Breakup Survival Techniques

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This may be a bit unfair, since my ex is a Doper too, but I really need the help of the teeming millions on this one.

My girlfriend broke up with me last Sunday. I did everything I could to convince her to stay with me, but she was determined. Some of the blame for the breakup lies with me, for being insecure and needy, but I treated her incredibly well apart from that and I’m not a bad person in any way. She just wasn’t ready for anything long-term, felt trapped, and couldn’t handle being with me anymore.

I’ve spent the last week in agony, unable to eat solid food or sleep through a night. My job was threatened by my absences, certain friendships have cracked under the strain of my needing support, and my ex is sick of talking to me about this and wants to have as little to do with me as possible until I’m better.

I’m further upset by the fact that she’s already moving on, with practically no mourning period: out partying and drinking with friends three nights this week, while I’m at home under the watchful eyes of one of my remaining friends to make sure that I don’t kill myself. I suffer from serious depressions as a fact of life, and this is one of the worst ones I’ve ever been through. I haven’t exactly helped things with my ex, I’ve called her when I was in pain because I felt that I absolutely NEEDED her back… she got colder and colder to me until today she told me that I was allowed to contact her once per day only, no matter what medium I used.

I need help dealing with this, help coping with losing someone I love so deeply and help becoming a person who can be her friend. Right now I’m too bitter and angry to deal with her on any terms but wanting to make her feel bad, and that’s not how I ever want to feel about her. This has been hell, and although I’m relatively new to the boards I’m hoping someone has some non-trite advice. PLEASE don’t post any ‘plenty of fish in the sea’ or ‘it just takes time’ comments, Dopers are smarter than that.

Thanks,

Loupdebois

2

IANAMental Health Professional.

Well, I know it’s far less than no fun. Still, I think the single most important thing for you to do right now is sever all contact with her.

That’s tough, I know. But right now you sound like you’re dependent on her for part of your personality, and I doubt you’ll ever have a healthy post-SO relationship with her (or anyone) until you’ve made yourself intact.

And that will be harder to do if you have repeated contact with her.

Most of us have been there, and know that it can be hard. After one messy breakup some twenty years ago, I found that I had a difficult time not thinking about the recent ex. So, I took up skydiving - when you step out of an airplane there’s pretty much nothing else on your mind.

Another thing I did was join a video dating club - I decided I wasn’t going to mourn and mope. It was great! I didn’t find love, but I had lots of fun, met some interesting women and, most importantly, became very limbered up with the practice of asking women out, and that carried to the population I met in daily life (i.e., not club members).

Good luck!!

3

I want to be sympathetic, but assuming you are a grown man your post is one of the scariest damn things I have ever seen. I’m getting the shivers just reading the thing. Given the description of your suicidal tendencies and self absorbed, maudlin “me-centric” perspective, I can’t imagine a rational person wanting to hookup with you on peril of their life.

Normal people want to be with people who add something to a relationship, not needy, insecure “love me or I’ll die” people. Pull you head out your navel and get some therapy, possibly some medication and definitely get some some perspective.

4

Astro, I am twenty years old and my condition is both documented and being treated with therapy. Having tried medication, my doctor and I agreed that it was not a route which would correct anything and it would reduce my functionality. My ex enjoyed most of the time she spent with me, and weathered several crises tolerantly. This was my first real relationship, and the breakup was made much more painful by her actions leading up to it.

I agree that my feelings are not normal, but they do stem from relatively normal thought patterns. I do suffer from a mental illness, mentioned depressions in my first post because I got tired of the reactions I got from using other terms. It’s at times like these when I wish more people knew what was wrong with me so that I wouldn’t have to take so much flak. I asked for help in changing, from whoever cared to offer it to me (thanks Ringo, I’ll keep all you’ve said in mind).

Flaming me was not a cool thing to do. Your arrogance serves little purpose, and I find it troubling that there are people out there who are so self-righteous that they can make a value judgement on someone from so little information. You may have no understanding of mental illness, but I take great offense to your attitude. Please show me the consideration of not posting on this thread again.

