regret impulsively breaking up with the man of my dreams, BDP?
July 17, 2017 3:07 PM Subscribe
it's been three months since i broke it off with him, somewhat impulsively, largely because i felt like the relationship was already over and like he was about to reject me (which turned out not to be true). i regretted it immediately, but it was too late. we've been seeing each other again but he won't be exclusive again, and won't commit to a real relationship. i had what i wanted and i threw it away due to my issues. i can't get over this and am in a serious mental health crisis, am literally ruining my life.
basically, everything was on track in our relationship, but i felt insecure the whole time, i think because i felt like i wasn't good enough for him and like he was going to want to be with someone else, so i kept pushing for more certainty and security, and once i started pushing i couldn't stop. he's very attractive and is basically my dream man, and i was very invested from the start in 'getting' a serious relationship with him. i was able to remain fairly chill for the first 3-4 months, though he says he always felt me wanting more and wanting to move the relationship forward according to my agenda, which he resisted, having recently gotten out of a long term relationship and not wanting to jump right into something serious.
between months 4 and 5 we had a lot of conflict related to a trip we were supposed to take. the plan changed, he was indecisive about it, and i freaked out and assumed it meant he wanted to break up with me; i got really dramatic and kept asking if he wanted to keep dating, was he still my boyfriend, etc. he was really put off by this reaction--has since said it seemed like a 'preemptive doom scenario' and that it made him more uneasy about taking a trip with me. from there he started distancing himself, because all of our interactions were underscored by my resentment and determination to get an answer about whether we were going on this trip (and he wouldn't give me a straight answer yes or no, kept saying he needed to figure it out in his own head, and that he'd let me know). it got to the point, over just a few weeks, where everything he did felt like a personal slight-- how he wouldn't make plans with me in advance, and (i felt) wasn't texting me as much as before. i projected and assumed a great deal, and thought he was over it and wanted to break up with me. i really thought the relationship was already over.
so, one night i couldn't take the uncertainty anymore and i said i wanted to break up. we had a bunch of conversations about it, and he said he wasn't ready for a serious relationship, and agreed it seemed like we were on different pages with what we wanted. at the end of these talks he said he wanted to take a step back from getting so serious and so he wanted to try out seeing other people while still seeing me (he's never done the non-exclusive thing before, but was responding to all the pressure i had put on the relationship, and of course to me already saying i wanted to break up and the subsequent conversations we'd had about it not working out). i said no to that and said we should take 30 days no contact.
i regretted saying i wanted to break up pretty much immediately. as soon as i saw him in person i remembered how much i liked him and the narrative i'd built of him as a rejecting villain kind of fell away. but at that point it was too late to take it back. over the 30 days no contact, i became completely obsessed with this relationship and my role in sabotaging it. so at the end of NC i contacted him and said i wanted to see him again. he said he still liked me a lot and wanted to see me too, but it would have to be on the agreement that it'd be a 'fresh start' and that we wouldn't fall into the old dynamic of me always pressuring for more, and of us talking about nothing other than the relationship.
so, we started seeing each other again, and having sex, and it is basically like the old relationship except 1) he's seeing other people; 2) I am relentlessly chasing him--he rarely initiates and it's clear we're not 'in a relationship' like before; 3) the innocence is gone--we aren't building toward anything like we were before; 4) i have been acting completely batshit and can't seem to stop. my therapist recommended that i try to 'be in the moment' with him and not press him for answers about the future or about girls he's dating (which seems kind of like weird advice), but i have been unable to do so. every time we've hung out it's been worse. he will try to set a boundary and say he won't answer any questions but i have literally thought about nothing except him and our relationship for three months, so i have nothing else to talk about. i have put him in this 'god' role--i literally have asked him repeatedly if we can just go back in time to our previous relationship. (i am so delusional that part of me actually believes going back in time is possible!) i have tried every strategy to get him to commit to being exclusive again. i've interrogated him about his dating, looked through his phone, called him countless times in a row. i have told him i'm in love with him, begged him to love me, asked him why i'm not good enough for him. i have told him i want to kill myself. i have never acted like this and it terrifies me. i don't know why he hasn't run for the hills--i feel like any other guy would have at this point, but he says he likes me a lot, has really strong feelings for me, and wants to keep seeing me, unless i decide it's causing too much pain for me.
