My Last 3 Years With My Girlfriend :(

wow, what a horrible situation that you've been through. you just need to take one day at a time. you need to get back on track, and live for you! i know when your down it seems like nothing matters, but it does. and as you start to do things for yourself you will start to feel better. start with school, get back into it and dont be afraid to make friends! just live one day at a time.. maybe you should look into talking to someone to help you cope with your feelings of depression...

Hi:

First off, I’m prolly old enough to be your mom and have been married for almost 12 years (I got married at 3. We have no two-legged children (four cats) so I can’t give motherly advice but I can give you the benefit of my experience.

From the description of the both of you it sounds like you both had issues that you brought to your relationship. Did you ever discuss these things and try and do what you could to help each other?

Just about every relationship has a six-month “honeymoon period” where everything is shiny and new. After that the glitter wears off and each person sees the “real” other person. The two of you start going through things that you figured you could handle back in the honeymoon phase.

Unfortunately there are some things that can’t be addressed, particularly behavioral issues (pathological lying, possessiveness, aggressiveness). Those should be dealt with a mental health professional. Her reaction about your leaving for a better opportunity seems to indicate that maybe she’s inherited her parents’ possessiveness. If the two of you were just friends she might be sad that the two of you wouldn’t be able to hang out together but she would be happy and supportive that you had a better opportunity. Something about being in a relationship can bring out the insecurity in people.

I had my “First Love” when I was at University. I believed that my beloved only wanted the best for me and if he found faults in me then they must be there and I had to correct them. About a year after we met I transferred to the Main Campus. The main campus was 240 miles away so seeing each other every weekend was impossible. I absolutely hated the distance between us but we called each other pretty often (this was before the phone card and the drop in long distance rates) and I wrote him quite frequently. Most of the friends I made ended up being from my part of the State.

There was one guy at University who enjoyed a musical play that I enjoyed a great deal (don’t remember how we discovered this) so one afternoon I went to his dorm room and listened to the soundtrack on a vinyl record (I’m really giving my age away). We sang along with the record; he did all the male roles and I did all the female roles and any harmonies. I hadn’t done that in forever and it was wonderful.

For some reason I as though I cheated on Him and “confessed”. I felt incredibly guilty about this even though absolutely nothing happened. I had very low self esteem and promised it would never happen again. Why should I have felt that way—isn’t that crazy?! That’s what manipulative people do—you let them make you feel bad. No one does anything to you, you let them. You let them manipulate you, you let them dominate you, you let them possess you.

Over time he found more and more things wrong with me and every time there was a fight it was *always* my fault. It was to the point that I was seeing a psychiatrist whilst I was in my last year of University because I just couldn’t understand why I was such a terrible person.

The fights increased and I began to realize that I wasn’t the terrible person he lead me to believe. He was insecure and manipulative. At some point I realized was that he was jealous that I had graduated from University—he’d tried a semester and decided it wasn’t for him and took a job in one of the local steel mills. I *never* let that get between us because that was his choice. There were times when we fought that he denigrated my going to University, saying that if I was smart enough to go to college than I should be smart enough to not do whatever behavior he found offensive.

Anyway, I graduated from University and got a job. We were seeing each other more and more and the fighting increased. Every time he wanted to break it off I begged and begged him not to do it, I cried and promised I would change. Then we’d get back together. I think I felt that was because I was afraid about being alone again—he may have figured that out and was playing mind games with me.

Finally I realized that we could never go on together. It was a very painful learning process and when he again said that we were through I collected some things of mine that were very precious to me and left his place. I couldn’t believe I was capable of getting off that chair and leaving under my own power but something propelled me in that direction.

So how did I recover? I cried a great deal, I felt incredibly worthless; I shut myself off from people for some period of time. I couldn’t go to my parents to talk about this because my mom just couldn’t stand Him and I think she was secretly overjoyed when it ended. I was fortunate because I had a support system of friends, both male and female. I could go to them and they were most comforting.

I also kept a diary that I poured my heart out to and I did. One thing I *never* did was to contact him. He said it was over and the thought of going back to him just turned my stomach. However, I do I believe that he was faithful to me until some point towards the end.

Something funny did happen a few months after the breakup. He called me at work. Our secretary called me to the phone (I had told her about Him—we had broken up about four months after I started working there) and when I heard his voice my knees buckled and I fell into a chair (lucky there was a chair there). The reason for his call? He wanted to know what we should do if we were to encounter each other, say at a mall. I was absolutely stunned—why would he call me out of the blue to ask me such a stupid question. My astonishment turned to annoyance and I asked him why he would call with such a question (and I was annoyed). I told him I didn’t know and that we’d just have to see if that situation ever came up. I think I politely said good bye and hung up. The secretary was there through the whole call (for moral support) and when I told her about the conversation she said she thought that he was trying to feel me out about getting back together. I think I made it very clear to him that there was no way that would happen, even casually.

