I'd like a proper conversation with the ex. A lot of unspoken words

October 1, 2015

It's been 4 months since we broke up. We had a great relationship, very loving and rarely any arguments but towards the end I knew he had met someone else and possibly cheated whilst I was away on business and someone else was on his mind but he denied this and lied claiming he was just in a 'dark place ' was suddenly 'confused how he felt' 'just needed to be alone to work on himself' etc. Anyway, I told him I respected how he felt and initiated the split 'as long as there wasn't just someone else waiting in the wings' and he flat out denied there was. 2 weeks later I saw photos of them together and he continued to deny it. Now they are in a full blown relationship and travelling the world together 4 months on doing everything him and I planned to do in the 2 years I was with him.

I never told him how terrible it all made me feel, how badly he treated me towards the end when he knew it was because of someone else. I always thought it was me. He never had a face to face convo with me about it or even on the phone. I felt I gave him the get out of jail free card and he took it using lies and excuses and he's run with it. There are photos of them everywhere (I have hidden and blocked him - but unfortunately these photos pop up in the new feed if mutual friends like his activities) and I feel totally disregarded.

I've don't everything I can to move on from this - met new people, been doing well in my job, visited new places, gone on a couple of dates etc. But I still wake up and think of them and their happiness. I can't get them out of my head and it's draining and haunting.

A friend suggested to me I ask for 10 minutes of his time to simply get on the phone and get everything out, have a very honest conversation with eachother and I can tell him exactly how he made me feel. She thinks it's because I never actually got it all out, he doesn't know how badly it hurt me so he was able to get away with it guilt-free. She also said she thinks it's perfectly reasonable to have a conversation since we were together for a long time.

People might say 'forget it' 'move on' 'he won't care now' etc but he isn't a bad guy. He hates to feel it has bad blood with people - he's a people pleaser and I'm not sure there's anyone who he dislikes. I just feel there's a lot of unresolved tension and unspoken words and maybe a open conversation is needed.

It's like he jumped in to this new relationship so he didn't have to feel any guilt about me and I was left in the dust.

What does everyone else think?

Edited October 1, 2015 by aliroser

October 1, 2015

No matter what you say to him, he will continue to live his new life guilt-free. I guarantee it.

So if you're looking for closure at the expense of your dignity, have at it.

Otherwise, you must simply learn to accept the fact that you were replaced, and he was probably just trying to spare your feelings, because he knew that there was nothing you could say or do to change his mind.

October 1, 2015

I'm not looking for closure but I think it's important for him to understand what he did was not ok. and now some time has passed, Id hope we can both just be honest, clear the air and whatever unsaid words there are and be cool with each other.

October 1, 2015

I'm not looking for closure but I think it's important for him to understand what he did was not ok. and now some time has passed, Id hope we can both just be honest, clear the air and whatever unsaid words there are and be cool with each other.

Guess what? He isn't interested in listening to that. He has removed himself from the situation. All that is doing is talking down to him and he will get annoyed very quickly.

Lets sleeping dogs lie.

October 1, 2015

I'm not looking for closure but I think it's important for him to understand what he did was not ok. and now some time has passed, Id hope we can both just be honest, clear the air and whatever unsaid words there are and be cool with each other.

That's literally the last conversation he wants to have. Do you honestly think he's going to take anything you say seriously when your goal is to tell him how much of a d--k he was? He's going to think you're jaded and bitter and further dismiss you, which will make you feel worse.

You aren't going to get closure from the person who closed you out. Closure comes from within.

October 1, 2015

What difference does it make? If he had said he was leaving you for someone else, would you be in any less pain today? Almost no one is completely honest when they reak up, because saying you've found someone you want more or you find your girlfriend's attitude utterly insufferable and you hate her new haircut aren't helpful. What's more is that they don't matter. If someone doesn't want to be with you anymore, for whatever cause, then that is a valid reason to end the relationship.

You say you told him you were fine with the breakup unless there was someone else. What was he supposed to say? You can't always control who you fall in or out of love with. Dating is about finding the right match for you. Sometimes that match appears while you're with someone else. He ultimately did the right thing by breaking up rather than cheating on you.

