Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
August 24, 2016 at 11:42 pm in reply to: Some suggestions that might help for people going through breakup or divorce #113232Brav3Participant
Miniature Bodhisattva,
Another important delusion to see is this fantasy of the future that when I meet that perfect partner, I will be happy. Truth is you will only change from single person suffering to relationship suffering. If you see it clearly, you will not identify your partner as the source of happiness and will not get attached. Hence, if things fall apart again, you will get yourself up quickly.
One Buddhist nun told me once, we think we will be happy if we get what we want. Buddha says we get happy if see the delusions of our mind and stay in sync with reality.
Brav3
August 24, 2016 at 11:19 pm in reply to: Some suggestions that might help for people going through breakup or divorce #113231Brav3ParticipantDear Miniature Bodhisattva,
I am glad you liked #7.
I can see your point and to some extent I agree to that we must do what we can do. But if you look this world a little bit more deeply you might see more. We all learn from our school age, how to strive, how to find better job, how to find partner, how to go for it. There’s a whole self help industry thriving on this idea. These all motivational books talk about how against all odds, this guy or that girl persevere and triumphed. But nobody writes about someone who did their best and still failed. Something to think about. What we never learn is how to leave alone those things that we can’t do anything about. Now, there’s is a fine line here. The idea is to give your best, so you live your life to the fullest but find peace in your effort, not in the outcome. If you try to control your life, you will be disappointed. Do not try to tie all loose ends because you will never be able to. Find peace now amidst chaos.
It is the delusion that outcome is in your control, especially if you are highly successful. The truth is we can’t even control our own bodies, forget external things. And when things starts to fall apart, which they do eventually as that’s the nature of life, we despair and think this is forever to. We can only control our inner world which is basically to be in sync with reality and see the truth. Nothing is permanent, not even our feelings. They come and go.
Brav3
August 24, 2016 at 10:56 pm in reply to: Some suggestions that might help for people going through breakup or divorce #113230Brav3ParticipantDear Anita,
Thank you. I think you are the expert not me. Hats off to you for helping other on this site.
Brav3
August 24, 2016 at 10:54 pm in reply to: Some suggestions that might help for people going through breakup or divorce #113229Brav3ParticipantHi Cath,
Yes there’s a reason for all this to happen. We think it shouldn’t happen, instead we should see that it was meant to happen. Its hard when we are deluded though.
Friends are great. However, not many people are lucky enough to find honest friends. So, they try to fit in. They look for approval and obviously get hurt when that failed to happen. Friends change to, don’t forget that. Its life, this is how it flows. Always make friends but remember you are your best friend. Again, don’t get deluded by ‘I have friends forever’. Reality is friends come and go to. If you don’t believe me, ask your friends 🙂
Hope you are going good. Good to hear from you.
Brav3
Brav3ParticipantHi Butterfly,
I wrote OP in Jun and I was really angry on that particular day. Two months later I am in a very good head space. It had alot to do with reflection and learning.
First thing you need to do is either change your phone number or fully block his number and never contact again, until for some time. Texting is a form of contact and it is very clear from your post that you are getting hurt and he is in quite alot of pain as well. Mean texts are purely because of anger that will continue to come again and again until it vanishes. However, if you gave it away because of your anger and lashed out on him, it will worsen the situation.
When our minds are hijacked by negative emotions like anger, jealous, hatred, loneliness etc we become delusional. We are not in sync with reality. Its like we create this story in our mind where we see everything completely wrong or bad about a particular individual. Not many people understand this and not many people are ready to understand this.
If you respond to him, even nicely, you will send the message that he can get some reaction out from you and he will continue to drag you in this loop. Don’t get yourself into this trap again. You can’t teach this to him, he needs to see and learn this on his own. That’s his journey.
This is your opportunity to practice self love and compassion for yourself as you are hurt and also opportunity to learn how to let go and have forgiveness and compassion for others. Again, something that requires alot of courage and practice. But you know you can do this !!!!
