I’m still in love with my ex-girlfriend. We had an incredible relationship up to the point that I lost my son and depression took hold of me, we separated for a few months and got back together just as I lost my mother to a rapid cancer death. Depression took hold of me again and we separated in November last year. I have always been in love with her, throughout our time together and our time apart. I have never entertained the thought of being with anyone else.
We separated both times because I lost the ability to communicate and I had lost myself, the man she fell in love with.
About a month ago I found myself again, found my words again. I laid it all out to her, expressed everything I could and I did a good job of it. She told me she loved me and cared about me, understood and believed that I would never close her out again. Of everything I lost our bond is what I miss the most, more than my son and mother, she knows I’m being honest with her. But….
She said that she thought relationships were all doomed to fail, it was just a matter of time. That she had changed as a person, couldn’t and wouldn’t try to work out our issues and possibly try again at having a relationship.
We had lots of talks as I tried to come to terms with my broken heart and to understand her position. She has a platonic love for me, wants to be my friend and not risk our friendship by trying to have a more intimate relationship with me again.
Now I understand her position completely, her views on relationships I have had myself. After I had divorced many years ago I felt exactly the same.
However. When I felt that relationships were doomed to fail, I didn’t have any. I didn’t date, I didn’t have fuck buddies, I didn’t want to be with anyone, just wanted to be by myself.
On the other hand, she is dating someone. They seem to be spending a great deal of time together and he appears to pretty much be living with her.
I’m really trying to be her friend and to get over wanting more and it’s kind of working. I can see my love for her as a platonic one. True friends are very hard to come by and we have that bond. The problem is when she’s with this new partner I never hear from her. She doesn’t answer any Emails at all. Then as soon as he’s gone it’s almost constant communication. It’s upsetting me quite a lot.
She also constantly talks about sex she’s had since we’ve been apart, dating experiences, problems with her current boyfriend and so on. Obviously this is hard to listen to and I’ve told her as much but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.
I mentioned to her that I was going to spend the night with a very old flame who’d got in touch with me, basically wanting sex, I thought it would ‘take my mind off things’ and she reacted very strangely. Saying I was only doing it to hurt her and it was totally out of character (which it is to be fair)
If you’re still reading by now, thank you and apologies for droning on but as with all things it’s complicated.
My question is this.
Am I getting strung along and used when it is convenient and she is bored and wants some company, company that isn’t there because sex is on the agenda?
Or kept on the hook so if things don’t work out with this current lover she can take me back, happy that I’ve ‘remained faithful’ to her?
Am I just being stupid and hurting because I still love her and she doesn’t really love me?
I want to be her friend but I’m really losing my mind over this. Any advice from the wonderful ladies of SP would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.
20 comments
well, I’m not a female, but ill say this, go find a new one and move on.
why do you want her? she doesn’t give a shit about you now, if she ever did.
Lots of females out there, they are a dime a dozen.
This is why I’m asking for a woman’s opinion. I appreciate the sentiment but you’re way off base on everything you said and I don’t have the will to explain why. Thanks though.
There’s nothing off base about what he said.
Why are you asking for womens’ opinions when you aren’t listening to the only woman’s opinion that matters?
“She said that she thought relationships were all doomed to fail, it was just a matter of time. That she had changed as a person, COULDN’T AND WOULDN’T try to work out our issues and possibly try again at having a relationship.”
You have your answer. You are hurting yourself trying to imagine that something else is going on here. No woman would ever put it in such rock solid terms if they were at all entertaining a possible future with you. A lot of women won’t even make that much of an effort to make their feelings crystal clear to help you try to understand there is zero chance and to encourage you to move on – consider yourself lucky that she told you.
Things like you mentioning an old flame and her claiming that hurts her is a strong argument for why you shouldn’t even try to remain friends either, because it will create stupid drama like that. And what you described in that situation is totally toxic emotional blackmail anyway; i.e. trying to mention to her that you are going to spend time with another woman to try to hopefully incite some type of jealous reaction. Games that aren’t even worth playing. Remaining friends with someone only works out in the rarest of situations, and not so soon after the break up, and not when they are currently dating someone else and your feelings for them haven’t died down. Volunteering to be friends with someone you love is like asking for torture every day. You don’t want a friend. You want her, but she doesn’t. Might sound crazy since you want her in your life, but it’ll hurt less to not have her at all than to treat her like a friend and watch her date someone else.
You’re tripped up by her saying things like she believes relationships are destined to fail yet she is dating someone else. It doesn’t have to make sense. It simply means she doesn’t believe in a relationship working out with you. She’s trying to make philosophical statements like that to soften the blow for you and not make it seem like a personal thing that she doesn’t want to be together. She tries to dress it up as this belief that all relationships fail just so you won’t hurt too badly. But her dating someone else shows she obviously thinks the time and energy invested in relationships are worth it. Even if she believes they are destined to fail, she apparently would rather spend her time “failing” with this guy than with you.
