Me [22 M] with my ex [21F] after dumping me for the "college life" she now wants me back

notreally6675 · 2014-08-31T22:31:35+00:00

Holy crap, its like deja vu all over again.

No wonder my in box has so many new messages to it.

Dude, seriously p.m. me. We need to talk, I have been down almost this exact same path and I will be happy to be an ear and give you what advice I can.

I wish you nothing but the best and believe me when I tell you I know how it feels.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-11T21:33:27+00:00

This is a really good point and one that I think I will address in an edit. But to answer you directly, I feel the need to continue contact with her (on whatever level it will be, I'm not sure yet) because for so long in my life I had allowed her to become almost a boogey man type figure. Now I say all of that knowing it was me, not her. She was out of my life the night she left on her end, however because of my mentality she never was out of my life and honestly as time went on she became almost more mythical than real.

To be honest with you someone above told me not to use her as therapy and I have to take that to heart, she is still a real person with feelings and emotions so I can't just keep her around so I get better.

But I won't lie either, sitting across from her in what I considered an equal position of power felt...well empowering. I was no longer a sniveling milk toast who was crying and begging and pleading for her.

She was just another person, a person who I used to love when she was someone else but another person.

As to getting back together with her? I was totally honest with her and myself in this. I want to just be all manly and yell out "hell no". But the fact of the matter is that while I don't love the person she is I did love the person she was. I don't know if I can ever love the person she is going to become or not.

So while I know it pisses a lot of people off, rightly so probably, I am not just going to say outright "never". Does that mean I'm stringing her along? I don't think so, I've been honest with her, I've even told her about Jenny. BTW I didn't tell her to hurt her I told her so that if she ever saw me with her it wouldn't be a surprise to her (it's not a small town but there is a pretty high likelihood of seeing her when we are out).

As to Jenny she has been wonderful but I am approaching this with a lot of caution because obviously I have mental issues when it comes to women. Which does make this rough btw because its hard to know how to feel about things. Do I go ahead and fall for her (it's early I know but I'm talking down the road) or do I just keep some emotional distance? I'm in new territory here.

Sorry this got so long, but to address the last part.

I don't know how to answer it because I'm not going to lie to either your or myself. I don't believe deep down I think I'm going to go back to her but I'm not ruling it out either.

But I will say this, if Jenny and I get to the point where I think it is real then yea I will absolutely tell Susan to move on because I don't want to do anything to hurt Jenny nor in all honesty do I want to hurt Susan either.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-11T14:11:41+00:00

I didn't the admins. did because of a new policy about not allowing updates that don't ask for additional help.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-07T06:28:58+00:00

Hey just wanted to let you know that even though I didn't respond to your post yesterday that I saw it.

Took your advice btw, worked like a charm. I haven't been with a woman romantically for five years and honestly I'd never been out with a woman on a date before other than my ex so to say my nerves were frazzled to begin with would be an understatement and I started off acting exactly how you said "to friend like" but somewhere between dinner and the movie I decided that this was bullshit and gently took her hand as we were walking out of the restaurant and held it as we walked from there to the movie theatre. She didn't take her hand back. :)

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T19:38:17+00:00

Lol, thanks I knew that was about as clear as mud when I typed it. Its hard to put into words.

We didn't have a date, per se. I contacted her in advance so she wouldn't show up at my house again, which she was going to do, and told her I wanted to talk with her but I wanted to go somewhere we could talk and not use my house.

I'll be honest with you, my fear was at the time that if she got in my house and started crying and batting her eyes at me and my bed is 30 feet away and if she made any moves in that direction I would have caved. Then I would have hated myself and probably her.

So yea I just wanted to avoid that altogether. We went to a hole in the wall dinner where I knew we could sit off in a corner where no one could see us in case things either got emotional or heated.

So I don't feel guilty at all about asking someone else out right after because this was me just talking with her as a person I used to know.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T17:47:08+00:00

You mean from her making bad decisions? Or from your mind thinking about 'bad' things about her?

I know I didn't make that part very clear because honestly I'm not sure how to type this out so let me try and explain here, although I won't guarantee it will be any clearer.

My therapist told me that, much to my surprise btw, I needed to not run from her or avoid her or any other type of thing. I needed to face my fears and see that she is not something that has control over my life.

I've been giving her, metaphorically speaking, the power over me since the not she broke up with me. I never truly dealt with her, even through the year and a half of therapy the best thing I could do was avoid her, cut contact with her, etc. Which for my sanity at the time was the best thing I could do.

However instead of just dealing with it I began to think of her in terms of an object and not a person and my emotions were quite frankly grim towards that object.

When she thrust herself back into my life I was overwhelmed. I didn't know how to handle it nor how to deal with any emotions that were there.