5

Fine. You asked for perspectives and advice. I gave you mine based on your description of the situation, and if you don’t think that most women reading your post are going to get goosebumps (and not the good kind) you need a major clue. It is evident that you don’t want real world perspectives on your behavior just some sort of validating quasi-sympathy. Just be more clear next time and save us both the keystrokes.

6

My only take is that you need to NOT be friends with this girl. Don’t talk to her. Don’t contact her. I know it’s hard, but the fact of the matter is that a friendship between the two of you won’t work. I’m not exactly the most experienced person in this matter (someone else may have better advice), but I’ve been in your place and I’ve been on the other side, as well.

Friendship didn’t work. Every moment we spent “hanging out” found one of us longing for the other and consistently being shot down. Every day that you spend with her, you’re reminded that she no longer wants to be with you and will make it harder to let go and move on.

I suggest you just let her be and live her life. It’s the only way that you’ll let yourself do the same.

7

I don’t really want any more replies to this thread. Having already attracted posts from one Doper who feels that the best thing he can do is boost his own ego by dumping on me, I realise that I should not have brought my personal issues onto the message board. As much as I thought I could find some good advice on how to take my mind off of this thing by posting, it seems that I’m unable to make myself properly understood…

There were other posts in this forum asking for moral support. Clearly they included some indefinable thing that I didn’t. Thank you, Ringo and Interface, for at least trying to be sympathetic, no matter how badly I commmunicated what I was experiencing.

Astro, go to hell. Attacks on my self-worth are NOT what I need right now, and while I’m not terribly stable, I’ve never kicked anyone while he’s down. Your ‘perspective and advice’ was that I should be vilified for who I am, when I was asking for help to change. Ask yourself why you did that.

8

astro, show some damn decorum. The kid’s not asking for a psychological analysis, and if he did, I doubt you’d be qualified to supply it. Either contribute to the thread, or stay the hell out of it.

loupdebois, please refrain from telling people where to go in this forum. We have a separate forum for that.

9

loup

I really feel ya dude. I think we’ve all been there to some extent, and it takes a brave person to admit it.

But on the other hand, since the first thing you mentioned it that the ex is a doper. Make absolutely posi-fucking-tively sure that you are being honest with us and yourself about your reasons for sharing this here, and furthermore for being here at all.

I think yr a good guy, based on what i’ve read, and would love to listen and be part of the chorus of supportive voices, as lord knows you guys have been there for me over the years, but at the same time: I can see how, in your position, i might look for ways (such as posting on a public message board that YOU KNOW she reads) to sort of passive agressively keep her posted on your emotional state.

DON’T DO THIS. for you sake and for hers. My most recent ex was clinically depressed, so I’m not being flip or careless, indeed, I know intimately how you feel, (or similar to it), and I would suggest that you doeverything you can to not interact with her for the time being. the friction between your emotional state and hers is most likely to make the situation get MUCH MUCH worse before it gets any better.

Whereas if you kick back, and either don’t come around here for a while or put her on your ignore list for a bit, and do everything in your power to figure out your own shityou make salvage a friendship, in the longterm, but you’d have to try REALLY FUCKING hard to convince me that being friends with her at this point is either feasible or a REMOTELY good idea. for either of you.

Cut her some slack. some people deal with trauma by wallowing in it, and being very visibly depressed, and others deal with it by distracting themselves. Don’t asume that the whole thing meant nothing to her, just because she’s trying to have some fun and because you see her out laughing and flirting. A) don’t assume you know whats going on in her head B) its none of your business anyway, frankly, and your energy would be better spent trying to figure out a plan for you life that allows you to actively seek happiness regardless of what a girl thinks of you.

I’ll be back later.

Tough love dude, had to be said.

and hang in there.

Chris

10

For anyone who missed it in the Pit, public apology is hereby made to Astro for my bad manners. I’m not in the best frame of mind to accept medical advice, and I overreacted.

