bunnymac,

You always have a right to your feelings.  Your anger is understanding considering that he told you that he wasn’t ready for a relationship then turns around to start another one.  It is natural to start comparing yourself against the other woman.

My take is that he is still looking outside himself to provide what he does not have, qualities that would “save” him.  He still has his illness and still probably has not worked through his family issues.   Time to cut him off and don’t look at his social media.

In other words, nothing about him has really changed that will make him a good partner for you (or probably for anyone else).  Go back to therapy for wanting to kill yourself is not a good sign.

Mark

Dear bunnymac:

“if he is capable of being in a relationship but not with me then it has to be me, right?!”- wrong. From what you shared about him he is not capable of being in a healthy relationship (regardless of  who you are or who is the current girlfriend) because he is very troubled and has been troubled for a long time.

He got scared, ended it with you ASAP, not considering appropriate time and place (should have waited and done so in person), then told you: “I thought you could save me, but now I know you couldn’t. Only I can save me”, that was one of the last things he told you.

Following having said that, he didn’t manage to save himself, met another woman and latched on to her, making-believe that she will save him. It is now a matter of time before he gets disillusioned and figures.. she too cannot save him.

“It has to be me, right?!”- no, it is not you. This man is desperate to be saved- a desperate man is not selective, this is why it all  happened so fast. If he was a considerate man before, he is not anymore; Maybe he is even more desperate than he was before.

My suggestion: Don’t follow his way, the desperate way. Instead be resourceful, figure out what you value most, set a few goals for yourself according to what you value, then plan how to accomplish those goals and go for  it.

What do you think about my suggestion?

anita

Dear bunnymac:

You are welcome.

You wrote: “the early stages of our relationship were utterly blissful”- you felt bliss, it was your emotional experience because of how you perceived him and the relationship at the time. What you perceived was most likely not true to reality, you imagined he was a man who he truly wasn’t and you imagined the relationship was what… it wasn’t.

In yet other words: the bliss was your subjective emotional experience, it was not an objective reality.

“And convincing myself that he’s mended his ways”- an emotionally troubled person, for as long as he has been troubled, cannot just .. mend his ways. Mending the brain takes years.

“she’s worth it and I wasn’t.. slipping back into beating myself up”- how long ago did this start, this feeling that you are worth less than others?

anita

Hi Bunnymac,

I can see how depression would make it hard to do things and even have the desire too, but it’s been proven to help, and even if it just helps a little bit, it will get you moving forward toward feeling better. Even if you start really small. Get outside into nature if you can and just sit and enjoy the sounds and sights. I know it’s really, really hard to do when you’re in the middle of it, but take small steps. Would you be able to see a counselor?

Dear bunnymac:

Let me process best I can the little that you shared here and see if I come up with something new to me:

1.5 years ago your mother was killed in a freak accident.

You were engaged at the time with a man, six year long relationship, living with your fiancé in a rented house away from your hometown. (You wrote later: “the early stages of our relationship were utterly blissful” and that  you were “a wonderful partner for so long”). You and him traveled together to your hometown where the funeral was about to take place.

the early stages of our relationship were utterly blissful

Soon after arriving to your hometown, he “started freaking out and having panic attacks”. You then went on to mention his family experience, his relationship with his mother, his illness, his struggles in the relationship with you, what he said to you.

Then you shared a bit about yourself: “I was so distraught and confused about what had happened to my mother that I didn’t have the headspace to deal with him.. so I was almost relieved, but horrified at the same time”. He left your home town before the funeral, and he phoned you the day after burying your mother’s ashes, while you were still in your hometown, and broke up with you.

“I was shocked that he couldn’t wait to tell me to my face”. When you were back to the rented house you shared with him he told you that he can’t be in a relationship. “I was devastated, but I still felt a huge amount of compassion for his suffering and so we parted amicably”.

One of the last things he said to you was “I thought you could save me, but I now knw you  couldn’t. Only I can save me”. Following that you did well for a long while, close to a year, but a week ago you found out that he has been seeing someone else for about two months and you read what he posted about her on Instagram: “about how utterly amazing she was and how she’d helped him learn to live laugh and love again”.

Your response: “I am in utter turmoil. Comparing her to me, wondering why I wasn’t good enough, wondering what I could have done differently… it has to be me… am I right to be angry?… I’m barely coping… I don’t know if I have the strength to grieve the relationship all over again… Or maybe it’s grieving the person I thought I knew”-

– this is the something new to me that I am coming up with: I think that “the person I thought I  knew” in the above quote is you, specifically, you in the role of Savior.

I think that your interest, or great motivation in your relationship with him, in your mind and heart, was to be his savior, to save him from his family troubles, from his distress and his misery.

It is when you found out that he is seeing another woman who succeeded in saving him (he has been posting “how utterly amazing she was and how she’d helped him learn to live laugh and love again“), that you felt the failure of your efforts to save him.

Before he left you he told you that he thought you could save him- because you did try to do just that, to save him. He told you then that it will not work because he has to save himself. You were sort of okay with it because it was not that you failed- it was that he had to save himself. When you found  out a week ago or so that he was seeing another woman who succeeded in saving him, so it seems, it is then that your perception of yourself as a failure became acute, in your awareness.

Feeling like a failure, you wrote: “she’s worth it and I wasn’t… beating myself up… feeling like I’m just fundamentally damaged, broken, and  no amount  of trying to fix myself will work”-

I figure no amount of you trying to fix and resurrect your Savior Role will work, that is the broken part of you. And it is a good thing, because now you have the opportunity to let go of this role and be who you really are, a human, not a savior.

What do you think?

anita