OK, so what is your next step? It doesn’t sound like you have much of a support system so it’s now time to find a support system. Make yourself be around people, even if it just means going to the mall and walking around. If you’re still in University, what about starting a study group for a subject that you find difficult? Others may find it difficult and the group may be able to pull each other through that particular subject. I did that when I was going through my Masters.

Find a club or organization that sounds interesting and attend a few meetings. You might enjoy it and find something about yourself that you had long suppressed during your time with Her. At least you’ll meet some people that you could potentially be friends with because you’ll have something in common with them and that could lead to other aspects of friendship (I don’t mean romance, I mean becoming closer friends).

Consider finding something that interests you and become a part of it—start exercising, take up bicycling, start walking, join a book club, learn a musical instrument. Maybe there’s a support group for people who are going through what you’re going through. You are not alone, believe me. I post to another forum (“Broken Hearted”) and you’d be amazed how many people are going through what you’ve gone through. You might want to scan some of those and read the various threads. Some of the answers may provide you with ideas and possibly be a comfort for you.

Take time to get to know who you are and become friends with yourself. You may think you know yourself already but I think you defined yourself in terms of other people (that’s so easy when you’re in a relationship). You need to define yourself in terms of you—what are your likes and dislikes? Who are you really? What are your core values? At your core it appears pretty obvious (at least to me) that you are a caring, giving person. You have other good traits you just don’t realize right now. It sounds like you’re persistent—you went to University and, although your grades may not be up to snuff you sound determined to keep going.

Map out some goals for yourself. Start with something short-term, like doing what you can to get your grades back up (the study group idea may work). Or just start with something for the week (“This week I’m going to organize my bureau, vacuum my place, wash and put away all the dishes, and hang up all my clothes”). You’d be surprised how accomplishing those goals can motivate you to do something more. You definitely want to formulate something long-term and don’t be surprised if that changes over time—it will. Right now, you’re just trying to get yourself over what appears to be an insurmountable hump.

How do eat an elephant? Bite by bite. How do you climb a mountain? Step by step. Just take things step-by step. It’s hard to get started but you can do it. You took the first step by deciding that She was not for you. Make certain the break is clean and final. DO NOT go back to her unless you want to get back on that merry-go-round (and it sounds like you don’t).

Deciding on what your priorities are doesn’t come overnight and changes over time. The things I thought were important when I was 20 have changed over time. I still have crises and some of them are nearly impossible to deal with but somehow I get through. (I have depression and am slightly bipolar and take daily meds for those. I also see a mental health professional periodically, so that helps).

And remember that YOU ARE NOT A DOORMAT TO ANYONE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!!! That was a lesson that took me a long time to learn.

It’s perfectly OK to mourn the loss of relationship and to feel like a fool. One can feel like a fool at 50 but you only learn life’s lessons by making mistakes.

Over time you’ll start feeling better. You’ll have good days and bad days (sometimes those will happen on the same day), but the good days will be more and more. You’ll take one step forward and two steps back on the same day—don’t let that get you down. Analyze why you took two steps back and make yourself not let that happen again.

Keep posting here. I know right now you don’t believe it but things will get better. By the yard life is hard, by the inch it’s a cinch.

Good luck—I’m sending happy thoughts your way. Feel free to PM me anytime.

i just wanted to say thank you for your kind words...i will try to do something with myself, right now the only thing that comes to my mind is to hang myself for being such an idiot all this years...thank you again and also to miss optimistic

Don't say that even it jest--it scares me.

Welcome to the "Fool's Club". Here's your membership badge. The punch bowl and the munchies are over there. We're a pretty exclusive bunch--we don't allow perfect people in.

See that girl/woman over there? She caught her "True Love" cheating on her and they were engaged! And that guy over there? His girlfriend dumped him for another guy, came back pleading for a second chance AND DUMPED HIM AGAIN!

You have to get over this "feeling like a fool" business. I know it will come in time but, like any illness, you have to help it along. I don't know what more I can say since I pretty much rambled all over the place in my last post.

But you can't get too perfect, otherwise you're out of the club.

Feel free to PM me if you need a shoulder to cry on, but please, please never joke about doing away with yourself. If someone I knew said that to me I wouldn't take it as a joke--I'd be calling 911 (or 999, or whatever the emergency phone number is wherever you live). I could never live with myself if s/he did her/himself in because I didn't take them seriously.

Take care and good luck--day by day in every way you are getting better and better.