can talking help you move on quicker

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-02-2003
can talking help you move on quicker
9
Wed, 06-23-2004 - 6:52am
I know this is just me rambling-- but it is so hard to go from talking so often to NC. I know everyone says that is the best way to heal...but why? I think most of us are in the position we are in because something happened quite suddenly and threw us for a loop. In a sense we were blindsided. It was an event not a slow evolution of breaking up over time where you got use to the idea it would not work.

Talking in a sense allows you to get there, to get to the point where you feel somewhat comfortable. The "talk" will be different because your relationship is now different. You do not have the same kind of closeness and intimacy you once shared. I guess for some this can be more painful yet for others can this be helpful...to be able to see the relationship in a new way and then decide if that's what you want. In a sense - he got to decide you could not be lovers anymore, but you get to decide if you want to stay friends?

Now grant it- you have to be able to be just friends and having negative interactions all the time is not helpful for anyone. Can't talking sometimes be good and help you move on quicker?

tb

Avatar for northwestwanderer
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 06-23-2004 - 10:36am
Nope. That's never been the case in my (all too vast) experience with breakups.

Sheri

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-17-2004
Wed, 06-23-2004 - 11:52am
I think having a talk WHEN the relaitonshpi is breaking up is god i.e., open communication about why you are breaking up. But once it has been decided to end the relationship what NO Contact does is allow you to begin a life WITHOUT the other person in it. It also allows you to get over your romantic feelings for the person. THe problem wiht ocntinuous talk is you do cannot distinguish between the relationship (which has ended) and a possible friendship which may bein in the future.

Also you are so used to havign this person in your life that you do not allow yourself to concentrate on yourself and get back up on your feet. In a sense continuous contact is a crutch and really does not allow you to move on.

Now i'm not saying you should NEVER talk to your ex but you need to give it time so that when you DO talk to them, the romantic feelings are gone and you are not confusing the situation. You need several months AT LEAST of no contact. And after that see how you feel.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2004
Wed, 06-23-2004 - 2:34pm
No, talking will not help, not in my experience. Definitely not.

Here's what happens if you've been suddenly dumped - you will, inevitably, I absolutely guarantee you, want to know what happened. You'll want "reasons." And if it's a process for him, or he's confused, or not especially articulate, or it was fear of commitment, he's not going to be able to give you a reason. And you'll continue to pressure him for it, and it will upset you both. And any reason he gives you won't seem like a good reason, not like something worth ending the relationship over. So, you may try to reason with him, talk him out of it, try to get him to reconsider. Bad idea, very embarassing, it never works, you'll be hurt and ashamed of yourself before long.

Or, you'll still want him back, every time you hear his voice you'll get this little spike of love. And he'll be casual, or cold, or distant, you will hear the absence of love in his voice. Yes, you can kill your love that way, you can subject yourself to repeated rejection after rejection until you "get" that it's over. But you don't *need* to do that, that's not the only way. You don't have to be a masochist to get through this. Plus, if he has to reject you every time you talk, what kind of foundation is that for friendship? Can he respect and be easy with you if he has to remind you constantly that he doesn't love you, if you force him to hurt you over and over, if every time you hang up you feel freshly rejected? Plus, he agonized for some time over his decision, even though it's a shock for you. Maybe weeks or months, that's all he thought about. He's tired. He doesn't want to do this anymore. He made his decision, it's over for him. Sooner or later, he'll be angry because he has to keep reliving it, because you keep dredging it up, just when he thought he'd get some peace by ending it, you keep prolonging the drama. Or he'll just be too exhausted to talk to you. You'll come to represent this obligation, this chore, that he needs to talk to you again and it's all for you, not for him, it's hard on him, too.

And, you are prolonging the drama, and prolonging it selfishly for your own purposes. You want what you want, you want closure, you want understanding, you want your feelings to diminish, and you're willing to hold him hostage until you get it. You also want to maintain a relationship with him, when he just told you he doesn't want a relationship with you. You're forcing this continued emotional intimacy on the both of you, and he may resent it.

What if he meets someone? Should he continue talking with you? How will his new girl feel if he's talking to you all the time about the breakup? And how sad and pathetic will you appear to her, and to his friends, this needy ex-girlfriend who's still hanging on? Because it takes months, it has taken me three months to be comfortable saying that it's over without a rush of pain and fear, and it's not over yet. How long do you think you can continue to talk with him, to expect it of him?

Here's another thing - the grieving process is horrible, it is painful, you will think, do, and say things that will embarass you in the future. Save those things for your girlfriends or the people on this board. Don't let a relationship that was mature and loving and important to you both devolve to a place where you just look pathetic, really sad, where his strongest memories of you are you sobbing on the phone, begging to have him back, obsessing about why the relationship ended, dramatically declaring that you'll never love anyone again, whatever. You can chose to let this end with dignity, or with hystrionics. I pick dignity every time.

Look, your ex hurt you. He rejected you. He doesn't want you any more. All the love you had together, it doesn't mean that much now, he can and has cast that aside. How can you want that person to comfort you, to help you through your pain? How can you believe that is a reasonable role for him to fill? He broke your heart, he can't help you heal it. Believing that he can is just another form of emotional dependence on him. And while he's maybe not a bad guy, he's not Dr. Phil, he's not the person you want holding your hand and helping you make sense of all this, he *hurt* you, remember?

