Hi Anita,

I had an additional thought and I would just like to add on with a timeline of my relationship with my ex as I feel the need to clarify on this part that you said “AND that he is not interested (and has not  been interested) in a relationship with you, personally for a long time.”

I think the part about not being interested in a relationship with me  may be true after we broke up but definitely not at the point of our breakup and not for a long time like you said.

April – Mid October 2016:

We had a loving relationship and he was very loving towards me. I could see it in the little things like he would let me walk on the inside of the pavement so that I am safe from the oncoming traffic, he would make efforts to speak to me everyday even if it means he slept late, he would make little notes for me to cheer me up when I was down, he would take care of me when I was sick, he would always let me have the better things (seats in cinema, my favourite food etc). We talked about the future and how we want to come home to each other and what we would call our future home. He cooked a few surprise meals for me too.

Early October 2016:

He celebrated my birthday and made me a video and how he wanted to celebrate my birthdays and spend his life with me.

We also made plans to stayover and spend a week with each other in Mid November. We were really looking forward to it.

End October 2016:

His assignments were due and his exams were in early November. He started having sleeping problems, crying more often and quarrels with his family became more frequent. He started spending on his games and incurred huge debts.

Early November 2016:

We had a talk about what is happening and he felt he was burdening me with his huge debts and it was not fair to me. His family problems were also not likely to be solved so soon. I told him I would stand by him and he can figure things out. I thought it was at the peak of his stress and we can take time to think through this before making a decision. We cried together for hours during this talk. I could see the pain in his eyes during this talk.

One week later from the talk:

He had a quarrel with his sister and he was at his wits end. He did not want to end up having a strained relationship with me too and he did not have the bandwidth to work on so many things at the same time so he decided to break up with me.

It was during this breakup talk that I asked him if there was a chance for us to be together again if things improved. He said he would be open to it but at the moment he really cannot have a relationship with me or anyone else. We said we would leave it to fate and see how things go.

— Broke up at this point in time —

January 2017:

I spoke to him again to catch up and see how each other is doing. We did not speak again after this conversation.

August 2017:

I wrote in to seek some perspective on whether I should contact him again. Nothing  new happened at this point actually. But it was in my mind about our connection and I was trying hard to hold onto the connection that we had.

September 2017:

I wished him happy birthday and we catch up for a little bit.

October 2017:

He wished me a platonic happy birthday which woke me up that he is not in the same place as I am. This was when I started accepting reality.

So that is why I felt that he did not “compromised the truth, didn’t  tell you all  of it, choosing not to reveal what will hurt you and reveal the part of the truth that will serve to end the relationship without further hurt to you.” as you mentioned in the latest post. Up until the point that he had the stress of his assignments, he was in love and loving and we were making so many plans together.

I feel if he was just not interested in the relationship and wanted to break up, he did not have to go to such lengths and crying for many hours would not have been possible. The pain was real for him too.

But after the breakup, then yes he showed no signs of wanting to resume the relationship and it was in my head of wanting to resume the relationship.

It is personally important to me what I shared with him from April till the point we broke up in Nov 2016 and that is why I felt the need to explain this process. I felt he was honest and what he said was true.

Hi Anita,

I smiled when I read the part when you mentioned the not-so-lost-star. Sometimes I feel lost and sometimes not so lost. But writing here certainly helps me to feel less lost.

Thanks for being so gentle with me too. I think I have a sense of what you are trying to tell me with regards to my ex in that maybe he was not as into the relationship as I thought he was and he is not as good as I thought he is and it was not the circumstances that led to the breakup. Those perspectives was what kept running through my mind the last year after the break up. I kept wondering if it was true, if the circumstances bit was just an excuse and was I just carried away with my feelings? And it made me very troubled to keep thinking about it with no real answer.

The point you mentioned about him not making an effort to reach out to me.. yes I agree this year he showed no interest or indication in resuming a relationship whatsoever. I do not feel as comfortable with the view that you feel the breakup resolution was not sudden though. I thought it is two separate things here. I mean it could be one of the perspective that he just did not want me in his life but I thought the other perspectives could be that he was still not ready to be friends and he was still overwhelmed. He is not completely aloof when we are in touch – he still asks about me and makes references to my social media and we do talk quite a bit. But I do know he does not initiate anything.

I think I just got to the point that I thought there was no value to me to keep analysing his actions and what it all meant. I can never know what really went on in his mind when he broke up and subsequently in this year as well.  Only he has the concrete answer and I would not know the answer. Thus, I decided on a narrative of what happened between me and him and I would like to keep it that way. And I decided that cos of what I felt when I was with him, this gut feeling that I had when I was with him, that it was real. So I dont wish to go back into the cycle of doubting and wondering. I will just stick with my narrative that we were in love and the circumstances led to the breakup.

