Anita,

You asked :”Do you remember disapproving of yourself before you met your ex boyfriend? If you’d like, go back in time, scan your memory and share when and in what context did you feel inadequate, not good enough, less than perfect, and therefore unacceptable?”

I tried thinking about this so hard but I cannot feel like there is anything big, here is a few things that I came up with :

1. I did not have a lot of friends during the 3 years in high school because I was an over achiever so people tends to dislike me. I have my group of friends, we are still best friends until now – but I have to admit that I only have around 10 people that I truly consider as good, loyal friends.

2. I broke up with my first love when I was 15/16 and it left a huge scar for me. I had a lot of attachment to my first love, we were friends since we were 9 years old and then we started dating and broke up. It wasn’t a very nice break up, he expressed that I was a very good friend but a very boring girlfriend. It was so difficult for me to accept, I realise after a few years later that he wasn’t a good boyfriend at all. Not just to me but to almost all of his exes. He isn’t very loyal and has commitment issues. I do not have any relationship with him. I mean, we are technically still friends but I do not feel anything towards my first love anymore. No feelings at all. He is almost like a stranger to me. He has changed a lot and I have change a lot as well.

3. My parents especially my mother always criticise how I do not have a lot of friends. Personally, I do not need a lot of friends, I only need a few that truly cares about me and loves me. My mother seems very upset and has always expressed how I am very “anti social” – which is not true. I am just not comfortable with certain situations involving a lot of people that I know does not get along with me. I always try to be nice and polite to everyone, but it does not come easily for me. I like being alone.

Maybe there are more but these are the only ones that I can think of.

-Mina

Hello Lost Star!

I am very happy and grateful that you put such an amazing feedback and input into my thread. Thank you very much, it means a lot to me.

First of all, I am sos sorry to hear about your break up as well. I know exactly how awful it feels. I hope you are doing and is recovering well.

You asked : “I sense that you try to tolerate the distress of your needs not being met until the point that it may come out in a way that may appear to be “demanding”?

Yes, you are 100 percent correct. I have this really bad habit, that is every time we meet – I have a hard time seeing goodbye and parting ways because I truly did not know when we will be able to see each other again, I was emotionally drained out from his lack of time. It made me turned into a very clingy girlfriend and needy person.

You wrote : “I do not doubt his love for you as my personal view is that he let you go out of love as he knows that he cannot fulfil your needs and that is why he hopes that you can live your life without him.”

I share the same view as you on this one. I was in so much distress that I questioned his love for me. He did loved me, there was no doubt about it. Regardless of the whole thing that affected the break up or caused it, I can also share many things that I loved about him and a lot of things in the relationship that was very good and worth smiling over. These days, I cannot help but think what if my ex boyfriend wasn’t so much of perfectionist and If I wasn’t so needy … would this relationship lasts? Maybe not, as Anita have stated but I cannot be help to think and wish that we are still together.

Thank you once again, for writing me a beautiful and detailed feedback. You are such a nice person, you even read almost all of long threads about my ex that has been going on for months, most people would just ignore or write a stupid feedback without reading any of my posts but you read it. and most importantly, you understand 🙂

I hope that whenever you are, you will always be happy. I hope you have an amazing life and day!

Sending you all my love from Korea,

-Mina

Anita,

Thank you for your well thought out answers. I understand that since you do not know my ex personally, or the exact nature of the relationship (expressions, body language, conversation etc) – it is hard for you to give a definite answers. I understand, but I appreciate your response very much still. It means a lot.

You wrote :”… take on himself more than he can handle and continue to strive for the impossible, perfect performance in more and more endeavors, leading him, in intimate relationships. to dysfunction and overall lack of well-being.”

