Help me break free from this on/ off relationship

March 4, 2014 4:55 AM

I’ve been in an on/off relationship with a woman for the last four years. We’re both middle aged, previously married and with grown up children. She has broken up with me three times. We’re currently broken up and she dumped me by text a couple of months ago. She said she wasn’t feeling the relationship. This after spending what I thought was a nice Christmas together and her telling me she loves me. The previous time she dumped me she said we were incompatable. We’d spent 18 months together on that occasion. In the past I’ve tried to talk to her and work things out and then gone no contact when it was clear she wanted out. On this occasion I simply told her I accepted her decision. I sometimes wonder if perhaps she was testing me, or if I should have tried to win her round again? The previous times she has ended it she has eventually reached out, usually many months later. I still love her and had naively believed her when she told me that she loves me. But clearly her actions don’t seem to show this. I know this relationship is unhealthy for me. She would tell me she loved me, but more often then not would blow hot and cold with me. I don’t think she’s a bad person. It’s simply that she either has never loved me, or certainly doesn’t love me as much as I love her. She also cuts friends and family off for various reasons. But this is not really about her, but about me and how I can let go and move on. One thing that seems to hold me back is the thought of her contacting me again, as she has done before. It keeps me in a type of limbo, at least in my own head. Like it’s not really over. I know that I shouldn’t want to get back with her but I’m worried I’d be weak if she got in touch again, and I berate myself for harbouring hopes that she will. Could I really go back into a relationship with a woman who treats me this way? Does anyone have any advice for me? I am keeping as busy as I can and I have hobbies and lots of friends, but my thoughts are filled with her. I’m either reminiscing, analysing what could have gone wrong, what I could have done differently or just generally missing her and wondering what she’s doing now.
posted by blokefromipanema to Human Relations (2 answers total)

Block her phone number, block her email, remove her from your social networks, respectfully ask any mutual friends you might have to leave it alone for a few months, go no contact and block everything in such a way as you would not even know if she tried to reach out again for another ride on the merry go round followed by ending it temporarily.

Get a calendar and a thing of gold foil stickers from the drugstore. Every day that you do not talk to her put a sticker on the calendar. Hide the calendar if you need to.

When you feel the urge to communicate with her, write longhand letters or type into an online private journal (make an account on 750words.com) or create a dead end email address (sockpuppet account on hotmail or something that you don't use for anything else) and send messages intended to her to that dead end account. burn/toss the letters if actually write them in long hand. the act of putting your thoughts into words and onto either a paper or a computer screen will be cathartic. depending on your living situation you may also want to talk to yourself, if writing it out doesn't appeal to you.

process the feeling of not having closure using the above.

look forward to better days when you're dating someone who you can feel safe with and who doesn't "test" you or "blow hot and cold" and with whom you have a high level of mutual interest. everything is just so much easier in that situation than in the one you described.
posted by zdravo at 5:01 AM on March 4, 2014 [2 favorites]

I was in a situation like that for too long. Getting a different girlfriend solved the problem.
posted by BabeTheBlueOX at 5:03 AM on March 4, 2014 [2 favorites]