*Oooops,  I meant Dear Anna (I was/ am rushing)

Dear Anna;

“The first ex-boyfriend is trying to come back now… he actually asked me out. Which I obviously refused.. the past is in the past” – good choice on your part, I say: to refuse and to leave him in your past!

“When it comes to the second guy… I am finally back at having a better control over my emotions” – good thing for you to have a better control over your emotions, so that out-of-control-emotions don’t rule any part of your life.

“I wouldn’t be questioning him not having romantic feelings if he hadn’t told me that he was scared for having lost me..  that he took decisions out of fears… Point is, if you are genuinely happy with someone..” – if he was genuinely happy with you, he’d still be with you: he was happy at times, but unhappy at other times, and eventually he was unhappy in regard to you and in regard to his life overall.

When a man tells you that he doesn’t have romantic feelings for you- believe him regardless of what else he says.

“Obviously I don’t take well rejection, to a greater extent than average for sure… I wanted to date someone from a different world because of this feeling to be off with myself” – what is that “feeling to be off with yourself”, can you tell me more about it?

“My high school boyfriend is also trying to come back almost.. one decade later.. I am not saying that I am unforgettable“- but you’d like to be unforgettable, wouldn’t you? I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who prefers to be forgettable.

“maybe it also means that I will finally stop picking up guys who will follow this specific pattern” – I suggested more therapy for you so that you learn about your patterns, and so that you can make better choices in regard to your love life.

anita

Dear Anna,

I’ve read the last message you’ve sent to your ex, and it’s mostly fine. You expressed your feelings and your appreciation for him and the time you’ve spent together (I am really sad that you couldn’t see how much you brought to me, how much I just needed you in my life because for what you genuinely are. … My sadness was about what I lost, you and these times together. … I wanted to be with you, my feelings for you, it all comes from because you opened up about yourself, not only the brightest side of your personality but also your past, your scars, not because of the nice social picture you give to the crowd.).

You said you don’t understand why he left you if he was happy with you ( I was mad at you because I never understood how one could jeopardize something which makes them feel genuinely happy).

At the end, you told him he owes you nothing and that you are accepting the fact that he rejected you. You also wished him well. (You don’t owe me anything, this is your life and I am accepting that you didn’t want me to be part of it. … I sincerely wish you the best in your life.)

One part of the message is accusatory though – you accuse him of pursuing you even after the breakup, of not avoiding you like he claimed but seeking your company (No, let’s be real, none of us were avoiding the other. We both know how we are when we REALLY want to avoid someone.), and of not doing enough to push you away when he was already dating someone else (Why did you not push me away out of respect for her, as you told me, you did with her when we were together?)

I would like to explore that part a bit more. You said that in the first 2 weeks after the breakup you remained pretty close because he wanted it, he sought your company (The two first weeks after the breakup he was always around me and if during our first 5h of conversation I didn’t insist of the two of us taking our distance for my own sake, he would have kept being around me.). He even told you: “I totally picture the two of us in a near future, catching up once our lives will be on track”.

On one hand you didn’t want this closeness because it hurt and you have a bad experience staying friends with your exes (I said, no, there is no way, if I wanted to move on and heal, I couldn’t afford to stay around him, because I did this mistake in the past and it never ended well and that we needed to cut the ties completely.). But on the other hand, I think you were hoping that he still wants to be with you, and so you wanted to stay close to him (“I realized that I was still looking for you, I still wanted to be around you. It was not the smartest choice but it was the one which felt right.”)

His friendliness and even giving you hope about the future made you believe that he actually doesn’t want to break up with you. So you were seeking him out, watching his every move, every glance, every detail… trying to find a sign that he might still want to be with you.

I don’t know when exactly he changed and became more distant, but it appears he stopped answering your messages at some point (how can you feel that it would not bring any good to answer a simple supportive message yet thinking that staying around each other in real life was less dangerous?). But you felt that he still wanted to be with you, or at least around you, even though he later told you “I was avoiding you.”

The culmination was when you stormed between him and his new girlfriend, after which he got mad at you. It seems to me  that in your mind you couldn’t accept that he lost interest in you – you interpreted his behavior as still being interested in you even when he wasn’t replying to your messages. You told him he should have pushed you away when you were in his vicinity – to prove that he really isn’t interested in you. Anything less than physically pushing you away wasn’t enough of a clue for you. This is how strong your conviction was that he still loves you.

