The Ancient Indian Burial Ground of relationships

April 11, 2009 9:01 AM

I need some secular resources for learning to forgive, and how to relate if you have a broken relationship model. I have got to stop wanting an apology from someone who is never going to apologize to me.

When I was much younger, I fell in love with a friend of mine who, it now appears to me, was mentally ill, with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. (I'm not inclined to make these surmises about people, really, but there were actual grandiose delusions involved, and mania.) He loved me very intensely, and, a few months later, grew bored and dumped me just as intensely, with bonus public humiliation and loss of respect from friends and peers.

To all appearances and even my own satisfaction, I recovered from this in the regulation couple of months and went on to a proud, happy, independent life. I refused to revisit and examine what had happened; it was just a bad breakup, so far as I was concerned. And no one ever broached the subject of mental illness to me -- it was left for me to figure out, years later.

This was a hilarious amount of years ago. I have not managed to fall in love with anybody since. I've acted like Mr. Flinchy with some guys, but I haven't formed an emotionally and physically intimate relationship with anyone.

It was only recently that I stopped and thought about what I had been doing, and realized that my issue wasn't just that "I hadn't met the right guy yet." I had in fact been actively trying not to have that relationship again. I had gone around believing that love was supposed to happen that way -- that what I was supposed to do was be strong enough to survive it, and keep inspiring insane devotion. Somewhere in myself, I would flash through this every time I was in a Situation, and think: holy crap, no, go through all that again to win this chucklefuck? Let's stay home and read.

I am entirely responsible for my own future happiness, for how I handle myself and what I do. I have always believed this and acted accordingly. And yet, on accidentally stumbling across this guy again -- thanks, internet, thanks a lot -- I felt gut-punched. I asked myself why I wasn't any better than that. Then I came to a series of conclusions, including the above.

I want an apology. I will never, ever, ever get it. I need to forgive him, not for his sake, but for mine. Who would know that a grown-ass professional woman had the impulse to curl up into a ball and shout at no one: Apologize! Apologize! Apologize to me!

What I am doing actively: working on getting out and meeting more guys, which has suffered due to my job schedule; working on getting therapy, although I may not be able to get the kind of talk therapy that would assist with this; taking up hobbies with a vengeance. (Furthermore, I understand that this kind of problem is pathetic and laughable when viewed with any perspective on actual other lives, and I've been using that perspective for years, but it hasn't made the problem go away, so thanks in advance for that suggestion, but no thanks.)

What I would like you to do: recommend books or techniques about letting go of anger, and finding fresh ways to relate to potential partners when your own are all broken. There's so much fluff and inspirational crap out there. I'm not religious or sentimental. I always viewed the self-help aisle with contempt, but it looks like I need to help myself now.

Email if embarrassed: [e-mail].

posted by anonymous to human relations (31 comments total)

The biggest thing I ever learnt in this area is focusing on how much forgiveness in general can be more about you, the forgiver, than it is the forgivee.

Anger itself mainly damages you, particularly as it sounds like you're internalising it. It is pernicious, and when you have been particularly brutually emotionally damaged in ways like this, it can be incredibly destructive.

For me, it was about learning that the apology I wanted was never going to come, then I sat down and wrote out all the wrongs that had in this case particularly been done to me. And then very consciously made the decision to forgive them for it, not to rationalise the behaviour, but to step away from it myself. Enough with the going round in circles, just making a decision to say okay, I am forgiving you for the things you've done to me, and stopping them from being so destructive in my own life.

I'm sure people will come up with more helpful and well established ideas shortly, but I just wanted to emphasis remember the reason why you're forgiving right now, for your own peace of mind and peace of heart.
posted by Augenblick at 9:20 AM on April 11 [1 favorite]

It will always be a part of you, but one day it will be a ridiculously small part of you that you rarely think of. I'm sure your feelings of injustice are now compounded by the amount of time "lost" due to the lingering effects of this experience, but that, at least, is not something you can really blame him for.

