I'm heartbroken, and I showed up where he was. What now?
April 7, 2011 5:13 PM Subscribe
My last boyfriend broke up with me four weeks ago, in large part because he is uncomfortable being in a relationship and because he wants more time to spend on other things important to him. I've been trying to give him space...until I drunkenly showed up in his neighborhood last weekend after he checked in to a club there on Foursquare. What do I do now? Plus: will he ever want me back?
The larger question I've been asking myself over the past four weeks is what to do at all while I'm getting over this. I cared about him deeply--in fact, after he broke up with me I realized I do indeed love him after all--and the past few weeks have been extremely painful. I'm in my late twenties and I've had my heart broken before. We dated for four months, not a terribly long time. I know that someone who seems perfect for you can turn out to be a laughably bad mismatch and a good friend. I know that eventually I will feel better, and that I will probably meet someone who seems even better than this last guy. But our interests and personalities meshed so well that I can't imagine meeting someone better.
We met online and had our first date after a week of chatting. We were both intensely into each other from the very beginning, and on that date he told me that he hadn't been in a relationship for 2.5 years and that things would go very slow. Over the next few months we navigated his comfort with being in a relationship with me as well as my own comfort with being in a relationship with him. We live on opposite ends of the same city, so he lives a 50-minute subway ride away. He came to my place very infrequently and it was something we ended up discussing and working on. After the first two or three months he was tasked with an assignment at work that took up most of his time besides eating and sleeping, and it was very frustrating for me not to be able to spend time with him. The deadline kept getting extended and extended and finally after four to six weeks he was done. Then he wanted the next weekend to take care of everything in his life that he'd had to put on hold. Then he quit smoking and was incapacitated for the next week or so. The second week he quit smoking I went to visit a friend for a couple of days and when I got back he broke up with me.
Obviously, there were problems here. I wanted him to put more effort into seeing me and he ultimately decided not to keep trying but to give up. Throughout our relationship, though, he was trying very hard and so was I, and we were communicative about this and told each other explicitly that we recognized the effort that was being put forth. I was actually impressed by how committed he was to being with me, despite the fact that it was hard for him to be in a relationship. More than once he apologized and explained that it was strange for him to be in a relationship at all, and it made me so glad that he was choosing to be with me.
When he broke up with me, I was drunk, which he did not realize, and so the details are a bit fuzzy. We had been drinking at a bar, which I had done on an empty stomach, and it was only just hitting me when we left and he started his break-up speech. He told me that he had been a shitty boyfriend, and I told him that I agreed and that I was glad he had recognized that and I appreciated him saying that. But then he went on to say that there were a lot of things that he was trying to get done and that he was "kind of trying to figure out how to be an adult" (half-laughing at himself as he said this) and that he wasn't able to be a boyfriend too.
He told me that he understood if I couldn't do this, but that he would like if we could be friends. He has a pronounced tendency to tell long, rambling anecdotes to illustrate a point (which I am prone to do too), and he told me one about how he had had a girlfriend and they broke up amicably and she moved away to another city, and then when he found out she was dating someone else he told her that he didn't think he was over her, and was shocked when she replied, "Yeah, I know."
I said something about wanting to be friends. He rephrased his original statement and said that he had all these things he wanted to get done and that he didn't know how to balance that with also being my boyfriend, which would have been a lovely place to start a conversation if he had been so inclined. I recommended a book I love to him and he said he'd read it. We went to his house and I took off my clothes and tried to have sex with him and he wouldn't. Then he drove me home and I played screamo the entire half hour ride. We hugged goodbye.
The next day I said hello to him online and we had a brief exchange about our cats, and then didn't talk to him until last week, when I had found out online that his friend and his grandfather had just died, and I had woken up that morning feeling at peace about what had happened and just feeling concerned about his own wellbeing and wanting to reach out to him and show some human support. We also talked very briefly the next day about a mixtape that had just dropped.
