BaxterBurg

Yeah thats true. Its for the best that I NC. And I kind of figured that she just didnt want to keep saying no to me, it probably worsened her guilt especially since I was good to her. Thanks for all your help Selena!! Seriously appreciate it. Happy new year! And i'll update here if anything changes in the future.

hey, so i said "I dont mean to annyoy you about the relationship. I understand you don't have the answers Im looking for, and ill leave it at that. have a happy holiday and happy new year"

hmm I understand what you're saying; and can understand from her perspective as well. With the movie, I told her it was just a no strings attatched friend thing, and I joked about it a little. We both laughed. I understand how that may be uncomfortable for her, but it was very lighthearted and the least she could have said was "no, i dont think im comfortable with that". I would have understood. I was veyr passive during the call and i said that i respect her perpective. All good there. I think she is getting frustrated that I can't seem to understand why she does things, or what she says. I will take your advise and just NC. I remembered I can't block her, but i might just private the posts and keep posting my usual stuff. Also, one more thing to note, she never asked me for space. She said us being friends is fine, hence why I asked her to watch the movie still. I thought us just hanging out while she's going through her grief would be fun for us, and something that would take her mind off everything. Should i post maybe something on my blog just saying I understand or something? Or just leave it at this point? Thanks again Selena, your insights are pefect. And thanks for your understanding of my perpective too.

Yeah you're 100% right, i ended up calling her to ask her when they would be here, and then I asked her about the meeting. She said I was putting her in an "uncomfortable position" and that she already explained everything that needs to be explained.. I said no, there's still uncertainty about everything, and i just wanted closure. She got very annoyed. I get what you're saying that she has told me all that she knows, but thats why I set it in a month or two which we already agreed to do this meetup after our last talk. She said theres no need for an in-person meeting because there's no rush and I canjust message her or call her whenever. We will also just see eachother in school (which, keep in mind, is like 7 months from now, if fall term is even in person). I just said okay. She doesn't even seem interested in having a relationship with me in the future, why does she keep it open? My mom was her longest defender, and liked her a lot, but even she got pissed with how shes dealing with this. To me it just seems immature. This wouldn't have happened if she just answered my requests, instead of ignoring it. After seeing how you two are dealing with your situation, I don't think this is right. Doesn't seem like she wants to confront this situation, and is just pulling me along. And like you said, I can't trust someone like this through the tough times. If shes so mad with me, why can't she just say that we have no future? Youre right though, I should have just left it as is. But I don't agree at all with how shes dealing with this, neither does anyone else. It would have been 3-4 months by the date I had asked, but i get what youre saying. This call probably ruined it though, or at least made her angry for now. And in my blog posts i said that its just up to her to mke the relationship work if she wants to, and that I wasn't expecting the relationship to work out because from waht I have read they never do; so i don't think its that. I also said that we need time away so that she can heal. But I might just block her from my blog or something, I doubt shes even going to be viewing it after this. Thanks for your reply Selena, I should have listened to Kayc from the start and just did NC. Oh well, live and learn.

update: ok, so she totally ignored my request to meet up. All she said was that she needs the textbook sooner, and that her brother will be in the area so he can pick them up right now. No acknoledgement of my request. Ouch. First the movie, now this. I think she is immature and unable tp confront this situation. Can't beleive I did so much for her and she can't even give me a simple response to my requests, suprised she even accepted a replacement sweater at this point.

Thanks so much for all your guy's help. I appreciate it greatly. Really.

To be honest, I might even show her this post. I wonder how she would react. It seems like she does care about trying to figure it out, and this might be an interesting way for her to think about it. I guess I don't really have anything to lose. This was vey well written, and I appreciate the time you put into helping us.

