Letting go
January 19, 2020 10:35 AM   Subscribe

I am having trouble letting go of a brief, intense relationship. It's a new year and I want to leave this hurt in the past. But how?

This was me. Turns out everything he told me during the breakup was a flat lie. He had been cheating on me with a woman 14 years his senior before breaking up with me and diving into a full-fledged relationship with her. They moved in after three months and are seemingly still going strong, though who really knows the truth.

He rushed into it with me, gave me a key to his house, professed his love to me and really made me feel like he meant it. I saw a future. I loved him totally and completely and was committed, until one day he started pulling away. He literally stopped looking at me. He would get angry at me quickly over minor things. He stopped touching me and started leaving me out of plans all the time. I literally felt like I was going crazy. Whenever I tried to talk to him about it he turned it on me. He told me that he gave me space to do my schoolwork, so I should give him space to do what he wants--video games, TV, whatever. He told me, repeatedly, that everything was fine. He made me feel like I was losing my mind. And then he broke up with me, fed me a bunch of lies, and didn't even return my mother's stuff, which he still has all these months later.

And now he's seemingly in a happy relationship with this new girl, while I'm over here, still in love with him in spite of all my better judgment. I deserve so, so, so much more than what he gave me. I am smart, kind, funny, in a grad program (and well on my way to being very successful someday)--I deserve the world and he made me feel like my worth was less than zero. I deserve so much more than that. And yet, in the same breath, it is so undoubtedly true that, when things were good between us, I was deeply happy, maybe the happiest I've ever been in a relationship, even if it was short. I want that back so badly. And I know I can get in again someday, with someone who won't lie to me, who won't rush into it and then leave me for someone else. But I can't do that until I let go of this first.

I've done all the right things. I started spending way more time with friends. My friends and family basically rallied behind me. I threw away all of his stuff. I went, and am still going, to therapy. (Let's repeat: I am going to therapy already so you don't need to recommend that). I have thrown myself into school and work. I have completely revamped my approach to relationships: I will not rush into it again. I will carve out specific days for myself, for my friends, for things that are overwhelmingly not him. I have spent so much time reflecting on my own worth, and why I repeatedly sell myself short, so short. I have sworn up and down that I will not sell myself short again. l'm trying, I really am.

And yet.... it still just hurts. It hurts to not be chosen. It hurts to feel like I was not enough and wonder why. I hate thinking that he is still with her and they are seemingly happy and I can't help but think that it's so grossly unfair that he gets to treat me like shit and still be happy with her. I find myself wanting him to know that I know the truth. But so what? What would that accomplish?

I'm done. I need to stop. My happiness does not depend on him and it's bullshit that this asshole gets to keep taking up space in my brain. My happiness does not depend on him and I am (still) selling myself short by being stuck here. The problem is I don't have the slightest idea of how to get unstuck. This feels like complicated grief. I have been in much longer relationships that did not hurt this much when they ended. I know I need to work on not ruminating. I am trying to redirect my thoughts from painful things when I get started down the rabbit hill. I am trying to say--loudly--NO. And it works, a bit, but I still find myself in the rabbit hole far too often.

It's a new year, I have a new home, and I want to let go of this ever-present sadness I have carried with me ever since he told me he didn't love me anymore. What are your tips for making that happen? I am considering getting a new therapist since I'm not sure my current one is helping. Besides that, I don't know what to do or how to get myself unstuck. Any tips and anecdotes are appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
posted by Amy93 to Human Relations (15 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
I am so sorry you are going through all this.

It sounds like you are doing all the right things to get past it, and in the longer term, it is simply time that will heal you. The fact that you are working with a therapist will help you identify any deeper thought patterns and beliefs that might make you more vulnerable to such a person, and more hurt by such a situation, than you might otherwise be.

In the short term, though, I think you need to get angry at this guy. Your previous questions talk about how nice he was, even as he was pulling away, but it turns out that he was a liar and a cheat.