Well, after that was when I got trashed (not having intended to do so at all) and he checked in to this place on Foursquare, and I was so drunk that I went all the way there. I didn't approach him or talk to him at all. We definitely saw each other, and I had a couple of interactions with his friends that were pretty awkward. A friend of mine drove over and rescued me. My ex and his friends know that I don't know anyone else in their neighborhood, so it was definitely odd that I would be there. It was an aggressive invasion of privacy and I very much regret doing it. I feel that I've destroyed whatever goodwill was there between us, and it was also extremely not cool of me to make him or his friends feel bad.
I said hello to him on IM today, which I regret but seemed to make sense at the time, and when he didn't respond I told him that I knew he was at work, but that it seemed that things had gotten shitty between us and that's the last thing I had wanted. I'm trying to decide if that is enough and whether I should leave the poor guy alone, or if an emailed apology where I acknowledge how much I fucked up makes more sense.
I'm a huge extrovert and would never need space from a person unless I thought I needed to completely cut them out of my life. However, I understand most people are not like this, and I understand that he needs a lot of space right now, and probably in general. We'd talked once about him being alone for those 2.5 years and he said, "The first year was really hard..." I can't imagine how hard it must have been in a downward spiral and then pull yourself together and accept being alone and finally feel happy, and then to meet someone you find amazing and try to reconcile their enthusiasm for you and your desire for them with whatever self-preservation instinct you've manifested. I mean...really. I can't. Haha.
But I have amazing, wonderful, giving friends who understand that a little better and have let me crawl inside their headspace. The consensus seems to be that even if he does change his mind and want to try again, it won't be for at least three to six months at the very least. Why did he want to break up with me anyway? At first I didn't understand what he meant by all these things he was committed to, but one of my friends saw right away that my ex was talking about all his creative projects that he has going on. He's very concerned with getting things off the ground and completing them, and he's turning 30 in the fall. I think he was under a great deal of pressure with finding himself in a relationship, everything he's been trying to complete, his upcoming birthday, and the massive amount of effort he's had to put into work lately. He has also told me that the change of seasons to spring makes him "feel crazy." I think he just hit some breaking point and felt that he had to accomplish certain things and prove to himself that he is an adult/in charge of his life/whatever. Which is great and all, but how does one even prove that to oneself? What does it all mean, anyway?
Why do I love him? When I broke up with my previous ex, I went through some good self-help books and did the damn exercise where you write down everything you're looking for in a perfect mate, even if you think you'd never be able to find those things. So I wrote down, though it seemed shallow, I wanted someone who makes me feel funny inside and has amazing tattoos and who writes (well!) and has exquisite taste in music and the same morals and doesn't eat meat and loves babies and is interested in and excited about my own passions (one of them is birth work, which is not something people are typically interested in)...and this guy fits all of the above. Everyone who knows him loves him. He's so out there and such a goofball about everything and yet everything he does makes sense to me. Even this, if I'm right about things, makes sense. I've never met anyone who thinks so incredibly similarly about everything to me. At the beginning we were freaking each other out with how similar we are...his mom is even in my profession and is from my hometown in another state. Everything we do together is fun. He feels like my best friend and lover rolled into one.
I just wish that when he hit this crucible in our relationship he had tried to stay true to himself and stand up for himself while in a relationship with me rather than sidestep it by giving up. I understand, it's ridiculously hard. It was so hard for me to stand up for myself and in February I even told him that if things were going to be the way they had been, we had no future. I realize looking back that by the end, he had stopped using endearments with me, had stopped calling me cute or telling me how "good" I was, but I knew that he still thought highly of me and thought I was amazing because he was still with me. It hurts to realize that by the end he wasn't even really holding my hand anymore. Something happened after the first couple of months and it went from being fun and fairly easy to me walking on eggshells trying to figure out what he needed in the relationship. But the entire time he kept being in there with me every time we talked things out, and I really thought we were going to make it.
The larger question I've been asking myself over the past four weeks is what to do at all while I'm getting over this. I cared about him deeply--in fact, after he broke up with me I realized I do indeed love him after all--and the past few weeks have been extremely painful. I'm in my late twenties and I've had my heart broken before. We dated for four months, not a terribly long time. I know that someone who seems perfect for you can turn out to be a laughably bad mismatch and a good friend. I know that eventually I will feel better, and that I will probably meet someone who seems even better than this last guy. But our interests and personalities meshed so well that I can't imagine meeting someone better.
