Hi Hella, sorry to hear you’re going through a tough time. Reading your story I’m curious about one thing in particular – why haven’t you ever shared your view of reality and feelings with your friends?   The guy has clearly moved on ( or back depending on how you look at it ) and I can absolutely understand you anger towards that, especially when you have not.  But the image you are showing to the world is likewise of someone who has moved on, dating other people and seemingly ok with being around the guy, not saying otherwise.  Are you just hoping people will understand otherwise? If these people truly are your friends, then they would be available to listen to you, be it awkward or not. Do you have any new friends in the city with who you can share or close family?

I know you want to focus on the now but it seems you are carrying a lot of anger about the relationship and how it ended. Trust me, there is nothing he can say or explain about why that will make it any different. It is just something that is, something you can not change, only how you continue to respond to it. What was the driver behind the on/off parts of the relationship – were they always initiated/driven by him or did you also start/finish the relationship at times. Are you angry because he no longer wants to continue the on/off nature and has settled down with someone else in a “proper” relationship?  I think it would be helpful to try to work through what is really behind this anger, usually there’s an underlying cause less obvious than the one that seems to be causing the pain.  What do you think?

Hi Hella,

If I’m reading the time line correctly, it looks like he and his ex girlfriend who’s now a girlfriend again were with the friend group before you. It’s THEIR group! I know, it’s infuriating!

I’ve been “erased” before, but trust me, the Group Scribes will always remember you, and who knows? They may tell the tale one day of The One That Got Away. YOU! Ten years from now you may be remembered as His Great Love. At any rate, it’s time to carry yourself that way!

You have some choices. Keep the friend group and set the record straight in a classy way. AND/OR ditch them all and form a friend group of your very own.

How to be a Classy Truth Teller: Forget THE GROUP as a whole. Pick one friend or couple from THE GROUP and invite them to dinner or a party. They may assume the rest of THE GROUP is at the get together and will soon realize that they are the chosen ones among YOUR group of people. People who adore you. People they’ve never met.

Introduce them to your friend “Magnus”. Tell them, “Don’t tell (name of your ex) about Magnus yet OK? I think this has to come from me. I’m very fond of (name) and he’ll always have a place in my heart, but I had to end it that summer, you know.” In short, present yourself as if YOU are the one that got away! (You are!)

Best,

Inky

Hey Hella.

Honestly, it sounds like you actually have quite a lot of anger at yourself for making (from your own perspective) a number of ‘mistakes’, from “giving in” to what your instinct told you was not a good relationship idea, allowing yourself to become vulnerable and trusting him despite this and then continuing to hold out hope it wasn’t actually over.  These things hurt as you feel stupid, weak – and they hurt all the more if you are usually a strong person, which is likely another part of why you have so much anger at being put in the role of a person you don’t see yourself as.  The thing is, we all make choices with consequences, it’s part of the joy and pain of learning and growing as a person. There is no need or basis for you or anyone else to judge you harshly for it, as you put it. It just is what it is. I think you will find if you can be gentler on yourself for making what you now perceive as mistakes, the anger will fade towards the group.  I know it’s not what you wanted to focus on but I suggest it is worth thinking about?

Dear Hella:

To understand better, I ask: during the two year on an off relationship, did the two of you argue or fight, and if so what was the nature of those arguments, or fights?

Also, you wrote that “he is the director of this narrative”, the narrative being his account of what happened between you and him. What is his narrative?

anita

Dear Hella:

Is it the first time, in the relationship with him, that you felt  being silenced, “not having any rights to have feelings or emotions of anger or frustration or whatever negative (feelings)”?

I am asking this because it reads to me like an old emotional experience that you have, from before meeting him, one that he triggered.

anita

Dear Hella:

You do  have the right to your anger and any other emotion that you experience.

In your original post you wrote: “I also want to preface by saying that yes, I know that by being involved with someone who  can’t make up their mind about you, you are putting your own worth down and accepting sh*&^ conditions, but I didn’t know any better at the time and nobody is perfect. So please accept that that is how I dealt with things and please don’t judge me too harshly for it”.

Someone judged you harshly early in your life, and that someone has a mental representative in your brain (aka the inner critic) judging you equally as harshly, or worse. You projected that harsh inner critic to the reader, assuming the reader will judge you harshly as well.

Who judged you harshly early in life?

anita

Dear Hella:

“I feel in a way less entitled to harbor these feelings”- but you are entitled to harbor the feelings that you experience. We are emotional animals, we can’t help our emotions. We don’t choose them, any more than any other emotional animal.

Our emotions don’t or shouldn’t pass a test of entitlement, doesn’t matter if we knew better before getting involved with someone, doesn’t matter if it is a sister or parent that did us wrong compared to a stranger.

There is always a valid message in what we feel and that message should be listened to. Once we listen to that message, once the emotion successfully delivered its message, the emotion will quiet down.

It is the same as this: an animal feels hunger, it eats, the hunger quiets down. The animal feels fear, it runs away from perceived danger and arrives at a safe destination, the fear quiets down, and so forth.

If you want to examine the valid message in your anger toward your sisters or toward this man, please do and I will try to help you doing that.

anita