I know my ex boyfriends past relationships in details. Almost all of it. I have mentioned previously that we based our relationship in being open and honest, so we knew about each other exes quite well. My ex has only been with another girl officially besides me in the past. They started dating when they were 14/15 and broke up because my ex was moving to another city (he was living in China at that moment because of his fathers work) – the funny thing is they started dating AGAIN when my boyfriend was around 17, just like my relationship with him, their relationship was also very short lived. My ex boyfriend broke up with his ex girlfriend for ALMOST the same identical reasons as the reason why we broke up. He told her that he needed to focus on his SAT and college prep in Korea, the ex girlfriend was so mad at my ex that she splashed my ex with coffee during the break up. Yes, very dramatic indeed.

I understand why she was so mad though. My ex boyfriend was the one being so excited about being in a relationship but he gave up so easily – now that I think about it, my ex boyfriend has some problems in building a relationship that is stable and long term due to his perfectionist nature. Why start a relationship in the first place when you are never emotionally ready or available? That was the question. I asked him that (when he told me that dramatic ex girlfriend story) and he told me that of course he did not know that he would break up with her, that he did not know that the preparations for SAT was going to that hard, that he did not know that he will move to Korea soon, basically saying how he cannot predict the future of the relationship due to things that are constantly changing in his life.

Those reasons reminds me so much of the reason why we broke up, that he did not know that the military will call him so early and how he he did not know that he actually wants to move college in the middle of the semester and how he did not expected student council would be very demanding. I told him this during the break up talk that he might have some problems and how he is taking relationships very lightly. He wasn’t able to say anything about it. He is a smart person, maybe if he think about it hard enough, he will understand why it is hard for him to date someone long term.

What do you think, Anita? You have my ex details about his past relationships now, do you think that his personality to achieve everything perfectly is taking a toll in his romantic relationships with women?

You asked : “Is it possible for you to attend quality psychotherapy so to explore this?”

I would love to, but you have to be aware how depression and mental illness is looked down here in Korea. Having them means you are crazy, If I do receive a real therapy or getting help from a mental hospital, I would have red records on my resume. Mental illness isn’t a disease worth talking about or have discussion about. It is a taboo here. For the sake of my future career, I cannot take any risks. My ex boyfriend, he mentioned how he actually wanted go see a therapist and get a real help from experts but for people like him (and me) getting treatments means we have no thoughts about working in big important companies, because they do not accepted mentally sick people and even the people who is 100 percent cured isn’t accepted because they have records about getting treatment. They are afraid that it would intervene with our work if we someday got it back.

I do have a plan to make an appointment with the university counsellor though. What do you think about this?

-Mina

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Mina.

Anita,

I cannot stop feeling guilty, do you know how I was NOT aware that I have also contributed to the break up before yesterday?

I was BLAMING my ex boyfriend and his military service and his instability because he keeps making decisions that will not benefit the relationships. I did not even see my fault in the relationship.

You wrote : “Regarding his grade as a boyfriend, he gave himself a poor grade.”

Can I perhaps, help in this case? Will it comfort my ex boyfriend If I express how he was actually a very good boyfriend regardless the hectic schedules he cannot handle? and how his decision to move college isn’t his fault at all?

I have a a few important questions :

1. Did I drove my ex boyfriend into depression?

2. Was I a burden to him?

3. Did he even loved me at all?

You wrote : “This guilt that you have, the self hate that you feel, this originated before you met him. What is that about, will you share with me?”

I tried thinking but nothing really came up. I would love to explore this, Anita.

-Mina

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Mina.

[MOREA]

Anita,

At the end of the day … my boyfriend rejected me anyways. This really kills me. To be rejected by him hurts very badly, I feel like dying.

I am regretting it very much, Anita. I want to die because of this. I understand that I reject myself because of this too because I realise Mina was an awful person and a terrible selfish girlfriend. I hated Mina. I hate myself very much because I drove the person that I love very much to break up with me.

He must have hated me… maybe he hates me now as well. I feel so sorry towards him, I am crying right now because I just realise that the reality is that : I made him break up with me.

-Mina

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Mina.

Anita,

You wrote : “Clearly, in his mind, other items in his life were more important than the relationship with you. Other items were of higher priority than you being in his life.”