11

I should ammend.

I’m not telling you to get lost, or that I don’t want to hear it, thats certainly not true,

and i think you’ll find that if you are being honest with you and us about your reasons for posting in a place she’s likely to read it, that I and a number of others around here will more than gladly listen, and offer a shoulder and any insights we might have.

Just make sure you are writing to us, and to yourself, and not (even subcousiously) to her. And definitely put her on “ignore” for now. Give it a couple of weeks, or more, and find YOU dude.

We’re all listening.

12

Trust me, much to my chagrin, she’s heard much more and much worse than I’ve posted here… I’m glad to know that I haven’t done wrong by posting this mess up here… it’s just that right now most of the people I’m talking IRL to don’t really understand depression, and can’t see that I’m losing control of myself and my life and wasting away… they don’t really get that it isn’t about her. She was my first truly loving relationship, and I felt that she loved me unconditionally. She claimed, on the day of our breakup and several times since then, to still love me. Losing that unconditional love, or the illusion thereof, has left me completely shredded, especially since it seems to be an arbitrary thing built into herself. I’m trying to forgive her for it, and honestly if I didn’t have moments of weakness I’d leave her alone completely because I know it’s the best thing for both her and me. I’m just thick-skulled enough to have moments when I truly think that if I call her maybe I’ll get some sign of affection this time, something to make it hurt less, at least enough for me to eat a full meal before I fall apart again. I was unhealthily thin before I stopped eating, and I’m scared to weigh myself and find out how much I weigh now. I’ve got a horrible cough that won’t go away, and I get dizzy spells every so often. I needed to come to terms with this somehow, and I posted because my friends are out of ideas and I want to get OFF of her back. In what I consider my lucid moments, I genuinely have no desire to call or see her… but when I’m really hurting, I feel obliged to call her, and I feel like she’s the only one who can comfort me. There’s nothing else that helps, and I feel like I’ve tried everything to take my mind off of her.

13

Why do we have a need to “be friends” with our exes?

This woman doesn’t want to be with you. She apparently doesn’t want to hear from you either, judging from her “one contact a day” rule.

So why would you want to be her friend?

14

Hon, trying to be friends with her right now is just ripping your heart out every time you talk to her. You need to take a break and work this out on your own, with the help of your other friends and your therapist if appropriate and necessary.

Perhaps, down the road, after you feel more whole without her, you will be able to be friends again. But getting dumped, even if you felt pretty much whole without the loved one in the first place, is a hard thing to handle. And it sounds like you have enough difficulties with depression that maybe you DIDN’T feel whole without her before you met her. (Forgive me if this isn’t true, it is just what it sounds like to me.) Either way, you don’t need the added pain and humiliation you feel every time you interact and the other person rejects you. And you ARE going to feel rejected, because she evidentally no longer feels what she once did for you, what you WANT her to feel.

I feel your pain, and I wish I could help. But the sad fact is, only YOU (and time) can help you with this. You are doing the right things in talking to friends and your therapist about this, I think you are walking (however reluctantly) in the right direction. Albeit slowly.

That’s the way it works, loupdebois…it feels like your heart is going to break into a million pieces and you can’t eat because your stomach is one great big knot and if you force yourself to eat it makes you feel like throwing up. Many of us have been there, and most of us got through it. Eventually. You will too. Some of us even managed to remain friends. You may be lucky enough to have this happen eventually too. But…it takes time…a LOT of time.

Read a book. Escape in it. Take long hot baths. Better yet, take long hot baths while READING a good book in which you can escape. Do whatever you normally do to relax that doesn’t involve your ex. Try to sleep. Force yourself to go to work and focus on the work instead of how you feel…it helps enormously to focus on what you need to do instead of how you feel. Try to eat, small amounts if your tummy is in knots. Repeat over and over to yourself that you are a person of worth and value and you ARE going to get through this. Eventually.

My heart goes out to you, and I am sending a prayer your way as well.

