NO CONTACT

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2010
NO CONTACT
22
Sat, 10-16-2010 - 11:55pm

Hey there - I may only be talking to myself right now since many of you are out ENJOYING your lives - and weekend with freedom and peace!! (Ill get there) Since Im newly NoContact - Im reading everything I can get my little internet fingers on...regarding the Concept - and if you all dont mind (not trying to hijack or insert myself as this big ball of NoContact Energy...(Im a zealot - when Im focused on a goal)

I wanted to start a thread that contains EVERYTHING NO CONTACT.

1) so I can come back and read/learn and post what Im going through

2) so that everyone else who's also going through no contact has a one-stop place to come when they're feeling edgy

3) so that all those WISE WOMEN who came before us - can throw down all the tidbits of wisdom they'd like to share or give feedback on.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. I started looking inside and went NC October 15, 2010

Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-16-2009
Sun, 10-17-2010 - 12:08am

thanks Michelle. I too am up late. I wait till I am so tired that I will get sleep.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2010
Sun, 10-17-2010 - 5:47am

No Contact


Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. I started looking inside and went NC October 15, 2010
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-22-2009
Sun, 10-17-2010 - 9:40am

M~

Did I read in another post of yours that you didn't hear from Xmm yesterday? Does this mean you hadn't BLOCKED him yet? I hope that you have taken this step by now because NC is *not* a punishment as so many initially think. Rather it's like putting on a protective shield so we can no longer hurt ourselves.

Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life. ~ Buddha
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-25-2010
Sun, 10-17-2010 - 11:01am

This is some good info, thanks :)

I will echo Iddy though, be careful about getting 'hooked on getting over xAP', the idea that you can plow forward without any snags. Not saying that you assume this, since we all hit snags. I'm just speaking from

----
'It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
We have come to our real work,
And that when we no longer know which way to go,
We have begun our real journey'
- Wendell Berry

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2010
Sun, 10-17-2010 - 2:46pm

Thank you Iddy,

I do know what you mean - about the feelings washing over. I've had those a couple of times already - and PRAY my way through them.

PS!!! OH YES I HAVE NOW BLOCKED HIM! FROM EVERYTHING. Only open port is my phone number (which I changed 2 weeks ago and he had someone do CSI on me - and got it - so Im not going to waste the $ to change it again - plus look foolish to my colleagues explaining another number change)

As an intellectual solver, my style is such that when I start to feel overwhelmed by my feelings- I seek LOGIC or RATION to overcome or get 'out' of it ...however, I have let myself CRY hard about this.

I think because I've been thrown by the winds and waves of this affair for SO LONG...3 yrs ...and allowed myself to be controlled for so long by everything but my own mind and direction...that THIS TIME...My gung ho efforts are about taking control- making a choice and employing all my EFFORTS into making it a success. Im probably still on such a "high" of holding the reigns snugly in MY hands - that I've not yet been hit from an undertow of sadness and grief.

My coping style does follow my personality - ENERGETIC, perfectionistic, Take Charge, Intellectual - so somewhere in there - Im sure THERES a blindspot - and Im sure when it sneaks up to take me under - I'll be here Like a confused, bawling child - seeking answers. I apologize in advance. :)

Also I know that in other areas of my life - where I sought balance - My modus operandi was the PENDULUM SWING. I tend to swing from one extreme to the other - until I settle in the middle.

Im as passionate about this ending as I was about it living - we'll see what the next days bring!!!

Im also - eating well, sleeping, exercising AND spending quality time with both friends and family - where NONE of this comes up! :)

Hugs,

M

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. I started looking inside and went NC October 15, 2010
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2010
Sun, 10-17-2010 - 3:04pm

WCFEM,

Thank you for responding!!! Thank you for offering up your singleness for email buddying!!! :) I WILL take you up on that!

I understand what youre saying about the snags, feelings and fixation. Thank you for the heads up - I get that "blind spot" capability. I PROMISE not to be OVER CONFIDENT about any fishing attempts - because I KNOW that all my reading and posting and 'fixating' if you will is to MAKE ME...GET IT.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. I started looking inside and went NC October 15, 2010
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2010
Sun, 10-17-2010 - 9:06pm
Breaking the cycle of obsessive thinking
28 Posts
08-20-2008 01:51 PM

Okay, I'm making a list of ways to let go and break the obsessive thinking cycle and otherwise occupy yourself.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. I started looking inside and went NC October 15, 2010
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2010
Sun, 10-17-2010 - 9:39pm

BREAKING YOUR PATTERN BY UNDERSTANDING YOUR COMPULSION

Some of the women I regularly correspond with feel a compulsion to make contact with their exes. They conjure up excuses to send a text, agonise over whether to send a birthday card, worry about what he might think about the fact that she’s not supposed to be thinking about him, and will have gone through regular periods of cutting contact, albeit maybe more fleetingly.

Many women cut contact physically, as in they don’t see or speak with their ex, but they stay mentally connected by moving into obsessing about him. This is effectively like conducting your relationship in spirit on an alternative planet. Obsessing about your ex and analysing the coulda, woulda, shoulda’s of the relationship is about looking for reasons to blame yourself, which also become reasons for you to find a way to try to ‘fix’ things, which in turn also keeps you emotionally invested in the person and the relationship.