I have someone in my life that fills this sort of role. I'm a little afraid for him, a little afraid of him (because of the power he had over me), and pretty sympathetic toward him because I think he's damaged beyond repair and will never know true companionship. My resentment has, for all intents and purposes, finally drained away, and I chalk that up to putting as much water under that bridge as possible. If you transform enough other parts of your life, those few parts doggedly determined to hold onto this will have no choice but to change a little bit too.

The things you're doing actively are a really great start; try not to see what happened before as anything that can really happen with these other guys. There was no underlying principle in effect that may haunt you in future relationships, no particular weakness in yourself; shit happens, and so do shitheads. Every new person you meet is a glimpse at a totally different facet of humanity, and should be treated accordingly. When you go out, practice mentally leaving your baggage at the door and entering the room as if you're completely unburdened of history. You may be surprised how often you forget to pick it up again on your way out.

And definitely seek out the talking therapy, because talk really does help. Eventually you'll realize you're tired of talking about it, and that will be a huge relief.
posted by hermitosis at 9:32 AM on April 11 [2 favorites]

Boy, do I hear you. I'll be looking at these responses with interest.

It's been hard for me because I can be pretty compassionate towards people and think, "Okay, he couldn't control it because he had never been in this situation/she was taught to deal with things in this manner," and thus find reasons why people acted the way they did. That helps a little. But in some ways, rationalizing it only makes it worse; now I'm actually trying to make sense of something that really shouldn't make sense at all. I do all sorts of things which either have no easy explanation or only make sense within my very personal way of thinking. Why should I expect that other people's behavior might somehow make sense to me? And then I beat myself up a lot for knowing that other people act this way and yet continuing to fall victim to what I KNOW won't work for me.

I think that the first thing you have to do is forgive yourself for feeling this way. Forgiving yourself for being upset is usually pretty easy; I'm sure you've been through a lot of situations where anyone would have been upset, and for very good reason. Forgiving yourself for doing what you did (sticking it out when you know it wasn't good for you, continuing to care about someone when they obviously do not care about you in the way you want, continuing to care what someone thinks of you) is much more difficult. There's a lot of "How could I have been so STUPID????" that goes on during and after a relationship like this. That's the biggest hurdle I've had to overcome, and I'm not there yet. I might not ever get there, either; my relationship with my mom, for example, is ever-present and continually drags me back into the same old patterns of thinking.

Recognizing patterns is very helpful, and it's really the only way I've been able to organize my reactions to situations. if i can categorize something more easily, it's also easier for me to dismiss it before it upsets me.

A prof here on campus runs the International Forgiveness Institute, which I think does a lot of work with, say, people caught in international conflicts but still has other implications on a smaller scale. Perhaps some of these books might give you a head start.
posted by Madamina at 9:38 AM on April 11 [1 favorite]

What you want is within yourself. You want the apology so something can happen inside of you. You need to recognize that thing within you as internal, and work to mitigate the pain it is causing.
posted by Pants! at 10:27 AM on April 11 [1 favorite]

I realize you have indicated that you aren't religious, but it's worth pointing out that these issues are exactly the kind concerning which many people find religious beliefs to be the most relevant and helpful. Much of the most significant thinking on forgiveness arises out of the religious life of various traditions. You may not have any beliefs that you would categorize as religious, but any port in a storm, you know?

Just something to think about.
posted by valkyryn at 10:47 AM on April 11

Please write theis question to Cary Tennis. He's excellent at this kind of thing.
posted by lalochezia at 10:51 AM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Anger, by Thich Nhat Hanh.

And therapy. I'm not sure what you mean by "the kind of talk therapy that would assist with this" but therapy is available. There are community mental health resources; look up Department of Mental Health and your county, and there will be some places that will offer sliding-scale fees depending on your income. If you have insurance, that's even better--find someone that way who is on that insurance panel.
posted by so_gracefully at 10:55 AM on April 11 [1 favorite]

You might like Becoming Human - The 1998 Massey Lectures by Jean Vanier. You could skip to the 5th lecture, which focuses on forgiveness, but there's a lot of good stuff in the first four.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 10:55 AM on April 11

but there were actual grandiose delusions involved, and mania.) He loved me very intensely, and, a few months later, grew bored and dumped me just as intensely, with bonus public humiliation and loss of respect from friends and peers.

