for some time and resolve your commitment issues first. You might think you're commited now but it's seems the breakup is fairly fresh.

 

What do you think you resolved about your own problems in the past few weeks that you haven't been able to resolve in the past year.

 

If you truly love this guy, take the time to fix yourself first. It's not gonna take a few weeks, it may take months or a year or more. But if you keep reeling him back into a relationship while you still carry your old personal issues then you really won't resolve any problems. You will probably fall back into the same feelings and breakup with him again.

 

Do you really want to keep hurting someone that you believe you love?

  • Author
Posted

I guess you are right. Thank you for taking the time to reply.

  • Author
Posted

One more question - he asks me to go for coffee with him on a fairly regular basis, like once a week or so. Do you think I should break off contact? My motivation for wanting to hang out with him is obvious - I want him back. Even if I stop actively trying to get him back and start trying to work out my issues etc. I can't stop being attracted to him. His motivation is unclear to me. Should I continue to see him like this while I try to really figure out what I want?

Posted

While I think this whole saga is, for the most part, your fault, I know how it's like having to try and decipher someone else's thoughts.

 

Ask him what he wants from you. Only he can give you an answer. And since you made your intentions pretty clear, just ask from him what he wants and take it from there.

Posted
One more question - he asks me to go for coffee with him on a fairly regular basis, like once a week or so. Do you think I should break off contact? My motivation for wanting to hang out with him is obvious - I want him back. Even if I stop actively trying to get him back and start trying to work out my issues etc. I can't stop being attracted to him. His motivation is unclear to me. Should I continue to see him like this while I try to really figure out what I want?

 

I don't believe you can truly figure out what either of you both want if you contine to see each other like "normal" without resolving the underlying issues. Continuing to see each other on a frequent basis AND in the current state of affair won't help to clarify the situation.

 

My opinion, take a little bit more time for yourselves and let the emotional turmoil die down a little. During this time, contemplate (on your own) on what you both really want from the the relationship.

 

If after some time has past and you really want to be with him, communicate it. But you must be ready to kiss major butt and really want this! Don't half a$$ the effort, you must go full a$$ or not at all...and you must stick to your promises and be genuine.

 

So, like I said, take your time and really think about what you want and why you deserve to be with him. Do you love how he makes you feel or do you love him for who he is?

 

One caveat, if and when you realize what you want and you try to make it up to him, be ready for the fact that he may have already moved on. And if this is the case, you must be prepared to let him go...you know what they say, if you love something set it free...

  • Author
Posted

Thanks again for the responses. For the moment I'm in agreement about having no contact and taking time to figure out how I really feel. Mostly I can't handle having any contact because it hurts too much so that's an easy one :)

 

Anyway, at the risk of banging on and on about this, I'm still confused about a couple of things and the responses so far have been very helpful so I thought I'd try to clarify the rest of it, hopefully with some help from you guys.

 

Now that the hysterical emotions of the weekend have died down, I think my initial post was too hard on me, as I was going through a stage of blaming myself. However, I do think I had legitimate reasons for breaking off the relationship. Yes, he said he loved me, but I never actually felt loved and that was the crux of the problem for me. I don't think I have a problem with emotional intimacy as some people have said (I'll admit to the commitment issues though). The reason I ended the relationship was that I wanted a whole lot more emotional intimacy than I was getting. This was a guy who treated me very distantly from the start, wouldn't talk to me about anything intimate, and wouldn't make eye contact with me. I don't think it's a lot to expect that when you've been told you need a possibly life threatening surgery, your boyfriend would ask you a few questions about that and seem interested, rather than just shut down and seem freaked out. Although I'm willing to let that go - it was too early in the relationship, he couldn't deal etc.

 

After we split up, I wrote him a letter explaining how I felt - lonely in the relationship and like he wasnt really engaging with me. He later said that everything I'd written was spot on and that he was never truly emotionally available.

 

The doubts started because a couple of weeks later I had to do some reading about personality types for work and I started to understand that some people aren't comfortable with effusive displays of emotion, however they do mean what they say. That made me think that I should have just believed him when he said he loved me.

 

Anyway, I guess my question is, how do you know whether to follow your gut or whether to just accept that the person wouldn't be with you if they didn't want to be? If someone won't look at you and won't engage in all the little intimacies that I take for granted, is it possible that they're just majorly introverted?

 

And finally, how can I tell whether the relationship isn't working because I'm not trying hard enough to communicate and work out our problems, or whether the relationship isn't working because we just aren't right for each other?

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