I’m in love with a guy who lives back where I’m from. I left for college back in late August, and well, things with our relationship have gotten screwier over the past few months. I’ve been home for at least a couple days every month this semester, and well, it makes me so melancholy to see what he’s doing lately.
It feels as if he’s only doing it to kind of make him forget about the fact that the distance between us geographically hurts. It’s led him to making a lot of dumb decisions, and well, I don’t know if he’s made them because deep down inside he’s hurting or whether it’s just him trying out stupid things because what mattered to him before doesn’t matter much anymore. 
He worries me, but I have neither the time nor the patience to try to help him from up here. I’m leaving for back home on Friday, and well, our relationship has gotten to the point where our relationship is so open that it’s like having all the benefits without the title. :rolleyes:My LiveJournaltalks more about it, but the fact of the matter is that he’s started dating a girl on the side who doesn’t realize that I’m still an important part of his life [well, at least that’s how he treats me when he can get time away from school, work, and her to prove himself to me], and apparently my presence in his life makes her jealous. I just wish I could take everything wrong with his life and make it better. It’d be nice if I could; I’d be happier if there was a possibility for him to move up here next year for his last year of high school and live with me, but that’s not likely at all. Some of his friends from school that he’s known for a while have talked to me, and they’re all worried about him ruining his life and possibly doing something stupid that might kill him. Overall, I get the impression that he’s depressed but using all these other situations to distract him from his own feelings. It makes me unhappy to hear this, and I feel like sometimes I’m the root of everything. You know, he’s very emotionally stressed and confused right now, and a great deal of it has to do with the fact that I’m the one he’s in love with and I’m up here, while he’s becoming infatuated with a girl down there who’s older than me and older than him by more. :mad:I don’t know if his friends that he met her through are a bad influence or whether he’s just taking things too far when he’s with them. At least some of them realize that there are things going awry with him that need to be solved, and they want to help him. I used to be the person he lived for and stayed clean and sober for because he was already that way to start with before he met me. He didn’t start any of this stuff until after he started dating the other girl, and I don’t know what to think of any of this anymore because I feel like I don’t have enough details. I guess this is kind of a rant and a cry for help and just someplace to get my thoughts out. I don’t know if I want sympathy or what, but right now I’m pursuing the single life and not looking to get my emotions tied to anyone romantically because I’m still attached to him. He’s the only one who’s made me feel I need someone in my life, and well, to be honest, it’s a scary thought in itself for me. The fact that I may lose what I wanted with the one person I thought I needed just frightens me even more.
Did I step into BZ00000’s Time Machine? 
You may as well have plagiarized a letter I got from my older girlfriend after she went off to college and I was still in High School for another year and we were starting to have problems. I was this guy. Right down to the new out-of-control lifestyle and the older woman I started seeing.
I’ve had a decade plus to think about why I behaved the way I did, and for me I think it boiled down to:
[ul]
[li]I was afraid of the responsibility involved with making something like that work[/li][li] She was my only girlfriend I ever had and I wanted to experience more before settling down[/li][li] I was not enough of an adult to handle the jealousy I felt knowing she was in “college” already (Not having any real idea what “college” was like yet, of course)[/li][/ul]
If I were forced to pick one, it would probably be the first one. Sure, I was young, but that’s no excuse. Neither is the fact that it was a long-term relationship, in and of itself. Nope, I was simply afraid, pure and simple.
If I could tell you what I should have told her back then, it would be that this has everything to do with him, and that you haven’t done anything wrong or pushed him away somehow. He has some growing up to do, unfortunately, and it’s a shame that your relationship has to suffer because of it. Oh, and long term relationships that don’t work out SUCK, no matter how old or young you are. But, of the ones that haven’t worked out for me, I’ve been able to take something away from the experience and become a stronger, better person. Time will take care of the pain part.
Best of luck, and keep your chin up. 
Oh big hugggggs Mirrored Indigo Shadows but the one major lesson I have learnt in life is…You can’t fix anyone else
If it feels like it is going wrong then it is. Be a friend to him, maybe. Drop him a line or an email to see if he’s ok, but don’t stay in the relationship. Look after you and the hurt you will feel ending it, then go out and socialise. Close by realtionships are hard enough, relationships with people who are dealing with “issues” are hard enough…long distance, troubled relationships? Nope don’t do it.
Dooku, you’ve given me the answers I already had. What can I say??? I think far too much for my own good. I know right now he’s growing up and well, it’s going to take a while for him to do so. I remember the phase I went through my Junior year of high school; it was nuts. But this isn’t close to his first serious relationship, and well, if he’s ready to try things again when he’s out of high school, that’s fine by me. I just hope that things can work out faster than they probably will.
Right now I’m just hoping for the future, and making sure that, even though the ties are a little tangled right now, they’re not broken and won’t be.
::hugs Indigo::
Hon, I was exactly where you were a year ago, and, if Dooku’s reasons are the same as your SOs, so was my then-SO.
The distance made things far too difficult, and things got tense. Really tense. I had the added complication of losing my virginity to him right before things went down the crapper for good.
