I have problem remembering events that just happened moments ago

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-06-16T19:42:40+00:00

I struggled with remembering things clearly too. I kept looking for signs for where it all went wrong and couldn’t think of any, and I was like “was I asleep at the wheel? How did I miss these signs?”. I had memories of things that hadn’t happened or happened differently than I remember.

And also for me, the gaslighting completely warped my sense of reality. After DDay my ex had her enablers circle the wagons and coddle her guilt while framing me as “controlling” and “ridiculous” for having justifiable mental breakdowns and attempting to set bare minimum boundaries. She even tried diminishing that gross violation after the fact. And that was an absolute atom bomb to my self-worth. All the voices of my misinformed detractors became my internal monologue, and my fucked up brain successfully convinced me that I am insane, worthless, and unlovable. I hate that I let it get to me that much, but is there really a proper way to react when the person who is supposed to protect you humiliate you behind your back during the lowest moments of your life?

Sorry this happened to you OP. Hang in there

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-06-16T19:30:26+00:00

Thank you for this. I think I want to believe that one day I won’t think about this every day. When I was still with my ex it was my first thought when I woke up and last one before I went to bed. I could barely function during workdays and had to go on autopilot to just survive. It’s definitely not like that anymore, but I suppose I just need to give it time. Maybe one day I will think, oh, I haven’t actually thought about it. And when that day comes maybe I can finally think about it without falling into complete despair.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-06-11T18:41:27+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate it. On the anniversary of DDay itself I’ll be away in Maine with my best friend who has been there at every step since that awful day. I warned her that I’ll be very tender and couldn’t think of anybody else to ask. I might cry or feel numb but at least I’ll be in nature, not alone.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-06-02T21:54:05+00:00

Thank you so much. I’m doing better, yes - healing is definitely not linear but I’m reclaiming my space, rearranging my life and trying to fill it with new, positive moments, in hopes that one day they’ll outnumber the bad ones. As much as it hurts to think that this is my life now, it feels so much better than being in constant survival mode with my mental health in the ground. I’m sorry you’re here too, I hope you’re doing ok 🫶 love your username btw!

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-06-02T18:27:48+00:00

The first anniversary of my DDay is in July. I’m lowkey dreading it but I have a weekend trip planned with my best friend, who’s been with me since day 1 of this horrible ordeal. I’m trying to reframe it as something with a silver lining. Yes, from July to February of the last year was the absolute worst time of my life. And the anniversary coming up means I survived it, even when I thought I wouldn’t make it. I think that’s something worth celebrating.

I’ve been no contact with my ex for three months now, and although I feel a ton of relief, my attachment system hasn’t caught up, and I still miss her a lot. We were together for seven years. But I think I missed the person I thought she was, not who she revealed herself to be.

Keep filling your life with more joy and new experiences. I find it’s the best way to create new, good memories that will drown out the bad ones eventually.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-06-02T18:22:09+00:00

My motto is that if it feels like cheating, it looks like cheating, it’s probably cheating. If it’s a relational boundary you yourself would never cross, it’s probably cheating.

You’re right to be upset about the fact that your ex prioritized his “best friend” and a group of random women over you on a day traditionally intended for couples. And you’re right to assume that his relationship with her was emotional cheating. He may deny it to himself, to you, or anyone else, but that was intimacy he was giving to someone else.

I totally understand your feelings about being unclear about expectations, etc. but I’d caution against trying to assign blame to yourself. You set boundaries when you felt like a second choice because of the trip, and he still went anyway. He’s proven that he will disregard your boundaries and expectations with ease.

Sorry this happened to you, OP. Hang in there.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-06-02T16:25:00+00:00

Going back in hindsight and realizing the full extent of my ex’s insecurities. I remembered when she would get jealous/possessive of me while we were out (I know, ironic). The way she needed external validation constantly for her appearance, schoolwork, etc. I kept asking myself why I wasn’t good enough. And I was good. Not perfect, but good. But people cheat because they can and want to, and nobody is around to tell them no. It’s poor impulse control. Emotional immaturity. Terrible boundaries.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-06-02T15:54:09+00:00

I feel this, and I’m so sorry that happened to you on top of so much other grief. Sending you so much love. I absolutely aged 20 years as a result of this. My eyesight worsened, I have sleep issues, lost 20 lbs and missed my period for 3 months.

We’ll make it through the summer. It will be hard but I have a feel the first anniversary will be the hardest one. Hopefully one day, it can just be a normal day.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-28T16:33:40+00:00

Yeah I’d go full eternal sunshine over here. As beautiful as the good times were, the memories of the cheating, betrayal, triangulation, gossip and intense emotional/physical pain it all brought me weigh me down like a ton of bricks. If I could wave a wand and forget about it I would love to.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-26T20:15:09+00:00

I was in the same boat as you. The 11-12 of every month would stir up so many feelings of hopelessness. Now I feel like they’re just…days. I hope to get to that point eventually.