Please don’t get me wrong – I am not judging you in any way. I totally understand your reactions. I used to be like that myself, seeing things which didn’t exist, believing that the guy is interested when he wasn’t etc. I know what a strong yearning and a strong desire is. This guy was at least interested for a while, and even gave you false hope about the future, so it’s not that you misinterpreted everything. You only misinterpreted the end and his behavior after the breakup. You wanted him so badly that you refused to see that he has actually moved on.

This still doesn’t mean that the main dynamic that we’ve discussed – you falling for “broken” guys – isn’t true. I think it is. And I would like to ask you, similarly like anita did, in what ways do you believe you are broken?

In your last message to your ex, you said you both were “very dysfunctional“. Could you explain this a bit more – how were you dysfunctional?

Because you believing that you are broken and dysfunctional may be just a belief, a consequence of feeling unworthy of love, which is a consequence of your mother’s upbringing… Or if you are really broken and dysfunctional in certain parts of your life, it’s actually the consequence of believing you aren’t worthy of love, that you are bad, that there is something wrong with you. Once you heal that main wound and main core belief, the brokenness and dysfunctionality will lessen too…

Dear Anna,

you wanted and at the same time didn’t want to cut the ties, obviously, because it’s hard to stay friends with someone you have feelings for. He, as it seems, was seeking you out because he needed some help (He was seeking for my advices about some stuffs and we spent many hours talking.) However, this doesn’t mean that he wanted to pursue you romantically.

Maybe he thought you could be just friends again, you helping him out and giving advice about his student life, e.g. about his poor financial situation that he found himself in after dropping out and not receiving his scholarship any more? Could it be that he wanted your help and advice in such matters, but not any more being involved romantically?

I also understand that you are hearing some hear-say from his best friend: “it also what his best-friend told me very recently: (on Monday actually) him still holding strong regrets for me, not being sure about the situation with me and that girl.” I understand this is hard for you because it could easily take you back into that “what if he still cares?” mindset, and you start hoping, and looking for signs and pursuing him… Even if this were true, it would only be a proof of his troubled mind, because he is certainly not showing any interest in you when you meet him in person. So even if there is a morsel of regret in his mind, there is a huge amount of rejection too. So it’s good that you are not falling for this kind of hear-say (“I don’t want to care anymore”) because it would only hurt you more. The only proper thing, which will help you, is to let him go. Which I know is easier said than done, but still…

Anna, I wish you a nice stay in London, and hope to hear more from you when you return home!

Dear Anna,

I went back and read the whole timeline of your relationship and breakup with him, on Page1 of this thread, and I must say I’ve changed my mind about him. I now think that you indeed were not misinterpreting his signs, but that he was actually leading you astray with his behavior after the breakup.

I am so mad at him for not having kept his distance with me, while we both said to each other that keeping our distance would be the best attitude as it was obviously way to painful for us to stay around.

It seems to me that it was painful for you to stay close to him, but not for him. He in fact told you that the perfect setup for him was being just friends: “He told me that for him the perfect set-up was back in February when we were just “friends”. This “friendship” involved a lot of physical touching and closeness, a lot of hard flirting, as you said, and I think you rightfully felt it was more than friendship. After the breakup he wanted to return to this kind of “friendship”, which he knew was painful for you because you had feelings for him and you told him so.

He not only sought your proximity but even told you he still has feelings for you. He did that on April 8^th, when you’ve heard a rumor that he is dating another girl: “On the 8^th of April we got into a 5h conversation at our student pub because a girl told me about him and another girl, she thought they were dating since a long time and that he cheated on me. He promised me that nothing happened between them. However, he admitted that he felt the chemistry between the two of them and that he kept his distance out of respect for me. We also discussed about the breakup and he finally admitted some important things: 1) he was scared that he lost me for nothing because he was simply overthinking and that he actually had feelings for me 2) it was more about him thinking he couldn’t reciprocate my energy 3) he wanted to stay friends with me but I told him that it wouldn’t be possible, not when so much feelings were involved“.

What he admitted about his feelings about you seems misleading. On one hand he said he was scared that he lost you, and that he “had feelings” for you. However, he didn’t want a relationship with you, but just to remain friends. Which you refused because it was too painful for you.