((((((loupdebois))))))

I know that is not much, but I am nowhere near you geographically, so it is the best I can do.

15

i only have a sec, but loup I saw that you posted over in Eva’s dating thread. One of the things eva and I have been trying to nail into eachothers heads is that if its worth doing, its worth waiting for.

In the context over there, we’re talking about taking time getting INTO a relationship and not rushing it. But the same thing applies to getting over a relationship too.

I think ex’s often make great friends, and many of my ex’s are my best friends, as the have a unique, and hopefully, really supportive and insightful perspective on our lives.

But as with getting into relationships, when you are getting out of one, the is ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY 100% no substitute for time, and its wound healing powers.

You have us, and as you mentioned you have at least a FEW IRL friends to turn to, and unlike your ex, thier and our emotional boundaries and needs aren’t at odds with yours. Talk to them. Talk to us. and perhaps (due respect) you might wanna talk to a professional.

But for the love of god, dude, don’t talk to her right now. Block her emails, forget her email address, ignore list her here, get caller ID and don’t take her calls, and when you have those “moment of weakness- I must talk to the ex” moments, write a fucking letter and sleep on it. I guarantee you won’t want to send it in the morning.

This isn’t about logic, we’re talking about love and need and depression, and nothing could be less logical. Don’t get hung up on justifying or subverting your feelings. This about will power. You KNOW that talking to her is wrong. Its up to you to take that energy you are spending worrying about how to salvage a friendship with this girl and turn it into something more constructive.

Figure out how to love the things that no one can take away from you, and you’re on the right track.

Chris (who seeks daily the strength to change the things I can change, the serentiy to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference)

16

i have also serenely accepted the fact that I can’t spell.

17

Loup, my most recent S.O. (he of the 23-hour first date in my dating thread) suffered greatly and variably from clinical depression, so I have some idea of what you’re going through. If you want the story, do a search on my username and Prozac, and you’ll see it.

It was, and continues to be, extremely difficult for me to accept having lost him not only as a lover, but as a friend. I hope he’ll come around someday and be able to deal with me on some level. (and he, too, is a Doper, although not a prolific one, unless he’s changed his username. In fact, he’s the one who led me here. I’m aware he may be reading this, but it’s nothing I haven’t already told him in so many words.)

It’s rare for complex people to find others who they feel they connect with so deeply and on so many levels, so when we do find them, we treasure them more than most people do who are more on-the-surface about their emotions and make new relationships more easily. And IANA mental health professional by any means, but I think those who are prone to depressive episodes have higher highs and lower lows than most people. Their emotions are just more intense.

You will mourn for a while. It’s hard, but it might be better for you to stay away form her for a while, for your own sake as well as hers; you may just be prolonging the agony. It took me a long time before I started to feel like myself again; I had no particular history of depression, but I was certainly showing all the classic symptoms for a while there. Didn’t want to do anything but lie on the sofa and cry, didn’t want to bathe, get dressed or eat, didn’t want to talk to my friends or family about it (which is waaaay out of character; usually I bore them to death with the details).

During your period of mourning, do whatever makes you feel good but isn’t self-destructive. Blast music, talk to your friends, eat chocolate…whatever it is that normally gives you warm fuzzies. It’s hard, but try to make yourself do things that don’t involve her or that make you think of her, especially things that will keep you around other people. My co-workers must have thought I’d lost it, what with my random crying spells and the dark circles under my eyes, but they were GREAT, and work was at least a productive distraction.

And yes, it can certainly help to talk to a professional, even if just for some perspective that what you are experiencing is normal. Good luck, and keep us posted.

18

Bad Hat makes a good point about posting here. It relates to the point I tried to make earlier about deciding upon an absence of contact.

Loup, pal, I didn’t mean forever never, but a minimum target of 6 months or a year would be a good place to start.

My most significant ex and I admittedly took a few weeks just to untangle, but after that I went a year before I talked with her again. In later years I was able to engineer a career change that she needed badly, and that was very personally rewarding. We’ll never have an intimate relationship again, but we’re going to be very close friends, who know each other well, until time goes down for one of us.