We met online and had our first date after a week of chatting. We were both intensely into each other from the very beginning, and on that date he told me that he hadn't been in a relationship for 2.5 years and that things would go very slow. Over the next few months we navigated his comfort with being in a relationship with me as well as my own comfort with being in a relationship with him. We live on opposite ends of the same city, so he lives a 50-minute subway ride away. He came to my place very infrequently and it was something we ended up discussing and working on. After the first two or three months he was tasked with an assignment at work that took up most of his time besides eating and sleeping, and it was very frustrating for me not to be able to spend time with him. The deadline kept getting extended and extended and finally after four to six weeks he was done. Then he wanted the next weekend to take care of everything in his life that he'd had to put on hold. Then he quit smoking and was incapacitated for the next week or so. The second week he quit smoking I went to visit a friend for a couple of days and when I got back he broke up with me.
Obviously, there were problems here. I wanted him to put more effort into seeing me and he ultimately decided not to keep trying but to give up. Throughout our relationship, though, he was trying very hard and so was I, and we were communicative about this and told each other explicitly that we recognized the effort that was being put forth. I was actually impressed by how committed he was to being with me, despite the fact that it was hard for him to be in a relationship. More than once he apologized and explained that it was strange for him to be in a relationship at all, and it made me so glad that he was choosing to be with me.
When he broke up with me, I was drunk, which he did not realize, and so the details are a bit fuzzy. We had been drinking at a bar, which I had done on an empty stomach, and it was only just hitting me when we left and he started his break-up speech. He told me that he had been a shitty boyfriend, and I told him that I agreed and that I was glad he had recognized that and I appreciated him saying that. But then he went on to say that there were a lot of things that he was trying to get done and that he was "kind of trying to figure out how to be an adult" (half-laughing at himself as he said this) and that he wasn't able to be a boyfriend too.
He told me that he understood if I couldn't do this, but that he would like if we could be friends. He has a pronounced tendency to tell long, rambling anecdotes to illustrate a point (which I am prone to do too), and he told me one about how he had had a girlfriend and they broke up amicably and she moved away to another city, and then when he found out she was dating someone else he told her that he didn't think he was over her, and was shocked when she replied, "Yeah, I know."
I said something about wanting to be friends. He rephrased his original statement and said that he had all these things he wanted to get done and that he didn't know how to balance that with also being my boyfriend, which would have been a lovely place to start a conversation if he had been so inclined. I recommended a book I love to him and he said he'd read it. We went to his house and I took off my clothes and tried to have sex with him and he wouldn't. Then he drove me home and I played screamo the entire half hour ride. We hugged goodbye.
The next day I said hello to him online and we had a brief exchange about our cats, and then didn't talk to him until last week, when I had found out online that his friend and his grandfather had just died, and I had woken up that morning feeling at peace about what had happened and just feeling concerned about his own wellbeing and wanting to reach out to him and show some human support. We also talked very briefly the next day about a mixtape that had just dropped.
Well, after that was when I got trashed (not having intended to do so at all) and he checked in to this place on Foursquare, and I was so drunk that I went all the way there. I didn't approach him or talk to him at all. We definitely saw each other, and I had a couple of interactions with his friends that were pretty awkward. A friend of mine drove over and rescued me. My ex and his friends know that I don't know anyone else in their neighborhood, so it was definitely odd that I would be there. It was an aggressive invasion of privacy and I very much regret doing it. I feel that I've destroyed whatever goodwill was there between us, and it was also extremely not cool of me to make him or his friends feel bad.
I said hello to him on IM today, which I regret but seemed to make sense at the time, and when he didn't respond I told him that I knew he was at work, but that it seemed that things had gotten shitty between us and that's the last thing I had wanted. I'm trying to decide if that is enough and whether I should leave the poor guy alone, or if an emailed apology where I acknowledge how much I fucked up makes more sense.
I'm a huge extrovert and would never need space from a person unless I thought I needed to completely cut them out of my life. However, I understand most people are not like this, and I understand that he needs a lot of space right now, and probably in general. We'd talked once about him being alone for those 2.5 years and he said, "The first year was really hard..." I can't imagine how hard it must have been in a downward spiral and then pull yourself together and accept being alone and finally feel happy, and then to meet someone you find amazing and try to reconcile their enthusiasm for you and your desire for them with whatever self-preservation instinct you've manifested. I mean...really. I can't. Haha.