Your earlier questions also indicate that he had trouble with the fact that you are committed to your studies and future career, and guys who have those kinds of issues can ruin women's lives. (Check out this FPP and the linked article if you have not already.) Thinks might be going well for him and the new woman for now but that's only because she doesn't yet know who he really is.

In the very short term, make a list of all the things that you felt constrained from doing with this guy and do one of them when you start to ruminate on him. You are free and that is a good thing.
posted by rpfields at 10:55 AM on January 19, 2020 [7 favorites]


Liars and cheaters make damn sure that we feel happier than we’ve ever felt, etc for their own gain— they get to decide the terms of the relationship that way, even when you’re hurt and confused and just trying to get back to when things were nice, but what’s most important is that things are always only nice on their terms. When it starts to become a hassle (when your feelings become a hassle!) they get rid of you, out of irritation, out of a vestige of guilt, out of self preservation from you calling them on their bullshit. Honestly, it seems IME mostly because you become “less fun” and (rightfully!!) complain about their shitty toxic behavior which makes their life harder to balance. Been there too many damn times.

Get angry. Your feelings of hurt and abandonment and fear are real, because you’re feeling them, but you were also manipulated into feeling them. The feelings won’t just evaporate ( I still struggle with an overwhelm of ugly feelings from relationships that ended 5+ years ago) but get angry, get righteously indignant on your own behalf, and remember every day that there are people (including you!) out there who aren’t like this, and try to just feel a vague pity or disgust for people who are.
posted by zinful at 11:22 AM on January 19, 2020 [5 favorites]


Your relationship with that asshole sounds like it was very traumatic for you. It took me a lot longer to get over relationships in which the guy did me wrong, cheated, gaslight, lovebombed and then broke up out of the blue -- traumas. It's going to be painful for a while longer than a normal breakup. Doesn't mean you won't get over it and heal and move on to better because you will.

The best thing I did was force myself to stop stalking the dudes on social media, and stop asking common friends about them. You should not know anything about his current relationship. If you are monitoring his social media accounts stop doing that to yourself for own sake.

You don't know what his relationship with the new woman is like but people like him don't magically turn into nice, respectful partners with the next person.
posted by shaademaan at 11:22 AM on January 19, 2020 [10 favorites]


A long time ago, when I broke up with someone and was angry about how he treated me, intense aerobic exercise helped. And dating other people.
posted by pinochiette at 11:39 AM on January 19, 2020


Once when feeling particularly shitty, I read something in a self-help book that brought me up short: a section at the beginning noting that the target audience of the book was people whose anxiety was stopping them from making choices in accordance with their values. I looked at my life and realized that wasn't actually me. The things I needed to be doing to move on in spite of feeling basically ninety-eight percent shitty, I was already doing those things. There wasn't going to be a magic pill to stop the feeling shitty part. I just had to let that part ride.

Which is all to say, it sounds to me like you are already doing the things you need to do. And I mean, you should give yourself major kudos for that. Your feelings haven't caught up with your good choices, but that doesn't necessarily mean you could make different ones to get past the feelings part.

Nevertheless: I like the exercise suggestion above; that sometimes helps me. Mindfulness meditation has recently been helpful too. It's surprisingly relaxing to have a calm voice in your ear helping you to practice identifying what it is you're experiencing, and simultaneously telling you not to worry about trying to change it. I have some (ancient, but still wincingly remembered) experience with pining myself, and I think mindfulness practice would really have helped me, honestly, because at some point the pining stopped being about the qualities of the other person at all and became about my own reluctance to accept facts at face value. I just didn't want to have been wrong. Sometimes accepting that something bad is true, and that you feel ninety-eight percent shitty about it, is the best path to turning the volume down to ninety-five percent, and then ninety.
posted by eirias at 12:18 PM on January 19, 2020 [6 favorites]