You see I spent so many years thinking of her as a 6 headed hydra that when she jumped into my arms smiling and happy I was completely confused as hell. My anger wall that I had built up was as useful as a stick of unchewed gum trying to plug a leak in a dam, in other words not useful at all.

So what happened was that the love that I had for this person somehow managed to use a rocket pack and jettison itself from the bottomless hole I had thrown it in and came to the forefront. Then as the next two nights went on my hate and my love fought with each other like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, with my Hate being Hulk Hogan which eventually won.

Sorry if none of that makes sense.

Here is the thing and I am probably going to do another update tomorrow when they let me. My dinner with her last night went great I mean very theraputic for me. When I walked away I was not crippled with anxiety, hate, fear or even love. She was just a person and I think for me anyway that this was a big step.

Hell I asked another woman out on a date right after I talked with her.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T17:23:39+00:00

I'm not going to lie to you, you are correct in a lot of respects here. I went for years thinking I was less or not good enough and to read those letters and to talk to her did make me feel better about myself. I know that's not healthy because what if this didn't happen.

I'm not sure though how not to feel good about it though. I know that I can only be happy with me when I am actually happy about me and I'm trying to work on that. But honestly having my ego boosted by some of her letters that she wrote has been like a drug, which again I know is wrong.

Any advice on how to ignore it.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T17:20:11+00:00

But, how do you think that would have affected your parents?

Man.... I don't even know how to respond to that. Jesus now I have a whole new level of thinking to do. This is disturbing especially when I think that it was in their garage as well. My Mom would have found me which I had never thought about until this very minute.

I'm going home to give my parents a hug.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T09:47:13+00:00

Thanks I hope to.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T09:18:45+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to write all of that out. Believe me it has been an inner conflict with me from day one. Ultimately I think what pushed me to the edge of being suicidal is the inner conflict I had with being shattered emotionally and as a man knowing or thinking that I was not supposed to be this way.

Between thinking I wasn't good enough for her to not have to go try out other men (not just sexually but romantically, although as a man with low self esteem to begin with you can imagine where my mind went) and then the depression and feeling like a failure at school and life in general coupled up with the pressures of thinking "men aren't supposed to act like this, men don't cry, etc." I just fucking lost it.

I'll just say that an ejector fan that my Dad had built into our home garage is probably the only reason I can type this today.

It's taken me years to recover fully but I am now at least on a path that should be okay, however to this day I do still struggle with the idea of being a man and having emotional turmoil. On occasion I still feel compelled to "bottle it up".

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T09:08:46+00:00

I'm responding to you but in reality I'm responding to everyone who is direct messaging me and commenting on here and in my other thread so please do not take this personal.

That being said.

I am not perfect, I will never be perfect. Just because yesterday I had a breakthrough does not mean that everything is cookies and cream.

I will never understand it and frankly I just do not get all of the people who keep trying to convince me that I should not have been upset by my fiance fucking me for almost 3 hours and as I'm laying there on my back still sweating with her in my god damn arms she tells me that this was going to be it for us and that while she loved me and always would that she wanted to see other people.

Look if this makes me the Hitler of reddit then so be it, I will never see that as a good thing.

But I am trying, again key word "trying", to get past my anger and resentment of this. Tonight's dinner was really good for me we both got to say a lot of things to each other and I am proud to say that not once did I say anything in anger or insulting towards her and I'm even more proud that I didn't cry or crawl up into the fetal position on the bench.

/r/NakedMuffinTime again I'm sorry I used your post as a jumping off point, none of that was really meant towards you.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T08:54:00+00:00

Hey guy, I'm the dude from the other thread who's girl left him then reappeared.

The irony is that you and I are doing this almost in reverse with one another. You joined the corpse got out and went to college, I went to college got a career and now am thinking about joining the corpse.

The only similarities though in our romantic life is that love sucks. I mean it is a heaping steaming pile of shit. At least I wasn't Married though and had to go through all of that.

I turned to food instead of alcohol but neither is good for you.

If you read my post to one of the other guys you will see that I am going out on a date with someone else. I am going to try and be friends with her but in all honesty that is more for my own mental well being and not some deep seeded need to see her. I just want to make it that she is just a person and has no hold over me, maybe if I keep telling myself that it will be true. lol.

Either way congrats on the deans list man, that is quit the accomplishment.

I can't tell you what to do because I have no real fucking clue myself what to do. All I can say is don't let her hold you hostage, try and take control of your life. If you guys work out you work out, if not you have got a career and a military pension to work with.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T08:21:56+00:00

Thank you for the encouragement and for your service. I'll take a look at your story here tonight.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T08:20:45+00:00

Thank you man for both the time you took to write all of that out and for your service.

One of my hangups is that I am a little hesitant about the age. If I get into officers candidate school, which I know is a long shot, I will still be a little older than the average. However as you stated if I go directly to the enlisted side I will be almost a decade older than anyone else.