Hello Selena, Thank you so much for taking the time to read/reply. Thi is something I think about all the time, and you are right. I did everything I could to slavage the relationship, and it seemed like she just didn't have the energy or want to save it. I feel as though if we did get back together, she woud need to do a lot on her end for it to work. I should say that I have a blog which she reads frequently. I left two blog posts with tons of information regarding grief and break ups, as well as personal grief resources from Marty. I also showed her tons of screenshots from this forum, and she looked at around 20 posts. It seems that she is trying to understand her feelings more, and I think if it did happen again, it would be different. However, it would always be in the back of my mind. I even told her this in my blog posts, I said that if she wants this to work she would have to prove to me that I can trust her again. This is a really good point. I bascially already experienced it for a month without her telling me why we had distance. It was worse than what I'm feeling now; never have I felt so lonely in my entire life. I was extremely unhappy, and i kept it in for an entire month; I was actually relevied originally when we broke up. I have to keep this in mind. You're right. This is true, and something I have recognized. Its kind of what I meant by "feeling" like there's barriers to reconiciling. We would both know thatwe could never go back to how it was, esecially since she is still greiving. Yeah this is true. To be honest, me and my mom have been talking a lot, and just from my own experience with her, she seems to be easily emotionally overloaded. I think it will take a significant amount of time before she is able to be in a relationship again. I hope my posts are helping her ralize this sooner. To me, she does just seem like a young woman who is getting her first dose of the adult world. She never had to deal with anything really before, and within a month all this s*** was just sprung on her. She seemed very broken by it, and I can't date someone who is broken. You're right. You're right again. I will do my best to focus on my own progression. I might have to cut contact with her for a while though, which means losing my friend group too. I feel like a friendship is too much, and even just seeing her name in class hurt me for some reason. I do think in time she will realize that thiswas not the right course of action. I won't wait for it though, if someone else comes along I have course won't hesitate to make it work with them. I still want to keep the door open for her though, I might just tell her that I need some time alone, but my the door for reconciiaion is open for her when shes ready; i just cant promise ill be there when she is. Ill update here what her response is to our dicussion meet up. I have a feeling she will be uncomfortable with it, as she was with my movie propisition. I hope she is able to use the resources I gave her. I'll keep this in mind. I know all too well that you can't force someone to love you, its how i felt that one month. On my blog I bascially told her that ive done everything I could at this point, and its up to her to make things work if she still wants the relationship. This is a great post Selena, and very well written. It for sure helps.

Hi Salena, you both seem to be handeling it well, or at least a lot better tha many on this forum. Ive been thinking about your situation and your words here for some time, and its made me think. Do you think this wouldbe the case in my situation too? We're both young and she never lost anyone before on top of lots of other stress (its bad). She said she lost feelings for me after her family member declined in health, and broke things off affter weeks of coldnes towards me. She said she felt very conflicted about the deicsion but didnt feel right about stringing me along. Do you think if she really loved me she would have tried to hold onto me through this, no matter what? Or did she do everything right?

just a little update: I have to return the gift i got my ex since its too small, and i have to bring back some textbooks she lent me. Asked her if we couldd have our relationship discussion on the same day. this will be a month from now. I'll let you now what she says. @kayc any thoughts on how proceed depending n her reaction? She already blew me off for the movie; sometimes it seems like she just wants to get rid of me, but at the same time she left things open like this, and keeps reading my personal blog.

you could evne throw in "looking forward to many more". Just be careful though cody, its these things that will keep you from moving on. I think the captions you gave were good, but there's just something I came up with

Ending the year with a photograph. Hope you enjoy our cover, and thank you to the special people in my life who left me with so many great memories., and experiences.

ah okay thats good, no need to block then. And that makes sense, she might take it wrong. But if it saves you, then it might be worth it. And I don't think you made a mistake Cody. Just from reading you stuff, I don't think the relationship was going to work, regardless of how you acted. Don't be hard on yourself, and yes, keep that mindset. I told me ex that Im going to do my best to move on until the day we decide to discuss the relationship. I'm not sure if this will change anything, I rly doubt it will. And just for your own health its probably the best option. I'm more likely prolonging my pain by keeping these things open; one frined told me from the day she broke it off that I should just block her on everything and cut contact completelty. My whole plan is to cut contact from new years, keep posting on my blog, and wait for the day, whenever that may be. For all I know, that day may never even come; all depends on her greiving process and feelings. In short, don't beat yourself up. I don't think anything would have changed.