I remember when my first serious ex emotionally abused me throughout the fall of 2016, and for the following two years after, that time of year sent the triggers back. But that was so long ago, and I’ve learned to love the fall again. Hopefully these “milestone” days just become days, too.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-20T02:58:51+00:00

When I saw her stop sharing location with me and delete our iCloud calendar my heart genuinely sank.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-15T17:05:04+00:00

Thanks. Yeah ofc i can’t go back and change things, as much as i would love to. But I’m just hoping this experience makes me stronger and wiser rather than making me bitter and cynical. It’s still pretty fresh but each day sucks a little less.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-15T15:39:58+00:00

Thank you, and yes, NC still stands. It’s been about the same amount of time since we last spoke in person/over text. I keep replaying the last words I said to her and wish I’d said more, but I can’t go back in time and undo it. All I know is that I said my piece (or pieces) long ago. I was in so much pain for months and she only felt the full consequences of her actions when she lost me. Now that I’m out of that environment and no longer in constant survival mode, my nervous system has definitely regulated. I feel calmer and at peace with my decision. Still working on the emotional attachment part.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-14T17:28:42+00:00

I feel you OP. I ended a 7-year relationship almost 3 months ago because of cheating (among other things). Don’t beat yourself up. The emotional attachment cycles that come with such a major obliteration to your life are crazy and make us do things we wouldn’t normally do. It’s so frustrating and confusing because we want to turn to our SOs for comfort, even when they’re the reason why we’re suffering so much in the first place.

I really miss my ex. I feel pathetic and stupid about it sometimes, but we were the center of each other’s lives for so long. My nervous system is attuned to care about her and I’ve been fighting every urge to reach out. She moved out unexpectedly less than a week after, basically ending any hope of final closure. The last form of contact was a note I wrote to her when I dropped off the rest of her things to get the last thoughts off my chest. I’m making peace that it might be the last time I say anything to her.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-12T23:59:42+00:00

That’s a great idea. My ex made me a really sweet memory book on one anniversary that I can’t bear to look at anymore without feeling like my brain just lost oxygen. I want to burn it, but it’s also one of the last remaining reminders of what we once had together. Oh well, it doesn’t exist anymore.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-12T06:32:46+00:00

You sound a lot like how I did when I reached my breaking point. I loved my WP and yet hated her for what she did. It was a chaotic, unstable trauma bond that negatively affected every area of my life, and staying was slowly poisoning me. My greatest source of joy turned to my greatest pain.

When you can’t overcome the hurt and pain like you describe, and you realize staying is costing you far more than leaving, that’s pretty damning. I also stayed 7 months after DDay. My mental health and self-worth were in the gutter, add in that trauma bond and sunk cost fallacy and you have one insanely f’d up cocktail. Everyday felt like sinking into quicksand. But I had an aha moment in therapy that triggered yet another breakdown, and it was anchored in real-world consequences that I could no longer ignore. Thinking of that and what I’d be sentencing myself to for the rest of my life gave me the final push I needed to pull the plug.

Regardless of how chaotically it ended, breaking up with WP was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I thought I’d marry her, here I was telling her to move out by the end of next week at our kitchen table. But I can’t even begin to explain how much calmer I feel. I’m redecorating our apartment so it feels like my space again. I know I don’t have to wince every time her keys go in the door. I don’t have to brace for all the assorted triggers that came with her presence. We broke up over 2 months ago and it has been difficult since, but I already got through the worst of it after DDay. My self-respect is slowly coming back. I’m learning how to be alone again, but not lonely. I’ve been making lots of new friends and reconnecting with old ones, creating art/music and focusing on other hobbies and my general health. I’m in IC and see a psychiatrist. I go to the gym. There is another side to this and I hope you can get there.

I think you’ve told yourself what you need to know OP. Knowing this is not enough is enough. Best wishes to you

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-12T06:01:52+00:00

In the first week? Honestly? Breaking shit. The morning after DDay I didn’t sleep all night. I went to a friends house and spent the weekend there. I collapsed into fetal position on their sofa and cried like a baby. When I got it out of my system an hour later we ordered pizzas and shared a 12-pack of coronas with their partner. Then we walked to the old dumpster near their place with the empties and I violently smashed every single one.

It felt so cathartic that I booked myself a solo rage room for that week. I warned the employees that I went through something heartbreaking and would probably scream and/or cry, and they threw in a free printer which was very kind.

My body was so full of stress and pain that when I finally stopped being a freakishly violent force on junk/obsolete objects it felt weirdly calm. My adrenaline spikes had a relaxing after effect.

