I want my ex back - Please Read!
Find a Conversation
| Sun, 01-18-2004 - 10:30pm |
I've already read discussions about the pros and cons of getting back together and what should be done to make it work the second time and how most of the time it doesn't work. Well, I believe everyone's situation is different and I think mine is kind of unique so I figured I'd post and see what kind of responses I get.
It's been a month since I saw my ex (a little over a month since he broke up with me) and during that time I've done a lot of soul-searching, going to a counselor, talking to friends and family, gone through the typical stage of post-break up (denial, anger, fear, self-blame, guilt, hope, relief, trying to rebound). And I think I'm entering the stage where I'm accepting that the breakup happened and putting it behind me, looking at it as something that happened in the past. Now I'm starting to get myself back into my own life. I just started Atkins, I'm focusing on music, which is what I'm studying in school, and looking forward to graduating in May.
And that's just the point - I know that relationships are complicated and fixing one thing is not going to change everything. But I do believe, objectively, without feeling the pain of the breakup because that's subsiding, that one of the biggest problems of our relationship was that somewhere along the line I completely lost sight of myself and became overbearing and clingy. My friends have told me that he wasn't man enough to stick by me and broke up with me but I know that he tried his hardest and he just couldn't do it anymore. We were both unhappy and we knew it. He just ended up being the one that stopped the relationship from getting worse.
And it's not that we want different things in a relationship. We both believe that two individuals should come together and be joined in a relationship of trust and commitment and love. We're both very young and agree that marriage is not the purpose of our relationship at this time.
We talk about the "needs" and "wants" of a relationship and I know that he's not perfect but the little things that would bug me about him were "wants" that were on the bottom of my list. He fulfilled a lot of my "needs" of a relationship and I know that it is rare to find someone like him. Believe me I've tried to go into the "he's the bad one for breaking up with me" mode but the more time passes by, the more I realize that I can't do that. And I read somewhere on this board that when people are apart, they seem to remember only the bad things (if this is true, I hope he's remembering the only good things as well). But I'm really talking objectively here.
After a month of withdrawal (which I believe that's what it was because I was addicted to him), I can see more clearly now and that I don't need him. But I do want him. Maybe not right away but I do want him.
There is the fact that I am graduating in May and he's still a junior and he is going to go abroad in the fall. And I let that bother me a lot in our relationship before. But now I've learned that I can't be worried about things in the future when the present is a mess.
If we were to try things again, I would insist that we start from scratch. But my concern is that he wouldn't want to.
I'm going to talk to my counselor about this later this week. But my plan so far is to not contact him until my first week of school is done (which is next week). I have exams to take care of and even though I want to contact him before school, I'm taking the step to take care of my life first before doing anything with him. I'm hoping that he will contact me first during the first week of school but we'll see if he does.
The good thing that came out of this whole things is that now, after a little over a month, I'm actually glad we broke up. It hurt like hell when we did but I realize that if things just continued, I probably would've never been able to recognize these things and try to fix the problems for the future, and things could've ended a lot worse than it did. Now that I look back, I think he had a much clearer head on his shoulder while I was spinning out of control.
Oh, and we were officially together for 10 months and sort of "dating" for about a month and a half before that.
I read somewhere about forgiveness in order for healing to happen. I forgive him for the pain he's caused me. And then I realized, how can I ask him to forgive me when I haven't forgiven myself? So right now I'm on my way to forgiving myself.
Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated.
Violenta

I know, only too well, how hard it is, but it's what you have to do to get back to normal. Only then can you start to think about any relationship.