Nevertheless, after this conversation of yours, he was often seeking you, wanting to talk to you and spend time with you. He once even grabbed your arm so you would talk to him: On the 10th of May, we bumped into each other and I told him that yeah, it’s stupid to avoid each other to what he responded “yes, I was kind of hoping that you would come and talk to me”. From this moment, we started to talk again, be around each other, bursting out of laugh as we used to do. During an event, he even said to one of his friends that he was going to stay with me and one of my friends instead of going with his own friend to join other people. At another event, we stayed talking for somehow 1h just the two of us and when a girl came, he ignored her. Finally, during a ball, I was ignoring him but when he saw that I wasn’t going to talk to him, he literally grabbed my arm to start a conversation with me”.

I understand why you felt angry at him and wanted him to stop this game: “I couldn’t keep doing this masquerade with him. I decided that I wanted to talk to him about the situation. He avoided me.” He didn’t want to talk about his behavior though.

But the biggest disappointment was yet to come, because it turned out all that while that he was trying to get close to you and be “friends” with you, and you were hoping that maybe you have a future together, he was in fact dating another girl, unbeknownst to you. He started dating her on April 17/18, and you only found out in the beginning of June, after the party where you stormed between the two of them. During the months of April and May, when he was trying so hard to get you to communicate with him and be “friends” again – he was actually dating this other girl. All this time he made you believe he has feelings for you. No wonder you were furious when you found out about it (I was enraged, I went to see him, asked him what was going on, what game he was playing.)

When you confronted him about it, he told you that he has feelings for her but doesn’t know what it means to him (He told me that he had feelings for her but he didn’t know the meaning of what they had and if it even had a meaning for him). He also said that he didn’t have feelings for you anymore. Since that day – when you discovered the truth about him – he started ignoring you, not greeting you, not even acknowledging your presence with a nod. Suddenly he turned from a warm, fuzzy friend into a cold stranger…

Maybe I am too strict, but I now believe he isn’t as innocent and confused as I previously thought he was. I mean, I could imagine that he told you back in April that he still has feelings for you because he felt guilty for not being able to reciprocate your feelings, and so he said it not to appear cold and heartless. I can imagine he said some things he didn’t really mean because he might have felt pressured. But the fact that he insisted on being friends with you when he knew this would only hurt you, and also hiding the fact that he is dating someone else while fooling around with you – that’s a bit too much. I believe it’s plain selfish.

I don’t know how you are viewing it, but this is my impression at the moment…

Dear Anna,

I am still thinking about what happened with you and him and that other girl, and one thing is puzzling me: if he dated her since April 17/18, how come she was never with him at various social events that both you and him took part in? For example, you mentioned a ball sometime in the second half of May, where you were ignoring him but then he grabbed your arm to get your attention. How come she wasn’t at that ball? I mean, considering that she was his classmate, I’d assume they’d spend a lot of time together, hang out at the same places, go to the same events…

Dear Anna,

now that you’ve provided new information about him spending quite a bit of time during April and May in his room, and you hardly seeing him (or not seeing him at all) during that time, I am re-arranging the “story” that I’ve created in my mind, through which I am trying to understand what happened. So this is the info that you’ve provided so far about the months of April and May:

The two first weeks after the breakup he was always around me and if during our first 5h of conversation I didn’t insist of the two of us taking our distance for my own sake, he would have kept being around me. I was the one who insisted to keep our distances in a first place, he didn’t take it well at all.

During the rest of April and May, we kept bumping into each other because we belong to the same student associations

I know he shut down many times in April and May (didn’t get out of his room for two weeks until end of April, two weeks and half in May he did the same pretty much)

So, in the first 2 weeks after the breakup, from April 3 to April 17, you were bumping into each other often and he sought your company. You insisted on keeping distance to make things easier for yourself, but he didn’t take it well. Then, about 2 weeks later, about the time he started seeing the other girl, you stopped seeing him around because he was spending most of the time in his room. I don’t know if you communicated via messages during that time?

Then, he popped up again in early May and you started bumping into him again. On May 10, you bumped into each other and you told him “yeah, it’s stupid to avoid each other“, to which he responded “yes, I was kind of hoping that you would come and talk to me”. The friendship was reinstated and it was like in the good old times:

From this moment, we started to talk again, be around each other, bursting out of laugh as we used to do. During an event, he even said to one of his friends that he was going to stay with me and one of my friends instead of going with his own friend to join other people. At another event, we stayed talking for somehow 1h just the two of us and when a girl came, he ignored her. Finally, during a ball, I was ignoring him but when he saw that I wasn’t going to talk to him, he literally grabbed my arm to start a conversation with me.