Yeah I've been doing a lot of reading and wtaching videos on how to get over it. I think the best thing to do is cut contact and just focus on your hobbies etc. also writing helps. for sure. Me and her were talking about moving out together right before all this went down. We also discussed having a family and all that. I was forming my entire future around us being together, and it fueled everything I did. We had plans to travel, and I finally had someone to do all these things with. We're haunted by futures that never happened. I'm doing my best to imagne the future without her in it; its tough and I'm scared that im going to return to my old miserable self. I'm despreatly holding onto my underlying happiness right now. Try to envision a future of finding someone just as good or better than her, it helps me. Since they broke things off during ths means that they weren't great for us anyway. this is for sure true, but what I said was actually my fault. sounds good dude, i do this when writing. Always great to have an art to express yourself through. im 20, so yeah we're pretty much the same age group.There's plenty of time for us to meet the right people.

I agree. its hard man, but try to think of a future without her as much as you can. I get what youre going through right now--today it just hit me how much i miss her. time apart is making me realize that i didnt just miss the feelings of the relationship, but just her being there. I miss her voice so much. i miss our talks, and our cuddleing, and i feel like i would do anything just to experience those right now. But its out of my hands, and there's no point trying to change things that are out of our control. Time goes on. You can be happy without her. Try not to think of the memories, it will only hurt you; those moments are out of our grasp, and they arnt coming back. I'm sorry. Even if there was hope in the future, theres no use in torturing yourself now. I won't lie, I typed this with tears in my eyes, but we'll get through it. try blocking her on instagram, or whatever social media you use. i find that everytime i see her face it just sets me back and feels like a punch in the gut. like we talked about, it makes us question why she does things. My ex posted another story on snapchat--3 in the past 2 weeks. She posted 0 in our relationship, and she only went on there for me. It can drive you crazy; best to just cut everything if you can, or use the mute function. Even right now, i know theres probably a message waiting or me on whatsapp from her, but I cant bring myself to checking. I just know that im going to feel terrible afterward. She already hasnt responded for like 12 hrs the last time i checked. Its for the best you get social media out if you feelready to do so. You could evne just let her know befrehand so you dont feel bad about doing it.

You're right Kayc, and that is the bst way to look at it. You did dodge a bullet, and you're right that it is always best to find out sooner rther than later that someone won't be as commited as yourself to the relationship. A relationship should be a team, two people who fight through everything as one. And I'm not sure if I could ever go back to being friends. I understand in your situation now why you felt it was alright; but her being my first love I'm not sure if that would ever be okay with me. Maybe I only say that now because I'm not over her. And you're right again that we need to focus on ourselves, this is now what I've been focusing on. No point in investing time and energy into someone who wants to deal with it alone. Its up to them to fix themseelves. yes, I agree. How my ex dealt with this, it seemed like she was in her own world. And I don't think thats right. While I've never experienced the grief/stress she has, just knowing how much I loved and cared for her I don't think I could do to her what she did to me. and there is absolutly no excuse for how your ex dealt with your situation. That was awful. If you love someone they should always be on your mind, and in your considertions. I worried bout my ex all day, and it felt awful that I couldn't physially be there to console her. I would have done anything to not see her hurting anymore; and when she would cry it made me tear up too. Anything that hurt her hurt me too.

