Dear allicia,

Your dilemma really resonates with me because I am a former Architecture student and have since changed course to go into another artistic domain. Like you, I have been pressured by my family to “just finish it” even though I knew this wasn’t what I wanted to do.

I know how stressful studying Architecture is, I think a lot of people don’t realize just how much effort and time it requires to present work from week to week, how you always end up working at nights and barely have time to eat properly or sleep. I’m sure this stress is contributing a lot to your feeling of urgency and anxiety.

I think the positive point in your story is that you do know what you want to do. I think you shouldn’t worry too much about being older than everyone else when you start to study what you want, I was around 5 years older than most people in my art school and I can tell you it didn’t make much difference, no one looked at me funny and I found friends and it all went well. Also, there will be other people who start older like you, maybe even older than you. Not everyone’s life is a straight line just like yours isn’t.

I also found that my Architecture studies did give me some advantages so it wasn’t all in vain, I already had some software experience, I already knew how to present work, I already knew how to work a lot and invest in projects.

I think right now it’s hard for you to see that it is not all black & white and that your situation is difficult but not desperate. But I believe it seems so bad to you because you think the lost time is lost forever and you’ll be “late” somewhere, late to your appointment with your real life, so to speak. I’m trying to suggest that this is not necessarily the case.

I can keep writing to you if you want to, in the meantime I hope you can relax a bit, take a deep breath and tell yourself that this is your life’s path and it’s ok just as it is. Hard to believe I know but it’s true.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Midnight.

Dear Cherryblossom,

I admit I didn’t read all posts in this thread, mostly your first post and your recent update, and now Anita’s summary which helped me get a better idea of what you are going through. So if I reply in a way that doesn’t suit your story and needs, please let me know or feel free to just ignore my words.

Like Anita, I too can see that you are still very caught up with your past.
Your experiences at your work place and this long period of unemployment have left you feeling useless, unwanted and lost. I can relate to what you are going through, I know how hard it is to be unemployed and to feel that you left a workplace with “bad energy” instead of a good, healthy closure. It is in some ways similar to a relationship that ends, and it can be as unsettling because you feel that you have lost your life frame somehow and are left with a void. From what I’ve read it sounds a bit as though you were trying to go back and fix the things that went wrong, instead of going forward with your life.

I was wondering if there was any other direction that you could take, in the meantime or altogether, to break this pattern of desperately looking for a similar job to the one you had, or getting back into the same company?
Could you perhaps find work in another town/city, start your own little company, work from home, make a career change, learn something new? I have no idea what area you are in so maybe none of these apply to you, but I find that it can sometimes help to think about other possibilities and consider other options, to make you see that your life doesn’t have to be narrowed down to this search for a job. And that the miracle can be created by you, even if it takes time and effort. Because at the moment it seems to me that you feel so dependent on other people’s approbation of you, hiring you or being happy with you, that maybe it takes up all the space and leaves no room for what you can do to change your life, and to what would make you happy and fulfilled.

If you want to share a bit more about what you do, or about what you like to do outside of work, maybe we think can together and see what options there might be that you’re not seeing right now?

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Midnight.
• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Midnight.

Hi mommalicious,

I think you observed correctly that by unblocking him you are hoping that he will contact you, you’re leaving the door open for him to come back to you.
But the truth is that if at some point he really wants you back and is sure of it, he will find a way to communicate that to you. In fact, he will not rest until he does. Remember all these silly romantic movies with the guy running in the street just to tell a girl how he feels about her before she gets on a plane? Well, it might be silly and exaggerated and I really don’t like romantic movies, but I think that these scenes are a metaphor for how we feel when we know we love someone and want to be with them. It becomes the most important thing in our eyes, to communicate with that person, just like you said “he’s like a drug to me”.

The reason I’m saying this is to make you see, that unblocking him will not improve the chances of him coming back to you. In fact I believe if anything, it makes it less likely to happen. So my advice is, block him so that you can get on with your life and so that he will understand that he cannot change his mind on you whenever his mood changes and you’ll still always be there for him.
If he really loves you and overcomes his issues, then he will find a way to communicate that to you. After all, you’ve made it very clear that you were interested in him.

