I just rejected someone today, please help?

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This topic has 131 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 3 months ago by Anonymous.

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September 11, 2017 at 3:35 am #168250

Anonymous
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Dear Mina:

My last question for you was: “are you willing invite reality into your thoughts and feelings?

This is the non-reality on your part:

Only yesterday you wrote: ““the worst thing that can happen is I will turn our current relationship into something really bad”

On July 3, you wrote: “Me and my ex are still very much good friends”

You believe that there is a relationship, a friendship going on in the present even though there is no contact and no communication.

Back to the sentence from July 3: “”Me and my ex are still very much good friends. we don’t contact each other but we know that we will always love and support each other.”-

You believe that you know what he knows presently (even though you have no contact with him) and that you can predict the future, not only for you (that you will always love him), but that he will always love and support you.

This is reality:

On that thread, July 3, you wrote: “He decided that it was too much for him”-

He broke up with you. It was his decision, not yours. There is no current relationship going on.

Mina, if you are not sure what reality is, do contact him, do ask, and if he answers you honestly, you will know his state of mind, his feelings, thoughts and intents.

When you feel love for another person but there is no communication, it is just a feeling, not a relationship.

anita

September 11, 2017 at 6:35 am #168284

Mina
Participant

Anita,

I feel like this is going to be another tough thread for me here. I am well aware that I have no relationship with him.

But, these past 2 weeks, I have been secretly hoping and praying that I would bump into him on the university – even though I know that it is almost impossible. I told my Business School friends to look out, maybe they will meet him and to tell me if they do meet him.

I haven’t asked him whether he actually gets accepted or not, maybe a part of me is scared that once he confirmed that he did got in, I would have another mental breakdown. Maybe deep down, there is a part of me that wants all of this to be a cruel joke or nightmare. That my ex boyfriend is coming back to me, to us, to the university and he isn’t leaving anywhere, ever. That is my biggest and most hopeful dream in my life at the moment.

You wrote : “Mina, if you are not sure what reality is, do contact him, do ask, and if he answers you honestly, you will know his state of mind, his feelings, thoughts and intents.”

How?

1. How can I do that, Anita?

2. What kind of questions that I should ask?

3. What kind of informations that I should tell him?

4. How can I make him understand my intention and my thoughts when I do not want to tell him anything regarding my depression, my panic and anxiety disorders, basically anything that will burden him?

I have a lot of things that I want to say, so many things that has pilled up from these past 3 months. From how much I struggle, to how I genuinely think he is the one for me – it will never end. I have so much that I want to say, to ask, to ask for support for, to just talk about with him. You can imagine how I feel.

Imagine going back from hell, and you met the one who sent you to hell after you got back. The one that sent you was the most important and your favourite person in the world. You love him so much to the point where you are willing to went to hell and go back again.

Imagine what kind of words that you would say to that person, Anita? For me personally, I do not think I will be able to say anything. It isn’t because I have nothing to say – it is because the experience of going to hell was so tough and traumatic, and the time I spent inside hell thinking about how someday I will be able to meet that person again was probably not enough and not worth the pain. Maybe I have too much to say to him, maybe I realise that talking to him in a sense – is where the current meaning of my life lies.

Anita, I have a hope. It is my sincerest hope in my life. I am sure you are well aware of my current situation in general, I feel like I am inside the vicious cycle. I keep fighting, denying, questioning and torturing myself. I hope that If I do get to make a conversation with my ex boyfriend, he will be the one trying to lend me a hand to get up and get it together again.

Do you remember his birthday message? He told me to go have fun this semester at the university and spend my summer holiday well. Because of that one sentence, that maybe he did not even think much about, I survived summer and had the courage and fighting spirit to go back here. To find the courage to find my life purpose, to actually try to have fun (which I am trying actually, I found a really good friend today!) this fall.

Maybe, all I need is his faith in me. His faith that I can get through this. His words of support and his push for me to live my life in a positive way by stop holding on to him. I need to hear that maybe.

I would love advices and feedback, thank you.

-Mina

September 11, 2017 at 7:09 am #168290

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

I strongly believe that our mental health depends on our thinking being congruent with reality. The more you, Mina, perceive reality as it is, the healthier, mentally, you will be.

This is why I encourage seeing reality as-it-is.

Over time, in your threads, you’ve been engaging in a lot of thinking that is not congruent with reality. I call it “convenient thinking”- it makes you feel better at the moment, for a short time, but you end up distressed as before, or worse. The feel-good of such thinking doesn’t last long.

