I’m sorry I just realised how long this is! If anyone has the patience to read it, you are awesome.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. @Inky never apologise, am so grateful and I love your insight. I think you may have a point in that my reaction to this loss is kind of disproportionate in some way to the relationship itself and it might be that I have work to do still since my divorce, rather than this necessarily being a great loss itself.

That kind of hurts, because I really worked hard on that, or so I thought. Maybe its something you never ‘get over’ completely and utterly….I’m not sure. When we split (my husband), he walked out and I literally have never seen him again. It was a shock, and as such I took a long, long, LONG time to feel better. There was no conversations, explanations, nothing. It wasn’t like we’d been fighting. In fact he’d been talking about us having a family soon. So it just came out of the blue and felt like a trauma, in that I relived it every day for years. He hadn’t told me anything was wrong, and he wouldn’t talk to me after. He told me he had mental health issues and couldn’t be with anyone, but I later found out he’d been cheating on me and he married her within 2 years of leaving me. I lost myself for a while, stayed indoors, ignored social engagements, etc. Eventually I did a lot of CBT and behavioural activation to engage in new activities. And I wrote, wrote, wrote. Talked to friends. Spent time with family. It was 3 years before I felt remotely human despite all this, and another year before I would meet anyone else. I analysed it to death, wondering why it had happened to me, why he would treat me like that, and every morning I would wake up, throw up (not something I could help, just a body reaction to stress with me), and wonder why the universe hadn’t stopped becuase I wanted to scream “Wait! Wait! This isn’t what is supposed to happen! I’m supposed to be having a baby right now like all my friends! Can we just hold on a goddam minute while I catch up!” It just made me see the world so differently and I don’t think I’ve ever fully got over that. Although, I did make a new life for myself.

And I think part of the difficulty and why I took so long to recover was my age, which I began to see as a failing (I was 30 at the time). I was suddenly single for the first time in my whole life, but I was 30. I had no idea how it would feel to be the only single person at friend’s weddings, standing in the sidelines of other people’s milestones and celebrating their life events while I was dying inside. Spending Saturdays or whole weekends alone. It wasn’t until I was 34 that I met this new man. I rarely meet men that I can spark with. I do go out a lot, don’t get me wrong, but I am not a fan of internet dating and the pure and simple fact is its a small fish pond just now (everyone married or taken). So when I met this recent man it felt like a gift, even though there were issues from the start as he was himself quite bruised from his own divorce. I felt chemistry and I thought “aha! That is what this feels like!” I’d forgotten all of that. I felt human again, that basic instinct we all have to touch and be touched. And then suddenly I was. And he was very flattering, and I know he tried his best, but he ultimately couldn’t commit to me. So I feel rejected again, and @Inky maybe you are right this is setting off emotional memories of the other great relationship trauma in my life. I was not 100% happy in this recent relationship but I saw such a potential and I feel upset and cheated it didn’t work out.

Either way, I am so grateful for this community. I wish I could see this last relationship in a mindful sense, as maybe some kind of learning experience. I am trying to look for silver linings. I am using everyone’s advice, around being worthy, but my own self worth is really, very knocked right now. I need my confidence boosted and my self esteem back, but I’m so scared because I don’t have another 4 years to ‘work on things’ so I’m maybe living in my fear rather than getting out of my comfort zone. I feel like my time is running out (bio clock). I’m trying not to wallow in my own pity party, really. It may not sound like that! I will try today do something to take myself out of this.

Thank you for listening.

I can’t thank you enough for these awesome replies, I really mean it, I’m so touched and it helps a lot to have your input. I have in fact printed out these responses, and read them over and over, its so amazing. What has shifted as a result is that I now know and feel that this is just something I have to go through rather than battling it and wanting it to change. I mean, I still want the situation to change, in that I want him to make contact with me, but I don’t feel quite so hopeless. I accept that I will feel sad probably for a while. I accept that this isn’t the situation I wanted. And I am trying, really trying, to accept that I am in control of my thoughts and as you pointed out @Inky this could be the universe’s way of steering me from one path to one that may bring more happiness in the longer term. I really hope that turns out to be true.

I still feel tearful and sad, though, which I suppose is OK, and as time goes on its getting a bit less and less. And you are all helping me with that, so thankyou.

Someone advised me to make a list of silver linings of this situation though and that really stumped me, I couldn’t think of a single one, I obviously still have work to do!

TZ

Oh wow thanks everyone for their helpful comments. I love this community. @msmaedae I took your advice to write what I wanted for myself. And I love your comment about learning how strong you are and better at coping than you think. Thank you so much for that. (I write a lot, but it tends to be how I feel, and ruminating type stuff, all very negative- which helps to get it out, but tends to also keep me stuck). What I want is to be happy. First and foremost. And I want to be in a committed relationship, and I want to have a family. But most of all, I want to know I can cope with what life throws at me, and be OK INSIDE. And I think sadly this ending/breakup or “the relationship that never quite was” has pushed me to the side a bit and I’m finding it hard to garner my strength. But I am trying. Small steps and all that. Just need to find my way back to the path!!