But I have amazing, wonderful, giving friends who understand that a little better and have let me crawl inside their headspace. The consensus seems to be that even if he does change his mind and want to try again, it won't be for at least three to six months at the very least. Why did he want to break up with me anyway? At first I didn't understand what he meant by all these things he was committed to, but one of my friends saw right away that my ex was talking about all his creative projects that he has going on. He's very concerned with getting things off the ground and completing them, and he's turning 30 in the fall. I think he was under a great deal of pressure with finding himself in a relationship, everything he's been trying to complete, his upcoming birthday, and the massive amount of effort he's had to put into work lately. He has also told me that the change of seasons to spring makes him "feel crazy." I think he just hit some breaking point and felt that he had to accomplish certain things and prove to himself that he is an adult/in charge of his life/whatever. Which is great and all, but how does one even prove that to oneself? What does it all mean, anyway?
Why do I love him? When I broke up with my previous ex, I went through some good self-help books and did the damn exercise where you write down everything you're looking for in a perfect mate, even if you think you'd never be able to find those things. So I wrote down, though it seemed shallow, I wanted someone who makes me feel funny inside and has amazing tattoos and who writes (well!) and has exquisite taste in music and the same morals and doesn't eat meat and loves babies and is interested in and excited about my own passions (one of them is birth work, which is not something people are typically interested in)...and this guy fits all of the above. Everyone who knows him loves him. He's so out there and such a goofball about everything and yet everything he does makes sense to me. Even this, if I'm right about things, makes sense. I've never met anyone who thinks so incredibly similarly about everything to me. At the beginning we were freaking each other out with how similar we are...his mom is even in my profession and is from my hometown in another state. Everything we do together is fun. He feels like my best friend and lover rolled into one.
I just wish that when he hit this crucible in our relationship he had tried to stay true to himself and stand up for himself while in a relationship with me rather than sidestep it by giving up. I understand, it's ridiculously hard. It was so hard for me to stand up for myself and in February I even told him that if things were going to be the way they had been, we had no future. I realize looking back that by the end, he had stopped using endearments with me, had stopped calling me cute or telling me how "good" I was, but I knew that he still thought highly of me and thought I was amazing because he was still with me. It hurts to realize that by the end he wasn't even really holding my hand anymore. Something happened after the first couple of months and it went from being fun and fairly easy to me walking on eggshells trying to figure out what he needed in the relationship. But the entire time he kept being in there with me every time we talked things out, and I really thought we were going to make it.
This post was deleted for the following reason: poster's request -- jessamyn
You are hungry. He isn't going to feed you. Seek sustenance for your heart elsewhere.
Something I have been thinking about lately is operating from a place of abundance, instead of scarcity. You may think that love is scarce for you and he is a rare source in a desert, and that makes you panic and want to cling to the carcass of what was there. But what if the world were full of rich sources of love for you, and he is just one, and you can do better than hoping for scraps? Relax in that feeling, and let go. Don't do yourself a disservice by thinking this is all you have.
posted by griselda at 5:28 PM on April 7, 2011 [13 favorites]
Something I have been thinking about lately is operating from a place of abundance, instead of scarcity. You may think that love is scarce for you and he is a rare source in a desert, and that makes you panic and want to cling to the carcass of what was there. But what if the world were full of rich sources of love for you, and he is just one, and you can do better than hoping for scraps? Relax in that feeling, and let go. Don't do yourself a disservice by thinking this is all you have.
posted by griselda at 5:28 PM on April 7, 2011 [13 favorites]
"I said hello to him on IM today, which I regret but seemed to make sense at the time, and when he didn't respond I told him that I knew he was at work, but that it seemed that things had gotten shitty between us and that's the last thing I had wanted. I'm trying to decide if that is enough and whether I should leave the poor guy alone, or if an emailed apology where I acknowledge how much I fucked up makes more sense."
Hooo boy. I mean this in the kindest way possible: that is enough. You should leave the poor guy alone. An emailed apology where you acknowledge how much you fucked up will not improve anything, and may make the situation worse.
