There’s definitely some amazing lessons that you can learn from this experience. From your last post, the first one that comes to mind is, never drink to the point of intoxication. Reason and logic become suppressed under the influence. It’s a short term escape and will only perpetuate your cycle of up and down suffering.

As to your question about how long you should wait, well, everyone is different, but based on what you’ve been posting in the past little while, I would say anywhere from 6 months to a year. Don’t rush into another relationship until you’ve found your footing. Standing strong, tall, and firm will prevent you from getting sucked into the dramas, insecurities, and neurosis of others.

During this time, I would prescribe the following:

– keep your home neat and tidy (the state of your home reflects the state of your mind and vice versa)
– meditate daily
– exercise regularly (cardio at least 3-4 days a week)
– abstain from any sexual activity (discover a new sense of emotional mastery by not succumbing to your libido)
– improve your diet
– don’t do any drugs and never drink to the point of intoxication

There seems to a be a contradiction here: “I thought that if I just put myself out there, out of my comfort zone and into unknown places, I would feel at least some form of approbation…”

I think putting yourself out of your comfort zone is a great way to grow, but it’s precisely because it creates feelings of discomfort and pain. If wasn’t uncomfortable, it wouldn’t be out of your comfort zone. 😉

Now that you’re outside of your comfort zone, you may want to recoil and run home to safer grounds, but take a pause, breath, it’s only been 48 hours. If you suffer from social anxiety, pace yourself and give yourself a break. Two steps forward, one step back. Eventually, you’ll get where you want to go.

Read this article (http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/0002153) and now read your post over. Sound familiar? There might be some deeper underlying issues that you might want to take care of. 😉

The real question at hand is, now that you’ve moved into residence, what are you going to do next to connect with people around you? 🙂

Meeting new people is hard and at passive social events like parties, it’s hard to strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger. If there was a social setting where you could play an active role and take some action, it would help break the ice and make connections.

What clubs are available on campus? What meet-ups might be available? Any posters around looking for volunteers to help a cause?

University is a stream of activity, but you have to be ready to get your feet wet and go with flow. 🙂

In that case, I retract my statement. I misunderstood the scenario you were describing.

The only other thing that I would react to is this notion of keeping score, “more UNavailable than he is available”.

What if, when he is available, he is simply available, and when he’s not available, he’s simply not available. If we stop tracking numbers and setting up implicit expectations what someone should or should not be, there’s so much less churn. 😉

I hear your pain and if this helps, let me share with you what I’ve experienced having been on the other side. When it comes to break-ups I’ve been in both scenarios.

The first is where I am cold and distant, pretend to be relieved to be free, which is simply a suit of armor I put on so that the arrows of pain of the person I’m breaking up with bounce off of me. This is mostly a defense mechanism because in reality I too am suffering the pain of the break-up and to experience someone else’s pain in addition to my own would be more than my heart could take. Don’t let his external facade trick you into believing that he’s not feeling any of it. Even if he’s the one who broke it off, he may be suffering just as much as you are.

The second scenario is where I do break-down and cry in-front of the person exposing my raw painful feelings. If I’ve broken up with a person (for whatever reason), but I’m still really attached to them (perhaps co-dependently so) then break-up can feel like withdrawal symptoms from a drug and my emotions are in such turmoil that I look for support from the source of my addiction. This scenario makes the break-up drag on even more painfully as with every moment of despair I turn back to the source of my addiction apologizing for leaving and looking for some sort of external release and permission to be free.

As painful as both scenarios are, I personally prefer the first approach to the second – go cold turkey, cut ties, and begin some serious soul searching and reflection to learn more about yourself and what drove you into that obsessive, addictive, and co-dependent relationship in the first place.

I know it hurts. If there was a way to avoid the pain of a co-dependent break-up, I haven’t heard anyone describe a better way to do it.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 4 months ago by John.

I agree with Matt. I feel for you. I’ve been there before and I know this may not mean much or it may sound unusually cruel, but I’m glad that you’ve had this experience at such a young age as opposed to when you’re older. You’ve already admitted that your behavior and reactions are those of a drug addict and that is an amazing first step. This realization and the pain and suffering that you’re experiencing right now could open your eyes to a world that you never knew existed and can help you find a new resource of strength inside of you that you didn’t even realize was there.

It’s a painful inward looking journey that uncovers loneliness, insecurity, desire, addiction, obsession, anger, jealousy, judgement, and a desperate clutching for something solid that really doesn’t exist. It exposes you to the realities of love and relationships that are far more profound than what you think is possible or ideal.

“first gf kissing in my room while parents are downstairs… ”

“memories of me sending her love letters written on tiny sheets of paper, memories of our first date, right after school bus trip where we have met each other”

“love which is like a flame in a gas lamp…fueled by unlimited resources of oil…”

“first kiss, first holiday,…”

I’ve been there before and I know how these things seem very important and real as you look to them as proof of love, but I tell you there’s not much there. We are victims of a society obsessed with counting and numbers. “Who was your first? Who was your second? How many did you have?” What we’re not taught is how to look for quality over quantity, how to seek depth over superficial comparisons, or how to feel instead of looking for proof of feelings.

The sentiments you echo are words and images of things you’ve seen in movies and heard in songs. They’re fun to think about, but they’re not love. They’re not worth shedding a tear over or striving for. They’re fantasy and not even your fantasy, but the fantasies of people that have come before you who themselves were deluded, dare I even say brainwashed into believing that’s what love is. Passed down from generation to generation, it’s a ruse that’s been unknowingly perpetuated on so many of us and one that we’re at the risk pushing and promoting onto future generations.

Take Romeo and Juliet for example; two highly dysfunctional and deluded individuals whose tragic ending reveals more about the health of their relationship than all the lovey-dovey words they exchanged. And what do we focus on? We focus on their passion, their flame. But where did that fire take them? It consumed them into a premature death because they couldn’t see the world beyond each others noses.

Avoid their tragic end by learning from addicts that came before you.