As a result…when things finally ended, I was shattered. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have any friends at the university–I’d spent too much time on the phone with him and online with him and visiting him to have any sort of social life. I also had never had a serious boyfriend–or ANY boyfriend–before. I was convinced that I could never love anyone else, that the one person that was meant for me, my fuckin’ soulmate…that he didn’t want to make things work, and that things could never work, and I was always going to be alone.
Boy, those first two months sucked.
Then things started to get better. I made some friends on campus. I got out of the room. I joined things. I went home, and I met someone really great. Someone who didn’t live so far away, wasn’t younger than me, and who is just…incredible. Words fail me. And now we’re engaged.
There will be others. But you have to live your life to find them. Like it or not, things aren’t working right now, and you can’t take any reasonable steps to make them work.
I know it’s easier said than done. Hell, I was taking extra doses of NyQuil just to kill the pain. But it got better (and I do NOT suggest the NyQuil route!). And it’ll get better for you, too.
You need to get out, socialize, and–most importantly–try to wash your hands of the relationship, and of his actions. 'Cause, hon, they are NOT your fault!
I can’t really express everything here…feel free to IM me (I kinda hope you do). My thoughts are with you…
Right now I’ve had more to focus on than what was going on with my SO… and I developed things to keep me busy while I was up here, like friends and such. I guess part of the reason why things went awry was because I was doing this for the first month and he wasn’t… or at least not as often as I was. The pickup in his social life meant meeting new people for him as well, and unfortunately, she was one of the group he was in. I’m really not bitter about it because I’m thinking there is a possibility that she will be kind enough to not shut me out of his life if given the chance… that and he wouldn’t drop contact with me because of anyone else. But anyway… Thanks everyone for trying to make me feel better. I’m not trying to fix him, I never had to, and right now I’m just in a state where I’m still very emotionally tied to him and I have a tendency to waffe about my emotions related to him lately, but I understand that what I’m doing right now is the best I can do without sacrificing myself for his sake.
Well here is my perspective of long distance relationships (I’m a guy).
They rarely work for any length of time.
This is especially true for people making major changes in their lives like moving to a new city or going to college.
Here’s why:
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As you build a new life in your new place, your old friends and SO tend to become more and more irelevant.
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Because of this, there will be ever increasing conflict as the two worlds collide. I can’t remember how many times my LOSO used to give me shit about “if you can drive 2 hours to ski with your friends why cant you drive 6 hours to see me?” or “I called you Fri and you were out…WTF?” WTF!!! Bitch…sorry if I have a social life!
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Having a person come up and visit for an entire weekend can be very disruptive. Especially when that person is trying to cram a months worth of ‘you’ into 2 days.
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It’s a rare man who can stay faithful to a long distance girlfriend (area code rule an all). My buddy always gave me shit because I was always hooking up with girls when we go out. My response was “you were faithfull to your girlfriend for 6 years and she still dumped you”
Oh boy, :rolleyes: No wonder they don’t seem to be working out for you.
Mirrored Indigo Shadows I assume that you are coming to the end of your first semester in college. Almost no long distance relationships last through college. Both people change too much, and they have too many different experiences to stay together. IMHO you are better off to cut the ties and work on establishing yourself socially at school. In the long run you will be far better off for it.
I can’t tell you how many people I saw go through what you are going through when I was in school. They all thought that they were going to do the long distance thing for four years of school, and then get married. NONE of them made it for more than a year. It just doen’t work.
Mirrored, you need to make a clean break. It sounds like you’ve effectively broken up, but are still clinging to the scraps of what you once had, which only prolongs the pain for both of you, without doing either of you any good. The sooner you two officially break up, the more likely it is you may be able to recover a friendship at some later point.
It’s really hard to accept that sometimes life moves in such a way as to make a relationship untenable, even if in different circumstances it would have worked out. But if you try to force it, you will both be worse off. Let him go, grieve, and move on.
Sounds like you’re already on your way. We’re not machines (well, there’s probably an A.I. Bot or two around here somewhere <g>) - we can’t just cut it off completely. The pain and the emotional attachment will linger, sure. But, you’re doing the right thing - making friends, moving on. If it works out at some point in the future, great. But, you’re only hurting yourself by dwelling on the good things that you had. Had.
Forget the past, live in the present, and let the future be its own discovery. {{{Indigo}}}
I have to echo what Giraffe said - I think you know what you need to do, and that the distance between you has grown not just physically but mentally. Relationships aren’t supposed to hurt so much.
You’ve got a wonderful new life at college. I wish you well
An awful lot of people go through what you are right now, ** M I M**, like I did. At first, I didn’t want to let go of my high school relationship that made me unhappy. When I did, I felt liberated and good. It wasn’t what I expected. I suddenly wished I had done it earlier. I hadn’t, because he also had “issues”. Let it go, at least for now. It’ll feel good eventually.