Of course, if you are literally consumed by your thoughts and feelings for this person, you will not only fail to move on, but you’ll end up being trapped by your own feelings. It’s very difficult to gain objectivity, perspective, and a sense of reality if you’re submerged in an underworld of illusions. You’ll feel intrinsically tied to him irrespective of whatever pain you have been through and become convinced that having him in any way, shape, or form, is better than not having him at all in your life. And so you will opt back into the cycle and likely make contact with him and go through all the rigmarole until something else happens to cause you to feel like you have to find a way out of the relationship.

Not only will you be trapped by your feelings, often feeling paralysed unable to do anything or resist the compulsion, but you may feel isolated. No Contact is difficult. There is a huge reward at the end of it, but particularly for those of you who are constantly fighting yourselves, you’ll struggle to recognise what the reward is because you’ll perceive the ‘absence’ of him from your life as ‘punishment’.

Unfortunately by isolating yourself in your feelings, you’re putting yourself into emotional purgatory.

This happens because with your dating habits, the likelihood is that you validate yourself based on your success or lack of it, with men. You’re likely to feel invalid when you stop trying to pursue a relationship with him and will internalise the reasons as to why the relationship ‘failed’. You may not even know why you want what you want, you just know that you feel like you want it because of the fact that things have not worked out in the way that you expected.

We choose men that reflect the things that we believe about ourselves, love, and relationships, and if we are carrying a lot of negativity, we’ll find ourselves with the very type of men that we profess to want to avoid. The classic example of this is being afraid of abandonment and then finding yourself with partners who disappear on you or who keep abandoning the relationship and are completely disloyal.

The danger in having a lack of self-love is that if we seek validation in others, when we are alone, we’ll panic, and quickly try to go back to the original source for some familiarity. If you’ve kept going back to a relationship, you don’t know how to, are afraid of, and are unprepared to deal with loss. In fact, you may be hypersensitive to loss, and rather than actually work your way through it, you just avoid going the whole hog of feeling the loss. Avoidance of feeling the pain and professing fear of it, is about dodging the full extent of your feelings about the loss, abandonment, and any perceived rejection.

Hard as it may be for you to hear, the fact that you avoid feeling out something to the fullest extent, doesn’t change the reality. The relationship is still over, you still need to grieve it, and you’ll still feel rejected. The difference is you’re prolonging your own agony and suspending yourself in limbo.

This is why you’ll end up being stuck in an illusion being completely distanced from the reality. You won’t see the real him and he’ll be able to recognise this because you need to live a lie so that the reality doesn’t pierce it. Burying your feelings as a coping mechanism is basically shutting down.

You may have numbed the pain but it will play it’s way out through your health, mental, and

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. I started looking inside and went NC October 15, 2010
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2010
Sun, 10-17-2010 - 9:46pm

For a start, pain is not love.

If you’ve found yourself in the position of having to go NC and have experience of emotionally unhealthy relationships, you have learned the wrong associations about relationships.

You think that the feelings created by fear are ‘love’ and that the excitement and desire you feel is ‘love’ when it’s actually fear. Much of the pain stems from fear and drama and we mistake our feelings of fear and penchant for drama as love, because we have poor relationship habits that have been learned over an extended period of time, often from childhood.

This means that our behaviour and desires may seem completely normal and even familiar as we can be playing out subconscious patterns. What you learn though, as you become aware of your relationship habits and harness your pattern, is that if we don't address how we feel about ourselves, love, and relationships we end up with a very skewed idea of what love is.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. I started looking inside and went NC October 15, 2010
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2010
Sun, 10-17-2010 - 9:52pm

You basically end up having a relationship with your fear.

You subconsciously (maybe even consciously) believe that you are in control because at least you know what you’re dealing with and by and large know what to expect.

As a result, you’re afraid of losing control. Struggling to break your pattern and maintain No Contact will be driven by fear of losing control.

This is where the compulsion to make contact and have the relationship on any terms will result in you continuing to try to fit the square peg relationship into a round hole. You’ll keep managing down your expectations, discussing, trying, analysing, crying, pleading, begging, willing, waiting for him and whatever else you can do to hold onto the relationship or illusion and stay in pseudo control.

Another facet of this, is that you may find yourself being compulsive because the type of pseudo relationships you engage in are a ‘safe bet’ – you may be trying to avoid putting yourself properly ‘out there’.

This is why if you end the relationship and you keep making contact with him, every time you engage with him, it’ll feed the compulsion.

You’ll send a text, you won’t hear back, so you’ll send another one. If you get a response, even if it’s a short, polite response that conveys no warmth or interest, you’ll try to extract further attention from him, and may then try to call or email, or do something to drive your thirst to gain his attention and some level of validation.

Yes you may feel like better the devil you know, or get a vague comfort from knowing he’ll call every seven days, or come back to you when he’s been with the other woman for 3 months, but the control you think you have is another illusion.

You’re afraid of losing control of a relationship and a man that you don’t actually have control over. The moment he deviates from what you expect him to do, you’re going to feel like you’re losing your mind…and him.

You’re not in control. If you want to be in control of yourself, your life, and your experiences, you need to opt out of the cycle and cut contact.

Until then, you’re in pseudo control. Until then, all of your fears are feeding into each other. You’re not giving yourself a chance to feel the fear and ride it out.

You react to your fear and tell yourself that you’re doing it because you’re a good woman that loves your man unconditionally or that you’re fighting for your relationship, or you believe that at least you know what you’re dealing with.

Unfortunately, no matter what reasons you’ve given yourself, you’re engaging in selfdepleting behaviour that may even embarrass or humiliate you.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. I started looking inside and went NC October 15, 2010

Pages