A
female
age
26-29,
anonymous
writes:3 years ago, when I was 15, I split up with my boyfriend of 15 months, S. It hit me really hard. I stopped eating, lost 28lbs, stopped talking and just stopped being me afterwards for a long time (to the point where my mom made me go to the doctor and I got referred for therapy)About 10 months later I started seeing this guy, J. It was an easy relationship to fall into because we had a lot in common, but in the end he just made me miserable because he was so pessimistic, and he wasn't S. We split 6 months ago after 2 years together. I thought I was over S, but I saw him yesterday and clearly I'm not. I feel like a scared little girl when he's near, and I have to run away or risk saying something. He's moved on and is moving in with his girlfriend soon, but I just don't know what to do. I can't see myself ever moving on from him. What should I do to forget about him?
View related questions:
move on, split up Reply to this Question
Share |
Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
reader, anonymous, writes (10 June 2014): I also loved completely and was badly hurt. All I can say is get help and forgive him and his father as that is key to moving on. You need to accept that this was not meant to be. Don't make this guy out into something he is not. You seem to blame the dad for causing the split, but that is not entirely correct as your EX is a man and could have grown a pair of balls to fight for the relationship. If he loved you that is what he would have done and not moved onto the next woman his father put in front of him. Do not make the ex into some fantasy and that its not his fault. You are creating a false sense of comfort and will not heal. Grieve however long it takes and then start living and enjoying life, fake it if you have to and eventually it becomes a reality. But do not lose hope and do not go back in life. Live knowing that you loved and it was special but its over. Move on, do not let this destroy your life. Remember the best revenge in life is start living be happy, study , better yourself, do not look back. I promise the day will come and you will say the best thing was you broke as today you are a better person.
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (9 June 2014): OP again
Me and S ended because his Dad didn't like me or my family. He consistently pointed out more "suitable" girlfriends to S, and eventually refused to let us see each other outside of the youth group we met at (where he was a leader so could keep us separate). Our break up left me feeling like we should have been together and would still be if it wasn't for his dad.
...............................
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (9 June 2014): You don't mention how or why your relationship with S ended. But it sounds as if it might have left you quite traumatised?The picture that I get, from what you say, is that your parents are a mixture of loving and kind to you but are also - sorry to say - abusive towards you; your Mum gets angry as well as caring for you, so that's a mixed message and kinda positions her, to some extent, as 'unreliable' as an emotional resource for you to know that you can turn to. Similarly, your Dad seems to care for you but mixed in with this have been past experiences of his outright physical abuse of you. Again, this gives you a mixed message of him being ultimately unreliable and source of strength as a father figure. If your Dad was suffering from anxiety and depression for a period, this also likely put a massive strain on your Mum because he would become very dependent on her to gather strength and support from. You don't say whether your sister is older or younger than you, but if she is incredibly emotionally demanding then this further depletes any emotional support and sense of reliability, from your parents to you - emotional nurturing, must have been VERY thin on the ground and possibly actual nurturing - ie. doing nice things for you and as a family on a regular basis, is likely to have been thin on the ground too.And as well as this you were being bullied at school! No wonder, when S came into your life, he became an emotional resource for you - he would have been in the role of compensating for the lack of emotional support from both parents and also a comfort - but not a solution to - the abuse that you were on the receiving end of. I am not surprised you stopped eating when it ended with him. Eating is one source of pleasure and self-nurturing and it sounds very much as though you felt, inwardly, that you felt worthless and did not deserve any form of comfort because you had 'failed' to keep this vital source of support . The rejection that you must have felt from him probably hit harder because he sounds like a nice guy, not easy to lose.You say you've been to counselling and I know what this can be like - it can help, but counsellors don't always 'cut to the chase'. They tend to let you 'present' problems in your own way and then work them through with you. And it can really help. But sometimes you can come out with an intellectual idea of what's happened to you and still have leftover emotions. Conversely, you can sometimes come out of counselling with not much sense at all of the 'bigger picture' of what happened and so you are left with emotions still a bit all over the place because you feel lost and don't quite 'get' what took place. One thing that I've found with counselling is that unless you yourself raise something as a problem then the counsellor usually won't approach it first. So a lot relies on your description of events and quite often if you are in a real mess, your description won't necessarily cover everything.From an outside perspective the picture seems very clear, and obviously upsetting. Young girl with not much family support and some abuse thrown in, sister taking up any leftover parental attention, bullied at school. Rather than having supportive ways to work this all through, you've turned, in your heart, to S, who has been a source of enormous comfort during that time, but is obviously not qualified to counsel someone who is in an abusive situation.Parenting is hard - I am a parent and I have a great relationship with my daughter, but we went through a very tricky patch recently because, after she left home, she started to question her upbringing. Her step dad was a binge drinker and never abusive to her, but she witnessed me being abused and the attention that I gave to him and his problems took time and support away from her. It wasn't until much later that she questioned it and we could work it through. One thing that helped me to see the bigget pattern was understanding Co-dependency and how it works between couples and how it tends to make children co-dependent as well.If your Dad has anxiety then that is a BIG sign that he may be co-dependent on your Mum for support and she will have become co-dependent on him. When this happens, the Mother is not really in a healthy position to properly nurture her child. I've no doubt at all that she really loves you, but believe me, I would lay down my life for my daughter but it's honestly a different thing entirely to get parenting exactly right. It's really hard to be an excellent parent even when you want to be. It sounds to me as if your Mum's situation is similar - she loves you but in giving attention to your Dad at a critical time in your life, and for not stepping in properly when he was abusing you physically, she's let you down.The result will be that you have not learned, yet, how to become completely independent as an adult - she's missed part of the emotional nurturing that you needed and you've tried to get it from S. It doesn't matter that he was male, sometimes we just look to whoever can supply care to us in the absence of what we need from a Mum. In turn, you've become co-dependent on him and still not learned, through no fault of your own, how to nurture yourself and to fully grow up. The sense of loss that you still feel is probably one of abandonment - emotional abandonment is what co-dependents feel a lot, and what they fear most. You can overcome it and it helps to read up about it. If you look on Amazon there will be books about overcoming co-dependency. It really helps if you have a counsellor to support you - and it will help a lot if you acknowledge that this could be your problem, because then they are able to support something that you are leading, which is the way that they work.Honestly you can and will get over this. I know it sounds flippant of me to say, but it is a VERY common condition, yet not many people know all that much about it. It's worth reading up about it to check if you think it may apply to your parents and to you. And in any case, it will encourage you to nurture and care for your needs, beginning by understanding what 'needs' actually are.