Your distress over this relationship has been ongoing for a long time. At times you feel better, soon enough (too soon), you are distressed again.

I believe that you are too scared to see this as-it-is. But seeing it as it is- that is your hope for well-being, for peace of mind.

Example of your convenient thinking: what you thought following his reply to your happy birthday wishing. You thought that in his reply there was way, way more than what was in it, I believe. That made you feel better, for a while.

You asked:
“What kind of questions that I should ask?”- How are you? What changes happened in your thinking since we last spoke? How do you feel about your new university? About the military service to come? About your parents’ pressure? About our past relationship? Do you ever regret ending it/ are you satisfied that the breakup was right for you?

“What kind of information that I should tell him?”- depending on his responses to the above questions (and any other questions you may have for him), you can choose what to share with him.

“How can I make him understand my intention and my thoughts when I do not want to tell him anything regarding my depression, my panic and anxiety disorders, basically anything that will burden him?”- I don’t know that such information will burden him. I don’t know (and neither do you!) the nature of his current state of mind, whether his focus has been not at all on you. Your concern to burden him may be… well, not an issue for him.

anita

September 11, 2017 at 7:18 am #168292
Mina
Participant
Anita,

I understand. It is true that I am scared to see things as it is.

1. But … by talking to my ex – will it be able to force me see things as it is?

2. Will this conversation help me heal?

3. There is a chance that I will probably misinterpret like what happened with the birthday message.

What If I start seeing his answers as more than it is again, how can I prevent this?

4. I am well aware that I am too scared to face and accept reality … do you perhaps know the reason behind this? why do I avoid my own reality?

-Mina
- This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Mina.
September 11, 2017 at 7:21 am #168296

Patrick
Participant

Dear, Mina,

Judging by how long this thread is, I do not think this conversation will help you see things the way they are. It will only feed you information that you will attempt to distort into a reality with you and him together. Trust me, I’ve been there and it sucks.

You need to bring your focus on something else, someone else… anything else.

September 11, 2017 at 7:45 am #168298

Mina
Participant

Patrick,

Hello there.

I appreciate your feedback, thank you.

I saw you also made a thread here, you are having a problem, too. I sympathise but here is an advice to your thread.

Patrick, I think in order to stop your self destructive thoughts, here is what will solve it :

You need to bring your focus on something else, someone else… anything else.

Hope you have a great happy life.

-Mina

September 11, 2017 at 7:55 am #168304

Patrick
Participant

Dear Mina,

You’re right. I focused on your situation and how I can help you.

Thanks 🙂

September 11, 2017 at 8:16 am #168310

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

As to #3, the chance that you will “misinterpret like what happened with the birthday message”- well, if you post here the conversation, including what he tells you, I can give you my understanding of it. I am not emotionally invested in your relationship with him, past or hoped-for, so for this reason alone, I will be able to give you a more likely to be accurate understanding of it.

Regarding #1 and #2: maybe, maybe not, depending on the fear factor. We close our eyes so not to see what we are afraid to see.

The thing with fear in this context though is that what we fear already happened. We are afraid as if it didn’t happen yet. The breakup already happened and you fear it as if it didn’t happen yet.

A few posts ago, another thread I think it was, I talked about you relaxing into your feelings. This kind of work needs to be done not only using your rational understanding but your emotional understanding. For the latter you have to be calm.

You wrote: “I am well aware that I am too scared to face and accept reality … do you perhaps know the reason behind this? why do I avoid my own reality?”-

I think that the reason has to do with your parents, maybe your mother particularly, invalidating your feelings during your childhood, sending you the message that you are either wrong to feel what you do, or that your feelings are irrelevant and you should do what makes sense, not what feels right. Maybe she passed on to you the belief that feelings are dangerous, a trap to be avoided so to do act and choose intelligently.

In… again, reality, we need both our intelligence/ rational understanding and our emotions so to understand reality. Your intelligence/ rational understanding is excellent but your emotional understanding is blocked by fear and, I believe, by a deep belief taught to you, that emotions are dangerous or such. What do you think?

anita

September 12, 2017 at 5:37 am #168374
Mina
Participant
Anita,

I see your point. I agree that my mother since I was a kid did not gave me any chance to really express how I feel. I am open to my parents for every single thing except for my own feelings. I guess I do have troubles expressing it even though I am a person full of warm and love. I was taught that expressing emotions isn’t good. Expressing emotion means … I am weak. Vulnerable and I will be easily attacked by people. I do not feel safe and confident when I express my emotions and my opinions in front of a lot of people that I do not know very well.