The first time I broke up with someone I was surprised at how difficult it was. I tried to be as respectful and compassionate as possible, but all I wanted was to get the hell out of there. It gets much more frustrating when the other person looks at your breakup as a potential problem to solve and not a choice you've already made. I would have said anything, up to and including "I'm actually a tentacled alien who preys on human livers" if it made the other person accept it was over. In the intervening yeaelrs I've learned how to break up like a responsible adult, but at the end of the day I still just want it to be over as simply as possible.

Your relationship is ancient history to this guy, and I guarantee you any meeting will end with your feeling ten thousand times worse. This may hurt but let it act as a deterrent to contacting him: any text you send will be reported to the new girlfriend. What do you think she'll do? Respond with pity and discomfort, maybe say "Yikes, I guess she's not over you yet. Say, what do you want to do for dinner tonight?" Think about how indignifying it is to be an awkward footnote in their lives and forget about them. Live for you.

October 1, 2015

Honestly, I went through something similar with an ex boyfriend and when I tried to reach out to him to explain my feelings he basically ignored me and did not care how I felt. It wasn't until I finally moved on and was able to bury those feelings when he resurfaced and was willing to listen but by that time my feelings had already deteriorated. The best thing to do is just let it go and stay off social media. Do whatever you can to avoid seeing anything affiliated with him give it a few months you'll be over it and prepare because that's when they always come back

October 1, 2015

I think if he had the words you want to hear he would have said them to you 4 months ago. He's not about to sit there & listen to your list of grievances because he doesn't care about you or your problems / issues / concerns anymore. He does not have the ability to tell you what you need to hear about why the relationship ended. He voted with his feet & left, possibly even before he formally broke up with you.

You want closure but what nobody tells you is that you get it from yourself not the person who dumped you.

October 1, 2015

Guess what? He isn't interested in listening to that. He has removed himself from the situation. All that is doing is talking down to him and he will get annoyed very quickly.

Lets sleeping dogs lie.

^^this.

Theres no such thing as closure in situations like this....put your stamp on that old pain and leave it where it belongs… in the past. Go and live your life, however you decide to.

October 1, 2015

Like everyone else said, he doesn't care. Tell someone who does care like family or friends. They will be sympathetic to you, and they will care. Your ex is the person who cares the least when it comes to how you feel. He has a vested interest in not caring because he has the most to loose if he does care.

October 1, 2015

i think maybe you could send him an email expressing yourself calmly and state that you are not looking for a reply, just to vent. this is the only option, and still will likely make you feel worse. any actual phone or in person interaction will for sure make you feel worse.

October 1, 2015

It's been 4 months since we broke up. We had a great relationship, very loving and rarely any arguments but towards the end I knew he had met someone else and possibly cheated whilst I was away on business and someone else was on his mind but he denied this and lied claiming he was just in a 'dark place ' was suddenly 'confused how he felt' 'just needed to be alone to work on himself' etc. Anyway, I told him I respected how he felt and initiated the split 'as long as there wasn't just someone else waiting in the wings' and he flat out denied there was. 2 weeks later I saw photos of them together and he continued to deny it. Now they are in a full blown relationship and travelling the world together 4 months on doing everything him and I planned to do in the 2 years I was with him.

I never told him how terrible it all made me feel, how badly he treated me towards the end when he knew it was because of someone else. I always thought it was me. He never had a face to face convo with me about it or even on the phone. I felt I gave him the get out of jail free card and he took it using lies and excuses and he's run with it. There are photos of them everywhere (I have hidden and blocked him - but unfortunately these photos pop up in the new feed if mutual friends like his activities) and I feel totally disregarded.
I've don't everything I can to move on from this - met new people, been doing well in my job, visited new places, gone on a couple of dates etc. But I still wake up and think of them and their happiness. I can't get them out of my head and it's draining and haunting.

A friend suggested to me I ask for 10 minutes of his time to simply get on the phone and get everything out, have a very honest conversation with eachother and I can tell him exactly how he made me feel. She thinks it's because I never actually got it all out, he doesn't know how badly it hurt me so he was able to get away with it guilt-free. She also said she thinks it's perfectly reasonable to have a conversation since we were together for a long time.

People might say 'forget it' 'move on' 'he won't care now' etc but he isn't a bad guy. He hates to feel it has bad blood with people - he's a people pleaser and I'm not sure there's anyone who he dislikes. I just feel there's a lot of unresolved tension and unspoken words and maybe a open conversation is needed.

It's like he jumped in to this new relationship so he didn't have to feel any guilt about me and I was left in the dust.