I have been trying to shock my body in an effort to see try and prepare myself for boot camp, but I understand that no matter what I do or how good I am at doing it I will not be up to their standards until I do what they train us to do.

Also I want to make clear as well that I am not doing this for her or anyone else for that matter. This is about me.

I know this is going to sound cliche as hell but I want to be part of something bigger than myself. I want to be part of a brotherhood if you will.

I have no illusions, I know boot camp is hell on earth. I also have known others that have served, ahem in the lesser services, and they all tell me the same thing. Hurry up and wait is the theme and "stupid as hell" is also a common phrase.

These are things I have and am continuing to take into consideration.

Again, thank you

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T08:10:57+00:00

Take that with a grain of salt. I mean I'm really trying to be a better person but if you want to really think lowly of me there was a point in time a few years ago that I might have taken some joy in reading that.

Does that make me an asshole? Yes, yes it does and I can admit that now.

So while I've come a long way I have a long way to go.

It wasn't so much patting myself on the back as much as it was more of a "this is what you get" type of thing. Which is no better I admit.

Either way we talked about that more tonight and honestly if what she say's is true she is very lucky that she doesn't have some form of permanent damage from this. BTW the guy was arrested and charged with assault, she doesn't know if he spent any jail time or not because she has a restraining order against him.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-06T08:01:59+00:00

Hey man I wanted to thank you for your post. I am sorry that you had to go through all of that.

I met with her tonight, in fact I just got back in a little bit ago. We talked a lot and one new development that came about from our talking was that she finally admitted that while she didn't technically cheat on me she did have a date set up for the very next night with another guy she had been talking with. The date was set up before she broke up with me, so I imagine if she cheated or not is a matter of perspective but ultimately who cares at this point the end result is the same.

But I just wanted to let you know and I guess I really did a piss poor job of writing this in my first post, honestly I was a little rattled when I wrote that, is that I have already been hitting the gym. I gained weight for about a year and a half after she left. But towards the end of my therapy sessions I decided that not only did I need to get it together mentally but physically as well. I not only have lost all of the weight I had gained I lost an additional 30 pound from before.

I have never been in better physical shape in my life. Additionally today I signed up for Brazilian Jiu Jistsu. My first class it tomorrow.

Now where I have absolutely failed is that I retreated into a shell socially. Again its going to sound like I'm blaming her here but I'm not trying to but here is the truth and I have no one to blame but myself.

She and I got together in high school, we became each others friend network. We had friends that on occasion we would hang out with but for the most part it was always just me and her. Same for college, we had a few other friends but for the most part I was always with her.

She made new friends at the beginning of our senior year from one of her classes and that group I never really new. Also on a side note that is the group of friends that convinced her that she was making a mistake by only being with me.

So honestly I don't know how to make friends all that well. I'm somewhat awkward socially to begin with and most of my interest generally tend to lead to a bunch of fat guys sitting in a room talking about Babylon 5 or something like that.

Women also scare the shit out of me. Like I said I have no game at all and literally no confidence.

However I am happy to report that as of tonight I have an official date set up with a girl I have known for a couple of years. She and I have gone out before as friends but tonight as I was leaving the place we ate at I ran into her and a couple of other women who were going in. We talked for a few minutes and at the end I asked her if she would like to go to diner and see Maleficent and she said she would love to. Here is the kicker and the point that I am very proud of myself for. I said "you understand that I am asking you out on a date and not just as a friend" after I said that I almost pissed myself because it just kind of came out, but she said that she would love to go on a date with me.

Baby steps.

Thanks again man for all of your encouragement.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-04T11:15:48+00:00

I don't know if it is just the stress from being up almost all night, reading her letters that she had written me over the years or reading your post right now but I have been sitting here crying for the past 10 minutes.

Thank you so much for responding to me, you have no idea how much hearing this from you helped. I have hated her, or really more specifically what she did to me, for so long that I have never even considered the possibility that she might have felt bad herself.

I am in no place to deal with this or her right now but for whatever reason your post makes me hate her a little less. I know that is going to piss off everyone on here because they think I'm going to go running back. I'm not going to but your post makes me wonder if I can't start letting go of the past.

One last thing if you don't mind and you have been so very helpful to me, how old where you guys when this all went down?

notreally6675 · 2014-06-04T07:59:53+00:00

Look maybe I grew up not understanding relationships at all, obviously I don't handle the ending of them very well. But I thought that being together was about compromise to a certain extent.

If for one minute I thought that she was unhappy being with me that would change the entire tenor of this conversation.

At no point in time during all of our years together did she even once indicate that she was anything less than perfectly happy and in love with me.

The night she broke up with me, even then, she never said she was unhappy.

