Am I coping wrong?

[lindsay1990]

Edited, too specific timeline and would rather it get buried behind.

 

 

Basically, I feel I'm stuck on my BU as ifnit was yesterday. Still get chest pains and ruminate all day, and its been 3.5 months.

 

How can I tell if I'm progressing or not?

Edited November 4, 2013 by lindsay1990

[Mariposa10]

First of all, how long were you two together??

 

I think everybody has a different way of dealing with things. I personally would die if I were to be alone or if I had been alone during the breakup process. Maybe since it's really hard for me to talk about my feelings, so hard that nobody in my family knows what's really going on with me. Only a couple of friends. I didn't really want to tell everybody because by not doing that, I would be forced to be stronger. Plus knowing my mom, she would've gotten pissed off/frustrated with me, and would have told me to stop being so weak, and that I shouldn't be suffering so much because of some idiot who's not worth anything... Or she would start feeling really bad for me, and right now I don't need to worry about another person. I also seriously believe in that "fake it until you make it" phrase.

 

I will probably not talk about this, until I'm ready that will take months. This is why I use this forum, also because I did some indirect begging which I don't want people who know me to know that I was so messed up, can you believe I told dildo face, I would "always" wait for him. Can you think of a worst phrase than that??? That only shows the mental stage I was in

 

Anyway, I cried my eyes out at the very beginning. I would cry while taking a shower, while getting ready in the morning, before going to sleep, while walking or on the bus. I lost my appetite. While I was in contact with dildo face, I was getting anxiety attacks. Plus, let's not forget that I also had to pretend I was doing fine in front of dildo face because god forbid I brought him down with my attitude! So I had to swallowed all that pain.

 

My point here is that I don't think you have blocked your process, I think you're just feeling weird right now because you want to move on so fast, you don't want to feel like this anymore. I feel like you're like, ok I better be alone suffer what I need to suffer, so I can finally be myself again. I know that feeling, I've felt like that. But I've come to realized that if I truly want to be alone, I have to take my time to mourn this relationship.

 

Another thing, I probably shouldn't say that, I don't mean to give you false hope. I don't even know your ex, but I don't think he's having the best time of his life right now. Anyway, anytime I start thinking how I'm suffering and dildo face is not, I force myself to start enjoying myself. I know he's not having the best time of his life. He might not be suffering as much as me because already has a new distraction, but he has to get used to this new life. So in a way I use him to feel better, I can't allow myself to be suffering all the time, while he has a new distraction.

 

Everything will be fine, we'll get out of this alive. Have some patience

 

Btw, I still replay in my head some of the conversations I had with my ex as if they had just happened yesterday when they took place in July.

[im_thedude]

You said in the other thread that you've been looking up your ex through Google and fake Facebook profiles. These actions are preventing you from moving on.

 

The only way you move past a break up is by proactively taking the steps to distance yourself from what has happened. You switch things up in your life, putting time and new experiences between past and present. And more importantly you make a conscious decision to completely phase this person who isn't in your life anymore out.

 

...You're not doing that! I don't know the details, but even if you haven't directly been contacting your ex through phone or text, you are still keeping the image of his face and who he is right in the front part of your conscience by looking him up online. You still remember every detail of his smile. You know his whereabouts and how he is doing.

 

It's hard, but you have to let go. You've not accepted that this person will not be in your life anymore. I know the feeling too, as someone who battled repeatedly looking at his ex's social media too. I realized I kept checking up on my ex's Instagram not because I hoped for some sign of getting back together, not from mere curiosity, but because I was afraid to make the final move of phasing her out completely from my life. And by looking at her stuff online, I still felt some odd connection to her.

 

It's time for you to go into FULL NC. On your phone and your computer, download apps that allow you to block websites from even showing up on your browser. Don't just block him/her on Facebook/every other social media, block the physical web page itself because you seem to be an addict and can't control yourself! If you're resorting to stalking your ex through fake accounts, it's gone too far. Grab this situation by the horns and take control!

[lindsay1990]

First of all, how long were you two together??

 

Around a year. Suuuuper intense, moved in together, marriage speculated with both families, but specially discussed between the two of us a very real thing.

 

 

I think everybody has a different way of dealing with things. I personally would die if I were to be alone or if I had been alone during the breakup process. Maybe since it's really hard for me to talk about my feelings, so hard that nobody in my family knows what's really going on with me. Only a couple of friends.