This tells me you are drastically underestimating the trauma you experienced.

This is exactly the sort of thing that used to cause Young Ladies of Quality to have nervous breakdowns and commit suicide. You experienced a very serious-- and I would guess intentional-- attack on your core self, and the consequences of it have been devastating to you. I think the jokes you are making about yourself are clever, but have the effect of continuing your victimization in the complete absence of the victimizer. They tend to perpetuate your subjugation by him, and amount to an acceptance of the scorn he had for you and an acknowledgment that you continue to feel it was justified.

But it absolutely was not and is not. You are far superior to this man, though you clearly have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to evaluating men's characters, of the sort that sometimes comes from having a charismatic but no good father.

It may or may not be helpful to shift the blame to him (there is also the danger of getting stuck in the 'hell hath no fury...' stage), but I do think you need to see what slime this guy actually is, and how much he hurt you, before you can move on.
posted by jamjam at 11:11 AM on April 11 [5 favorites]

I think forgiveness is a decision. It's just that sometimes you have to make that decision everyday, day after day, hour after hour, all over again, until it really is a part of yourself. It's hard to do. And I realized lately that you actually want to have to do it.

Marianne Williamson has some great passages about how she learned how to forgive in this book: A Return To Love. If you're not religious, just skip the parts about God because the information and the practices she does seem to work. The information was pretty valuable to me. Since I"m not really a christian, I usually just substitute some name for God and do the exercises that way.
posted by gt2 at 11:14 AM on April 11 [1 favorite]

This book is all about forgiveness and changed the way I think about forgiveness and humanity (including relationship wrongs).
posted by whimsicalnymph at 11:31 AM on April 11

I don't think about these things in terms of forgiveness much, but, um, I'm more of the sort of person who thinks about this in terms of 'It'll affect me less as time goes on.'

What are you trying to get out of this? What is their apology going to do for you?
posted by kldickson at 11:42 AM on April 11

By 'affect me less as time goes on', I mean 'seem easier to deal with as time goes on'
posted by kldickson at 11:43 AM on April 11

And I'm an atheist, so my advice might help you.
posted by kldickson at 11:44 AM on April 11

Having a relationship with someone who is mentally ill is difficult to get over. It took me two years to stop hating him, and I don't like him to this day, but I realize that none of it was my fault or a reflection on my worth as a human being.

Your ex is broken and he succeeded in breaking you, as mine did with me. It only took five months for mine, and I was lucky enough to fall into a sane and loving relationship shortly after that helped tremendously, but also to read books such as Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle or I Am That. Anything by Thich Naht Han is amazing as well.

If you're looking for a more step by step spiritual directive (not religious), try the iChing, and I find that Carol K. Anthony's reading of it is most illuminating.

Ask yourself, would you worry about forgiving your dog for crapping on your bed? Or a child for ruining your favorite dress? This is the same thing. He was not conscious of his destruction and seeking cognizance of this will only drive you mad. Leaving yourself open to these ancient emotions is keeping you from moving forward, but it is up to you to work on letting go so that you don't turn into Ms. Havisham from Great Expectations.

I think your quest is less about forgiveness and more about the shame you feel for being abused in such a way and for not being able to let it go. Realize that you are not responsible for his actions, and that you are not forever defined by this one relationship.

Perhaps performing some sort of physical ritual when you let go of something that reminds you of him will help. Yes, you're angry, ashamed, and stuck, but now you've decided you're done. So move on.
posted by anniek at 12:00 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

I heard Doug Manning, a former Baptist minister who does a lot of grief counseling especially for people who lost a family member to suicide, talk about forgiveness.

He said that forgiveness requires that the person to be forgiven sincerely wants to be forgiven: no request for forgiveness, no forgiveness. The example he gave involved a woman who was abandoned by her father when she was a child, with the resulting lifetime hurt.

He clearly stated that she did not need to forgive her father, since her father did not ask nor want forgiveness. She could still consider herself a good, loving human being without the need to forgive the unforgivable, and that she could go on with her life by admitting to the profound hurt and by recognizing that she was not to be blamed.