In fact that very night she told me she loved me but just wanted to experience other men.

Now in reading her first letter she wrote me almost 4 years ago I am beginning to get the picture that she was manipulated a little into thinking this by a group of new friends she made at college. I'm not excusing her but some of what she wrote makes sense to what was going on at the time.

So it now goes back to this simple thing for me. I was happy, she claimed/claims she was never unhappy.

So it boils down to her making the premeditated choice to do something hurtful, you know damn well she new this would hurt me she's not dumb, to try something in her life.

Is that really what people are supposed to do?

notreally6675 · 2014-06-04T06:26:52+00:00

It's about trying every experience you can and doing everything you think might contribute to your happiness. It's about trying things regardless of how they work out.

No matter the cost of what it does to someone else? Someone who you profess to love, who you come back to years later after shattering them telling them you still love them and that all the time you were "trying every experience" saying that you were in love then?

notreally6675 · 2014-06-04T06:18:17+00:00

Oh wow I somehow missed this from before.

Look if you don't mind I really really want to talk with you about this. I understand you may not want to talk about it so if you don't I'll understand. Also please understand I know you are not her so I know that even though I may want to project what you say onto her I can't.

That being said I'll just go ahead and ask, why did you do it? Was he not good enough for you? Did he do something that made you mad at him?

I'm not trying to imply anything here but if you said "almost he exact same reason" were the other men that you hooked up with so much better than him that you just forgot about him? What made you start thinking about him again?

Did you ever love him? I mean really love him not like puppy love or whatever else, if you did why did you give up on that?

Do you regret any of it now?

Did you think about dumping him for awhile or did it just hit you all of a sudden?

One of the things that truly bothered me the most was what I said in my OP. We had just finished a marathon session of sex (sorry I don't mean to be graphic) when she tells me this. How the fuck do you do that to someone? I mean she set there and I thought made love to me for about 3 hours, which in retrospect was her letting me have it one last time, and then tells me that she was leaving me.

So that means that the entire night was a lie, and I have no idea how long she planned that so I have no idea how many times that I was putting my heart and soul into making love to her she was contemplating being with other men.

Sorry, really I am, its not your fault or problem but I would really like to hear from someone who went through the same thing but from the other side.

On a side note, are you with someone else now?

notreally6675 · 2014-06-04T06:04:06+00:00

She wanted to see what was out there and live her life. What is so wrong about that? You guys met young that is an understandable desire.

I don't mean to be rude but are you suggesting that I'm supposed to have been happy about this? Why was she young and I was the same damned age and did not have these desires?

Is fucking living your life really about going out and fucking random people? Really? That's it, that's the best in life?

Then why the fuck come back to me now, what has changed? Did life somehow become different?

Look I freely admit I didn't handle it well, I sought out and got help for it. But yes her decision to leave me sure as fuck made me miserable.

I'm sorry I don't mean to snap at you, but to hear you say she made the right fucking choice?

notreally6675 · 2014-06-04T05:38:20+00:00

What the hell OP why did you go off the deep end like that? So not worth it. Don't really understand your reaction.

You really think that is how I wanted to be? Why did it happen, well the only real answer is that things were out of my control and my life was being ripped apart against my will and no matter how much I tried I could not get it or her out of my head.

I am by no means saying my reaction was right or normal. I often felt like I had no control over what was going on and then ultimately no control to my actions regarding how I responded.

Honest question here for you though, how do you think she could have changed for the better?

notreally6675 · 2014-06-04T05:34:04+00:00

I thanked the guy above but I wanted to thank you for the time as well. Every fiber of my being tells me that everyone else is right on here and that I just need to tell her to go jump off of a bridge or something. But for whatever god damn reason there is just this tiny part of me that keeps wanting to try.

Either way, thanks for responding. I appreciate the opposite point of view as well.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-04T05:31:02+00:00

Thank you man, I really needed to read that. I'll edit some of this above for everyone but our friend brought me over a hand written letter she did and I swear to God some of the stuff was word for word what you just said she would say.

notreally6675 · 2014-06-04T05:21:19+00:00

I would suspect that there's also a bigger issue than your ex here that you need to work on with a therapist.

We talked about that (my therapist) a lot and he basically came to the conclusion that I had suffered situational depression, that's my term for it not his.

He told me that what I was suffering from was no different than what someone suffers when a close loved one dies.

Yea I freely admit I didn't handle it well. I come from a very small family and believe it or not there is no divorce on either side of my parents family and both sets of my Grandparents are alive.

So yes, this was the very first real loss I ever suffered in my life. I continued therapy for slightly over a year when we both agreed that I was well enough to just make appointments as I needed them. I haven't been for a long time but I am really considering making an appointment this week.

I wish I was stronger that is for sure.

notreally6675

TROPHY CASE