ccirider

I agree with your dad. I understand why you feel rejected, but if his exgf were as good as you, or better, she would have rejected him the same way you did.

Peace.

hbb

:rof


Your right, i'm thankful for all of you and your loving support, especially you!! :praising

eat it 2

Hi Heather.

I'm so sorry you are feeling like the one who lost. I have felt that way too. Especially when I saw my ex out in public surrounded by all our friends making out with his beautiful new girlfriend right in front of me. It felt like I had been stabbed in the heart.

I can assure you that you are more than just his ex. You are much more valuable than that. Like all of us here who have so much love to give, we must start with ourselves, as lonely and painful as it can be sometimes. Please be compassionate with yourself and trust that you will come through this a much stronger and more amazing person because of it.

The truth is you don't want to settle for what he has to offer, you've tried that. Was it working for you?

I'm learning how to be still through the pain and not try to fix it. Knowing that it is just a storm passing through. Life will give us more storms, to be sure. But it will also give us the most clear and warmest of days too.

You are a winner and you are not alone. Allow yourself to feel the love that is coming to you form your community here at SB.

Happy Thanksgiving!

hbb

Thank you Eat It 2 and i'm so sorry you are going through this as well. It certainly is hard to deal with then add the holidays on top of it all. Today was fun, i played with my little 1 year old cousin Charlie who made my day

I do believe in the long run this is for the best and i am trying to focus on me but deep down inside i do miss him as i kinda think i gave myself some false hope thinking we might have talked by now.

hbb

Well i got through Thanksgiving okay. Had a nice time with family and friends. But haven't stopped crying since yesterday. I really don't think i'm going to move on and don't know what else i can do. I miss him alot and am so sad that he could be with me one day and then with his exgf the next and just move on like that. I don't even understand at all. I'm so very sad and not sure how to get through Christmas now either

i'm sooo depressed right now

gns

Hi Heather,

I know what you mean. The rejection was/is harder then letting him go.

I want to say after waiting more than a year, my ex was fired and is starting to actually have consequences. It is screwing me over a little, too since we still have a house, but I am glad to know that there is justice and consequences in the world.

The second part of rejection, I think to myself that this lesson of learing to value myself is more important then my ex and important to learn before my next relationship so I don't give someone else the power of my self worth. Think about it, we have decided that our value is based on whether "x" likes us or not!

Kahlil Gibran has this quote "I learned silence from the talkative, kindness from the unkind and tolerence from the intolerent. Yet stangely I am not thankful to these teachers" I would add I learned to value myself from someone who was unable to value me - and i am not grateful to him!

Barbara52

Heather I am so sorry you are still feeling so much pain from this. I wish I could tell you how to get over him.

gabenyc

Hi Heather,

I'm in the post-A breakup storm right now as well, and I'm really sorry you're having to go through all of this. From what everyone's been telling me, time is just really important here. There's a lot of feelings and pain and fallout from what you've been through (sometimes, at least for me, I can't believe that my body can still keep producing more pain), but I guess you and I need to have faith -- based on those who have come before us -- that we'll end up better and stronger people at the end of this. I, at least, also need to believe that the laws of gravity apply to everyone, even A's, and that all of this will even out in the end on some karmic level. But for now, know that I and others sympathize, and that you're not alone.

Gabe

kglast

Hey Heather - sorry you are having a rough time - As I was reading through your post and the replies - two things came to mind -

1) a quote from a song someone sent me recently " Do not put your trust in walls, they will only crush you when they fall..."

and

2) a quote from Alicia Keys in People magazine when asked who she was dating..." I am dating a beautiful woman named Alicia, getting to know her better and taking her everywhere she wants to go..."

For me, they were inspiring. The first reminded me to feel my feelings and try not to build walls - if we bury the feelings, they will surely resurface at some point. The second made me realize I don't want to have to worry about anyone else right now...I am going to take myself wherever I want to go and get to know myself better...then if/when someone else is in my life again, I will have more to offer and be sure I won't lose myself again.