It really hurts my heart reading this. So his social college life is more important than his girlfriend? Student council is more important to him? 15.000 people that he does not even know personally one by one is more important than his girlfriend? He sounds very selfish to me.

You wrote : “he chose to remove the item of lesser value in his life, the relationship with you, so that he will invest his time and energy in the more valuable items.”

It hurts even more reading this. So I do not have a high value in my ex boyfriends life right? Military and college is clearly more important than having a girlfriend.

You wrote : “It may be that he highly valued you, Mina as a person, but he didn’t highly value having you in his life compared to other items in his life.”

In the back of mind, I understand these basic things you have mentioned above but the fact that he does NOT want me in his life is a form of rejection in my mind. And it is, right? The college thing was ex boyfriend decisions. The break up was in a way a consequence of his decision as well. I was never involved in this decision. I understand that it was hard for him and he did not even knew that he would even move college in the middle of the semester … but I feel like he is running away in a sense.

Running away from me, from student council, from his problems in his major – from his own life. He really disappointed me with that decision but I have always 100 percent supported him when his parents and his friends were questioning his decisions. Yet … I was the one he REMOVED instead?

I loved him very much, to the point where I was willing to do everything to have him in my life and to make it work. Yet he gave up on me. He also told me that he actually tried to make the relationship with work schedules, the college and army preparation thing but he did not really see it going anywhere in the future. Considering the fact that he would be “free” to date in the next 3-4 years in his life, I probably wouldn’t even be in Korea by then.

I understand his decision and his logic behind it but again – I have a sense of abandonment that came because of the break up. I have a sense of confusion : why me?

You asked : “how do you think you may have unnecessarily burdened him?”

1. By demanding to see him when his schedules were really hectic. My ex can be forgetful to reply to text messages in general and one time he only read my message so I got mad and did not talk to him for about one day – he begged me to forgive him and I did not reply at all. We ended up meeting for dinner and he came to neighbourhood. He actually live 15 minute by bus, he came in and sat in a bench near the bus stop. I asked why he wasn’t standing up and he told me that Business school had some kind of a sports event, and since it was summer, it was really hot and he had to organise stuff as usual – he was so tired that he cannot even stand up. He also got hurt from setting up a running event. He hadn’t even eat proper meals in that day and his first meal was actually that dinner with me. I felt really guilty that I cried, we had a deep conversation after that (which I can post to you in detail since I still have it saved in my phone)

2. I also demanded him to celebrate our 1 month anniversary (very common in Korean to celebrate this) even though I know that he has an exam the next day, a final exam. To be fair, we ended up moving the date to the day before the actual anniversary and we spend time together until 4/5am that day. I was being really clingy and refused to go home – I shouldn’t have done that.

3. I am indeed very attached to him. You guess the nature of our relationship from the very start. I got homesick and lonely a lot here in Korea so I had a very hard time parting with my boyfriend after a date or a lunch or a dinner. My ex boyfriend was very understanding, he knows that I got homesick considering I am here all alone without any family or a lot of close friends. All I had was him. Every time I have a problem, I would go to him for advices.

4. Sometimes I forgot that besides being Mina`s boyfriend, he is also the student council leader, he is also someones son, he is someones friend. I wanted to be only priority and the most important thing in his life. I never told him this, of course – but deep down inside I had this expectations.

5. I heard from some of his Business School friends told me that my boyfriend treated them differently from the way that he treats me. They saw a different side of him when he was with me. My ex when he was with me ended up being very open, vulnerable and soft. With other people, my ex filtered out a lot of things, he became more guarded and had a strong image. Maybe my ex felt the need to treated me extra nice, I mean he did not have to do that. He can just be himself, you know? I do not which one is the real him. The one when he was with me or the one when he was with his friends.

-Mina

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Mina.

Anita,

I think it is time for me to be honest about why I am avoiding reality and closing my eyes on it.

