Home→Forums→Relationships→HELP Am I in a relationship but still in love with my ex? Cant figure it out!
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Anonymous.
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November 29, 2017 at 8:19 am #179889
Jenny LynnParticipantHahahahah you are so silly lol.
But yea that’s how I feel what your saying. Its becoming a lot though.
We have been dating a year tomorrow. What an irony….
November 29, 2017 at 8:36 am #179899
AnonymousGuestDear Jenny Lynn:
You have the opportunity to not make this tit-for-tat your way of living forevermore. Isn’t it a beautiful idea, the idea that you can choose what you will tolerate and what you will not tolerate… where to put your energy and where not?
Dealing with his MO for years to come, explaining your actions so to show him you didn’t intend to hurt him, that it makes no sense that you will bring his retaliation on yourself… why go through this? Wouldn’t a peaceful life be better?
anita
November 29, 2017 at 8:55 am #179909Jenny LynnParticipantYes, yes as a matter of fact it would. I don’t know why I can look consciously at the facts and even the things I haven’t told you ya know. Understand that its just not something I can do for the rest of my life. Yet hope he will change.
I guess Oprah style. “When people show you who they are…believe them” up until probably January/beginning Feb so 4-6 weeks after we had been dating. We been arguing and bickering about the same shit.
Honestly I let him slip me into a level of his manipulation because to go back to the original share remember I told you that we had met a year before we started dating right. He said he asked me to go out and I was flaky about it or whatever. So after that when we started dating, for a really really long time he would never contact me to do stuff. He was always ready when I would text or call but he said because I was flaky at first he wasn’t going to reach out for me until he saw that I wasn’t about games or whatever. This guy at my old job said it was because he knew about the other guy and that he just didn’t want to be vulnerable to you until he felt like you wouldn’t go back to him. So I went with that but I guess it stewed since then. Because in my recollection I don’t remember it ever stopping, we just started being in a committed relationship so it wasn’t so much that he had to reach out because he was always around.
I know I seem like a complex human but I really don’t argue with people. Like its just out of my nature because my childhood experiences of verbally being attacked or shunned. I just don’t be around people who don’t like me or don’t appreciate my company. Keeping it simple.
Like John…me and john literallllly had 4 arguments our entire year of dating (vegetarian animals from the bible lol, that first girl who showed up at his house, one time I accidentally yelled at him for something silly, and then another time he yelled at me). Me and Glen argued 4 times already this week smh.
So yea John may have been all the things he was but he was still an easy going guy you know. Seeing him mad was easily said to be “out of the ordinary”. He held me to such I high regard and he knew that I was down for him so we just never sweat the small stuff you know. That’s what I miss about him.
November 29, 2017 at 8:59 am #179911Jenny LynnParticipantOh Anita! 🙁 I know what’s right and what’s wrong I just don’t know why I feel so ______ *insert emotion here* about ACTION.
Because like my mom says …what’s talking if there’s no ACTION!
I know he “loves me” but I also know he isn’t the first man to “love me” and furthermore I know that if we weren’t together I can be loved again.
I don’t know what’s happening inside my head…
November 29, 2017 at 9:22 am #179923AnonymousGuestDear Jenny Lynn:
You wrote that Glenn didn’t reach out to you for a long time because you were flaky at first and he wanted to be sure that you are not playing games before he initiated contact with you.
Problem is he still thinks you are playing games and often.
When he thinks that you purposefully don’t answer his texts or that you purposefully didn’t share about your bartending application status, he thinks you are playing games with him.
Maybe you were flaky before, but no matter how anyone is, he perceives that others are playing games with him.
And his response: playing his tit-for-tat/ equivalent retaliation game.
Reality is then that you are not playing games with him (you really didn’t know he texted you at a particular time, for example) and he is playing games with you (intentionally not answering your text, probably looking at the time and making sure… an equivalent no text-response time has passed before he answers, if he does).
You wrote that you know that he “loves (you)”- you put quotation marks there for a reason…?
anita
November 29, 2017 at 9:35 am #179933Jenny LynnParticipantI put quotation marks because I feel like it is not my place to decide someone’s feelings.
Yet I understand that some perspectives, people could say that he doesn’t love me based on the things he does. Or John or Hunt it can be perceived by some that they don’t/didn’t love because of the way you behaved during our interactions together.
I never like to scale someone’s feelings. I always say “feel your feelings because they are yours not someone else’s.” If something made you mad or sad or insulted you. The alternate person may have a perspective about that BUT still it is your choice to feel your feelings. Its just about what you do with them after the acknowledgment of them.
Like I never am the person to say “Why are you mad about something small?” or “That’s not a big deal why is that upsetting you” because that’s not for me to decide.
Like me for example if I say I love him. He may say no you don’t. To me its like YOU don’t get to make that choice.
Love is subjective. I decide my feelings, I know me, so the quotation marks are the fact that I know he says he loves me and I know he loves me but those actions can be interpreted differently to someone else.
Like “he doesn’t love you because if he did he wouldn’t do ____.” I don’t support that.
People do bad things to the people they love. Doesn’t un-constitute their love for you. You just have to decide if that is the love you want to accept.
My mom is a great example, for me to say she doesn’t love me is foolish….but she did and let bad things happen to me that shaped my entire life. She loved me the best way she knew how and could at that time.
November 29, 2017 at 9:54 am #179941AnonymousGuestDear Jenny Lynn:
I agree with how you view people’s feelings, your acceptance and tolerance to how you feel, respecting another’s feelings, as well as your own.
What is love may be a complicated question- is it the subjective sometimes feeling of affection, of a need, a craving? If so, does a person still loves you when feeling angry at you?
In other words, does love change with time, there it is one moment, now gone.
Or is love the persistent intent and educated effort to benefit the one we love?
