Mid-NC: living in the same city as ex and still obsessing about bumping into her?

[preyouandi]

Dear Loveshack,

 

It's been 7-8 months since my ex decided to break it off - just after I moved cities and even countries to work and live very near to where she lived - and I'm still not over her, psychologically speaking. I should explain that the placement of the job was more of a convenient coincidence for us both at the time that I accepted it as I had been considering taking part of that teaching exchange since long before I met her. We met while she was working as part of the same teaching exchange at my home university while I was doing postgrad studies there, and we essentially switched places - the relationship lasted 6 months of being together in that country and then 3 months of us both making believe that we were going to carry on in a LDR until I arrived in her country, until I finally arrived in her city and she decided to have the conversation.

 

It was my first breakup from an adult relationship and I didn't take the first few months with as much grace as I would like to have done - I definitely broke the NC rule (which I didn't even know at the time was an established thing) more times than I can count, allowing my thought processes to go round and round and round and coming back to calling to ask her the same old questions and get the same old answers.

 

Admittedly, this whole thing was complicated by the fact that it was not at all an easy time outside of the breakup, and there was a lot going on in the rest of my personal life, with a parent being seriously ill and dying a few months ago. Following everything that happened in my family, I moved away from the suburb I had been living in (close to where she lived) to live into a very central area of the city that I used to live in two years ago and that I always loved, reasoning that if I distanced myself a bit from her the breakup would become easier and I would be surrounded by familiar people that would help me get through this difficult time. This has definitely been true for the grieving process for my parent (I feel a lot more at peace with it now and was able to get on with my daily life and to some extent begin to enjoy a lot of things again reasonably quickly), and it has admittedly helped with the breakup too, but I'm still having difficulties with the latter.

 

I have only recently properly thrust myself into a full-blown, day-counting, NC regime (taking Greg Behrend's advice on waiting an initial 60 days before even considering making or responding to any contact). It took finding out from her a couple of months ago after phoning her (after a few weeks of not calling her) and then coincidentally ending up on the same train into the same place that day that she had started dating somebody else (albeit apparently slowly and not very seriously) to tell myself to pull myself together and take NC seriously. That discovery wasn't at all easy. Even if she told me he wasn't especially her type and that she was mainly testing the waters to see where it went because she was fed up of being single and having met nobody, it dropped me straight back into a very difficult circle of insecure thoughts about her and the guy she had started seeing. At my prompting her she told me a few small things about how she had met him - not to gleefully rub it in my face, but more because I kept asking questions about it and because she felt like if she responded to those questions she would have to give honest answers. At the time, she still sounded hesitant about him, saying that she was sort of interested in him and giving him a chance but that he wasn't really her type and that she found him a bit shy. Since then I've stopped asking questions and have cut off the flow of information. I have no clue now whether she's still seeing him or whether things between them have progressed at all, but I have had to keep telling myself that I really am better off not knowing any more than I already do (which is too much).

 

I'm on day 20 of NC now. The problem is, that's only with actual personal contact with her - I haven't gotten in touch with her since the day after she got in touch with me asking how I was going and I mistakenly took the bait and replied (albeit basically saying that I was doing OK, doing things to move forward in my personal life, trying to get over her, and trying not to contact her because of this). Since then I've been trying to take NC very seriously, including not checking up on her Facebook profile (which I unfriended a while ago and which only gives me tiny breadcrumbs of information these days - she is not the kind of person that puts her boyfriend in her profile picture, that shows public displays of affection online, or that changes her relationship status when she's in one - which means that I have to search very hard to find anything that could mean anything, which is an unhealthy pursuit in itself that I've been trying to cut out of my habits).

 

I've been very successful so far at not calling or messaging her and have started to lose the urge to do so. I can't say the same on the checking up on Facebook front, though, and frustratingly this last week I caved as I "accidentally found" her posts on an event that her favourite band were playing at, which led to me clicking on her profile and looking through it. I didn't find out anything new of interest, aside from learning that she was going to a concert that I hadn't been planning on going to anyway, but it's still meant that on principle I've had to set back the No Facebook counter to zero, while keeping the other NC counter going (for the sole reason that the fact that I haven't been having the urge to actually contact her IS a source of confidence for me and I want to have a personal reminder of how long it's been since I've indulged in any actual communication with her).

 

Here's the thing.

 

I live in the centre of Paris. Thankfully at very least she lives, works and studies outside of Paris, BUT whenever she goes out, she goes out into the city itself. There's a lot of people in Paris that look superficially similar to her - short, pretty, dark hair and dark eyes. I have had a really difficult time with that last fact since finding out that she had started seeing someone else. Why? Because every time I go out in Paris I keep doing double-takes to check whether a girl on the street or in a bar is her, and I keep nervously worrying about bumping into her in public (especially if she's with that new guy).

 

It's absolutely obsessive and it takes over a lot of my day. It often accompanies the usual questions about how she's doing and how long it'll take me to get over her. It's completely ruining my enjoyment of this city and I'm not able to relax and just enjoy being here because of these invasive thoughts.

 

I know that some people decide to move cities post-BU. I don't want to do this - I didn't move to Paris just for her and since I have lived in this city once before, before I ever knew her, I want to be able to reclaim the city for myself. I know that she's likely to gravitate towards the nicer areas which I probably enjoy going to as well (although I don't know specifically which areas she normally hangs out in, so I don't know which places to avoid) and I know that despite the fairly large odds that I'm not going to bump into her (after all, there's a lot of people in Paris) there's always a small possibility of bumping into her when I least expect it.

 

I'm trying to do as many positive things for myself as I can apart from that - going to the gym, yoga classes, spending time with the small number of good friends I have here whenever I can, going to language conversation exchanges to meet new people (although I haven't been able to get back on the horse just yet) - but I still need to conquer these thoughts and reclaim the city for myself.

 

My question to you guys is: have any of you ever felt this about bumping into your ex in your own city? And have you managed to get over a person in these circumstances without giving up the fight and moving to another place? If so, do you have any tips for how you got over it?

 

Thank you for any help you are able to give

Edited May 10, 2014 by preyouandi

[mtnbiker3000]

Bro, Paris is immense. I've been to Paris. I wouldn't worry too much about her. Instead focus on the other millions of hot women there...