In his opinion forgiveness was overrated.
posted by francesca too at 12:05 PM on April 11 [3 favorites]

You say that it was only recently that you realized the way in which this experience was affecting your relationships. That is the first, biggest, and quite possibly the only step (with the exception of remembering it, and not forgetting). If you just only recently realized that you want that apology, and have also realized that you're not going to get it, what remains is the amount of time (an unknowable quantity, unfortunately) that it will take for you to become ok with the disappointment of knowing you are not going to get what you want.

Take what you want or deserve out of the equation for a moment. Focus on what holding out hope for what you're not going to get is affecting you, and why you ruminate on it, what holding out for it does for you.

I think honestly, that it hurt you incredibly bad, and you, wanting to save face, "moved past it" more quickly than you were ready to. You didn't talk about it for long enough, you didn't have your feelings about it validated. It's real easy to stay in that place and replay the same situation over and over again, like a ghost, waiting for the outcome that you want. You could do that, if it was more satisfying for you than moving past it, but you clearly do not want that.

Take heart in this, at the very least he is not in your life anymore, although the memory or evidence of his existence will pop up from time to time. These sorts of hurts leave scars -- I don't think you ever become completely at ease with that sort of disappointment, and experiencing it at the hands of one who is mentally ill is particularly painful and frustrating.

I have had a similar experience, and I only stopped ignoring and pushing down the desire for validation, and for an apology about two years ago. I had a similar realization to the one that you had. I talked about it alot, and I felt like I was getting nowhere. I felt that maybe I would hold out for this apology that would not manifest for as long as this person was still in the world and the apology was physically (although not emotionally) possible. I even held a mock funeral in my apartment in an attempt to get past it. I had felt, up until that point, that I would eventually 'face it', get past it, and come out the other side where I would emerge, okay with it. Imagine my disappointment when I learned that it doesn't really work that way. It will always pop up, to some degree, I think -- but you can learn the ways in which you will and will not let it affect you.

A final note: I saw the person in my life whom I have these feelings about recently. I talked with one of my closest friends afterward, wondering how this person fits in my life and how to move ahead now that I believe I've made all of the realizations I think I'm going to have about the situation. He reminded me that this person fits in my life as a reminder of how I do not want to be, what I do not want to become and how I do not want to treat others. Then he sent me a link to this. It made me feel much, much better than I have in a long time.

Forgiveness is a tricky thing, but really it's yours to decide. Good luck to you, I am confident you will move past this as best you can.
posted by pazazygeek at 12:58 PM on April 11

I agree with anniek about the irrelevance of forgiveness here. That guy was like the weather; there's no use forgiving him, but that doesn't mean he didn't flood your foundation/put a hole in the roof/insert weather-related-analogy-to-severe-emotional-effect here.

"This was a hilarious amount of years ago."

"Who would know that a grown-ass professional woman had the impulse..."

"I understand that this kind of problem is pathetic and laughable."

All these phrases suggested to me that you are feeling pretty silly about being hurt by this guy and by the fact that it has affected your life. And that it has affected your life for so long. Well, there's nothing to feel silly about. You were treated badly and you're reacting to it. You've only just attained self-realization on its occurrence, so cut yourself a little slack in the amount of time to 'recover' -- start from the time when you really felt like you had a handle on what happened. Every time you say things like this about the situation, you add to the mistreatment of you...you're putting yourself down, and there's nothing in your situation to suggest you should do that.

I don't know if I can answer your question as to what to do to get past this, but in dealing with the 'weather' in my own life, I know that the two steps of a) not constantly telling myself it was silly to be angry at things/people that would never change and never say sorry and b) just having some faith that in time it would get better, were the first steps. I honestly couldn't have done them without therapy. I really needed someone to point out to me when I was turning my anger at others, inward.
posted by Tandem Affinity at 1:12 PM on April 11

Have you talked to people you love and trust about what happened with him? In dealing with a similar experience from a long time ago that I'm still finding scars from, that's what's helped me most-- internalizing it just let it fester.
posted by NoraReed at 1:20 PM on April 11

I see you're currently working on getting therapy -- I cannot recommend this enough. If you don't feel like you're getting something out of a therapist, find a different one. I'm going through something similar to you (wanting an apology but realizing I'll probably never get one), and I can't tell you how important it's been to have a Mental Health Professional tell me when I start joking about my situation or acting self-deprecatingly, "No, this is not pathetic. It's a natural human reaction."