Thanks for sharing your methods, and I think its a good way to go about it. I am also experinecing the replaying memories; particularilty the dissapointing ones. I also keep replaying memories of random things in my past, and they all make me hurt for no particular reason. I originally looked at the situation this way, but the more I think about what we didn't get to do yet, and the lost futures, I just get this deep pain in my stomach like we missed out on a lot. Even if things weren't meant to be, we were robbed of many of those happy moments even just because of covid. I was her first adult relationship, and therefore first serious one. She always looked towards her parents as model of what she wants, and they agree on everything supposidly. she told me this, and She didn't like when I would disagree with her on ideas, even though we agreed on 90% of things, incuding the same vision of what we wanted in the future. This is where she brought up doubts on the relationship. Maybe it was the grief pushing her to do this, but I was totally taken aback by how much she cared about something so insignificant. We had been talking about these things since our very first date, and when we were even just friends. yeah its sad for sure, and just seems unfair for everyone. But I guess thats life sometimes. I think this is what may have happened on my end to. She once asked for space so I stopped messaging her for two days. I didn't hear back from her until i gave her something from class. She said that she didnt mean i couldnt message her, its just that she needed time to respond. I wouldn't be too hrd on yourself, it is hard to understand, nd its possible they even hd trouble communicaing it to you. For instance my ex doesn't even seem to know her own feelings; she told me that I probably understand them better than she does. Its part of the reason why i keep posting on my blog resources so maybe she can figure it out. I don't think I would go that far man. I tend to think, as others have mentioned, that the greiving may have just magnified some of these problems and pushed them over the edge, when nromally it would have been just small. As long as you reconciled the issue I don't think it was that significant. I also did something I regret during this and miss communicated somehing pretty bad. What I said came off as insulting and I really didnt mean it to. We talked about it the next day and explained what I meant, but she still felt the need to get angry and kind of yell. I asked if it was still going to bother her, she said no, but its always in the back of my mind. I don't know why i said something so stupid. thats good, and don't be hard on yourself. man! the same exact same thing happened here. During our political disucssion--maybe she would call it an argument, but I wouldn't--she got very emotional and upset because i disagreed with her. This is when she told me maybe she would have to consider if these dfferences would be feesible in the long run. She said herself she reacted this way because of her situation, so I'm sure its no different on your end. Of course, its normal to feel sad. My body stlll tells me when its 9pm because a sudden sadness/lonliness/emptiness comes over me. Its when we would talk over the phone every night. We did this I think for 3 months straight, every single day. That sounds great Cody, Good luck! A lot of things to look forward to. Public speaking is a very good thing to practice, can't go wrong there; and the red cross volunteering sounds like it will be a very rewarding experience to have. A buisness will be a lot of work, but the indepdence you gain is more than worth it. For me I've been just talking to family and friends all day since I've accepted the end, but I have a very ambitious goal of reading most of the western canon, as well as improving my writing. And I have some university research goals that i need to attend to. Other than that I'm just going to get some hours at work, and workout harder than usual. Maybe pick up my instrument again, or explore some of the research topics I have been neglecting.