This is just my interpretation, but during that time, you probably started hoping that he still has feelings for you, while for him, it probably meant going back to being just friends, which is the arrangement that he liked best.

Then, after the ball, which was sometime in mid May (after May 10), he disappeared again and spent 2 weeks or so in his room again. Next you saw him was May 26, at a pub event, when the incident with the other girl happened:

On the 26th of May, we had a pub event, I wanted to talk to him but since the moment I asked him if we could talk, he was being distant. … Later in the evening I think my world crumbled. I saw him going outside of the pub to meet with a girl, not a random girl, but the girl he told me nothing happened. They didn’t stay long together, she didn’t get in and at the end he.. PAT PATED her to say goodbye. But it was already too much for me, I stormed between the two of them, he got mad, I got mad and then I left.

I must say that when looking at the events now, I realize that I’ve made a wrong conclusion in my last but one post. He actually wasn’t pursuing you during the entire April and May, as I thought before, but only in the first 2 weeks after the breakup, before he started dating the other girl. Then he disappeared – maybe to be with her? (just a thought). When he reappeared in early May, he was friendly, but he started communicating with you only after you gave him the green light. You told him (on May 10): “yeah, it’s stupid to avoid each other”, to which he responded “yes, I was kind of hoping that you would come and talk to me”.

He might have thought that you don’t have a problem being friends with him anymore, that you “cooled off”, and so he went back to his usual style – being friendly, talking and laughing together (I don’t know if physical touch was present too?).  You probably interpreted it as “he still cares about me”, while for him it was just friendship. When he grabbed your arm at the ball, he might have wanted to talk about some practical issue, since you said he used to ask for your advice?

Then later in May, after the ball, he disappeared again for 2 weeks or so. During that time, was he in touch with you via messages? Was that when you sent him a supportive message, to which he hasn’t responded? (How can you feel that it would not bring any good to answer a simple supportive message yet thinking that staying around each other in real life was less dangerous?)

And then May 26 happened. First you wanted to talk to him about something (perhaps about his real feelings, i.e. the game you felt he was playing with you?), but he avoided you. And then you saw him talking to the girl you knew he fancied, and you stormed between them. That’s when he got angry with you and isolated himself for 2 hours. Later that evening he was just staring at you. Here I can see how he could have been angry and offended at what you did, and that’s why he didn’t even utter a word.

The next day the two of you had a conversation. He told you he doesn’t want to hurt you, but that he owes you nothing and that he doesn’t want to talk about the past any more. A week later, at another party, you confronted him about the girl, and it turned out they have been dating since April 17/18 and that he has feelings for her (although he didn’t know how serious it all is). He also said he doesn’t have feelings for you anymore. The next day you sent him a message, which you shared here, and then you blocked him.

Now viewing it through this new prism, I must say I’ve changed my opinion once again. If this is how things happened, I don’t see that he was pursuing you and leading you on with his behavior, because a) he wasn’t in touch with you when he started dating her, b) when he reappeared, he was friendly and sought out your company, but only after you agreed that there is no point in avoiding each other. In May he disappeared again and wasn’t around much, so again you weren’t really in touch. Unless he was trying to contact you via messages?

So all in all, I don’t think he behaved selfishly, except in the beginning, before he started dating her, when he told you that he didn’t want to lose you and that he still has feelings for you. And that you may even end up together in the future. Maybe he said those things to make you feel better, but in fact, it gave you false hope, to which you held onto ever since.

He in the meanwhile has moved on, started dating someone else, and distanced himself from you somewhat. But you haven’t really noticed it, you kept seeing his friendliness as a sign that he still wants to be with you. When you wanted to clarify it, he refused to talk about it and avoided you. So yes, this is another problem – that he didn’t clearly told you “no, I don’t have feelings any more, sorry”. He was probably a coward to admit it, and only did it when you confronted him about the other girl. So in a way, by refusing to “push you away”, i.e. say clearly that he isn’t interested, he left you hoping all this time. And it caused you pain.

I am sorry, Anna, that it ended like this, I truly am. I hope you can move on from this, and in the process heal from the false belief that you aren’t worthy of love. Because you are worthy, Anna, and you deserve a guy who will say a clear “YES, I want to be with you!”, without second thoughts and lame excuses…