Whatever the solution is to 'getting over this,' dismissing it as pathetic is almost definitely not the answer. This is easier said than done.
posted by telegraph at 1:31 PM on April 11

It sounds like you are doing lots of "outside" things to help you let go and move on (hobbies, etc), which is great and helpful. But I think, based on some of the things you say (eg, "this kind of problem is pathetic and laughable when viewed with any perspective on actual other lives"), that maybe you should try some "inside" things, too. I think jamjam is right that maybe you are underestimating the trauma that you experienced.

You were hurt. You were badly badly hurt by the actions of this man, and it's no wonder that you have been afraid to experience such hurt again. But it sounds like you maybe haven't really allowed yourself to feel hurt. Even "grown-ass professional" women are allowed to feel hurt! As you said, you "recovered" within a few months and were proud and happy, in defiance of your maltreatment. I think that this tactic -- ie, maintaining healthy functioning in the "outside" stuff -- is greatly beneficial as a first step in moving on.

But moving on is not the same thing as healing. Moving on entails turning away from, and it sounds to me like what you need to do for yourself right now is turn TOWARDS your old hurt. I don't know you, obviously, so I don't know how you relate to yourself, but from this question, it sounds like you value strength and independence, and you hold yourself in some contempt for (a) having been hurt in the first place (because being able to be hurt means that one is weak), and (b) not having been able to independently get over this weakness through your thoughtfulness and strength of will despite the passage of a hilarious number of years. I respectfully submit that as long as you feel contempt for yourself, you will not be able to do as others have suggested above and forgive yourself and heal.

I suspect that you will be able to better relate to men and open yourself to the potential for intimacy only once this old hurt has been really healed -- not moved on from.
posted by tentacle at 1:36 PM on April 11 [4 favorites]

You don't need to forgive him yet, if you're not ready to. Why not just feel angry and hurt for a while? It sounds like you kind of skipped that step the first time around.

If a year from now, you're still stuck in the emotional place, maybe you could decide it's time to stir the pot and nudge yourself along. But it might be that you just want some sympathy and understanding from yourself for how big a deal this really was, so the fastest way to move through all of this might be to create some space to really give that to yourself.
posted by salvia at 2:13 PM on April 11

I have two suggestions for you, and I too find this question very interesting; this is something I have been working on as well. I have not spoken to my parents in years, and have been working on letting all anger go, even if I don't have a relationship with them.

1) Write a letter but don't send it. Just write a letter to the person about everything you want to say. Why you feel hurt. But also, what they meant to you. Just get all of your feelings out about the situation. I have done this in breakups and it is really really helpful.

2) Try to examine where they are coming from. Really, truly! Write it all down, spend a lot of time trying to figure out their point of view. Then, maybe you will develop more compassion and be able to let it go. This may be a little more difficult because this involves mental illness, but still, I think you should be able to still do this.

In terms of your issue with getting in new relationships, that is your issue, and you will need to work on it, most likely with a therapist. Or, by some significant self-examination.

Good luck, and I commend you for doing this, this is really hard, but the best thing to do for yourself.
posted by hazyspring at 3:01 PM on April 11

I agree with francesca too. You do not need to forgive this person. You need to go on and go forward. You can do that perfectly well without forgiving him.

You may need to forgive yourself for being taken in by him. That's a separate issue, and, I would argue, the real issue. And you do not need to forgive him before you forgive yourself.

Forgiving someone who doesn't seek forgiveness is a sham unless the person in question is your child. Otherwise, it's more appropriate and more helpful to burn the offender in effigy—or some other cathartic ritual—and be done with him. Otherwise, you may find yourself "forgiving" him now, and realizing years later that you never did and never could. Yup, forgiveness is overrated.
posted by bricoleur at 4:32 PM on April 11 [4 favorites]

I recovered from this in the regulation couple of months

this kind of problem is pathetic and laughable when viewed with any perspective on actual other lives, and I've been using that perspective for years,

There's so much fluff and inspirational crap out there

Your words seem so harsh and unforgiving. I don't know that you can effectively address this problem if you view it (and by extension, yourself) as "pathetic and laughable." You're not pathetic. Your feelings aren't laughable. You might want to figure out why you think this way. It sounds like you were somehow taught that feelings = weakness = bad. I don't think hearing "I'm sorry" is the fix you need.