I feel like we are now in a twisted s&m type relationship. i have begged him to just tell me that a relationship isn't possible in the future, so i can move on, but he won't tell me that. he says he doesn't want to commit to anything right now, which includes committing to NOT wanting an exclusive relationship with me in the future. neither of us has slept with anyone else yet, and we've agreed to tell each other if we do. i've said that i won't want to keep seeing him after he has sex with someone else, and he says he feels the same about me. so we are in this weird stand-off, and i think i am in deep denial, thinking that if i keep seeing him i can somehow prevent him from starting to actually date someone else, even though every time we've hung out it's been dramatic and unpleasant (the only time i'll stop asking questions is when we are actually having sex, which has always comprised a great deal of our relationship). he says he has never been in a dysfunctional relationship like this--not even close. it baffles him that i keep acting this way.
he is now on a monthlong backpacking trip with his brother. i spent all day with him the other day, and would not go more than five minutes without descending into my obsessive questioning mode. he told me that if i'd acted normal after getting back together, maybe we could have figured out a way for me to come along for a leg of the backpacking trip, which really hurt because that would have been SO fun and i want nothing more. he also says he wouldn't have broken up with me the first time, that he was waiting to see what i would do, and whether the tension would cool off, but that he was into our relationship and would have done all the couple stuff i want so badly--spending holidays together, going on trips, etc. this makes the pain so much worse, because it confirms my fears that i actually had what i wanted, but squandered it due to my insecurity and anxiety, and my inability to cope with uncertainty and let things play out on their own. i forced an outcome because i was so afraid of rejection; i manifested my worst fears, and am now living in a nightmare. i felt insane the entire day, hanging out with him, helping him make preparations for his trip. i was going on a date with someone else that night, which i told him about, and he was jealous, and we had sex four times in 24 hours, and i went back to his place to shower before my date, which seemed really messed up. he texted me later asking if i had been into the guy (i wasn't, of course--i am completely obsessed with him). i thought it was interesting that he was jealous; i'll admit it gave me a little bit of hope, a sliver of power.
still, three months after the first breakup, i am obsessed and it's all i'll talk about with anyone. i've lost friends due to this obsession. i'm a writer at a crucial juncture in my career and i haven't written in three months. i haven't even READ in three months, or watched a movie or TV show. the only thing that brings me comfort is analyzing the situation with whomever will still listen. i obsessively replay the events of the last weeks of our relationship and imagine doing things differently and how things could have played out. i don't want anyone else, can't imagine ever wanting anyone else. i am dying over the loss of a summer with him, going on trips, celebrating his birthday, continuing to have amazing sex and developing our relationship. i can't comprehend why i acted the way i did, and why i have acted much worse since 'getting back together.' i have acted so desperate and insane that i can't imagine he would ever want to get back into a committed relationship with me. i am on psych meds now (lamotrigine and wellbutrin) and am seeing a therapist, but i'm not sure how good she is (she's an intern). i am worried i have borderline personality disorder or something; looking back at our texts in the last weeks of our relationship, i feel like he was actually being nice and fine and normal and like i was interpreting everything according to a narrative that said the relationship was doomed and that he was rejecting me.
i have kind of a lame relationship history and have usually dated guys i wasn't that into, but who were into me, and this time, i was REALLY into him, and he was into me too (but less intensely, more in a 'let's see where this goes' healthy kind of way), and i am horrified that i've blown this chance to finally be with someone i was so excited about, who matched me in every way, who i am completely attracted to. but, i am so stuck in this cycle that even when i am with him, i can talk about nothing other than the past, or the future (i.e. how likely is it we'll get back into a relationship like before), and i'm putting far MORE pressure on the relationship than i did before, and behaving toward him as if he is not a person, but a conduit for information about our squandered future together. again, i'm not sure why he won't walk away. people say he is just using me for sex, but i think it's more complex than that, and i know i'll probably have to be the one to walk away, but i CAN'T, because i want only him and as long as there is any glimmer of hope, i will keep chasing it. like i said, he's away for a month, but says he'll get in touch with me when he gets back, that he still wants to see me. and, he still does give me glimmers of hope. he made me a present to celebrate me getting into a prestigious writing residency--wrapped it up and everything. he says maybe we could still go camping before the summer's over, and that we can discuss the relationship and monogamy once i get back from a writing residency (he's gone for a month, then back for two weeks before i leave for a month).
i can't get over this. i can't accept reality. i would do anything to go back to april and do things differently. a few different choices on my part, a realignment of my thinking, a reality check about how entitled and selfish i was being toward him, and we would still be together. i don't recognize myself anymore, i don't want to live without him, and i don't know what to do.