It took me this long but I am going to say it finally. The words that haunted me for a long time, I am literally shaking while typing because it so hard and painful for to admit this to anyone. Because admitting it means  I am one step closer to the reality I am very afraid of.

My ex boyfriend told me something during the break up that I haven’t told you yet.

I actually asked him during the break up, why did we have to break up NOW? We still have at least 6-7 months until February 2018 (his semester will start next year) – we can continue to date until then. I mean we can talk about the break up next year after seeing things instead of breaking up now. I told him that I won’t mind If we actually break up for real next year, because the LDR will be too hard, I understand that and I will not demand to continue the relationship.

He answered saying that it is mentally too much for him right now and even If he comes back for one last semester here, he thinks he won’t have the time to date at all. He felt like having a girlfriend last semester had its “negative” effects on him too. He told me that since he is in a relationship – he couldn’t properly focus on college life.

Maybe it is nothing to you, Anita. But for me … it was like hearing that my love for him was a burden to him, that being with me was a burden. That the relationship did not helped with his army or new uni problems but was actually adding into it. I am in so much pain due to that words that he probably did not even remember saying now. I was blaming myself for those words that he told me.

I remember that a few days before the break up, we got into a small fight. I told him how I am not the type of person that can go over a long period of time without seeing her boyfriend (at that time we almost haven’t met each other for a good 2-3 weeks due to final exams) – my ex boyfriend actually MET with his Business Major friends before he met me. I think I was personally hurt by how met his friends before his girlfriend. Especially since I was going to go back home for 2 months for the summer holiday so I think it would be good to meet my ex boyfriend before I went back. I told him that and he got distant after that. I think he was starting to think about the break up after that fight. That was the turning point for my ex boyfriend.

During the break up talk, I do not know If it is due to his depression or he just wanted to find excuses to break up –  another reasons to break up is because he thinks it will be too hard to continue the relationship since I am going back to my home country for the summer holiday. I was going back only for 2 months, Anita. It sounded so insincere and so unlike him. I felt like MAYBE there is a deeper bigger reason behind it. He told me a lot of logical reasons such as army and new college life but that one last reason was very irrelevant to me.

To give you a bit of a background, me going back to my home country was not a problem at all for him before the break up. I was coming back and he knew it. We were going to video chat everyday and call each other and I even told him my summer holiday plan in details. I was confused at why he suddenly brought that as a reason during the break up.

I am sure reading my last few threads about how he treated me made you think about what an amazing young man is but like you said … he isn’t perfect. He isn’t God. During the relationship, he was pretty busy – there were a lot of times when both of us (mostly me) had to make a really good effort to even meet each other outside school. There were a lot of times when I had to wait for him and buy him coffee to talk for a good 2-3 minute before he had to move class to another building. Or when I quickly had to done my assignments because he has a free time to watch a concert together on a Friday night. I sacrificed a lot just to be with him, in a sense.

My ex boyfriend is well aware of this. He was constantly feeling sorry for not taking care of me well like most boyfriends are (picking up their girlfriends, buying them flowers, or go on a date every weekend due to his student council schedules that includes weekend as working hours as well) – I was the one taking care of him instead, and I did not mind at all because I loved him. There were times when I felt like I was in a one sided relationship because I could not meet him freely or meet him very often.

I felt like he was not as invested as me in the relationship and it is very hard for me to admit this. Considering all these things I have wrote to you above – you will be able to grasp the situation fully. I am very afraid that maybe he never loved me and the relationship to him was never meant that much at all to him.

Do you remember how I ask you what kind of questions that I should ask because I do not know what kind of questions that I should ask him? The truth is, I do not know want to know because the questions that I want to ask him is the things that I am denying itself right now. That the relationship was nothing to him. and he never loved me. and he never cared about me at all. and most importantly – whether he broke up with me ONLY because of the military and new college not because of something else / other reasons he is not telling me. 

That was the real questions that I want to ask him, Anita.

-Mina