What does everyone else think?

I Think your in a terrible situation. AND if you feel that you should let it out, do it. But not if you Think that you two should be together again. Let him see how angry you are!!

October 1, 2015

I understand where you're coming from.

If he won't talk lay it on him in a letter and have you're say.

Can't hurt a thing but don't expect a response.

Then go dark and move on.

October 1, 2015

He didn't tell you there was someone else because he didn't want to hurt you even more. Like another poster said at least he broke up with you before he got with her. It's very annoying to the Dumper to try to give closure to the Dumpee. You are the only one who can give yourself closure. I would suggest you write out everything you want to say to your Ex about how he made you feel and tuck the letter away. In 6 months go back and read it to see how far you've progressed. It takes time to get over heartbreak but you will do it.

October 1, 2015

i think maybe you could send him an email expressing yourself calmly and state that you are not looking for a reply, just to vent. this is the only option, and still will likely make you feel worse. any actual phone or in person interaction will for sure make you feel worse.

No! All this will accomplish is giving the guy an ego boost that his ex is still this torn up months after the breakup.

October 1, 2015

Re-reading your original post, I think you almost have it right:

It's like he jumped in to this new relationship so he didn't have to feel any guilt about me and I was left in the dust.

I would restate that to say:

He jumped in to this new relationship, therefore he could not feel any guilt about me and I was left in the dust.

I think that's pretty close to the truth, and there's nothing you can say that will change that.... which is why your conversation is ill-advised.

October 1, 2015

Do not try and call him or contact him in another way and ask to talk. When you do this and he ignores you or flat out says no, then you will still be left wanting to get things off your chest and you will be hurt by his actions. If you do anything, shoot him an email and don't ask or expect a response. Your just doing it for yourself to get things off your chest. It's not for him and to try and win him back, it is for you to help you move on. He's already given you closure. I sent one to my ex and heard nothing for almost a month and then bam! I got a reply that just killed me. That's the only thing I still regret during and after the relationship with her, is sending my email, so do it if you must, but odds are you will end up regretting it like I did. Sometimes you have to touch the stove and get burned in order to learn the hard way.

Best suggestion on here is to get it all out and write it down and save it on your computer, but never send it. Look at it again 10,20,30 days down the road and see if you feel the same. That's the problem right now for you is that you are still not in a good emotional state to have any contact with your ex. You need to avoid the social media and I know that's hard.

October 1, 2015

^^this.

Theres no such thing as closure in situations like this....put your stamp on that old pain and leave it where it belongs… in the past. Go and live your life, however you decide to.

Its very easy to say right? If she is angry about this and feel there is no closure, she shall go for it. This is NOT about him this is about her, and if she feel that something must be done, she should do it. For her NOT for him :-)

October 1, 2015

I have learned the hard way that really, when it's over, it's over. When someone does not want to be with you, for whatever reason, let them go. Don't contact them. Do grieve, but privately. You can find your own closure. Remember that closure is not the same thing as learning all the answers. You won't ever know the answers, regardless of whether you meet with him or not. Closure is much more complicated work to achieve, and largely it involves a lot of self-examination about what you want out of life, what went wrong in your relationship in terms of how YOU may have failed to serve YOU, and getting to that elusive emotional understanding that just because this relationship ended doesn't mean your life is over. It really, really sucks when you saw a future with the person and they don't see one with you; you have to re-frame all your expectations and dreams and the process is painful for sure. But it's THIS that is meant by "closure."

I used to think differently. I used to think that especially when someone cuts you off abruptly, leaving you utterly blindsided, they owe you some kind of talk or explanation; they owe you the courtesy of a face to face talk explaining as much as they can. And while I'd like to think that the more emotionally developed dumpers would do this without any prompting from the person they're dumping, because it's the "right" thing to do, truthfully a) even this gesture of decency and caring won't make the break any less painful--in fact, it takes away some of your ability to hate them since they did the thoughtful thing; and b) if they're not forthcoming with a kind, face to face explanation, do you really want to suffer any further indignity by asking them please to pony up? Really, if you don't want me, then don't have me. No matter how it plays out, it's gonna suck, and you have to work through the suck to find closure. It's a solo process, achieved with the help of friends, family, and a good therapist.

Best wishes to you in working through this.