basically, everything was on track in our relationship, but i felt insecure the whole time, i think because i felt like i wasn't good enough for him and like he was going to want to be with someone else, so i kept pushing for more certainty and security, and once i started pushing i couldn't stop. he's very attractive and is basically my dream man, and i was very invested from the start in 'getting' a serious relationship with him. i was able to remain fairly chill for the first 3-4 months, though he says he always felt me wanting more and wanting to move the relationship forward according to my agenda, which he resisted, having recently gotten out of a long term relationship and not wanting to jump right into something serious.
between months 4 and 5 we had a lot of conflict related to a trip we were supposed to take. the plan changed, he was indecisive about it, and i freaked out and assumed it meant he wanted to break up with me; i got really dramatic and kept asking if he wanted to keep dating, was he still my boyfriend, etc. he was really put off by this reaction--has since said it seemed like a 'preemptive doom scenario' and that it made him more uneasy about taking a trip with me. from there he started distancing himself, because all of our interactions were underscored by my resentment and determination to get an answer about whether we were going on this trip (and he wouldn't give me a straight answer yes or no, kept saying he needed to figure it out in his own head, and that he'd let me know). it got to the point, over just a few weeks, where everything he did felt like a personal slight-- how he wouldn't make plans with me in advance, and (i felt) wasn't texting me as much as before. i projected and assumed a great deal, and thought he was over it and wanted to break up with me. i really thought the relationship was already over.
so, one night i couldn't take the uncertainty anymore and i said i wanted to break up. we had a bunch of conversations about it, and he said he wasn't ready for a serious relationship, and agreed it seemed like we were on different pages with what we wanted. at the end of these talks he said he wanted to take a step back from getting so serious and so he wanted to try out seeing other people while still seeing me (he's never done the non-exclusive thing before, but was responding to all the pressure i had put on the relationship, and of course to me already saying i wanted to break up and the subsequent conversations we'd had about it not working out). i said no to that and said we should take 30 days no contact.
i regretted saying i wanted to break up pretty much immediately. as soon as i saw him in person i remembered how much i liked him and the narrative i'd built of him as a rejecting villain kind of fell away. but at that point it was too late to take it back. over the 30 days no contact, i became completely obsessed with this relationship and my role in sabotaging it. so at the end of NC i contacted him and said i wanted to see him again. he said he still liked me a lot and wanted to see me too, but it would have to be on the agreement that it'd be a 'fresh start' and that we wouldn't fall into the old dynamic of me always pressuring for more, and of us talking about nothing other than the relationship.
so, we started seeing each other again, and having sex, and it is basically like the old relationship except 1) he's seeing other people; 2) I am relentlessly chasing him--he rarely initiates and it's clear we're not 'in a relationship' like before; 3) the innocence is gone--we aren't building toward anything like we were before; 4) i have been acting completely batshit and can't seem to stop. my therapist recommended that i try to 'be in the moment' with him and not press him for answers about the future or about girls he's dating (which seems kind of like weird advice), but i have been unable to do so. every time we've hung out it's been worse. he will try to set a boundary and say he won't answer any questions but i have literally thought about nothing except him and our relationship for three months, so i have nothing else to talk about. i have put him in this 'god' role--i literally have asked him repeatedly if we can just go back in time to our previous relationship. (i am so delusional that part of me actually believes going back in time is possible!) i have tried every strategy to get him to commit to being exclusive again. i've interrogated him about his dating, looked through his phone, called him countless times in a row. i have told him i'm in love with him, begged him to love me, asked him why i'm not good enough for him. i have told him i want to kill myself. i have never acted like this and it terrifies me. i don't know why he hasn't run for the hills--i feel like any other guy would have at this point, but he says he likes me a lot, has really strong feelings for me, and wants to keep seeing me, unless i decide it's causing too much pain for me.
