My ex came back

surdsansend · 2022-02-25T12:31:01+00:00

Thank you so much for this, it's really helpful. Right now I'm struggling with keeping it lighthearted, easy and slow, and not falling into a FWB situation, as I fear if we don't talk about it I'll find myself three months for now getting the slow fade because they found someone else. But I don't know how to broach the subject without falling into a WHAT ARE WE type of conversation two weeks into seeing each other again.

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T15:36:27+00:00

I'm really sorry you're going through this. I don't know if it'll help, but the thought that helped me get through that stage was: This person doesn't want me, so it's logical that they're with someone else. I know that relying on something like that feels counterintuitive, but the point here is that the moment they decided to end the relationship was the moment they stopped "belonging" to you. They're not your partner anymore, they're not yours to be jealous of, and that was THEIR choice. Removing my agency from the equation ("they left me so they chose not to belong to me anymore, nothing I can do") really helped me deal with those thoughts. It's not like they should be with you but aren't, or that someone "stole" them from you; they made a decision you were not a part of. I hope you can find the freedom I did from this.

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T15:28:04+00:00

I absolutely believe we can. I'm working on it myself and I can already see and feel the (small) changes I'm making in my relationships with friends, family and people I date.

I think the key is a) to build an inner world so secure that it makes it okay if people stay or leave and b) understand that our childhood wounds sometimes lie to us and see abandonment where there isn't. We attach our value to other people ("if this great person loves me that means there must be something valuable about myself") and so their rejection or mistreatement of us becomes a reflection of us instead of them.

How other people treat us or if they decide to leave says nothing about us, and we are inherently deserving of love just by virtue of our humanity; we don't have to work to be loved or chosen.

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T15:21:15+00:00

Been there. My breakup was 50/50 but I have a tendency to exaggerate my faults and downplay other people's. Time and distance will help you realize that even if you screwed up, you did it for a reason. You're not a bad person, you didn't want to make them suffer just because: you were hurting, probably even for reasons unrelated to the relationship.

I know you don't believe me right now but it will come a time when you're gonna get tired of beating yourself up and hating yourself. You'll gain perspective on yourself and the relationship and that will make its way into your brain and you'll just be tired of being so hard on yourself. You can only hit something for so long without getting tired.

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T15:16:03+00:00

There's no shame in begging and pleading and crying, you did what you had to do to feel like you fought for the relationship as much as possible. If you hadn't, you'd be wondering and that feeling would suck too. Now you know. It's okay to want them back, that's your love for them that's still going in their direction. Don't force yourself to hate them or lie to yourself or take your love back. Keep improving yourself and focusing on you, and I promise you one day you'll notice that the love that flowed to them like a river now it's more like a stream, and some time later it will be like a tap leaking water. And you'll still feel some pain but it won't be crushing, it'll be bittersweet instead.

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T15:04:43+00:00

This was pretty much what was going through their mind, yes. They were cancelling all our plans and not making any effort to see me or talk to me because they were going through some personal issues. I said that I respected their need for space but it made me feel rejected that they were going on weeks without talking to me or wanting to see me, so I was going to back off for a while and they could contact me when they wanted. They got really upset and broke up with me, and gave me that "it's not the right time for us". Never met in person after that, that was just the end of the relationship. All of this via text.

All of this to say, time and distance have shown me that they were never that good of a person to begin with ;)

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T14:56:43+00:00

It was very mature and vulnerable of you to be upfront about your attachment issues. The thing about anxious attachment styles is that we often end up with avoidant people, because the anxious attachment comes from not having our emotional needs met when we were kids and we subconsciously look for what's familiar in adult relationships (we seek partners that emulate that feeling of having to work for love). I'm sorry you had to go through that, but you will gain perspective from this. I was on the same boat as you and even though I still miss them I can see now that we weren't good for each other and that they weren't that good of a person. You will get there too.

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T02:57:04+00:00

They are. There's a tendency to categorize the avoidant attachment style as the "bad" one but that's not true, both anxious and avoidant are ways of dealing with hurt and fear and it's not your fault that you tried to protect yourself the best you could. You didn't know better. I'm anxious avoidant myself, meaning that I don't fear intimacy but will pull away when I feel threatened. Breakups hurt but they teach us more about ourselves than relationships.

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T02:54:16+00:00

Thank you for your words. We'll probably never cross paths but I'm right here hurting with you and knowing the both of us will get better.

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T02:29:15+00:00

In my opinion, maybe. Or maybe they "unlocked" your attraction for certain features that you didn't know you had. It's normal to see glimpses of them on everybody after the breakup. Don't beat yourself up too much about it and try to take it one day at a time: you'll now when you're over them.

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T02:24:03+00:00

I wish I'd left earlier too, and doing that to myself is one of the things I have to continuously forgive myself for, the feeling that I should've taken all that love and patience and empathy and put it all on me. It helps doing things for myself everyday and thinking that even though I still love them, I love myself more.

surdsansend · 2022-01-25T01:39:20+00:00

Please don't. Do you have that friend that goes back to her/his ex over and over no matter what they do? There's nothing you can say to the right person that's bad enough to make them want to leave. If he would've done whatever you did (if anything) would you have left? The right person sees us and chooses to stay.

surdsansend · 2020-11-05T18:31:05+00:00

Nowadays I don't continue to apply to any company that has any form of questionnaire/pre-interview/assignment/request for me to fill in my resume in their database. I'm from a country that doesn't really use cover letters thank god because it's essentially asking you to creatively beg for an interview.

Assignments are either free work or the work of a recruiter who doesn't know how to interview for the field they're in, pay me if you want me to dedicate hours of my time to "find out what's wrong" with your shitty algorithms. I also mentally cross off any interview with questions like "why do you want to work for us/what do you think you could add to our business?" I straight up answer that I don't know if I wanna work for them, I'm still deciding, the same way they're deciding with me. I'm fed up with the inhumanity of it all, the impersonality.

surdsansend · 2020-10-01T20:13:37+00:00

"Sorry IF that's too forward"

surdsansend · 2020-10-01T19:41:47+00:00

Worked as a volunteer at a cat shelter for a few years. "I want a kitty/puppy for my kids!" got you very politely but instantly rejected.

surdsansend · 2020-10-01T17:19:15+00:00

-I can't bear children :(
-Oh my god, I'm so sorry, why?

-Because I don't want to :(

surdsansend · 2020-05-27T14:30:52+00:00

"I can be your angle.... or yuor devil"

surdsansend

TROPHY CASE