I'm not criticizing you. Your post really resonated with me. For years, I was angry and in pain. I hid behind a persona: uber capable, self-sufficient, impervious. I relied on sarcasm and self-deprecation as defense mechanisms. I downplayed my feelings, especially if I was hurt. I had patience and understanding for people I loved, but none for myself. Three things helped me change this: friends, self-help books, and therapy.

I asked select friends for honest opinions about myself, how I communicated, how I handled certain situations/things, etc. This wasn't a one-shot deal, but conversations over time. I slowly began modeling my behavior after friends whose approaches were kinder and gentler.

I read a lot of books: self-help, pop psych, Buddhist philosophy, Al-Anon materials, you name it. If a book didn't click for me, I put it down and moved on. I basically went on a fact-finding mission, a massive research project. A lot was fluff, but I found a lot of useful information. For a start, I recommend:

The Portable Therapist

The Dance of Anger and other books by the same author

anything by Pema Chodron

It took finding a good therapist to actually 1. understand why I thought this way and 2. make real changes. I spent the first year questioning her qualifications, talking about the weather and mocking people in therapy. I insisted I didn't need help because so many other lives were worse than mine. (You can imagine my initial, eye-rolling reaction to the suggestion that I had an "inner child.") Eventually, I opened up more and trusted the process. Therapy changed saved my life. Pre-therapy, I would have made fun of someone who said that.

Good luck, Anonymous. Feel free to MeMail me. I wish you the best. If you can address this problem at its root, your life will change for the better.
posted by Majorita at 4:56 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

I've been struggling with something similar for years with a family member. He did a lot to hurt all of us when we were kids, by not being in control of himself and his alcohol problem. What I did realize is that forgiveness is a thing all its own. There's acceptance, and then there's forgiveness. You can have one without the other. I finally realize that this person is who he is and I can just accept that, even if the forgiveness doesn't come easily. It was something that took me years to come to terms with.

But an apology? I haven't got one yet. Or, more accurately, an acknowledgment that things were bad in the past. That is what I've been waiting for. That is also something I most likely never get. And the biggest thing with an apology isn't so much that it's necessary to forgive. It's the first step in rebuilding any sort of trust. Trust makes forgiveness a lot easier.

If you're looking for an apology as a condition of forgiveness, what you're looking for is a trade. As long as the other person refuses to pay up his end of the deal, the transaction will never be made. Eventually you have to choose whether or not you're willing to make an advance payment in the form of either acceptance or forgiveness. It's a decision that takes a lot of thought and internal struggle, and often therapy.
posted by azpenguin at 5:39 PM on April 11

Yeah, it seems to me that the person you really need to forgive is yourself. There are no "shoulds" or "regulations" about feelings-- we feel what we feel. But we don't have to hate ourselves for have these feelings-- it's the self-hate that makes the feelings unbearable, not the feelings themselves.

Treat yourself the way you would treat a friend who felt badly over such a situation-- you wouldn't call them silly or talk about the world's smallest violin. You would show them compassion and kindness and be present and listen.

Do that for yourself and you will find over time that you really don't want or need anything from him. When you can be safe with yourself, you'll be able to feel safe trusting others. But right now, you can't feel your actual feelings because you are coiled and ready to attack yourself for it and you are completely vulnerable to your own rage at not being "smarter." You think you should be above and beyond your feelings and so you don't give yourself a break.

It's not a matter of smart or dumb-- it just is. When you can take care of yourself and let yourself be, you'll be able to move on and feel safe with others.
posted by Maias at 6:16 PM on April 11

[This is a followup from anonymous.]