@guru and @kelly how are you doing? I’m still no contact, but almost broke it again last night. I still feel a bit like I’m putting rose tinted spectacles on how things were. I ask myself, did he treat me right? Did he make me feel like an awesome person? No. He made me feel anxious, on edge, never sure of his feelings and what he wanted. Then I was trapped in thinking about what HE wanted and I lost myself in that. ANd now I am thinking constantly about what he is thinking and if/when he might make the positive changes to himself that he needs to go through to feel “ready” for me. Its like I can’t let go of that small hope that while its not meant to be NOW, it might be meant to be LATER. THAT HE WILL COME BACK. Its helping me cope a bit, but its also keeping me stuck. Anyone else have that? I still feel like there’s a bit of a grey sheen over everything at the moment and I’m not very happy. I am still crying a lot and I’m still really, really sad. I keep telling myself I am enough but I don’t quite believe it…..

Thanks Kelly. And I’m sorry for your hurt. I hope you are doing better. You sound strong. It really helps to know there are others out there going through all this too.
Sometimes I do feel strong when I think of the fact that it was me that initiated the conversation and told him I wasn’t happy, but of course then when I feel lonely I think “why did I do that?” , “he’d still be here” etc. But the REALITY is he wasn’t really there/present. It was a hope that I had rather than a reality. So I just hope it gets easier as I keep moving forwards.

One positive thing I think I’ve realised is that its much easier to just allow yourself to feel sad, than to beat yourself up about feeling sad, tell yourself that you should be feeling better by now, or by this date. To tell yourself that you are weak for having these feelings and fighting/railing against it constantly just makes it harder to deal with. I think this is something I’ve done to myself repeatedly all my life when I’ve felt sad, and this time I am genuinely allowing myself to just feel it and trying very hard to banish those self-chastising thoughts. Not very easy for me, but I am trying.

Thanks for your thoughtful replies. Daniel, I am like you in that I did write a lot during my relationship with him, so I can look back on that and remember that it was HARD. Too hard, too hard. I think you are right when you say I should not ‘wish’ to get over something. This is maybe just a process I have to go through. A process of saying goodbye to my hopes that things would change. It does help to know that things change in other people’s heads too! I really hope I feel better soon though, as this hurts a lot still.

Jag James, thanks also for your perspective. Its an interesting one, and one which I’ve in fact been struggling with myself. I spent six months wondering the exact same things you seem to be battling too. I wrote in my journal, and I talked to friends, and I tried to take steps back and assess how much was ‘anxiety’ and how much was reality. I did that a lot. And that’s how I know in all honesty to myself, that my anxiety did not cause the ‘split’. I kept giving it ‘a few more weeks’ to see whether things would change, but it just didn’t. In my particular situation it was very hot/cold, push/pull- seeing each other very irregularly, great when we were together, then lots of emotional distance in between times. Never knowing where I stood. being told I was special, and a priority, and then no contact for days. And he told me directly he can’t even take baby steps towards a future with me, because he’s so broken he doesn’t believe in futures any more. So if I was to keep going, just to have in my life in a ‘less than perfect way’ my mental health would suffer, because I would develop feelings for him that he was TELLING me he couldn’t see himself reciprocating. So I did cause the split, but not because of anxiety or vulnerability, in fact because I was strong enough to see that what I wanted didn’t match what I was getting. I think we are all worthy of love and a relationship should make you a bigger person, not a smaller version of yourself, which is what I was becoming.

But ….obviously part of me feels like having him around in any way is better than none. Its been two weeks now, and its still sore. Especially when I know I could just get in touch and have him around. But whether that is what I want, I think I need to take time to decide. I wish I found it easier to focus on a future, rather than obsessing constantly about my past.

Thanks Inkrid. I will try that. I am not really someone who meditates, but I like the idea of visualising who you want to be, what you want to have.

The hardest part of this is the bit where I think “here we go again”. Its the emotions that are all recycling around me all the time and I’m having panic attacks. I’m trying really hard, walking, listening to music, talking to friends, and journalling. But it hurts a lot right now, not just dealing with the loss of something I thought might eventually be good (although it wasn’t good), maybe its the loss of hope that is affecting me the most? The old feelings of hopelessness are actually more familiar to me than feelings of hope, because I spent 3 years feeling hopeless. I wake up in the mornings feeling like its 4 years ago and I’m processing all this stuff from my past CONSTANTLY. Its breaking me, and I’m terrified. Has anyone else been through this in terms of reliving the past when things don’t work out?