October 1, 2015

Its very easy to say right? If she is angry about this and feel there is no closure, she shall go for it. This is NOT about him this is about her, and if she feel that something must be done, she should do it. For her NOT for him :-)

If it was for her, she can write it down in a journal and never send it.

The OP wants a reaction. Wants him to feel remorse. He probably won't feel great he upset someone, but it will hardly be a blimp on his radar. This whole idea of telling him what he did and didn't do solves nothing. He won't change, he won't feel differently, and it won't matter. The only thing it will do is make matters worse. It solves absolutely nothing.

October 1, 2015

Its very easy to say right? If she is angry about this and feel there is no closure, she shall go for it. This is NOT about him this is about her, and if she feel that something must be done, she should do it. For her NOT for him :-)

Yes, it might be easy for some of us to say because we have experienced it. It is absolutely 100% true that you give yourself closure. Someone can't give that to you. His actions should be enough. Like the other poster said, write it all down. Get it all out, but don't send it. She will be hoping for a response. For remorse. She more than likely will not get it. She will be waiting and waiting hoping for a response. Something. Anything. If she gets anything it more than likely will set her back and leave questions and regret that she did it. She will do whatever she wants to do and she should. Sometimes that the only way we learn. This is only advice from experience.

October 1, 2015

It won't achieve much even if he's prepared to listen and apologize. The thing that is eating OP up is that he met someone else and left her because of this new person. That is not going to change. You have to find your inner peace and move on.

Absent the fact that I felt blindsided by our breakup (week before he was seeing me off on a work trip and we discussed moving in together when I returned), my ex was extremely nice with the aftermath and my reaction to the breakup. He responded to all my emotional emails (even initiated a couple of his own) and tried to explain to me where his head was at, etc. At some point we even met to discuss figuring out a way to stay together (he got a job offer out of state and decided to accept--we would be on different coasts and he didn't think long distance would work). After the talk, he emailed me daily and I responded. He apologized for being a bad boyfriend, mentioned his frustrations about his career--job he broke up with me for, fell through during salary negotiations. Anyways so he would email every day and I would respond. He apologized numerous times for not focusing on us getting back together and being more concerned with his career woes. Now looking back, I realize how much that communication set me back from moving forward. I quit responding after a month of back and forth. Did I really want to be with a guy whose interest in me was conditioned on where he found work? NO. Even though my ex and I talked at length about the breakup, etc. I was still hurt and still don't understand it but I have accepted it. 4 months NC and moving forward.

Anyways I say this to say that, breakups are hard, you can have a "nice" breakup or a "bad" breakup but if the breakup is NOT mutual, one person is going to feel slighted and want the other person to acknowledge their pain and admit fault. But unfortunately, more often than not, there are no answers to be had. Even when my ex explained to me why he thought we should breakup, I had a rebuttal for everything. Some men don't want to deal with that. They want a clean break and that's what your ex opted for. You can't fault him for that.

Edited October 1, 2015 by pidgeon1010

October 1, 2015

Yeah... when he says he's "sorry" that OP felt terribly hurt, he really means that it is quite unfortunate that she had to experience this unavoidable pain, and there was nothing he could do about that.

Which is 100% true. Even telling the whole truth wouldn't have spared her what she's feeling right now.

October 1, 2015

The e-mails & the snail mails won't produce the reaction you want. he probably won't even read them. If he does read them you risk having your feelings sent out into cyber space under a heading like "look what my crazy EX did now."

Unfortunately there is no upside for you in contacting him. It won't get you what you seek no matter what method you try.

If you really need to vent, I do suggest writing it all down. Pour your heart out, all the grief, all the pain, the hurt, the anger. . . .let it rip. Then put the letter away for a week or so. Pull it out, read it over then in a controlled space, set it on fire. Watch it burn & as the smoke drifts away let go of all your negativity.

October 1, 2015

Speaking from experience, do not contact him. He has moved on.

I decided to keep the dialogue open with my ex for too long. She sent me an email and it set me way back. Full of apologies and positive comments but also stated that the feeling was just gone and other statements that I didn't need to know. The email just made me feel worse.

It did not help me. It set me back. When it was over, I wish I would have let it go.

I'm better now, much better. Still have rollercoaster days, but it's the letting go that is making me move on. I will not email her. I do not want her to email me. When I arrived to that place, I started to heal.

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I'd like a proper conversation with the ex. A lot of unspoken words

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