sirjay Posted June 15, 2006 Posted June 15, 2006 My ex of 3 years broke up with me about 5 months ago. I had been living platonically with my ex in another city for a number of reasons and she got fed up with waiting for me to move. i have since worked really hard to get my life in order, have moved, got my money straight and basically corrected the flaws that spoilt things. We get on amazingly well, and i gave her a great deal of support, strength, love, knowledge and many things i think she will find very hard to find in another guy (she told me many times that i was one in a million and i know what she feels about other guys). The relationship was never really done properly and there is loads of unfulfilled possibility. We had a difficult first few months with me chasing too much, her backing off, a lot of fighting and winding each other up. We both discovered how much in love we were when we broke up and she wanted to be "best friends" which i found confusing. We have been in NC for 5 weeks since i collected my stuff from my place. I know she has picked up at least one guy in a club but i know that she has always found that kind of thing unfulfilling and we are still very attached emotionally (various things keep happening, like she got hurt and called just after it happened etc). I just got too hurt and said I couldnt do friends and cut off contact. She was devastated... I sent out a newsletter the other day. She was one of 4000 people on the list and i forgot she was in there. Out of the blue, she has broken NC (i guess i kind of did but the email was just an anonymous mailout and there was no reason to reply to it at all. it was very obviously the excuse she wanted!) Her message is really overly curt and non-committal, she just said she hopes i am doing well in a very stiff way. i know her extremely well and i can tell that NC has been really hard for her too and that she has missed me. she has been very guarded and stiff since we broke up and is good at masking her feelings but now i am accustoming to this side of her, i can read it. i can tell she has written it so cold to cover up her feelings... so i am not going to reply for a week or 2 but i am debating how to play it. long term, i want her to see that i have changed the aspects of me that spoilt things, and for us to rebuild things tentatively. Friendship might be a route to that but at the same time, would giving her too much of what she wants mean that she wouldnt need to get back with me? not sure whether to be friends, to maintain my distance and let her miss me more or what? how can i let her know i have been working on my life without it being too much "i want you back, i've changed?"
Author sirjay Posted June 16, 2006 Author Posted June 16, 2006 Opinions on how to approach this appreciated please!
lynni31 Posted June 17, 2006 Posted June 17, 2006 Hmm... ok, if she was devastated and you want her back , and you think she wants you back , why would you want to make her miss you more ?
Author sirjay Posted June 17, 2006 Author Posted June 17, 2006 Because i dont want to become available to her again and just get stuck as "friends". I don't know what her true intentions are. Well, there were things that I needed to change about myself before I could start to win back her trust but I don't know how to communicate to her that I have really made major changes without "chasing" her. I know that she loves me deeply but there was also a side to me that hurt her and i needed some time to myself to address those issues, which i have. It's a bind: I was really trying to get her back a lot and consequently was no "challenge", which everyone knows is not a turn on and doesn't make a person desirable. I went through a real crisis in my life and had to rebuild everything almost from scratch so i was very vunerable and wasnt the strong guy she fell in love with at that time - i acted weak and needy for a bit, because everything was just too much. So I have really worked hard on getting my life together, and getting on with things. My confidence and self control is back. i am the new improved model! I know she misses me and she wanted to be "best friends". I don't know whether she wanted to do that to retain bits of the relationship she wanted to keep or whether it was to keep me around to see if i got my act together. We went through something similar last year- she broke up with me for a month and it was 100% about getting me to make a decision about moving, changing careers etc which is what we needed to do for the relationship to grow further. But she would never say as much and was always non-commital about what was happening and that we were just friends. What happened was that the chemistry between us was too strong and we got back together before i was ready and we slipped back into the same pattern. Now is different: i have made hardcore changes in my life, moved, got a new job etc. I have done everything i was supposed to last year. When we went through that period, she did exactly the same thing she is doing now and did a damn good job of pretending not to be that interested until we got back together and then she was normal again. So I don't know what she is feeling at this moment but if I rely on my heart rather than my intellect, I feel our bond is very much intact. I hope that she just wants to take some months apart for us to take a break and for me to get settled in and then pick things back up. She wanted me to make the changes for myself and said she didn't want the pressure of me making those changes specifically for her. She had said that we should do a few months NC and then get back in touch and "see how it goes", but i dont know if she meant with a view to getting back together or just as friends. i told her many times that i could never just be friends with her.... So the question is: is it better to be best friends and see if that leads back to a relationship, or to maintain my distance? Would limited contact be better? I want her to see that i have changed.
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