Men like to think women speak in code and that they really mean something else even when they speak in the clearest of terms. You’re showing that you put your opinion and desires before hers, by listing everything she told you word for word and then following it up with “however….”. No, there can’t be a however. She told you how she feels. She would find it incredibly unattractive that she laid everything on the line for you and you’re still trying to make a different message out of it, thus not listening to her. You’re trying to reinterpret the situation because the message is too painful to hear. But sometimes it’s easier to face the pain and get through it. Don’t stay in this denial too long, it can be very dangerous.
She told you it’s over. Even if there’s a .000001% chance that she ever has a change of heart, it would be her job to come and find you and repair things, not your job to sit around waiting for it. The more eager and willing you act to sit on her back burner, the more she knows she can take her time, date other people, and string you along.
Stop trying to avert your eyes from the writing on the wall. She told you it’s over, she’s dating someone else. There is no secret code to her behavior that secretly means she really wants you.
Face your pain and get through it. Ignoring a gunshot would does not make it go away. It would just get worse. Emotional pain is no different. The longer you try to believe that it isn’t happening, the longer it bleeds. Accept it. Work on healing yourself. You are not strong enough to be her friend right now, if ever. Watching her date someone else and pretending that you’re okay with being buddies is going to destroy your well being. Maybe you can be friends in 6 months. If she really wants you as a friend, she’ll understand if you can’t be there right now.
And just to entertain your hope that she really wants to end up with you for one tiny second: you’d get the most response out of her by quickly running in the other direction and focusing on yourself, anyway. She dumped you and you’re still around to offer your companionship. What did she lose in that scenario? Nothing. She can dump you, still have your friendship, and date someone else too. That’s an awful lot of cake for her to eat. Tell her you’re too torn up to be friends and watch her date someone else right now, disappear, worry about you and your life and the people who actually want you 100%. If you’re ever going to get a positive response out of her, it would ironically come from acting like you give up.
So in either scenario it’s really healthiest to go away. To heal your own wounds: go away. To see if there’s any chance that she’ll realize this was a mistake: go away.
How old are you? How long were you involved intimately w/her? Was the son that died her child as well?
My overall feeling is not that she is stringing you along but that you are stringing yourself along.
How you feel is too affected by how she responds and interacts with you. Only by becoming truly independent can we enjoy the greatest fruits of what being with another person has to offer/Otherwise things can easily become a morass of confusion because unresolved emotional issues, are always with us.. even from long before you ever met her, they will rear their heads when that emotional button gets hit. They are what make us feel like shit when people dont reciprocate our feelings, we are looking to supplement what we feel we are lacking. Even if we are not in touch with this directly we feel it acutely.
Stop paying so much attention to your emotions. Most of us have more control over our emotional states than might be imagined. We are not feathers in the wind. We are the wind. Simply direct your mind towards what you wish to focus on. (I know sometime this is impossible but it is simply something to aim for). Truth is, we are almost never so happy or sad as we suppose.
Try to find emotional stability on your own. Let this girl go and if she is interested she will come back, either way, its best to have a well-refined and understood sense of self in order to successfully be with someone else. You just support whatever makes her happy while also letting her know how you feel, but hold your tongue. Its exhausting to be around emotionally obsessive people.
We should never expect than another person can make us happy. They distract us and this makes us happy. Or for materialistic reasons. But these are just distractions that soon fade.
You love the idea of being with her as you do not know what being with her actually entails. Because you had such little time together. You are romanticizing the past and she is trying to or has moved on. We all wanna be with people we look up to. People who bring us traits and qualities we feel we may be lacking in or that work with regard to our future goals.
I’ll you what women find attractive in men: Self-sufficiency, (emotional, financial & everything else), independence (DO NOT every show youre emotionally needy, -which comes through in much of what youve written above, even if you feel that way) Your gf is not your mom and you are, presumably not a kid.
I would say be patient, get a life. She didnt cut you off completely. When you really love someone, this is not about what makes us happy but what makes our loved one happy. Love is not about being served, but serving. It is not about enriching oneself, but sacrificing oneself to the good of others and asking nothing in return.
No one can make us happy for long, they can only distract us a short while.. It is a terrible thing to expect that a ‘loved one’ could provide for us what we cannot for ourselves/ So do not pursue happiness but only well-being, stability, peace and growth. Find a girl with goals in common to your own. But stop being needy.
Need no one as need is a euphemism for slavery. We end up resenting the very people we love and (oft times) measuring how much they love us by how much of our abuse they will take.
My son was mine from a previous marriage. I’m 33, we knew each other as friends for about 5 years and were intimate for about 2 years in total. I don’t need her or want her to complete me, it isn’t about that at all. I’m very comfortable with who I am. Thanks for taking the time to reply so thoughtfully but you’ve made a lot of inaccurate assumptions.
