Anger months after the break up

[Larna]

Hi everyone,

 

In short, about a year ago my long-term partner went on a volunteering trip for three months. Relationship was great before he left. Being so blindly in love, I had even made the decision to move to a whole different country to continue my degree after coming there on an exchange and meeting him there.

 

 

The place he volunteered at was in the middle of nowhere so we could talk only rarely and exchange a few messages. All was good at first, but I started noticing changes in his voice and the way he was messaging me. Whenever I confronted him about it, he got extremely frustrated, leading to wasted precious talking time on arguing. So I let it go, and again, and again. Even though I felt like something was wrong, he kept telling me that he loved me and he was looking forward to coming back home.

 

The day he came back everything came crushing down. He said he had lost feelings for me, that he loves me as a family, not as a partner anymore. That he thought the feelings would come back when he returned, but they didn’t. We were too different, too many commitments, time changes things, different life paths, so many things yet to experience in life, and so on and so on.

 

Of course, that was not the real reason for the break up. While being away for those months, he had become extremely close with this other volunteer there. I don’t know whether they were already romantically involved before he broke up with me, but straight after be broke it off with me, he was already in this new relationship.

 

 

None of that came from his mouth, when we broke up of course. The reason for break up? There wasn’t one, just an excuse after another excuse, every single of them rebutted by me. I could not make sense how a happy and functional relationship could just be thrown away like that and feelings of love lost so quickly. However, instead of being angry, I was sympathetic. I was almost feeling sorry for him, trying to make him feel better, trying to rationalize why things had turned out this way. I had so much love for him that I was trying to relate to how he was feeling and trying to comfort him.

 

10 months after the break up, all I have is anger. Anger that I never had a chance to let go. Anger towards his lies, towards him stringing me along for 3 months and then not even giving one chance to fix the relationship when he came back, towards the new partner who was making moves on an unavailable man, towards him getting off easy. I thought it had dealt with it, but in reality it was just well hidden away and the smallest trigger brought all of it back. I had blocked them both on all social media possible so I would not stumble upon one picture of them together. But there it was, a picture of them in one event on my news-feed. Him smiling the way he used in the pictures we took together. And it just brought it all back. All the pain, sadness, betrayal, feeling of being not good enough, and lots of anger. So much anger that I do not know how to deal with it.

 

Just wondering how you got over that anger. It feels so consuming sometimes that it almost scares me.

[Meli22]

I feel you on this one because I was angry for a long time after my break up, for many reasons. I had therapy for a while which helped but didn't stop the anger. What I have learnt though is to let that anger out. Not in a bad way, but speak about it to friends, family, whoever is willing to listen. Letting anger build up is a horrible feeling and can prolong pain even more. Be patient with yourself and realise that it's totally normal for you to feel this way. I can assure you that with time that anger WILL subside.