hurts to not be chosen. It hurts to feel like I was not enough and wonder why

Do you want someone who you call an asshole to choose you?
By your self description (being in grad school, well on your way to a successful career, etc) it sounds like you're used to, well, winning. And it seems like you're framing this up as this other woman "won" your exboyfriend while you lost" because by his estimate, you weren't "good enough." There's something confusing happening here where you both describe yourself as good enough but also "not enough." It might help to take this woman versus woman pitting out of your framework of thinking. This is the way your exboyfriend would construct this scenario, where one woman is somehow better than another, when this is in fact not true. Both you and his new partner are enough. You are both worthy of love. You are worthy of love, but you aren't entitled to his, which is getting under your skin. You didn't "win" or beat this other woman for the trophy of your exboyfriend's love. It might help to get legitimately angry at him, and hold your anger against him as a talisman against feeling like it was your fault that it ended, because it wasn't. This kind of relationship dynamic strikes me as one person being the mark, and the other person being the mark-maker. I think you were this guy's mark, and that's why it felt so good at first. He pulled out all the stops and then devalued you. But if it feels too good to be true this fast, it probably is. This is all incredibly hurtful.

I don't know if there's a way to speed up not feeling bad about this anymore. The way out is through, I think, and there's no shortcut to exiting the land of grief. I think it would be good to do some work on yourself though, so you aren't taken in like this again with the next man / partner. When I had a really tough break up years ago, I listened to the sad sad saddest music for weeks and let myself cry and mourn and grieve on purpose. I think diving in is the only way to surface. Take care.
posted by erattacorrige at 1:34 PM on January 19, 2020 [6 favorites]


I think the thing that's keeping you stuck is that you're still interpreting his behavior as somehow reflecting on you, your desirability, your worth, your value.

The way he acted *all along* really didn't have *anything* to do with that. Not the love bombing at the start, not the lying and betrayal and cruelty at the end. The way he acted was solely about him and what was going on within him. Let's make something up and guess that it was about his need to be in control: to get a girl so hooked on him that she fell super hard for him, then to be able to keep her on a string. We could make up some other story. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you didn't provoke him to be so charming and compatible, nor did you provoke him to be so cold and cruel. It might help you to read Lundy Bancroft's book "Why Does He Do That". You'll recognize a lot and it'll make you pity his new woman.

It's so hard to learn this lesson because humans are social animals wired to attach, and it's so instinctive to derive validation from love relationships. But it's one of the big lessons of adulthood and I encourage you to put your focus there. No matter what anyone else does or doesn't do, no matter what *you* do or don't do, you have value, you matter, you are good enough.

One thing that can get in the way of this if you're a high achiever is to get mixed up that what you *do* is the source of your value. You can get stuck on what you did or didn't do in this relationship that drove him away. It wasn't you.

But you can also reflect on what *you* did, and own that, and learn from that. You jumped in deep and fast; there's a lesson about taking time to develop real trust. You were attracted to something that, in hindsight, was too perfect to be real; there's a lesson about how recognizing that whole individuals don't actually resonate 100% all of the time, and some conflict and dissonance is normal and healthy. You stuck around as he was cold and dismissive; there's a lesson about believing who someone is when they show you the first time.

You can still be a good person, whole and valuable, while still having lessons to learn. You'll be learning your whole life long. Be gentle on yourself.

Hang in there. It sounds really hard and he should not have been so awful to you.
posted by Sublimity at 2:11 PM on January 19, 2020 [9 favorites]


Back in the early 90s, an interviewer asked Leonard Cohen "How do you get over a bad relationship?"

He answered "You never get over a bad relationship."

It's a counterintuitive answer, and one that's unpleasant to hear, but it's true -- this relationship is part of you now, and will always be part of you. There is no 'letting go'.

That doesn't help you in the slightest right now, of course. And that's where Dylan's line comes in, that "I've never gotten used to it, I've just learned to turn it off." That's your goal, to turn it off. As other have said above, get angry. Get that energy out. You have every right to be angry. The fault is with him and not you. Get angry at him.