I’m a guy. You’re being strung along.
You’re doing that really rude thing that heart broken people tend to do. You ask for advice and then tell anyone who says that your relationship is over “you’re wrong” “you’re way off base”. Then don’t ask for advice. Clearly you want to go on believing what you want to believe.
Just because I don’t agree with a response doesn’t mean I’m being rude. I don’t want to go on believing what I want to believe. I don’t know what I believe. I suspect that her desire to remain friends is serving an ulterior motive and I am interested to hear other peoples thoughts on the matter. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with them and not agreeing with someone isn’t rude.
Based on how you’ve described the relationship, it sounds very unhealthy. It seems like you are “something fun to play with” to her. If she really valued the relationship, she would keep things that would hurt you from you, unless you asked. She would also not get mad when you try to share the same details that she shares with you. From my perspective based on what you’ve said, it seems like she is stringing you along. I’m not saying that you should abandon all communication and connections with her but at the same time, you have to be able to take care of yourself. Talking about intimate details with a previously intimate partner is asking for issues. You’ve also stated that you’ve told her your feelings about some of the conversations and she’s chosen to refuse to respect and honor those feelings. I”m not saying to abandon her since you do have a close connection but be aware of how the inconsistencies are affecting you. Communication works both ways.
Thank you AarinaDaae, it is the inconsistencies which are driving me mad. I feel like she has not been entirely honest with me, perhaps because she doesn’t understand things herself. This is all relatively recent stuff in fairness to her. It is certainly unhealthy at the moment and it needs to change. Thanks again.
Again, NOTHING TO DO WITH SUICIDE. Go to a relationship advice forum or something. This is annoying and insulting to people that are really contemplating suicide. And stop asking questions you yourself know an answer to already!
I’m sorry it’s upset you so much. I’m fully aware this is a suicide forum, I regularly comment on such matters and have posted on suicide as well. Just because I didn’t mention suicide in my post doesn’t mean it has nothing to do with suicide.
Want to know where you answered it? YOUR FIRST FRIGGEN SENTENCE! STOP BEING A COWARD AND TRYING TO BLAME OTHERS AND MAKE YOUR OWN GODDAMN DECISIONS.
Don’t even try to use us SPers as a means of a punching bag or scapegoat. You’re the reason why more people want to suicide.
Wow
@thousandcuts You’re spot on with a lot of what you said in your long response earlier. Thank you. With regard to her letting me down gently. I asked her outright if she was doing that because the message is still the same whether it is given softly or bluntly. We have a clear understanding with each other, if she wanted to be blunt she knows I can handle it and would prefer it. She assures me she is not trying to soften the blow. The things she’s said to me about her current partner are in line with her relationship outlook. She has been very adamant that this is her current philosophical outlook. However what I see with regards her actions are at odds with her words. I think that she may well actually be trying to soften the blow.
With regard to my telling her about spending the night with an old flame, I can’t recount the entire conversation but she wanted to come to mine to collect something she had left, I said I was going out shortly and she asked me where I was going. As she had been open with me about dating and sleeping with other people I simply told her that I was going to stay with ‘X’ who she knew about by name and location as she knew my past. I spoke to her in the same manner she’d spoken to me about dating etc. Her reaction was not in line with someone who only saw me as a friend. It seemed strange.
So other than those two points you’re bang on. It is best for me to heal my wounds and doing that doesn’t rule out being friends with her either. Thanks again.
“She assures me she is not trying to soften the blow.”
“…her actions are at odds with her words.”
It’s right there, between those lines; do you see it?
foobar23: “i’m a guy. you’re being strung along.”
^this^ again and again.
Thanks clevername.
Yeah, I can’t figure out what the OP wants to hear. “She’s madly in love with you, she can’t live without you, you’ll spend the rest of your lives together and grow old together, and sit and reminisce and laugh about the time that you once broke up.”
And then to criticize everyone here on SP when his post has nothing at all to do with suicide, and then to criticize the consistently clear advice everyone gives.
Jesus man. Grow up.
There is this period of time when people fall out of love when they still have feelings of love but are no longer IN love (don’t know if that makes sense), or they might but they don’t have the willingness to fight for it anymore. In that period they still miss/need the other person, and they seek to have that person near to make the transition “easier”. That doesn’t mean she’s going to comeback to you, just that she’s not ready to let you go completely, and the jealousy she showed makes me think that’s most likely the case.
For what you mention of her, she seems like the escaping type. As in, you got depressed due to some major things in life and she left you everytime, because she saw problems, you “left her out”, and it was easier to walk than to fight it out. If she’s capable of dumping you like that in times of need, she’d most likely have no problem playing you until she’s okay with shutting you out completely out of her life, which is a possibility once she has a more stable relationship with her new guy.
I’m not a woman either..but..WOW. Are you kidding me? Thank you for the entertainment in reading these posts. WOW…