Yup, exactly. I'm trying my best to just believe its over, but its hard. I feel better having no obligation to talk to her, but I feel like I do because of the holidays/friend group. I want to leave this in 2020 like you. How do you convince yourself to move on? Part of me won't let go. I get what you mean, most people are just telling me this at this point. They tell me to just stop communication, and I think we both need this just to reset everything. I think this is best for you too. And just remember there's someone out there who deserves your commitment, and will offer you the same in return. The more time away from her, the more I realize she always had problems with me, and held me to this crazy standard. After she got out of her sh**** relationship and met me, she said she never knew what she wanted until she met me. She now wanted to look for a serious adult relationship, and she wanted perfection--which is a copy of her in her eyes. She always found problems with me disagreeing with her on things, and I think this happened right as grief struck, and she just let me go. She even got a bit upset when I would chllenege her on things. As i write this, i think i figured out what really went wrong. If this is the case, then this is her problem even more sothan I thought. Have you relefected on your own relationship and noticed any chinks in it? I wouldn't worry about it man, I think its best you both take a break from each other. You didn't do anything wrong, and she should understand how painful this is for you. I've been getting pretty anxious too over these thoughts but as long as you do whats best for you,it was the right thing to do. I don't think anything would have changed for either of us no matter what. Don't let it bother you if it still does. Yeah absolutely not. But in my case she made it clear that she lost feelings for me, I just wish she would say "its over for good" not "maybe the feelings will come back... I don't know if its personal or because of the grief... I don't know if we have a future... there's no reason I wouldn't want to be with you". It would be much easier for both of us if this were the case. I think this is most likely the case. There's no one there to tell her she's cute anymore. Its strange though because there wasn't anyone on snap except me pretty much. And she didn't post it on Instagram. Maybe she likes the validation of seeing me open it, I don't know. Bread crumbs. I messaged her today that I ordered her a new sized up sweater. She hasn't replied for 5 hrs, makes me feel awful. For some reason I feel that another awful thing is going on in her family, I'm not sure why. I guess I won't know. How are you holding up Cody? Any new developments/projects in your life?

Sorry to hear that Kayc; its very sad that he was never straight up with you, that's not fair. Its for sure possible that thats the reason why. Maybe there's a lot of guilt associated with it. But of course that's no excuse. I'm suprised you wre able to stay friends for so long. If things don't work out with my ex, I don't think I could ever return to being friends with her. She hurt me way too much, and it would always remind me of that awful month that she pulled away and kept doubting the relationship. She once questioned the relationship and I didnt even know if we were still a couple the next day. She apologized and said she didn't realize what she did; but looking back, this was no way to treat someone who was going out of there way to support them.

I tend to beleive this too, but i'm not sure. I hope this is the case for both of us. I guess I will find out at our meeting in a month or two. She said herself she has no reason to not want to be with me; but again, who knows if its true or if theyre just sparing feelings. a situation like this can really just drive you crazy if you let it. I hope we arn't giving our ex's too much credit with how good they really are. Some people I talk to seem to think my ex was awful for how she dealt with everything; and others are more understanding but still put off by some of the things she said to me. It seems with every action theres stwo ways you could interpret it. Her not gtting back to me on the movie for example seems like she wants nothing to do with me anymore; or its because shes so consumed by her grief still that it slipped her mind etc. Genuinly feels like a nightmare.

I posted a blog post for her to look at basically saying that I've done all I can at this point and that its up to her to reconcile things. It might come off a bit harsh, but it is what it is. I don't think I have anything to lose at this point.

Sounds good. For sure, let me know if anything happens.

maaaan thats true, this is so tough. Oh well, i'm not going to put in an energy at least; and i dont think she even cares anymore. We will be in class together (online) for the rest of the school year, its not like either of us will meet anyone. Maybe within this time she will return ot her old self; but if she moved on im out for good, im not a backup plan. you made the right decision, as sad as that is. im following suit. If its meant to be it will be. very true. If only we knew what they were thinking; but then again I dont even think they know what they are thinking, or what they want right now. I support your decision. You deserve to be loved, and i know how anxiety inducing it is to be constantly looking at your phone, or hoping for that reply. Add on reading into texts and trying to figure out how they feel through them--its awful and no way to live. take care

Thank you Kayc, I appreciate that a lot. Hope you were able to enjoy your holiday season.

yeah, its getting harder and harder to have any hope. I feel as though I'm moving on already; 75% of me just feels done. This is EXACTLY how i feel. my ex also responded with something very similiar, and with lots of explenation marks. I guess we may never know. I confronted my ex about the iritation it seemed she had with me: she said she wasn't, but part of me doesn't beleive her. I have no clue what goes on in her mind, its just too confusing to even think about. She never got back to me about the movie, which is what I thought would happen. Can't be angry about it though. anyway, hope you and Kayc's holiday season was okay. Take care of yourself.