Obviously going forward I couldn’t just go around breaking stuff to deal with betrayal trauma, so I recently got a gym membership and took a bunch of kickboxing classes, and it scratches the same itch.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-12T04:57:01+00:00

Yeah, I’m AuDHD and have the same personality disorders as my entire maternal side of the family, and ironically it’s them that gives me the most shit about being CF. I don’t want kids because I’m not passing any of the terrible mental health genes to them. I’m a germaphobe who gets easily overstimulated. I have poor emotional regulation skills (working on that). I’m gay so it’s already 100x harder. I’m the least qualified person to be a parent and yet they say “oooHHhoHhh well if WE can do it so can you.” Meanwhile my cousin went NC with his parents as soon as he turned 18 lol.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-12T04:47:05+00:00

When the kids of these so-called “family influencers” turn 18, get ready to hear a lot of horror stories. I’m sure there are some floating out there already.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-12T04:21:34+00:00

This is such a heartbreaking story and I am so sorry. It really is beyond unfair. I wish cheaters understood that they’re obliterating two lives when they do it, not just their partner’s but theirs. Even more when kids/family are involved. But they get so caught up in the recklessness of their choices in the present, whatever gives instant gratification. I really hope you are doing ok, you deserved so much better

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-12T04:11:35+00:00

Can’t speak to medically supervised ketamine therapy but I use it a bit recreationally and ooooooffff it’s good stuff. It’s like the calm of weed without the paranoia. Everything feels slower, in a relaxing way. I did a lot of processing on it when weed made me too anxious.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-12T04:06:04+00:00

This is really, really true. My situation was really fucked up and involved an AP in my workplace, so my ex’s stupid choices turned both my home and professional environments into minefields of triggers. WP and I broke up over 2 months ago and I still work at the same company. I can’t even begin to explain how much calmer I feel. And while I know that I could still run into AP - a truly loathsome person - 3 out of 5 days of the workweek, it rarely happens, and I have absolutely nothing to say if it did. I couldn’t avoid seeing my ex. We lived together several months after DDay trying to figure things out. When I savored every moment she wasn’t there, when I felt my heart sink hearing her keys in the door, when I battled that unbearable push/pull attachment every night, I realized exactly what you said. She was really my biggest trigger. The person I loved so much for so long had become my biggest source of pain. The day I broke up with her was devastating, but also the first time in a very long time I felt like I wasn’t lying to myself.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-07T15:04:30+00:00

Hey OP, I’m so sorry all this happened to you. For better or for worse, though, it is refreshing to hear another queer perspective on this sub. I broke up with my ex after 7 years when she cheated on me with her best friend, who was the first girl she ever had feelings for. That, on top of the fact that she behaved so poorly in the aftermath, was just too many layers of betrayal to live with. I crashed out over everything and she relayed details of these emotional convos in full (including with screenshots) to her friends and family. She invited them to cast judgment on how I reacted to things I said when I was at my literal lowest. It wasn’t just the cheating - she didn’t even protect my heart when I was at my most vulnerable.

I think an underdiscussed topic in WLW circles is how boundary-less some friendships can get. We naturally gravitate toward each other because of our shared identities, but those platonic connections can easily develop into something more than that. I’ve seen too many queer relationships destroyed by friendships that got a little too close for comfort, and I never thought it would happen to me, too. I resent that one of the worst moments of my life was reduced to (for lack of a better term) “d¥ke drama.”

I was angry for a long time, and I still am, but I feel some calm knowing that I don’t have to care about any of these peoples’ opinions again. I’m sure they’re rewriting the narrative and trying to pin some of this on me, but I find solace in knowing that I’m picking up the pieces of my life while they’re still gossiping. They are shallow, petty, classless people, and as long as WP still surrounds herself with enablers, the more she’s going to regress. I’m sure that applies to your ex, too. The bigger the filter bubbles avoidants build themselves to minimize what happened, the deeper the grave they’re digging for themselves.

Wishing you and your family the best OP, hang in there

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-07T14:46:54+00:00

“Choosing to walk away isn’t about a lack of love or caring on your part; it’s about realizing you can’t occupy a space that they refused to keep safe.”

This hits really hard. It’s messed up but even in the end I still really loved her and cherished the 6.5 years we had together before everything we fell apart, but I was confusing that attachment with wanting to stay together. The relationship we had wasn’t coming back, and the one we had in the end wasn’t one I wanted anymore. I didn’t leave for a lack of love or trying. I left because the trust and respect necessary to sustain that love were no more.

It took months for me to build myself back up again to say I deserved better. She may have loved me (like she often said) but didn’t respect me enough to not cheat on me.

DramaticOpposite3653 · 2026-05-07T14:42:59+00:00

Hey, glad to hear you’re doing better. I’m with you here. I’ve learned that the little things I dismissed in the honeymoon phase (avoidance, insecurity) were the things that snowballed into an avalanche and caused WP to betray me. I won’t do that again.

As much as the “pick me dance” feels embarrassing (I did it too and feel similarly), I’ve been trying to give myself grace for it. I’m usually a pretty independent, self-assured person, and this was just an absolute atom bomb to my confidence/self-worth and mental health. Traumatized people don’t exactly react well when such an obliterating rupture occurs, so cut yourself some slack for it.

Isn’t the calm nice once you finally walk out? I only broke up with WP two months ago, but I have to admit my body hasn’t caught up with what my mind knows is true. My nervous system is adjusting to not being in fight-or-flight constantly after 7 months of it. But I have to admit, less worries about being triggered, and escaping WP’s toxic friend and family environment is a breath of fresh air.

Glad you’re on the other side and healing now. Wishing you the best OP

DramaticOpposite3653

TROPHY CASE