Once that's done, and time passes (yes, it's true), it will be this irritant that you can simply turn off. It will always be there, but you will have tamed it.

I'm sorry you're going through this. You don't deserve it. But you can master it.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:31 PM on January 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


I haven’t read all of your back history and am limited on time to respond, but one of the hardest break ups I have ever experienced was of a short term, intense relationship. He initiated the “I love yous“ and pushed hard for the relationship. And when I finally allowed myself to be taken in by it all, he started pulling away and then was gone. Poof!

I finally came to realize that the reason why it was so damned hard to get over was because the relationship never really had the time to live in the day in and day out realities and I never had the time to get disenchanted in any way before he pulled away. In other words, it never had the time to go bad. I went from euphoria to loss nearly immediately. And in turn, I had a false sense of who he is and what our relationship would have looked like had a few more months (let alone years) passed.

In case you are interested...I long ago came to see through our experience and his history that he and I would eventually have broken up anyway. He was far too out of touch with his own feelings to have ever been a long term suitable mate for me. And I am grateful he saved me the wasted time.
posted by murrey at 9:02 PM on January 19, 2020 [7 favorites]


I’m so sorry you’re hurting so badly. Speaking from very, very similarly painful experience, right down to feeling “not chosen” and “not enough,” it takes time. It might be a lot of time. There were many days when a memory of a happy, tender moment between us would all of a sudden surface so vividly that it would take my breath away. Then I’d be crying in the middle of the grocery store and hating myself for letting him have that effect on me. Now I can barely even remember his face. Of course I still think of him from time to time, but it’s not every day. And it barely triggers feelings anymore.

It’s then that you’ll be able to see him clearly. Who he really is, his capacity for decency, and what the other woman has actually “won.” In my case, he reached back out to me a year after having chosen her instead, ostensibly the most amazing woman who he respected and admired above all others and was so in love with, and expressed his enthusiastic willingness to fuck around behind her back. What a prize, huh? I’m glad I’m not her. There was a time when I would’ve done anything to be in her place, but now it just makes me sad to think of the years she has invested, and that she may waste all her best years and beyond on someone who has so little regard for her, and who sees women as playthings generally. See shaademaan’s last point.
posted by keep it under cover at 10:01 PM on January 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


So some folks are suggesting that you are framing this as if it was a competition and you lost. I want to point out something specific you mentioned: she is 14 years older than he is. My recollection is that he’s a bit older than you, correct? Why is this detail so important? It makes me wonder if you’ve fallen prey to the patriarchal notion that younger women have more value than older women. So by this thinking, you should have “won” because you are younger and a better catch. I’d encourage you to interrogate that a bit.

You also said he got to treat you like shit. I think this is the real issue. The relationship was turning sour and you didn’t end it. You stuck it out, hoping he’d change. I think you didn’t feel like you had much control or power. So it’s not that he got to treat you like shit—it’s that you stayed with him when he did. So I think you have some anger at yourself for staying with him when he was treating you poorly. You are comparing yourself to this new woman to try to convince yourself of your value.

Therapy is great. I also think you need to end any channel of information you have about him.
posted by bluedaisy at 12:55 AM on January 20, 2020 [6 favorites]


Two bits of advice for you.

Firstly, regarding why you still feel so bad even though you know he's awful. Echoing the above that the bad relationships are the hardest to get over, because when someone is awful to us, our brains have a really tough time figuring it out. It (your brain I mean) really wants to process it, to find the logic, to learn, to improve. But this isn't a learning moment, in that sense. You might see your brain as a confused child, bullied by another child, asking his parent why? what did I do wrong? And you might be extra kind to it. When you catch yourself on a distracting train of thought, metaphorically hug your brain and say, brain we didn't do anything wrong. He was an asshole. You don't have to solve this one, we don't need to be better. It isn't our problem to fix.