I know how these things works, at some point you might think, “well what if he does want me back but because I blocked him he cannot get in touch/will think I’m not interested”. No. If he really wants you back, he will try anyway and he will find a way to speak to you. So don’t worry about that.
Block him and move on.

I don’t know if I know a lot about life, I struggle with my own issues as well… but I am much older than you so I’ve had some experience with dating and so on, and have heard a lot of friends’ stories over the years to form some opinions.

You didn’t do anything wrong, and I don’t think you need to become more like him, be a hurtful, insensitive person yourself, to avoid these situations.

What you do need to do is keep your boundaries. Understand and determine with yourself what behavior is acceptable towards you and what isn’t, and simply walk away from people who do not act in a respectful way.
You can still be who you are and keep all the good stuff about you for someone who will appreciate it. But you must learn to walk away from hurtful, disrespectful people. Not try to explain to them or demand explanations, simply walk away. Believe me, this is the best strategy. If someone doesn’t respect you, doesn’t see you, you cannot change that about them. It is sad but true and so much suffering can be prevented if you stick to that principle. Just ignore them the way they ignore you, and see how you will attract the right kind of people instead.

Dear daeneth,

I understand why you feel this way.
But believe me, his behavior has nothing to do with you and the person you are. He simply has this need and urge to sleep around, as I said because he’s young or because this is his nature. You could be a top model with 3 college degrees and the greatest person on earth, he still will be tempted to sleep with someone else. There is no explanation to give or demand. He got bored not because you are boring, but because he is simply not capable of maintaining a relationship with one person at the moment. It’s true, he didn’t care and you were nothing to him and that feels awful. But that doesn’t mean anything about you and your worth. It only means that you were looking for love where there wasn’t any love to be had.

What is your relationship with your parents like? Are you close? You mentioned your mom wasn’t supportive? I am asking because we sometimes repeat patterns we had with our parents in our relationships and if as a child you felt somehow starved for love, maybe this is something you are repeating now by attaching yourself to someone who doesn’t give you love and attention.

Dear daeneth,

You gave someone your trust and he didn’t respect you and hurt your feelings, a lot. This is a very painful experience to go through and it might take you a while to forget and move on. I understand how hard this must be right now and that it feels as though nothing can make you feel better. I assure you that it will get better, but for that to happen you must cut all contact with him, remove him from you FB and so on. Or you might get tempted to get back in contact with him again, which you absolutely mustn’t do.

Unfortunately, we sometimes tend to feel even more attached to and obsessed with people who hurt us, or who are not really there for us. I believe it is because we are all carrying this longing to belong and feel loved, and maybe the “high” we get when we receive that for a little while from someone who acts in this flaky way, is more intense. What I mean is, that this great feeling of “he chose me, he does love ME” that you get every time he makes you feel like you are his girlfriend, is so intense because it comes in between times when you’re not so sure how he feels about you. This hot and cold, or yes and no movement creates an excitement and rush which gets you hooked on him, and makes you so dependent on HIS moods, HIS choices, HIS actions. You are left passive, waiting and hoping for him to love and commit to you, much like a child who depends on her parents and hopes that they will love and approve of her.
I believe that what makes you so in love and attached to him is precisely that uncertainty, that passive state on your end, which usually fuels desire and longing so much. But you can get so much more out of a real relationship with someone who loves you, and who will make you feel safe.

The only way to move on is to change this passive way you act and feel. Remove him from everywhere, delete his phone number and cut all contact. Tell yourself that you are a good, loving person with who deserves respect and act this way. Don’t waste time and energy on trying to understand his actions – there really isn’t much to understand. His actions are immature and he is simply not ready to have a committed relationship and probably will not be ready for a long while yet, he is still very very young so this could be due to his age, or to his character in which case he will always act in a similar way. Either way, there’s nothing for you there and you should move on with your life.