 

Me too, just two of my girlfriends. We are the three of us super close. I always resented that during break up ex told his family everything going months back and then told me all their "opinions" about myself and out relationship, and when I told him I had never thrown him under the bus like that he snapped back that "well he WAS from a family" unlike myself. I am suuuper close to my family, and my family has done more for me than his ever did - including not enabling me, while his family raised him to an accommodated luke-warm moralist that's entitled to have his cake and eat it.

 

Anyway, I hated this statement because he said it like: well I have people that care about me (unlike you) and are trying to protect me from YOU. Ouuuch.

 

 

 

I didn't really want to tell everybody because by not doing that, I would be forced to be stronger./QUOTE]

 

This too. I feel like unlike my ex, I don't have people rationalizing stuff to me and telling me poor, poor Lindsay and validating me. Up until the day I left he was getting text messages from friends saying how I hadn't deserved him and we was a "great boyfriend" and it was "Lindsay's loss, and she can't be happy with you or anybody else". I was furious and told him that at the end of the day, I just didn't trust him, whether I was right or wrong not to but that ultimately it was just a matter of incompatibilities and nobody had to be the bad guy and I extremely hurt at the fact that we would drag my name through the mud like that like a coward. I hadn't cheated or stolen from him, we just had a bad dynamic for whatever reasons and that wasn't grounds to vilify me. Ugh. Coward.

 

 

Plus knowing my mom, she would've gotten pissed off/frustrated with me, and would have told me to stop being so weak, and that I shouldn't be suffering so much because of some idiot who's not worth anything... Or she would start feeling really bad for me, and right now I don't need to worry about another person.

 

In my case, my mother has always been pretty abusive and she is the kind to say I brought it on myself and ruined the relationship or worse, sympathize at first and at the first chance she got through it in my face. Unfortunately my mom has never been somebody I could go to for anything as she is very, very judgemental. I could tell my dad but I really (1) can't trust him to tell my mother, who in the best case would just mock me about what happened and (2) most importantly, I don't want to hurt him because I know he would suffer so much if he knew what I went through.

 

I also seriously believe in that "fake it until you make it" phrase.

I agree. This has been extremely character building for me. It's also made me a horrible cynic but just as equally I feel it wised me up brutally, the hard way, to what I was putting up with in the relationship for the sake of making it work. I put up with things that mortified me, like ex talking about our problems to his entire family always. I felt embarrassed, humiliated, violated and under scrutiny and I think that the fact that he kept doing it was (if only subconsciously) a mechanism that he used to keep me in check. Because I was so mortified of he running to others with out issues I would keep my mouth shut. Obviously this didn't work, but still. I feel he knew this and just doing it. At best, he completely disregarded my feelings but I feel that now I know how important this is to me and will never allow it again. First sign that a guy does this and he gets thrown back into the dating pool.

 

 

I will probably not talk about this, until I'm ready that will take months. This is why I use this forum, also because I did some indirect begging which I don't want people who know me to know that I was so messed up, can you believe I told dildo face, I would "always" wait for him. Can you think of a worst phrase than that??? That only shows the mental stage I was in

 

Oh, man. If we're going to talk about the ridiculous things we said and how low we stooped... we would never finish. I remember new crap I did everyday, ha. I kinda can't think of a worst phrase, but for over three weeks I begged (like on the floor, on my knees crying) to not break up (OMG I know) and one of the things I take from this is that I also was at a horrible mental stage. I was not thinking straight and the thought scares me. Not even of how embarrassing it is -because at the end of the day, an as.shole like my ex, who wouldn't budge after seeing me like that for weeks on end probably doesn't remember how I looked but only how validated he felt - but really, how terrifying it is to me to have found myself in that position.

 

The thing is i didn't decide to beg my heart out, I didn't decide to let him degrade me in so many other ways in those three weeks, I didn't decide to beg and beg and beg, I never pondered in my mind and thought "Okay, well I'm going to beg like this because if it works out it is worth it". It was never a decision or a strategy it is just something that I found myself doing. At that point I though I deserved it, that I deserved everything he was saying, that I was in fact and had in fact done all the things he was accusing me of, that I was evil, abusive, manipulative, horrible etc. He made me believe these things and I should have known better than to trust some guy I had known for a year than myself, whom I had known for 25. This is what terrifies me. That it happened at all and I couldn't even realize, I believed it all and played into it all. My God. But this is why I think it has been "enriching" because I realize no one is immune to this sort of gaslighting and abuse.