Both of you are way too young to be in a deep serious relationship. This guy has to be what? 17, 18 at the most. He’s still just a kid. Both of you have a long way to go before you are ready for a serious commitment. Life is too much fun, there are too many people to meet out there to be tied down to one person. You have plenty of time for that later. Don’t even worry about it now. Always remember, you can’t make someone happy, you can only add to the happiness that someone already has. No one should build their whole world around another person. You should have friends and outside interests or you will smother your SO and that won’t be a happy ending either.
I got down here for Winter Break, and well, we’re in the process of breaking up. Right now it’s painful for me because his girlfriend at the moment [the other woman] met me when I was in a very vindictive mood on Sunday and made Brian so upset that he started shaking. [If only he’d known I’d been doing it for half the day as well when he was avoiding me with my hurt looks…] She didn’t see me do that then, and she didn’t see me shake so violently the next morning when I was going through it that I ended up vomiting the only thing I had ingested in the past 12 hours: ice water. I’ve been so upset with things with him over the past two weeks that I’ve got an ear infection in both ears, with one of my eardrums having a slight perferation from the sinus pressure. I got sick because I was stressed over him.
When I go to give his things back and ask for mine back as well, she wants to be there. She doesn’t seem to understand that her presence just plunges the knife in my back deeper, giving it a quarter turn for every time Brian favors her over me or does something even slightly hurtful in my direction. This should be a “fun” venture, and I’m hoping to have a friend come with me so that I don’t get bombarded with “you’re not welcome anywhere near Brian anymore” looks from her without any defense.
The saddest part about this is that I don’t want to hurt her because she doesn’t know enough about what was going on to be anything but innocent. She doesn’t deserve to be hurt because I’m angry, but she does deserve the truth to be told to her. I don’t want to do it because she probably won’t believe me; I’d rather have a mutual friend or Brian himself tell her that he’s been lying to the both of us, but her more than me.
I realize that Brian has a lot of growing up to do. He needs to be able to handle commitment with someone even when they’re not around. I was willing to wait the two years until he was able to join me up at college; he wasn’t able to wait four months without fucking up. At least he admits that he fucked up… he’s sorry for it too. He’s cried about it, and he wishes that there was a way to go back and change things. We’re just trying to get to the point where we can be friends right now. He understands that I’ll always love him and that he’ll always be part of me. Hell, he’s the one who made me sentimental. I never needed anyone before I met him, and somehow he made a change in me that made me need what happiness he gave to me. Unfortunately, after a while all he could give me was pain and confusion. I spent a couple of months holding on and hoping the pain would turn back into happiness, and I’ve had enough.
Because I’m hurt, I wish I could make him feel every last bit of pain he put me through. I’m a little empathic; last Sunday I not only felt my own pain, but all the pain and emotional confusion he was going through at the same time. I wanted him to know how fucked up it felt to have to deal with that. I stopped before I could really hit it home to him because he started shaking. I couldn’t bear to deal with the fact that I had hurt him with just a couple of really harsh but truthful comments… much more and I would’ve destroyed him emotionally. I don’t want to do that, even though I can. I’m not the kind of person who can justify hurting someone that deeply just to make myself feel better. I just feel that it’s inherently wrong, and I want him and I to heal enough so that we can be friends. He and I are going to need to grow from this, and well, I’m hoping that we can still be friends because we care about each other enough to both want to be on good terms.
My Fiona Apple cd [“When the Pawn…”] has really been helping me out. The lyrics are really indicative of how I feel about things, and well, I can see his intentions in them as well. He always meant well, but he wasn’t ready for the commitment he so desperately wanted to make to me. Maybe he’ll grow up a little and become a better person of his own volition in the next couple of years. He needs to make changes on his own, but doesn’t seem to want to just yet. It’s easier for him to grow with the aid of someone else, and well, he probably doesn’t think he’s ready for the challenge of being alone and growing from it.
Thanks for all of you who were there to support me when I started this thread. I may have not heeded the advice immediately, but I was leaning towards the solution I made for a while now. I just wished I could’ve proven him wrong when he said that going away to college would end up tearing us apart. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that it would be his actions that’d do it. I’ll be happier in the long run, but I don’t know about him. All I know is I deserve better than what he’s become without my presence.
-Indigo-
PS: I really kind of do fit my username right now in the mopey sense. I’ve come to like its flexibility with my emotions and modes of thought. ::gives everyone a hug::
{{Mirrored Indigo Shadows}}
That sounds awful, Indigo.
Hugs to you.
I’ll be okay soon. I just need to get over the fact that the other woman has steadily changed him into a person most of his old friends don’t like since early October. I fell in love with the guy he was; I don’t know if I can accept the person he is as someone I’d even want to be around. At least he knows how I feel about things, and that I know how much guilt he feels for what happened between us. He changed for the worse and the man I cared for most left when another woman came about. He was always so scared that it’d be me that would leave him for someone else. I guess it might’ve been a guilty foreshadowing. Either way he knows that things can’t be the way they were because he fucked up while I remained faithful to him in every way. Love’s a scary thing, and right now he’s getting a big taste of how bad decisions and impulses can screw up what you wanted with your life. I just hope he learns quickly enough and improves on himself before I decide to give up on him completely for the rest of my life. It’s a sad consolation prize.