I wrote educated effort because a person has to be flexible enough to pay attention and to learn how his actions affect the supposed loved one, to listen to the loved one, to be open to examining his behavior and do what makes sense for his benefit and for the benefit of the supposed loved one.
anita
November 29, 2017 at 10:21 am #179951Jenny LynnParticipantI think people still love you when they are angry with you.
I think people still love people they haven’t seen or interacted with in years even. If those feelings were strong enough that they were not over powered by whatever dissolved said situation overall. Like John (lawd I shouldn’t admit this) but I think I do still love him. But not “that way” its hard to describe. Because the interaction isn’t their to fuel it so its almost like this ambient feeling when he’s thought about.
I think love does change in time though but only when it wasn’t unconditional love. Like your parents or something. I think someone’s view of you can change like maybe my mom may feel a way about how I have been acting over the past year or 2 but I don’t think she loves me “less.” because it is unconditional.
But regular everyday humans that WE CHOOSE yea I think they can love you less or more over time. My scale is
Infatuation
Crushing
Like
Really Like (lol)
Have love for;
Love
In love
Unconditional Love.
I do understand you part about intent and effort. I do think that is a major part in deciding that you do indeed love someone. I call that tolerance. No one is perfect, so your tolerance of things that bother you or just make a person a person. We all have quirks YOU CHOOSE to make a acceptance. Almost to say you ‘inconvenience’ you life for that person because you love them. Like you chew loud, or your late places, or you can’t cook, or your hella sensitive about something…you choose that the person is worth it aside from those things to still be in your life AND compensate for that. That’s love. Yea.
November 29, 2017 at 10:43 am #179959AnonymousGuestDear Jenny Lynn:
I agree: loving someone does necessitate inconveniencing ourselves some, absolutely. Of course, it is impossible to not be annoyed by anything someone else does. Or to not annoy another by something we do.
If the person we love chew too loudly (the example you gave)- we can examine the issue for ourselves first, before saying anything: is my annoyance valid, that is, he really is chewing too loud and it is not necessary and it will help him to .. get a promotion at work, a promotion he would like, if he chewed quietly at dinner with the employer? That would make a change in chewing acoustics a win-win, for both parties.
On the other hand, if the chewing sounds are due to teeth structure, better endure it if we can. It will be not right to complain about something a person can’t change.
If a person screams at you, calling you name, and you figure unconditionally loving that person means enduring the screaming and abuse, well… this is a distorted kind of thinking. It will help both parties to not tolerate such.
You decide if Glenn’s tit-for-tat is something he can change, if it is reasonable for you to expect him to make the effort to change and to see that he does, in practice.
anita
November 29, 2017 at 10:48 am #179961Jenny LynnParticipantRight like I can tolerate you while in your attempts to change…but just not changing at all is not going to work.
I am just so confused. What is his love worth to me?
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This reply was modified 7 years ago by
Jenny Lynn.
November 29, 2017 at 10:59 am #179965AnonymousGuestDear Jenny Lynn:
I think it comes back to my point: there is a difference between moments of loving feelings (affection, attraction, longing, feel-good-to-be-touched, craving… the infatuation, crushing, like, really like etc., that you listed) and the long term, moments and in-between-the-moments experience of love.
A loving relationship does not fix the problems we had entering the relationship, but it can help. When a loving-feeling relationship hurts us, it is not loving.
When you believe that a parent who has harmed you also loved you, and you hold on to that belief, you get yourself confused: you think- it doesn’t mean.. he doesn’t love me when he harms me, just like my parent.
anita
November 29, 2017 at 11:08 am #179971Jenny LynnParticipantFactual.
I don’t even know who I am right now …I always said in my past relationship ending them…LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH.
There needs to be more. I don’t know why I am having such a hard time with this. It’s never taken this much. I don’t know, maybe I have just invested so much.
Maybe I don’t want him to be right. So I feel this need to show him I am not who he insinuates I am sometimes.
Maybe its because he does love me so much and I don’t want to squander it.
Maybe I just don’t want to feel like this was all for nothing.
Maybe because I don’t want to have been wrong.
I feel all these things. Then I go home…and I see him. It’s a lot.
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This reply was modified 7 years ago by Jenny Lynn.
November 29, 2017 at 11:36 am #179979AnonymousGuestDear Jenny Lynn:
You wrote that you don’t want him to be right: well, he is not right. You already know he is wrong when he accuses you of not answering his texts on purpose and so on, when he perceives insult again and again, where there is none. His thinking is wrong. About you being flaky in a relationship with him- if that is what worries you, I don’t see it as true at all. The way you struggle and stay with him- no flakiness there.
Him moving out ASAP seems like a good idea to me. I am strongly leaning this way, for your own well-being.
Will be away from the computer soon for about sixteen hours.
anita
November 29, 2017 at 11:48 am #179983Jenny LynnParticipantYea I am definitely not a flake. The Hunt thing will forever be what it was but I clearly love this man. My moms fiancé even said that during the birthday incident. I was like “Yea he says I don’t do anything for him, etc. etc.” He was like “WOW he has some nerve. I KNOW that’s false. Like Im not even involved in your life like that but just what I hear thru your mother over phone conversations; I know that to be false.”
I understand. I am going to iron out the conversation that was being had last night and end my day with a damn resolution.
I just always feel like I am “presenting” I am begging for the clarity and solution. and he is my audience.
I need him to do something because I am just at a loss at this point.
November 30, 2017 at 3:47 am #180031AnonymousGuestDear Jenny Lynn:
I didn’t understand “I just always feel like I am ‘presenting’ I am begging for the clarity and solution. and he is my audience”- can you explain?
Did you have the conversation you intended to have with him, any closer to that “damn resolution”?
anita
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This reply was modified 7 years ago by
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