I think I would just like to focus on what I know for sure which is how I feel, how I can move forward and what I have learnt from the breakup. While I keep my narrative of how we were in love and it was circumstances that led to the breakup, I am also congnizant of the fact that it is not perfect and that there are some things I want differently for my next relationship. Like you said, the year after the breakup was not effortless and I do not wish to go through this again. I want the connection but I also want someone who stays.

So I feel that chapter has closed and I want to shift the focus back to myself and what I can work on. I am very willing to explore the part about pain and how I projected my own pain to him.

After reading what you wrote, I did some thinking and you are right. I do identify similarities in the pain that he felt and what I felt prior to meeting him. I think I did mention before that my family circumstances and his are similar just that mine is not to his extent that is still happening. The circumstances in my family is dormant and I suppose it is just all swept under the carpet.

I see the similarity in that I also feel the similar obligation to my father in having to be filial and fulfil my responsibility as a daughter even though I do have some resentment and anger towards him. I do not want to do it but I have to do it.

I think I never realised this when I was younger but I realised when I became older that my mother was subjected to some extent of abuse – verbal and emotional. My father never laid hands on my mother but he would threaten to and he was often mean to my mother with his words. He has a bad temper and if he is triggered, he would be extreme with his words and actions. He also had affairs when we were growing up. I felt that my mother did not have a good life with him and what made it worse was that she had cancer and passed away even before we could let her enjoy the life that she deserved. And she had lung cancer (and my father smokes while she does not) and there are times that I do wonder if his smoking caused the cancer.

But growing up, my mother would say to me that no matter what, he is my father and he did his part in bringing us up so we have to be grateful for that as well. And he does provide for the family and he never treated the children the way he treated my mother.

So within me, there is this part that feels the resentment towards my father for treating my mother the way he did and there is this other part that has the responsibility to be a good daughter. I know the part that he treated my mother had an impact on us children as well so he is not a good father in that aspect.

I guess the pain is so deeply entrenched that it seems easier to just let it remain and sweep it under our carpet. And for me to continue just fulfilling my basic role as a daughter.

Hi Anita,

Yes, I agree that even though the things my father did was not directly done to the children but we were affected as well. My father betrayed us and it was horrible. I guess my mother wanted to manage it such that we do not end up hating him. I think with her traditional mindset, she still feels as children there is that sense of responsibility that should be fulfilled.

I wonder if this very thing I just wrote is why you have  been focused on your ex not betraying you, taking his words as promises not kept, as betrayal.

Regarding this part, I think it was not so much the focus on the betrayal with regards to my ex, but more of what my ex symbolised to me. My ex represented a good man to me – someone UNLIKE my father. My ex treated me very well, he always put my needs above his, I was able to be vulnerable with him, he attended to my emotional needs, he doted on me, he was very open with me and letting me see his messages and knowing what he did and he never flared up at me the way my father did. I felt like an equal to my ex and I did not have to be submissive to him like my mother was to my father. It felt like a functional, healthy relationship.

(In the previous relationship before this ex, I fell into the trap of finding someone like my father and ended up being in the same role that my mother did. No verbal or emotional abuse but the power dynamics was more of how my mother was with my father.)

So I suppose the betrayal bit was important in that I did not want that symbol of my ex being a good man to be tainted. In the breakup, he said he did not want me to suffer with him. That is also a contrast with my father who made my mother suffer with him. So you see, to me, my ex represented the entire opposite of what my father had been with my mother. And I guess that is why it is important to me that the representation of him stays that way. And I really believed in him being a good man, at least for the period of time that we were together up till the breakup.

Having said that, I also know an even healthier and functional relationship would consist of a man who has the qualities of how my ex treated me AND a man who has healthy coping mechanisms and would not leave. I am saying this cos I know I may come across as putting my ex on a pedestal but I hope you know that I am not. I know his flaws, I know what could have been better and it is just that he is a START and a representation of my hope that men can be different from my father.

So you are suggesting that your identification with your ex, feeling your pain through him, is about feeling your/ your mother’s pain about your father’s abuse and affairs, as well as the possibility of him causing  her death?

Hmm, I think it was more of identifying with my ex on his own struggles and pain about the responsibility of fulfilling his duties as a son (giving his sister money, listening to his parents) rather than identifying with my mother’s pain.

When I spoke about sweeping it under the carpet, I was more of referring to sweeping what happened between my father and mother under the carpet and not the pain. I am very aware of the pain and like you said, how it can seep out. I know how the pain can seep out and that is why I have been seeing my therapist for 3 years working on all these.