 

 

Anyway, I cried my eyes out at the very beginning. I would cry while taking a shower, while getting ready in the morning, before going to sleep, while walking or on the bus. I lost my appetite. While I was in contact with dildo face, I was getting anxiety attacks. Plus, let's not forget that I also had to pretend I was doing fine in front of dildo face because god forbid I brought him down with my attitude! So I had to swallowed all that pain.

 

Those are exactly the time/places where I cried. Sounds pathetic but feels strong at the same time, right? As they say in my country "the procession goes on the inside".

 

I had anxiety attacks with my ex too, while I was still in the apt. where I would end up throwing up and he would stand idle and just once said that his therapist (his mother had a therapist call him because he went into a rage and had a several day meltdown) had said that I would do anything to manipulate him. So basically I was fake distraught.

 

 

Another thing, I probably shouldn't say that, I don't mean to give you false hope. I don't even know your ex, but I don't think he's having the best time of his life right now. Anyway, any time I start thinking how I'm suffering and dildo face is not, I force myself to start enjoying myself. I know he's not having the best time of his life. He might not be suffering as much as me because already has a new distraction, but he has to get used to this new life. So in a way I use him to feel better, I can't allow myself to be suffering all the time, while he has a new distraction.

 

 

Well, to be fair my ex blamed me for everything. I have read in some places that constant nagging is abusive. However, in my layman mind I imagine this as making somebody feel constantly inadequate and my case was different. I simply could not trust my ex-boyfriend, I don't know if he was lying to me at the end but I had caught him in half-truths early on in the relationship, half-truths about the extent of his feelings and relationship with his super close female best friends. Could I not cope with it? No. Did I constantly feel second-best and in some cases gaslighted? Yeah. Did I constantly feel under scrutiny by his friends and family who knew all our issues, why I mistrusted him and how "irrational" I was, who knew that when he would call me "irrational" I would lose my sh*z and cry and get mad? Yeah. I just didn't trust him and it made both our lives hell, but I was not abusive I think. Did I hold too much against him the previous half-truths and make my discomfort in trusting him clear? that too, but also he never made an active effort to make me feel secure.

 

But, the guy is convinced that I abused him. As Zahara said, me not trusting him wasn't abusive, it was gaslighting. This guy constantly applied double-standards to me, drowned me in psycho-babble and accusations of what I was doing wrong so he definitely, definitely must feel issues but is probably like myself: feeling traumatized. And hurt by me. I don't know how to feel about this, except try to not think about it because I know him to be a man of virtually non-existent accountability.

 

 

 

Thanks so much for your reply. I can tell you read the whole thing I had posted beforehand, it means a lot.

[lindsay1990]

It's time for you to go into FULL NC. On your phone and your computer, download apps that allow you to block websites from even showing up on your browser. Don't just block him/her on Facebook/every other social media, block the physical web page itself because you seem to be an addict and can't control yourself! If you're resorting to stalking your ex through fake accounts, it's gone too far. Grab this situation by the horns and take control!

 

You are completely right. It has gone too far and it's disgraceful, and I'm hurting nobody but myself. I have to take control, but how. Ugh. Thank you though

[lindsay1990]

Mariposa, I coded the quote wrong up there. Third one. My reply is inside the block, as if you had said it.

[Mariposa10]

Wow, I can't believe a therapist would say that to him, that you would resort to any kind of behavior to manipulate him. What an idiot!!

 

I can relate to how your ex would tell his family everything whenever you two had a problem. I hate when people do that because the family or friends will never see you the same way ever again. In their eyes, you'll always be the horrible person.

I remember talking with my ex and how he said, "all my co-workers/ new friends say you're controlling me and that I shouldn't put up with your horrible behavior." My stupid response, "what?! but you're new friends/co-workers don't even know me. I want to meet them so they can really know me, after that they won't think that." And then he said "it's too late! they already know about your behavior." I was in such a horrible mental state that I just wanted to fix things ASAP. I should've said something like: **** YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS!!

 

I'm so glad we are both past all that. Now we just have to keep healing!!