I feel like we are now in a twisted s&m type relationship. i have begged him to just tell me that a relationship isn't possible in the future, so i can move on, but he won't tell me that. he says he doesn't want to commit to anything right now, which includes committing to NOT wanting an exclusive relationship with me in the future. neither of us has slept with anyone else yet, and we've agreed to tell each other if we do. i've said that i won't want to keep seeing him after he has sex with someone else, and he says he feels the same about me. so we are in this weird stand-off, and i think i am in deep denial, thinking that if i keep seeing him i can somehow prevent him from starting to actually date someone else, even though every time we've hung out it's been dramatic and unpleasant (the only time i'll stop asking questions is when we are actually having sex, which has always comprised a great deal of our relationship). he says he has never been in a dysfunctional relationship like this--not even close. it baffles him that i keep acting this way.
he is now on a monthlong backpacking trip with his brother. i spent all day with him the other day, and would not go more than five minutes without descending into my obsessive questioning mode. he told me that if i'd acted normal after getting back together, maybe we could have figured out a way for me to come along for a leg of the backpacking trip, which really hurt because that would have been SO fun and i want nothing more. he also says he wouldn't have broken up with me the first time, that he was waiting to see what i would do, and whether the tension would cool off, but that he was into our relationship and would have done all the couple stuff i want so badly--spending holidays together, going on trips, etc. this makes the pain so much worse, because it confirms my fears that i actually had what i wanted, but squandered it due to my insecurity and anxiety, and my inability to cope with uncertainty and let things play out on their own. i forced an outcome because i was so afraid of rejection; i manifested my worst fears, and am now living in a nightmare. i felt insane the entire day, hanging out with him, helping him make preparations for his trip. i was going on a date with someone else that night, which i told him about, and he was jealous, and we had sex four times in 24 hours, and i went back to his place to shower before my date, which seemed really messed up. he texted me later asking if i had been into the guy (i wasn't, of course--i am completely obsessed with him). i thought it was interesting that he was jealous; i'll admit it gave me a little bit of hope, a sliver of power.
still, three months after the first breakup, i am obsessed and it's all i'll talk about with anyone. i've lost friends due to this obsession. i'm a writer at a crucial juncture in my career and i haven't written in three months. i haven't even READ in three months, or watched a movie or TV show. the only thing that brings me comfort is analyzing the situation with whomever will still listen. i obsessively replay the events of the last weeks of our relationship and imagine doing things differently and how things could have played out. i don't want anyone else, can't imagine ever wanting anyone else. i am dying over the loss of a summer with him, going on trips, celebrating his birthday, continuing to have amazing sex and developing our relationship. i can't comprehend why i acted the way i did, and why i have acted much worse since 'getting back together.' i have acted so desperate and insane that i can't imagine he would ever want to get back into a committed relationship with me. i am on psych meds now (lamotrigine and wellbutrin) and am seeing a therapist, but i'm not sure how good she is (she's an intern). i am worried i have borderline personality disorder or something; looking back at our texts in the last weeks of our relationship, i feel like he was actually being nice and fine and normal and like i was interpreting everything according to a narrative that said the relationship was doomed and that he was rejecting me.
i have kind of a lame relationship history and have usually dated guys i wasn't that into, but who were into me, and this time, i was REALLY into him, and he was into me too (but less intensely, more in a 'let's see where this goes' healthy kind of way), and i am horrified that i've blown this chance to finally be with someone i was so excited about, who matched me in every way, who i am completely attracted to. but, i am so stuck in this cycle that even when i am with him, i can talk about nothing other than the past, or the future (i.e. how likely is it we'll get back into a relationship like before), and i'm putting far MORE pressure on the relationship than i did before, and behaving toward him as if he is not a person, but a conduit for information about our squandered future together. again, i'm not sure why he won't walk away. people say he is just using me for sex, but i think it's more complex than that, and i know i'll probably have to be the one to walk away, but i CAN'T, because i want only him and as long as there is any glimmer of hope, i will keep chasing it. like i said, he's away for a month, but says he'll get in touch with me when he gets back, that he still wants to see me. and, he still does give me glimmers of hope. he made me a present to celebrate me getting into a prestigious writing residency--wrapped it up and everything. he says maybe we could still go camping before the summer's over, and that we can discuss the relationship and monogamy once i get back from a writing residency (he's gone for a month, then back for two weeks before i leave for a month).
i can't get over this. i can't accept reality. i would do anything to go back to april and do things differently. a few different choices on my part, a realignment of my thinking, a reality check about how entitled and selfish i was being toward him, and we would still be together. i don't recognize myself anymore, i don't want to live without him, and i don't know what to do.
This post was deleted for the following reason: I'm very sorry this is so distressing for you. AskMetafilter can't help in situations of immediate mental health crisis, though, and you've already asked two questions about this same situation. Please call your therapist, or if you're in immediate crisis right now, please reach out for live in-person help from one of the crisis lines listed on the ThereIsHelp wiki page. -- LobsterMitten
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posted by the webmistress at 3:11 PM on July 17, 2017