The things I mentioned above were mentioned for what they were, but a point I failed to make earlier is that such activities represent personal growth. While, in the immediate sense, stepping out of a perfectly good airplane a few thousand feet before it lands will clear your head, that experience is also one you have alone, after all that was shared experience in the recently deceased relationship.

Skydive, scuba dive, rock climb, whatever. It’s your experience and it doesn’t need to be reported to former SO until y’all have a chance to catch up a year or more from now.

Have a few dates…, how’re you going to share that experience? Well, you’re not.

Move out, pal. The new Loup is waiting.

19

Loup

I am sorry to hear that things are not all well with you. We all like to believe that we can handle what life throws at you and it is a rather rude shock when we find it difficult to deal with aspects of our life. Add clinical depression to the cocktail and the need for control over ourselves and the ability to maintain that control and stability just seems to evaporate.

(((((Loup))))) whilst I don’t know what you are going through specifically I can understand about your feelings and how you have reacted to them through the “veil” of clinical depression. I have only just returned to the boards here after a year. A year that I took when I realised my own self-destructive behaviour was not due to others actions but to my own non-rational reactions to those actions. It took me a long time from when I first started to suffer from Clinical Depression until I realised it for what it was and then it was even longer before I was willing to believe and understand that no-one else was responsible for me and that any changes to make my life one I would be proud of would have to come from within.

I just want you to know that I understand your pain and that I know it is a long road back but you need to find that goal of aiming for a mentally healthy life and keep it in mind. I managed to ruin many relationships over the years until I worked out what I was doing. Some I have remained good friends with, but others have fallen by the wayside. The ones I remained good friends with however were the ones that I took the time away from, distanced myself from their actions and my feelings and was able to rationalise their existence in my life as a friend and not as a shoulder to lean on, sapping their strength with my need for it. I know you probably don’t want to hear it (and would have heard it a million times before) but the ability to change and conquer this does come from within, it is never easy, but it is possible. If you need to talk at more length about the realities of overcoming Depression, then feel free to email me. It is hard living near the edge and I would like to be able to help. Not as a shoulder to lean on, but on an equal footing - as someone to bounce ideas/feelings off.

I sincerely hope you find the strength within to start taking the steps forward you need.

((((joup)))))

20

Hey Loup,

Feel your pain. My mom walked into my room when I was about fifteen. I was crying. My sweetheart (my term for our relationship, not hers) had just expressed on the phone that she needed space/wanted to explore other interests/liked me but not in ‘that’ way, wanted to be friends, etc. Mom knew that I was crippled, she knew why, too.

Mom said, “well let’s go to the mall and buy you some new socks.”

Having done my laundry for fifteen years up to that date, she knew that as of recent, I needed socks. Mom had no feelings for Leslie either way, just for me. She completely distracted me from my misery for two solid hours after that, taking me no further than K-Mart and spending $14.00 on socks, including the ice cream as we walked through the mall.

When I got home I wanted to call Leslie and tell her that I just got new socks and ate ice cream and went to the mall with my mom. It was the first moment I’d felt happy all week! But when I walked around in my new socks at 11:30 on a school night, I knew that Leslie wouldn’t care about it because it was quite trivial. Couldn’t call her because it was too late anyway!

Seventeen years later I have no clue where Leslie is in this world. But I would say that spending time with people that truly love you to do trivial things has become a priority in my life. AND I need new socks and can’t wait to get some with my wife.

Baby steps is all, I guess… Good Luck Loupdebois

P.S. if this falls in the category of ‘it just takes time’, please remember that the ‘dopers that are smarter than that’ got that way through experience. Respectfully stated, understand that it WILL take time. We can’t fix this kind of shit with one thread. It’s brainstorming, troubleshooting, referencing, communication, learning. growing, caring… you get it. Welcome to the boards our friend!

Peter