Brav3ParticipantHi Sarah,
I can relate to what you wrote about yourself. I’ve questioned my worth/value many times, and recently, after breakup. After digging and alot of searching, I found some answers. I would like to share that with you to help you understand more. There might be some harsh words but only to help you see this clearly. I apologise for that in advance.
Firstly, its not your fault and you are not alone.When someone gets cheated by their partner or life just brings trunk load of s##t from them. The usual response is why me? Why this is happening to me? Why universe is doing this? It wasn’t meant to be this way. I asked many times this and guess what?! I never got any answered back.
Unfortunately, we all are destined to bear some pain. We cannot run away from it. To put it in more positive way, we can make plans but since when our lives went according to our plans. We can only do our best and we should find peace in that. The outcome will never was and will never be in our hands. It is the ‘control’ that adds enormous pain to the painful event. A famous Buddhist monk once said ” Try letting go a little and you will feel some peace”. It is your opportunity to learn and practice letting go.
Secondly, when people cheat in a relationship for whatever reasons, they do not understand how much pain and suffering they bring to their partners. After going through excruciating emotional pain, the obvious response from people who were cheated by their partners, is to avoid pain by being closed.
You will never find peace by being closed and not being vulnerable. It would be extremely hard to create meaningful connected relationships with others if one is closed and not genuine. I never met anyone in my whole life.
If you look inside its your feelings of anger, betrayal, hatred, fear etc. are causing to be closed. When you feel closed, be closed and feel it fully. You will see it subsiding slowly and then you will open. You must do this repetitively and with time it will pass away. You can be in pain and still feel peace. However, that requires practice and alot of understanding of the nature of life.
Thirdly, you need to see that its your attachment that is bringing you more pain. Its not love. Love and attachment are two very different things but very hard to differentiate. Attachment like other negative emotions do two things to your mind. It makes our mind disturbed and it makes us delusional( from Buddhist psychology). This guy ( who lives in Korea) is just another average guy. But because of your attachment, you see him as reincarnation of a god or something ( just analogy). Matter of fact, he definitely is not worthy of you, because he is emotionally unavailable, lying and disloyal bastard (excuse me for the bitter words). And you are questioning your worth for this guy !!!! Come one !!!! This is the time to practice self love and compassion. You are hurt by his disrespectful behavior. Don’t beat yourself more please. Try look beyond your feelings and see rational reasons of how much incompatibility you have with him, in terms of values or other things. I mean do you want to be with someone who gives up like that, who cheats ?
Fourthly, Is it really good or bad??? Is it really bad that he broke up with you so quickly? Imagine if you found all this about him after years of relationship or marriage or kids. Imagine the pain you would have to go through then.
Another important thing to look at self validation. If you are going to continue to look for your self worth externally, again, I am learning that as well, you will continue to be disappointed. YOUR WORTH/VALUE IS PURELY DEFINED BY YOU. And reading from what you wrote, I can clearly see that you need to do alot of work on it again, again I am doing this to. If you consider yourself highly valuable person you will attract people who thinks similar. Otherwise, you will continue to meet the same people who feeds on girls who don’t think highly of them ( again you aren’t alone here).
Lastly, to answer your question why universe continue to do this to you. I have partly answered this above. But here’s some more. Universe\life continue to bring same things if we do not learn from our experiences. These experiences are like our teacher and they are trying to teach us something very important. If we miss out due to self blame, self pity and many other painful feelings, it will continue to happen. As Martin Luther King said ” Yes we are angry, but what are we going to do now”
Yes, you are hurt but what are you going to do now? Are you going to continue to question why me? or are you going to learn self love, self worth and letting go? Are you going to pity about why this is happening to you? or are you going to start to see beyond feelings, more factual information about the next person.Hope this gives you some insight. Sorry, for the long reply, I tried my best !!
P.S. I am a 31 year old guy who had a bad breakup, 6 months ago. I send you my compassion.
Brav3ParticipantHi Dreaming715,
One and only thing I can say about dating is the outcome will never be in your control ( by the way it goes for everything in life). IF ITS MEANT TO HAPPEN, IT WILL and if not, then no matter how hard you do EVERYTHING RIGHT, it won’t work. So, if its not in your hand, why try to understand men’s dating behavior as it leads to only more confusion.