My mother teaching might have pushed me further to have a very deep attachment towards my ex boyfriend, I can see it now as well, for all these reasons :

1. I am actually working my first job right now (part time, only 3 hour per week) – I tutor high school students. I get pay very well per hour considering my age and my academic background (haven’t even graduated from university) and my ex was the first person who encouraged me to took it. He told me that it has a good fee and how I can fill my free time with it. I was hesitating about taking it, because I do not need the money and I felt like at that time – my life was so perfect. I do not need any kind of jobs. But my ex told me that it was a great opportunity for me. He was right.

2. He was my first boyfriend that told me to relax. To be myself, and that it okay to express things to him as it is. He will never judge and he will always try to understand. He ACCEPTED me. He told me that some of things that I was nervous to tell him about was really nothing big to him. I was worrying about nothing, I was so worried about scaring him away or embarrassing myself but the truth was … it was all in my mind.

3. He was my first boyfriend that understand my insecurity of being judged by my physical appearance. I was and still is the type of person that needs to go out with the perfect hair and outfit, even going to college, I need to make a statement with the way I look. I am very greedy and desperate to received acknowledgement from people. From strangers. I remember that I had a plan to meet one of the best friend of my ex boyfriend, I freaked out about how I should dress up and act, my ex told me very clearly that I do not have to worry at all, that his friends are all very nice and open minded. Which turned out to be very true (as expected from my ex … he isn’t the type to be friends with jerks) – and his friends even complimented me a lot of times. Tried to make me feel accepted and relax during our meeting as well.

I guess for 19 years, I have never felt like people understand me emotionally. My ex boyfriend never said anything but he understood me by his actions. He let me be myself … with all of my weird and messy emotions. He told me that it isn’t messy or weird, that I am in fact normal for feeling emotions. Expressing it to him isn’t a sin, and that I can always express how I feel to him. He told me that with him – I do not have to try extra to be nice (like being extra nice even when I do not feel like it, I still do it everyday in my life. I fake nice to people just because … it became a habit and I am scared of being judged as a bitch)

I did not realise how big it was for me emotionally to finally be accepted by someone. Especially to be accepted by someone that I love very much. To receive his blessing and acknowledgement about everything that I am very ashamed and scared of myself. He wasn’t my first boyfriend or my first love but he sure was (is) something very important to me.

What do you think about this?

I tried to be as logical as possible while connecting ways of how my parents raised me and the reason why I became so unhealthily attached to someone.

You wrote : “Regarding #1 and #2: maybe, maybe not, depending on the fear factor. We close our eyes so not to see what we are afraid to see.”

I want to open my eyes now, Anita. Even if it is scary – I will want to see reality as reality If I do contact him.

You wrote : “The thing with fear in this context though is that what we fear already happened. We are afraid as if it didn’t happen yet. The breakup already happened and you fear it as if it didn’t happen yet.”

So for me right now inside my head according to you, the break up did not happened? that I am denying that such things ever took place? but I know …. that I broke up with him, though. Like my brain understood and accepted that I did broke up, that he isn’t my boyfriend anymore. How can I overcome this non existent break up If I keep denying and refusing it?

Is there any way for my ex boyfriend to help me see and accept the break up then?

I would love feedback and advices as usual x

-Mina
- This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Mina.
September 12, 2017 at 6:38 am #168382

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

You wrote: “I am open to my parents for every single thing except for my own feelings”- if we were robots, that openness would have been enough. Because we are humans, and feelings are an integral, most important part of us, not being open to your parents about your feelings is … a severely lacking openness. A lack of openness that you are not responsible for, they are.

You were taught that ” Expressing emotion means … I am weak. Vulnerable and I will be easily attacked by people”- it is harmful to express your emotions to individuals who don’t care or are going to use your expression so to have power over you and harm you. But expressing emotions is not the same as feeling them. A parent can teach a child that it is okay to feel whatever she feels, that there is a valid message to listen to in every feeling and that expressing them indiscriminately is not a good thing to do.

Everything you shared here about your ex boyfriend describes a wonderful young man, exceptional. (Not a god though, to keep in mind). No wonder you got so attached to him. You were not accepted by your parents (it is impossible to be accepted when your feelings are not accepted!), so to be accepted by him meant a whole lot to you and it still does. This is understandable.

As to the last part of your post: you know that the breakup happened logically but emotionally you don’t. Again, we are not robots. If you were a robot knowing that the break up happened logically would be adequate. Because we are born as emotional beings, we have to know important things logically and emotionally, both. When you stated before that “we know that we will always love and support each other”- that indicates to me that emotionally you still feel that you are having a relationship, that the breakup didn’t happen.