Thank you all so much, guys. This really touched me. I thought there would be maybe five answers, and no favorites -- !

jamjam: I would mark your answer best if I could. I was definitely supposed to be a Young Lady of Quality, although that is another story. Although my dad is a wonderful family man and I wouldn't trade him for anything, he is quite charismatic, and . . . hmm. I never thought of it that way. I've joked with my friends that "I have a thing for 'crazy,'" and it has been remarked by others that "you sure can pick 'em." Hm.

pazazygeek: I don't think I'm honestly mad at him anymore, which is why I was so mystified at my sudden intense desire for an apology. Even if he wasn't mentally ill -- which I would bet a stack of cash he was -- he was young and weak, and he had a difficult life. He wasn't Relationship Hitler, he just wasn't the man he thought he was.

NoraReed, I definitely talked to my friends at the time, and cried too, but I also consciously stopped talking to them about it (except for joking) after a while. I didn't want to wear them out, and I didn't want them to know I was hurt that badly. I didn't want to know that. Due to natural geographical turnover, I am in touch with only a couple of people who knew me then. The friends I have now have no idea. (But they are good and would be
good for it.)

I will follow up on the reading recommendations when I get to the library next.

posted by cortex at 7:35 PM on April 11

Here's an unbelievable reference in a thread like this - Ayn Rand. Consider The Fountainhead, if you've read it; what I got out of that book, and what I get out of Rand's whole philosophy, is the sheer, utter, almost superhuman difficulty of actually doing something willfully. In Fountainhead, the dude spends 20 years trying to conquer all manner of human inertia to finally get his architectural style recognized, and what he earns for it is pretty much jack squat. A "good job" and pat on the back from his old enemies.

Where Rand would hold this to weakness, I don't. When I was 16 I read it as a sympathetic exposition on exactly how much of our action, how much of our own life is subject to forces beyond our control or understanding.

He didn't mean to break you, likely didn't even want to. And you had no desire to be broken. You were trying to love. You were trying to do the best you could, both of you. That's all you can do, aside from, maybe, a monument or two to your own willpower, which will likely consume your life, and that's assuming you even know what you want to build. The Fountainhead dude wanted to build buildings. In love and everything else, he suffered. She goes to considerable length to describe the bitterness which he endures.

I don't think it's all that bad, but considering all the forces chance and the universe arrays against us, is it any wonder we get hurt? This man...he's the weather of human emotion. I'll say 90% that someone, especially bipolar, is more like a chimpanzee behind the wheel of a Mac truck than anything else. Of course there's going to be a crash, you were in the way, and in the sway of your own natural forces.

And that's ok. It's the way things are, the way they should be, and the essence of this crazy universe full of random chance and conflicting forces, emotional and physical, that make it possible for us to love in the first place. We have willpower, but not a lot, and we have to expend all of ourselves to exercise it, if we are to be a force in the universe as well.

I'm sorry for the sappiness, but I will suggest Fountainhead. It's unconventional medicine for someone who needs to forgive, and bitter, but it might help. :)
posted by saysthis at 11:11 PM on April 11

I read recently (in Applied Positive Psychology by Chris Peterson) that research shows letters of apology do little to bring about long term real happiness in the person who receives them or the person who writes them. But a letter of gratitude brings about real lasting happiness for the person who writes it. Is it possible for you to turn this around to look at what you are grateful for from the experience? How much you've learned about yourself?

Years ago I was in a similar situation to yours. I finally came to the conclusion that it was my need for the apology not his need to apologize. Therefore I had the power to get rid of that need. It isn't easy, but it is possible.
posted by Jandasmo at 4:55 AM on April 12 [2 favorites]

For what it's worth, I had a similar early bad breakup that led to (insert number so big I'm embarrassed to say) years of keeping men away, to avoid a repeat of that terrible pain. After so many years, the way I got over it was: thinking I was over it, (I wasn't) I got in touch with him after all that time. He sent me such a lame and boring reply that I was stunned: this was the guy I was obsessing about? I didn't forgive him, but I stopped thinking of him immediately and haven't really since. My dating life improved almost laughably fast.

I don't know if contacting your ex is feasible, and given the mental health issues, even advisable, but don't underestimate how big you've built him up in your head, and how small he actually is. Facing the reality might drain away some of the pernicious power he's holding over you.
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:11 AM on April 12 [2 favorites]