Another thing to look at is being comfortable with uncertainty. Yes, his behavior is odd but there could be 100 reasons for it. He could be busy, tired or caught up with something or his phone is having some issues or he lost/left his phone etc etc etc. Why to over analyse this and cause more confusion and disappointment for yourself. Say to yourself ” If its meant to happen, even if he hasn’t texted you, it will and if not, then no matter how perfect you act or reply or do right thing, it won’t work”.
There’s a whole dating industry thriving on people’s anxiety towards uncertainty, you know, how to decode text of your date or how to get the man or woman of your dreams and blah blah blah.Reading books and articles to gain knowledge about how to interact with men is good for certain aspects of dating like being confident, saying no and creating boundaries etc. However, you still have to remain authentic about yourself, which requires a bit of courage. You are not for everyone and that is okay 🙂 That makes you unique and beautiful.
Just relax and let it happen, naturally at its pace. Don’t let your mind trick you.
Brav3ParticipantHi Joanna2310,
I will try to give you some help here.
Bad Karma is when you intentionally do I wrong deed to harm others that can include bad mouthing, physical harming etc. Walking away from people that you know, will cause future suffering to you and them, isn’t bad karma at all. However, if you are walking away to cause harm to them, then it is, which I don’t think you are. So coming back to your question. No, you will not do any bad karma.
Buddhist psychology clearly says that one should have compassion and loving-kindness for oneself first. And that means if someone is mistreating you or manipulating, you meant to say ‘NO or this is poor behavior, you are treating me wrong here’ out of love and compassion for yourself.
So, if you can maintain distance with them after giving them support, then go ahead. But if you think you can’t or they will barge in to your life then don’t.
Good luck
Brav3June 13, 2016 at 11:56 pm in reply to: Parents divorcing at the same time of a bad break up. No one to talk to, so alon #107222Brav3ParticipantHey Cath,
Stopping by to see your update. Looks like life is slowly coming together. Glad you are doing okay 🙂
Brav3
Brav3ParticipantHi Chau,
I can relate to you in some way, that, I get obsessive thoughts every now and then about my ex which leads to pain and suffering. So, I feel your pain. However, after reading your post, Man ! I really feel like I need to tell you something to break your mind pattern and for your health and better future. So, I will give you some straight forward brutal advice. Please please please follow it, it will help you. A big apology for the language, but I think you need to hear this.
Get off the WHATsAPP- Dude delete her no. and your so called good friend no. and please for god sake delete the Whatsapp. Lets get the facts straight. He is NOT YOUR FRIEND because he slept with your ex !!! She is a …..you know what. Come on man ! What the F you are doing ? These people in your lives don’t deserve a guy like you. Why are you continue to hurt yourself by keeping them in your life? How will you heal if you continue to dig your wounds every damn day? Can’t you see, you can’t even sleep. Come on man Bro !!!! Cut them off from your life.
And for F sake why the F you want to connect with your ex. She cheated on you and deep down you want her back. Are you serious? Dude you are destroying your self esteem and value by thinking like that. You really need to come out from these emotional BS and see the reality. Take off these rose colored F glasses Bro !!!
I do not have my ex no. ( I remember her no., I hate my memory) and I deleted on Whatsapp. We have a common friend that I unfriended. I still feel pain but no way in world I will take her back. She betrayed me and I just want to forgive her and move on. She did offered me friendship and I said GO F yourself ( I didn’t say it but you get the idea). She and her friend doesn’t deserve a guy like me ( honest, caring and loving).
Here’s the truth you need to see. There are good people out there that you deserve. Good friends who will care and support for you and good loyal girls to date. If you worried you will never find anyone, you are absolutely wrong. Time to kick crap out of your life and meet new people. I know you can do it Bro. I know you can.
Brav3ParticipantHi Fairy,
Its really good that you feel wonderful after ending relationship. Usually people struggle to break free or struggle post breakup, even after discovering that they were manipulated for a long time. I am one of them.