I do not see a resolution with my father on this aspect, as in talking to him about how he has hurt my mother and how I am affected by it. So what I am sweeping under the carpet here is this part. I am just maintaining a cordial relationship with him and fulfilling my basic needs as a daughter.  I mean I do sense that he feels the guilt towards my mother and it is just something unspoken I suppose.

So in that sense, I feel that part of the past is “beyond repair” (thus sweeping it under the carpet) and what I really want to do is to move on from this and look towards creating my own family and to be in a relationship that is different from what my mother had with my father.

And thanks again for the consideration and empathy in addressing something difficult with me!

Hi Anita,

I am taking a while to reply you as I wanted to have time to sit down and answer your questions.

Thanks for your personal wow again! It means alot to me to know that I am still thinking logically and still on the right track in  a way 🙂 And just to add on, even if my ex were to want a second try, this bit about “an even healthier and  functional relationship would consist of a man who has  the qualities of how my ex treated me AND a man who has healthy coping mechanism and would not leave” would also apply to him. It would not be enough for him to just want a second try with the qualities he presented with previously but he would also need to show me the AND part.

And yes, your summary is right and that is what I was saying in the previous post. And please feel free to ask me anything! I appreciate the respectful way you have asked with you asking permission and as always, I am open to your questions and they have helped me gained alot of insights.

Now to answer your questions in sequence:

1. You wrote that your mother felt that “as children there is that sense of responsibility that should be fulfilled”- was she referring to his responsibility toward you as a father or to…. your responsibility toward him as  a daughter? If it  is the latter, what did she teach you regarding the nature of such responsibility?

It is the latter – my responsibility towards him as a daughter. What she taught me was probably to compartmentalise my father’s behaviour. There is one part of him that is the dutiful father – being the breadwinner, fulfilling our basic needs, having a roof over our head, making sure we have our education and in essence fulfilling our physical needs. There is the other part of him which is the horrible husband/father in which he cheats, shouts at my mother, flares up easily and is unkind.

So what I learnt is while there were parts of him that was horrible but because he had parts of him that was the dutiful father, I cannot completely disregard my duty to him as a daughter. Since he fulfilled his part as a father to bring us up, I will also have to fulfil my duty to be a daughter now that I have grown up. It will not be right of me to not be filial to him.

2. When you identified with your ex’s “pain about the responsibility of fulfilling his duties as a son”- does this mean that you are currently in pain while fulfilling your responsibility to your father as a daughter?

Yes, I am torn while fulfilling my responsibility to him as a daughter. Whenever I am in the presence of my father, I think I disconnect emotionally from him. There is no depth to the connection I have with him and we go about life asking each other the same questions, checking in if we have eaten or some superficial conversations. Disconnecting emotionally is my way of coping and being in his presence.

3. In maintaining this “cordial relationship with (your  father)”, if this is the responsibility you are referring to, how does it feel to be in contact and to be cordial to a man who “betrayed us and it was  horrible”?

As mentioned in point 2, I don’t feel when I am in contact with him. If I were to feel, it would be anger, pain, disgust and that would be mixed with guilt of having such feelings towards him. And it would be helplessness as I cannot make these feelings go away.

4. Will you not be  true to yourself if you have no contact with your father?

To give you some context, I am still living with my father. Where I come from, it is difficult to get a house as a single and thus I have to continue staying with him. Which is why when I was together with my ex, he also represented my hope to get out of this situation with my father. I thought we could build our home together and I do not have to stay with my father anymore. So he represented a good man and the hope for a different future (not that I see my ex as just a way out of the situation but I was really looking forward to starting a different life/future with him).

But after that, I realised that the only person I should count on is myself and I will work on saving up to get my own house so that I do not have to live with my father anymore. Yes, rental would be an option but it is very expensive here and it does not make financial sense to spend that money when I can save that money to have my own house. I think things are not sooo bad until I need to move out now. So I will just work on my long term plan.

But of cos if my father ever show any signs again of being the horrible father he was, then I would go with no hesitation.

Right now, I kind of see myself as a tenant in this house and I just need to put up with this until I can have my own house. And what I do is to minimize the time that I spend at home and alone with him.

So no contact is not an option. And I think when I move out, I will still have minimal contact with my father probably having dinner with him once in a while together with my siblings instead of no contact.

You know, the phrase that came to my mind when you mentioned no contact with my father is “heavy duty guilt”. The words you used when I was talking about my ex. And the same heavy duty guilt is felt here. I may be true to myself if I cut off contact with him but I will also feel extremely guilty. Guilty that it is not right to disregard what he has done for us. I know there are many things he has not done for us but what he has done for us probably features more prominently due to what my mother has taught me in 1.