I loved my ex with all my heart. Just seeing his smile or hearing his voice made my heart flip. I don't think I could handle talking to him, being near him, and not touching him, not seeing his smile. That pain is worse than the breakup pain, we broke up once before and I foolishly did maintain contact. And I want to always keep the memory of that little flip, I want the memory of our love, I want it untainted by all the "after" mess of a breakup, I don't want to flash between his loving face and his sad, disappointed, angry, pitying face. I just want to keep something clean and uncontaminated by the breakup, and a "clean break" really is that, it is valuable for that reason. No contact means that I have those memories, I and he both have our dignity, maybe we can meet on the street some day and hold our heads high. No contact means that I can date, now, without guilt or reservations, because my ex is out of my life, as totally as if he'd died, and that actually is a good thing. I'm free to live my life. I am sad it didn't work out, but it didn't work, and he chose not to make it work, so what continued purpose does he serve in my life? He'll be a fond memory, so I let him be that - a memory. I'm tired of the drama, I'm tired of the pain, I would not want to prolong it by talking with him.

I tried the breakup both ways, with the same guy - once I maintained contact, we had endless conversations about how and why it happened, how his feelings changed, we hung out as friends. I feel much better doing it with no contact. I feel saner, I respect myself more, I feel like this is more mature, cleaner, more respecful of us both. No contact is the only way to do a breakup and get out sane and healthy in any reasonable period of time.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-26-2004
Sun, 06-27-2004 - 12:53pm
thats a lot of courage 'milton333', i wish i had ur strength right now. right now im still resisting the temptation of being friends and just like wut you said i was just yelling and screaming when i spoke to him yesterday. but today i apologized by email and said that was the reason y i didnt want to be friends, i dint want him to remember the yelling, but its so hard knowing i wont be talking to him. its so hard ro think that there will be a possibility that he will forget me. and that hurts. i dont want to give in to that because i know it will cause me more pain. but right now im thinking of ways to forget, i dont have much friends here because all my friends all from across the country and its just so hard to talk over the phone, thank god for this board and that at least i can somehow vent and read other people's advices.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2004
Sun, 06-27-2004 - 6:12pm
Sad girl, let me say this - I still remember and think fondly of my first love from high school (I posted that the teenage Harry Potter reminds me of my first love, I had a sweet and nostalgic moment at the movie). And I'm 29, married and divorced, now dealing with the end of an almost 2-year relationship. We don't forget the people we love. He will never forget you, sweetie, don't worry about that. But wondering if he's thinking about you, missing you, wanting you back, that's so self-destructive, I'm proud that I've tried to nip that in the bud whenever it happens to me. Over is not the end of the world, really it isn't. And cutting off contact lets this relationship take its place in your past, as part of the tapestry of your life and experiences that you'll never forget, but something that is not immediate and in the present any more. It's sad, but it gets easier. It's a lot easier without contact. But don't worry, you never forget people you loved, he'll never forget you, either. You'll just come to accept that the relationship didn't have what it takes to last forever, and it had its time, and its time has passed, and now you can look forward to new things and a better relationship with real life-long potential.
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-26-2004
Sun, 06-27-2004 - 10:43pm
why does it hurt so much? why does it have to be so painful, is this the price of falling in love? how can one just easily let go and forget about the good times, can you really love someone and just say they dont want you anymore? are there answers to these questions? if you so milton333 pls give me answers, it hurt so much i dont know how i can go on. i just hate waking up in the morning knowing i know i have to face it again. if u have more answers pls help me. i need all the shoulder i can have now. thank you
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-30-2004
Sun, 06-27-2004 - 10:51pm
Welcome to the board!!

I haven't really experienced a situation where talking helped to heal faster. It's mainly because you're so used to that person and it hurts knowing you aren't together anymore and to constantly feel that pain every time you talk is hard not to mention there's usually a part of you that will want to try and get back together and the other person doesn't want that so talking to each other tends to drag out the healing process and hender it.














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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-11-2004
Mon, 06-28-2004 - 3:28pm
I also have to agree that no contact is the way to go. It was very hard for me, and my ex and I only managed to do that for less than a month, but that month helped me so much. I found a few new friends in my roommates (I live in a house with 13 other girls, before that I was not close to most of them because I had spent so much time with Mike), renewed old friendships that I hadn't had time for when i was with him, and just went out and had a lot of fun and discovered so much about myself that I never knew. My ex and I have been talking more lately, but it's been as friends. The last time I saw him, I really felt that I was no longer in love with him and could start being friends. I know that it will take a lot longer to be friends, and we will never be as close as we were, but like I said, the month of no contact was the best thing I could have done, even though it killed me not to talk to him.

The only problem that I do see with being friends is that my parents we in the exact same situation as I am in, and they ended up getting married after being friends for a long time. So even being friends in my opinion is still a way of clinging to what you had (which I realize that I am doing currently), so I think that a longer period of no contact is best.
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-02-2003
Thu, 07-01-2004 - 12:44am
I guess for me- we have been friends for so long- over 20 years. We also are not anywhere near each other- 1000 miles apart. So to be friends is relatively easy in some ways. We have had ups and downs over the years, but I think we genuinely both want the other to be happy. Don't get me wrong- this hurts like hell- but his friendship has always meant more to me than anything else. NC to me seems more like treating this ordeal like a death...and to me it is crazy to treat it like that- it is not in a sense a death. I can choose for it to be over or I can choose for me to accept his decision and allow the friendship to adjust and change with the time. Sure it may take a little longer to figure out how to be friends-- but nothing in life that is really important is ever easy. If we both want to be friends than that can happen. And friendship involves trusting the other just like any other relationship and it has to be wanted by both. A one-sided friendship will never last.

tb