Peace and hugs to you, hbb....((()))

hbb

"I too was left by my exabf. He was 6 months sober when he left me. I thought things were finally turning around and in the end he left. He left me for his exgf that would accept his bad behavior and doesn't care if he drinks. I"m not going to live that life of wanting nothing and never wanting to better himself. You can read my threads, this happened back in July and it still hurts but now i feel like he did ME THE BIGGEST FAVOR. I don't want to be around for possible relapse and God knows what else. I'm aiming much higher these days, my ex is very unhealthy and makes very bad choices and that's not how i want to live."

The above is why i'm so sad and frustrated with myself. That is my own post trying to help someone else. I reread it and thought boy a few weeks ago i was stronger and now this weekend feels like the beginning. I'm pathetic and a lost cause to where everyone is getting pissed at me now, my brother gets mad, my friends tell me to move on. I'm so afraid of never seeing that light now

eat it 2

Hi Heather.

I've been reading more of your posts and find that we have a lot in common. I too was left by my abf. Unfortunately this was the SECOND time. We dated over four years ago for nine months when he broke up with me because he wanted to be "alone", saying he was not ready or capable of intimacy. Basically it was just bad timing. By the way, for the nine months we dated he would constantly tell me our relationship was the best and healthiest he had ever been in. Can you say enabling?

I was sad when it ended but knew that he cared for me and that he was right, he wasn't ready to give me what I truly wanted and deserved. One month later he meets the aforementioned (earlier in this thread) beautiful new girlfriend and decides that I basically no longer exist and that there were things that I did in the relationship that were just "not sexy". Like behaving like a doormat, you mean? I was downright devastated then. How could this person turn his back on me? I gave him chances to prove that he once cared for me, but over and over he would disappoint me, of course. I once shared a bed with this cruel, cold man?

Well I went away to Mexico ALONE for a month to get away and reevaluate my life. I cried loudly and hysterically for the first ten days or so then had an amazing epiphany that ended with me physically embracing myself with the biggest and best hug I've ever received. Yeah, I gave that to myself. Corny, but life affirming. I came home and wrote him off for dead and began a long journey of healing.

I believe that for all of us, It usually does get worse before it gets better. Maybe this is your 'worse'. Hang in there, Heather. There is a light at the end of your tunnel, I promise.

As for my ex, well, lets just say after three years we started to talk again and I allowed him in a little too far while tightly clenching my newly found boundaries. It took about a year to get serious again, but eventually I found myself once again in a similar place. He broke up with me the day after my birthday and I once again am hurt. Only this time add humiliation to that because I knew better and still went back for more.

It is so much easier for me this time. The major difference being my ability to accept my role in all of this and how I could allow it to happen again. But I am proud that I held on to my boundaries throughout. I guess boundaries aren't sexy either. There is just no pleasing an A. It took this time for me to realize that it really doesn't have anything to do with me.

Stay the course and do not look back. You have the opportunity to initiate so much positive change in your life. It's scary as hell, I know. Whatever hope you have for the healing process, grab a hold of it and do not let it go.

Didn't mean to hijack your post, It's meant to give you hope for your own situation and reassure you that you are doing the right thing.

Be good to yourself.

robin

SaTiT

Somedays are better than others.
Obviously I'm suppost to get over my Agf and move on..it's not that i don't
know that. I do.

But I'm not going to pretend, I'm over it , when I'm not...no matter
what anyone say..that would be just another form of denial.

I just need to take care of myself and be more gental to myself
through it process.

Becuase it's not so much that I'll get over my GF..that's a given.
It's a matter of me getting well. if I don't get well, I'll pretty much
be in the same circumstance again with someone else.

Accepting that I'm codependent is not easy. i need to talk to another
codi that's been there and knows...Just like an alki needs to talk to another
recoverying alki.

When someone say i should just get over it...it's relatively the same
as telling an active alki to stop drinking.lol

Stop being so hard on yourself. When you're ready to move forward
you will. i don't know...for me it's a feeling of ..i get sick and tire of
of being sick and tired. So I start working on myself.

I do those corney things of making a list of the things i like.
it was a begining of me learnding about me and practicing
focusing my time and energy on myself instead of my Agf.

i still think of her from time to time. Once or tiwce a day.
Somedays i don't even think about her. She was a part
of my life and the relationship was imporatant to me. Even
after I grieved..I'll still have memories of her..maybe until that
day I die...but that's okay. I would be more concern if i didn't
have traces memories of her. Most normal poeple do..

