Draper Posted January 2, 2016 Posted January 2, 2016 Well, take comfort in knowing it took that long only because I made every mistake in the book: - I didn't accept it when she tried to break up with me the first time. - I kept thinking she would come around and change her mind, so I didn't move on. - We had to work together for another five months after the breakup, so going NC was mostly out of the question. - I only had periods of NC over two years. One lasted about five months, during which I made some progress. But I made the error of reconnecting with her and undoing all of my progress. - I didn't delete her from FB, meaning I was constantly locked into her page and would get panicky any time she posted a picture of her out doing something (not even necessarily with a guy). - She moved out of state after graduation, and I came very close to relocating to the area myself, thinking that, hey, how could we not get back together if we were in the same area? To be fair, we had talked about moving to this place while still together, so I had done some of the legwork already. But no way was she not the driving force for me almost moving. - I didn't so much as go on a date this entire time. In fact, I was basically a god damn priest during this time. It wasn't until we had one final conversation where she reiterated we weren't getting back together that I finally felt a sense of peace with the matter. Within a month, I was casually seeing someone I had been getting to know for months. We wound up together for three years. Of course, that relationship was a whole new level of chaos and I'm still healing from that one nearly a year later. Anyway, if I had just unplugged from her life entirely when I was able to (five months after BU), and avoided the above things, I would've gotten past it all a LOT sooner. Thanks for that, I do take comfort in it. I've often wished for that one final conversation like you said, as she left me with a lot of questions. She wasn't honest about any of it, in fact she pretty much led me to believe it was a 'break' when she was actually ending it. Anyway, I haven't seen or heard from her in nearly 4 months now so I guess I'll have to live without that conversation.
luck1978 Posted January 3, 2016 Posted January 3, 2016 An interesting discussion guys. I have been in the same boat (WAW 6 yr marriage) and realise a lot of recovery is about how you have to be so disciplined on yourself. By this I mean when your mind settles or you are un occupied it usually will veer back to your ex, it's actually amazing how many times you will do this even in an hour, but the next step is to work out how long did you actually think about her / him for - this is the worrying part! A month or so ago I was on a really long train journey that lasted 3 hours with many stops. It actually flew by in what felt like 10 minutes and I don't think I even knew I was at my stop, this was because I had thought about my ex and the breaking up and the sadness for the whole journey. This worried me slightly and made me realise that our minds can almost become addicted to doing this or will settle in to this state of zombi state / depression as an almost default. I now shout things to myself (in my head of course, don't want to be sectioned!) like "what are you doing, this women treated you like ****, stop wallowing, stop wasting your brain energy on her, lets have some fun instead" or "get back in the game, you will never get that wasted time back" You almost need to come up with a list of quick fire things you can quickly say to yourself to snap you out of the fog and to retrain your brain to stop it from settling onto the ex and the whole state of mind. Things that are positive and will give you strength. Obviously the main healer of all is time, but the depression / sadness stage of breaking up you want to try and limit it's impacts or time it lasts.
Author moonwalker86 Posted January 9, 2016 Author Posted January 9, 2016 An interesting discussion guys. I have been in the same boat (WAW 6 yr marriage) and realise a lot of recovery is about how you have to be so disciplined on yourself. By this I mean when your mind settles or you are un occupied it usually will veer back to your ex, it's actually amazing how many times you will do this even in an hour, but the next step is to work out how long did you actually think about her / him for - this is the worrying part! A month or so ago I was on a really long train journey that lasted 3 hours with many stops. It actually flew by in what felt like 10 minutes and I don't think I even knew I was at my stop, this was because I had thought about my ex and the breaking up and the sadness for the whole journey. This worried me slightly and made me realise that our minds can almost become addicted to doing this or will settle in to this state of zombi state / depression as an almost default. I now shout things to myself (in my head of course, don't want to be sectioned!) like "what are you doing, this women treated you like ****, stop wallowing, stop wasting your brain energy on her, lets have some fun instead" or "get back in the game, you will never get that wasted time back" You almost need to come up with a list of quick fire things you can quickly say to yourself to snap you out of the fog and to retrain your brain to stop it from settling onto the ex and the whole state of mind. Things that are positive and will give you strength. Obviously the main healer of all is time, but the depression / sadness stage of breaking up you want to try and limit it's impacts or time it lasts. I hear you loud and clear, so true. For me, I'm moving out at the end of the month so I'm actually going through a lot of flashbacks and having these moments where I remember certain things and it makes me cry. It's because the biggest change is going to happen soon. I'm bracing myself also for telling our child about the separation. Hate that it has to happen so badly. Wish I could be numb throughout that part. It's gonna hurt to see my kid cry.
Recommended Posts