I'm sorry you're hurting. It will get better.
posted by easy, lucky, free at 5:31 PM on April 7, 2011
Hooo boy. I mean this in the kindest way possible: that is enough. You should leave the poor guy alone. An emailed apology where you acknowledge how much you fucked up will not improve anything, and may make the situation worse.
I'm sorry you're hurting. It will get better.
posted by easy, lucky, free at 5:31 PM on April 7, 2011
Best answer: Showing up at that bar was crazy. I think you realize that, but what you don't realize is that now any contact is going to seem crazy to him. You can't turn back time and re-do the breakup and the aftermath, so the only thing to do is gather up some pride and decide that from now on you will do nothing that could come across as creepy. And that means you should do nothing at all. If a friendship or another try is in the cards, he knows how to reach you. I'm sure he's great, but he's just a guy. There are loads of them.
posted by moxiedoll at 5:45 PM on April 7, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by moxiedoll at 5:45 PM on April 7, 2011 [1 favorite]
Also, I am not saying you have a drinking problem - not even in a backhanded "not saying" kind of way. But given that it's been getting you into trouble, maybe you should refrain from getting drunk until you're over this guy so you won't make a fool of yourself.
posted by moxiedoll at 5:47 PM on April 7, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by moxiedoll at 5:47 PM on April 7, 2011 [3 favorites]
Space? He wants some space? Fine. Give it to him. Lots of it. Like, no contact whatever. Meanwhile, consider the relationship over and start seeing other guys. Love life, live and be happy!
posted by exphysicist345 at 5:53 PM on April 7, 2011
posted by exphysicist345 at 5:53 PM on April 7, 2011
yeah, you drink too much and then do things you regret. cut back. i think you may have gone too far for this relationship.
posted by elle.jeezy at 5:55 PM on April 7, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by elle.jeezy at 5:55 PM on April 7, 2011 [1 favorite]
What now: you need some space from this. You're describing a relationship that was a lot of work from the beginning with a man who is simultaneously completely like you and so unlike you that your friends have to explain him to you. I get the sense from what you've written that you lack perspective on this (for obvious reasons, it's still very close to you) and I also get the sense that you're not being totally honest with yourself about your own feelings and motives (hence the getting drunk and oops doing what you really want to).
Give yourself some significant time of not having any contact with him whatsoever, including through facebook/whatever.
posted by prefpara at 5:55 PM on April 7, 2011
Give yourself some significant time of not having any contact with him whatsoever, including through facebook/whatever.
posted by prefpara at 5:55 PM on April 7, 2011
Oh honey, you've been acting like That Girl. He broke up with you and will never want you back. Hide him from your IM chat list, defriend him on foursquare, delete his number from his phone, do whatever it takes to prevent yourself from contacting him again. It's over. Yeah it sucks, but facing the facts and starting to move on is the best thing you can do for yourself.
posted by emd3737 at 6:15 PM on April 7, 2011 [5 favorites]
posted by emd3737 at 6:15 PM on April 7, 2011 [5 favorites]
That was a lot of reading, when the only salient point is "My ex-boyfriend has every reason to doubt my good intentions towards him, because I acted like someone who should be kept at a distance."
You need to delete him from your phone, block him on FB/ Twitter/ whatever, get rid of Foursquare if it's enabling this sort of thing, etc. etc. The further down that road you go-- including IMing him to apologize when he doesn't want to hear it-- the closer you're coming to having to explain yourself to police or a judge, and no one wants that to happen to you.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 6:36 PM on April 7, 2011
You need to delete him from your phone, block him on FB/ Twitter/ whatever, get rid of Foursquare if it's enabling this sort of thing, etc. etc. The further down that road you go-- including IMing him to apologize when he doesn't want to hear it-- the closer you're coming to having to explain yourself to police or a judge, and no one wants that to happen to you.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 6:36 PM on April 7, 2011
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You should never need to convince someone to be with your or love you. Go find someone who wants to be with you - unfortunately he doesn't.
I'm sorry - good luck finding someone wonderful!
posted by amycup at 5:25 PM on April 7, 2011 [1 favorite]