The breakup with you happened and that means that he is likely to love and support another woman, now or in the future, so he is not likely to “always love and support” you. You wrote that you want to “open my eyes now, Anita. Even if it is scary – I will want to see reality as reality If I do contact him”- well this very paragraph I just typed is reality. Are you able and willing to open your eyes to it?

anita

September 12, 2017 at 7:20 am #168388
Mina
Participant
Anita,

You wrote : “well this very paragraph I just typed is reality. Are you able and willing to open your eyes to it?”

My brain accepted. Understood.

Emotionally? I am not really sure. How can I break up with him emotionally? I do not know how I will be able to do that. I mean the real break up was done for, and it was in the past. Emotional separation … is a bit tricky, don`t you think? It is different from being separated physically and formally which happened during the break up.

I understand that I think in order to cope with the really hard break up, I continue my relationship with him emotionally without realising until you mentioned it here. It is the only way that I know to survive somehow – I am afraid once that I break up with him emotionally – will I be ok?

I am very much afraid that in the future I won’t be able to meet someone better than me. Someone like him.

Just like how baby needs their mother to survive, I need this fake emotional relationship that I created by myself to survive. Yes, it is fake, and it does not exist in my ex boyfriend mind but it still exist in mine. I logically cannot let go of this emotional relationship knowing that I will not survive. Even If I want to, I will not be able to.

I have so many fears, I am tired of being in this one way only emotional relationship that I created to survive. But this fake emotional relationship is what keeps me going at this very moment. How can … I let go?

-Mina
- This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Mina.
September 12, 2017 at 7:52 am #168394

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

Your last post impresses me a whole lot as insightful and honest.

* Is it a typo: “I am very much afraid that in the future I won’t be able to meet someone better than me”- did you mean “better than me (Mina)” or better than him (ex boyfriend)?

To the insightful and honest post (again, I am moved by your insight and honesty): “Just like how baby needs their mother to survive, I need this fake emotional relationship that I created by myself to survive… How can … I let go?”

My answer: you don’t have to let go. For as long as you need it to survive, keep it, be it in your mind only. Keep it going.

If and when you are able and willing to examine or re-examine things, to decide what is true and real and what is not, to evaluate and decide, then do so and let go of what is not true or real. Not before

anita

September 12, 2017 at 7:55 am #168396

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

Your last post impresses me a whole lot as insightful and honest.

* Is it a typo: “I am very much afraid that in the future I won’t be able to meet someone better than me”- did you mean “better than me (Mina)” or better than him (ex boyfriend)?

To the insightful and honest post (again, I am moved by your insight and honesty): “Just like how baby needs their mother to survive, I need this fake emotional relationship that I created by myself to survive… How can … I let go?”

My answer: you don’t have to let go. For as long as you need it to survive, keep it, be it in your mind only. Keep it going.

If and when you are able and willing to examine or re-examine things, to decide what is true and real and what is not, to evaluate and decide, then do so and let go of what is not true or real. Not before.

anita

September 12, 2017 at 8:02 am #168400

Mina
Participant

Anita,

Sorry! Yes it is a typo. I wanted to say :

“I am very much afraid that in the future I won’t be able to meet someone better than him.”

You wrote : “you don’t have to let go. For as long as you need it to survive, keep it, be it in your mind only. Keep it going. If and when you are able and willing to examine or re-examine things, to decide what is true and real and what is not, to evaluate and decide, then do so and let go of what is not true or real.”

I understand. You want me to “end” this emotional relationship once I am emotionally ready, right? In my own timing. Not yours, or anyone else, but mine.

Once I am ready, I will be up for the discussion to examine things in a more healthy ways. I understand that this is what you are saying.

I think I successfully expressed my exact situation at the current moment to you. Since you are not invested in the relationship and not in a fake emotional relationship like me, do you still think it is a good idea to reach out to my ex boyfriend?

Or maybe … it will be better to wait it out once my emotional state gets a bit better … or maybe now is the right time?

Or maybe not contacting him at all is the best idea?

Thank you for recognising my honesty, it wasn’t easy sometimes to admit stuff that are happening with me.

-Mina

September 12, 2017 at 8:11 am #168402

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Mina:

My internet drops frequently, this is the reason for the last post being posted twice.

You understood me correctly: your timing, not mine. Regarding whether to contact your ex boyfriend: if you contact him he may damage your subjective experience of a relationship going on, in your mind only. His input may not match the story in your mind. If you need that story so to survive, better not contact him.

anita
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