The differnce is I don't obsess over her anymore today.

i don't know... write about your BF..all of it..everything the good
and the bad. i guess until you get sick and tired of it.

for me...
you can ask a HP or god to come into your life and heart
and heal your broken heart. A broken heart is an open heart.
it leaves the door open for something amazing to step in.
why ?...becuase i'm about as powerless over my codendency as I'm
with any addictions. My track record says so.
becuz i do want to get over it...but i can't...but there's one that
can give me the stregnth and courage to.
I call it , Unconditional love...some people term it as GOD.

hbb

Thank you so much for your experiences and i'm sorry you were going through such a hard time. I greatly appreciate your posts. Last night i was hysterically crying. It's just hard to see his truck there and stuff like that. My gut tells me it wont work out with them and i know know know it doesn't matter but i'm so hurt. It's not even so much him as it is me. I've been working on me and trying so hard to keep the focus on me but finding it impossible to do. That post i put in bold was to you Eat it 2, and i feel like such a hypocrite for trying to help others here when i can't even help myself.

I truly know there is so much worse going on here and around me and trying sooo hard to move on but keep falling into a downward spiral. I"m scared to death of Christmas coming. I put too much pressure on myself, like i'm once again the single loser at family parties and friends dinners. I hate it so much

freya

I don't know if this will be helpful or not, but when I separated from my partner one of the things that was going on with her was compulsive cheating with people who she had met on-line. For me, there really wasn't any question of feeling "not good enough," because anyone with one eye and half a brain couldn't fail to see that there was no way in the world that these "other" women were in the same league as me if one was interested in a healthy long-term relationship.....In all honesty, in each case (There were 3 of them she actually had sex with and others that probably would have ended up that way if she hadn't gotten back into recovery.) the strongest things these women had going for them was the fact that their mental health and their lives were even more f*cked-up than her's was at the time (one of them was an active addict and compulsive liar and 2 suffered from other mental illnesses and were strong contenders for the enabler of the century award) -- which is really saying something right there because she was far-gone into a dry-drunk relapse. So, although the whole situation really hurt me and pissed me off, there just wasn't any question of my being jealous, because I just can't find anyway (emotionally or rationally) to work myself up to being jealous of anyone that pathetic.

Actually, a story that perfectly illustrates how totally messed-up she was at the time, is from a few months before I asked her to leave and we were arguing about something related to out relationship and she goes and says that her friend T said that it was all my fault because I didn't trust her anymore. And I'm like "What? In the 3 years we've known T, she has dated (literally) a neo-nazi, a drug dealer and a Hell's Angel -- and this is the person you're going to for relationship advice?????" I mean, I just had to laugh (literally) because it just put such a perspective on where she was at and what she was really looking for -- and it made it so clear to me that it actually would not be a good thing for someone who was looking for that kind of extremely unhealthy, dysfunctional relationship to be thinking they might be able to get it from me!!!! (I'll say it again, sometimes Rejection is God's protection!)

So, anyways, for me it was pretty clear that the real issue was that I was not sick enough, and since that's not really something I aspire to be, there was nothing to do about it at the time except accept it for what it was, grieve it, and move on.

I think that, for me, two things that were definitely helpful for me in dealing with the situation were 1) I have relatively high self-esteem, and 2) I am almost always able to step back and think about what's going on, so that I can act from a place of reason rather than just letting things trigger me emotionally so that I end up re-acting from a crazy place. I know that many, many people struggle a lot in both those areas, which is why I started by saying that my experience may not be helpful to you, but my guess is that, if you could take a deep breath and try to look at it more calmly and rationally, you would probably begin to see that your dad is right and that, although you may miss him, you really do deserve (and can find yourself) better than the relationship that he is probably having with her.

freya

hbb

WOW, what a powerful post. I'm sorry that happened to you as well. I'm aiming to be that strong one day. To be able to think rationally and clearly. I am looking at like he is very unhealthy and his situation with her is exactly that. She's the same as him yet more unhealthy so why not go for that because then there are no expectations from either one of them where as i want a good life. I want a healthy, functioning husband that wants to the same as me. I don't want to settle. I do deserve a good life. That i do know, just getting there is half the battle!