Secondly:

I'm over here, still in love with him in spite of all my better judgment

when things were good between us, I was deeply happy, maybe the happiest I've ever been in a relationship, even if it was short

Here's another mantra for you: you're NOT in love with him, the real person. You're in love with a fantasy version of him that he let you believe in for a while.

That version doesn't exist, and never will. There will be other people who will likely make you even happier, in different ways, but you will never "get that back" because it wasn't real.

Your heart is pressing its face to the window of an empty house. So I guess this one is for your heart, this word to have with yourself: "heart, it was good wasn't it, but we'll never get that again, not from here. So lets go look for other ways to find that feeling".
posted by greenish at 2:04 AM on January 20, 2020 [7 favorites]


I'm so sorry. I have been (am?) where you are and know all too well how it feels to be doing all the "right" things in the aftermath of a breakup yet making no progress in "moving on," whatever the hell that means.

I found some comfort in this TED talk about how to fix a broken heart.
posted by anderjen at 7:05 AM on January 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


I agree with others who said that you are framing this as a competition which you lost. This is what capitalism does to us... People and relationships are commodities that we win and lose and that having them determines our self-worth. The fact that he's with someone else - you don't know if he's happy with her, and given how he was with you, with all the illusions and lies, whatever you hear or see about him on social media, will likely be illusions and lies.

I find myself wanting him to know that I know the truth. But so what? What would that accomplish?

Maybe take the time to write out an answer to this and bring it to therapy. Why do you want him to know the truth? What would it accomplish?

He created an illusion and you fell for it and you're kind of still addicted to it? You were manipulated. It's not your fault. What he was offering you was never real. Yes, it hurts. Yes it's hard to realize that you were taken in. Happens all the time to lots of people. Here's a good post about why it's hard to get over someone like this, beware, it might be a bit harsh though.

You ask yourself why you were not enough, this is the wrong question. Hopefully this Ask Polly will help.

Please be gentle with yourself. I know this will sound super woo, but whenever thoughts about him or your worth pop into your mind, have a conversation with them. Like, [thought pops into your head] "Oh hi. What do you need today? What would you like me to pay attention to?" I know, it sounds ridiculous, but trying to NOT have these thoughts, being mad at yourself for having them is not working, so try the opposite. Talk to them. Write it down if you want. See what they say.

Tl;dr: there is nothing wrong with you. You got taken in by a manipulator. You're a loving, caring, beautiful person - and it's those qualities that this guy targeted. That's on HIM, not you. Stop blaming yourself, and put it all back on him.
posted by foxjacket at 9:43 AM on January 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


Hey Amy. I'm so sorry you're going through this. I went through something similar last year.

I had a couple of things that helped me move on. The biggest one has just been to participate in life and let my attraction to women in general open up. I have a part of me that wants a romantic connection, and I need to give it space to grow or it will continue to fixate on the last place I found that connection. That doesn't even mean dating necessarily, but it does mean being in mixed spaces where I can talk to people and be interested in folks. Eventually I found myself 3 or 4 crushes down the road and I wasn't worried about her anymore. The internet helped me 0% with this part of the work, and I don't see how it ever could.

The other is the grieving process of coming to understand in my gut how the relationship wasn't working, wasn't going to make me happy, and fixing it just would have meant prolonging my unhappiness. That means that every time the memory pops up of walking through the hills of Oakland googly eyeing each other and making out and being utterly happy, I have to "play the tape out" and remember how I spent most waking moments obsessing over whether and how I was making her happy, and all the utterly out of character and uncomfortable things I did to try to make her happy that had no snowball's chance in hell of doing so.

The "truth" here was right in front of my face: I think this relationship makes me happy, but it actually doesn't. The details of how and when she cheated on me are unimportant compared to that.

Even harder is coming to grips with how I tend to put the screws to myself in the rest of my life, and then expect my relationship to make up for all the bliss I'm lacking. This just doesn't work, but that hasn't stopped me from trying it again and again. I take it easy on myself.

I hope you're finding some solace reading all this advice.
posted by billjings at 10:17 AM on January 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


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