There’s something I would like to warn you about before I give you some advice. People google about gaslighting, read and understand signs and then start believing that exactly what happened, just to gain some understanding of their traumatic event. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to say if someone gaslighting you or not, unless that person comes out and admits it. Anyway, my point is even if you have discovered whether you were manipulated intentionally or not ( alot of times it is unintentional) it doesn’t make any difference in your life. It didn’t make any difference in mine, in fact, it made me things worse by making me more angry and bitter towards my ex. So, if you can, just stop yourself from falling into trap.
If you really want to take steps to self-empowerment, self love, boost confidence and self esteem, you really need to see few things.
1. Self responsibility Manipulation or gaslighting happens when we do not take responsibility of saying “No” or ” I don’t like the way you are treating me” Or ” You are crossing boundaries here”. First thing to learn is how you can say no and walk away from any relationship if the person was treating you poorly or crossing lines again and again. If you learn this you will boost your self esteem.Remember this, the world doesn’t do it to us, we do it to ourselves. So, take things in your hand now ( which you are doing in some way).
2. Learn to love being alone Another biggest cause of getting gaslighted/manipulated is fear of being alone. People stay in toxic, abusive relationship because they are too scared to walk away ( include me in this). They put up with disloyal, not loving, unkind, mean, verbally or physically abusive, cheating partner because they are so afraid to be alone. If only, you now how to enjoy being with no one around you. So, find ways to practice that.
3. Learn to find you self worth, your value, your validation and love within yourself. Manipulator usually find people who struggles with self love, self worth and validation. They then put their victim in the beginning of the relationship, on pedestal, always showering with love and enormous affection. Then slowly they change their behavior, making their victim feel as if its his or her fault. So, the victim ( I am that person) tries to do everything right and still couldn’t understand why relationship is falling apart. And then the manipulator use this as leverage to do wrong things and continues to tell their victim that they are overreacting or insecure or possessive or jealous or blah blah blah….you name it. Sadly, victim’s start doubting all his judgments, memory and gut feelings as if he is losing his mind. And then its all downhill from there.
If I only learn to find my worth within myself and didn’t look for my validation outside, nobody can then manipulate, because I won’t seek their approval. Then I will have the courage ( balls) to say F##K YOU for treating me poorly and walk away whenever I want to. As you can see how self empowering that is 🙂
4 Learn to live in present and be happy now So when shit like gaslighting happens, its aftermath issues are quite draining. Mind continues to be confused and one feel isolate and lost for a while. Their is alot of pain and grief to go through which requires time and patience. What important to understand is one day we have to let go and forgive to move forward. Otherwise we continue our suffering. So, start cultivating letting go and forgiveness now. It will take alot of time for them to develop.
Living in present means what has happened, has happened , its gone, done, finished, over. See what is your present, which is that you are beautiful, loving and kind girl who’s worthy of love and who’s happy with what she have in her life. Develop this understanding and start loving yourself and find happiness within you first.
5. Traumatic memories of ex
What I do is, when I see those traumatic images ( when she was lying or manipulating) or hear those words or both, which often repeats again and again and again, I say to myself that she didn’t know what she was doing (manipulating) to me and she must have alot of pain in her heart to inflict this upon me and I forgive her for that. It doesn’t always work but when it does I feel relief.6. Friends and hobbies Best thing to do is try out every sport and see what interests you. Then see if you can sign for a program or a club. Then introduce yourself to whoever you encounter in a friendly kind way ( not flirting please). Then slowly build bonds with people by asking about their lives and all. Do not rush, do not have a very long conversation, do not try too hard if the other person is not receptive. It takes time to make friends, not everyone wants to be friends, so go slow and let them find you to 🙂
I could write a whole book on this. But I think this should be enough to give you directions. Here’s what I read somewhere
Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out. You can turn this 11 yrs of pain into something best for yourself ( strong, resilient, confident and independent girl), you can, you know. I send you my love and compassion.Brav3
Brav3ParticipantHi Scarlet,
I will try to answer simply to your question ‘Why it is so hard to let go’. Its very simple for past 41 years of life, the experiences you had, the situations you faced, you practiced ‘how to not let go’. You have 41 years of conditioning with you that makes you react to things rather than respond. I am the same, trust me ( 31 years of conditioning).
So, to break this conditioning/habitual pattern will require some time and alot of effort. What you have to do is simple see any difficult situation and then see what you are feeling and then do completely opposite to it. Easier said than done. But this is how you will slowly start breaking this habit.
For instance, the situation with you and your niece. She acted differently and you were disappointed. So, you felt anger and hurt. But then you identified yourself with anger and hurt. You didn’t see them as emotions/feelings that passes on its own. Your conditioning kicked in and you gave her call and then got further disappointed. All you have to do is see your thoughts and feelings as just ‘ thoughts and feelings’. A very hard thing to do because of poor old habits. You will see them disappearing and then you will respond rather than react. Its called ‘ Seeing the waterfall’.
Hope it helps.
Brav3
Brav3ParticipantHi Brittany,
I am in a similar situation. My ex Gf works at the same work place. She broke up with me 4 months ago on a sudden after 2.5 years or living together and I have been picking up my life slowly. Although, I feel like I am getting out, some days can be very painful. I get that same bouts of pain and anxiety when I see her or her car. She is with some guy now and I know I will have to face that situation as well sooner or later.
There are things that I do , that you can try.
1. Create a breathing space by cut loose everything that gets you stuck in the emotions This applies to what you can do without any significant loss. For instance, if you can change your club sport team, great, if you can’t because of significant loss, then don’t. ( I can’t change my job, so I have to endure seeing her everyday) Same goes for common friends. Either request them not to ever talk about him or find new friends ( I cut off and started making new friends). However, there will be times that you might end up facing him. Yes, you will shit but then it will make you stronger for the next time. And then later in life, you will have no problem. So, think of it as it is making you tough, strong and increasing your resilience.
2. Cultivate acceptance and letting go daily This means to remind yourself daily your present is that he is your ex and those good memories are nothing but thoughts that passes away. See them as just thoughts and feelings and let them pass, they will go and then return again. You continue to label them as thoughts and feelings and let them pass again.
3. Remind yourself times when you were questioning your relationship Do you want to be that miserable girl who stayed in the relationship just because she was sacred of being alone? Or do you want to be this new single, happy girl, who’s got room now for exciting new people to come in her life?
Attachment comes from clinging to certainty, from fear of unknown, and from being deluded to the truth that everything in this world continues to change. We hold on to people or things as if they were ours to possess. However, as described in law of impermanence, when things or people or situations changes, which they always do, we suffer because we grasp to something that is gone. If we only learn to accept and let go, we find freedom in present.
Brav3
May 31, 2016 at 11:59 pm in reply to: Breakup is blessing in disguise, it makes you stronger and wiser #106168Brav3ParticipantHi Anita,
When I see others going through what I am going through, I’d like to help them. It gets me out of thinking about my problems and if they feel some relief with my words, I feel I helped someone. Also, it helps me to remind myself about what I have learned so far. So, in some way, by helping others, I am helping myself 🙂
Yes, please. I’d like to know your comments on 1-7.
#5 is description of tormenting thoughts that I get everyday. Its more of worry thoughts and grasping onto past than anything else. I want to forgive her for what she did and move on.
I lived a deluded life for a long time and I am trying to break off from it. However, it will take some time as emotionally charged thoughts are the problem. I will continue to remind myself about how wrong I was about her and everything.
Brav3
Brav3ParticipantSandstorm,
Brother, in some way when I am giving advice to you, I sort of giving advice to myself. As I told you, my personality and past was similar to you.
I fully understand that feeling ( excitement) when some nice girl is approaching you. Its very natural. In my case, I actually asked someone to have a coffee with me, I could see the same excitement as yours. However, this time I am seeing it ( my feelings) rather than identifying with them and letting them go. This is what we all need to practice.
Here’s a very important thing to understand. There’s nothing wrong with seeking love in life. However, thinking that if you find love, you will be happy is fallacy. If you start believing this you will be able to slow down and see its your emotions that are tricking you again. You will feel less anxious and sad if things didn’t go the way you want them to go.
Remember, things will change with time.
Brav3 -
AuthorPosts