...............................
A
female
reader, Honeypie  + ♥, writes (9 June 2014):
 He was your first love, your (for now) ideal guy. AT 15 everything feels "epic" in a sense that you think you will never feel this again.
It didn't work out between you for whatever reasons. Again at 15 not everything MAKES sense.
At some point in time you will realize that YOU ARE the only one holding you back from moving on. Maybe because you don't WANT to move on. YOU want what you had, even though rationally, you know you can't get a do-over.
Like Auntie Oldbag said, try and stop looking back, look forward. Spend time with people that makes you happy, be it friends or family (or both). Find things to be passionate about. ALLOW yourself to grow.
There isn't JUST one person put there for you. You will find love again. Just don't rely on another person to be your EVERYTHING, that isn't fair.
I do question as well what kind of therapy you were in. Maybe you aren't "done" with therapy. Maybe you aren't using the tools you got.
...............................
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (9 June 2014): OP here..Me and my mom have a good relationship, but she can get stressed and angry. We can be antagonistic with each other.. My Dad is a good Dad, but at that point in time he was depressed and suffering from anxiety (which I also suffer from) and used to hit me/throw stuff at me (he once threw a pair of uggs at me so hard I was bruised, and used to shake me and push me when I didn't do what he asked)I was also getting bullied at school at that time, and I still have flashbacks. The therapy was counselling to help with that and the eating disorder. I do love my parents, but they have so much going on they can be really short and don't have time for me because I have an incredibly emotionally demanding sister.Throughout the bullying and the stuff with my Dad, S was an emotional crutch. I was lost without him. Even though things are better now, I still feel lost.Have tried to give some more information, sorry it is so jumbled.
...............................
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (9 June 2014): I had a totally different story with my first love. I was 16, we had sex, and then three months later split. He came to my house for some reason for a chat almost a year later. I just could not believe I ever even liked him. But in your story you were deeply in love and may be it will never go away. It's ok, though , we still learn how to live with it. It's actually not that difficult. Few years ago I had a relationship that I don't thinki will ever get over . He was everything I needed: handsome, intelligent, decent guy. Sex was amazing. There was nothing that I didn't like about him. The only thing was he never wanted children. I couldn't stay with a man who didnt want to have children with me, at least 1. So, I met my husband with whom I had my daughter. My life is wonderfull, though as how you said, my husband is not him. I still think of him, still fantasize about him, but I know there is no going back. I saw him couple months ago, and my heart started beating fast. I never even came up to him, what's the point? You wil move on, may be therapy will help.
...............................
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (9 June 2014): What kind of therapy were you referred for?I think if you've had therapy then any advice we can try to give here might come across as superficial and not very helpful. If you let us know more about that then maybe we can add something - how did you feel after the therapy, do you think it helped you? Sometimes people need a 'top-up'.Was it counselling or some other form of therapy?Sometimes when we are still growing up something can affect us very, very deeply and we can't get over it. Whether it's a split with a boyfriend, moving home, a new school, falling out with a best friend, death of someone close, being bullied. There are so many things that can affect us at this time because adult boundaries and ways of coping are not yet fully in place. We are much more vulnerable at this time of adolescence and early adulthood. Some people believe we are just as vulnerable as we are when we are young children, but in a different way, because we are still forming as 'complete' human beings.The thing that usually makes a huge difference to how we cope with the negative event is often not the event itself, but our coping mechanisms and, very importantly, the context of home life and the support that we have. If home life is strained and stressed for other reasons, or if we don't have such a great relationship with our parents and they are not emotionally supportive, then we get "stuck", sometimes for a little while, sometimes years, sometimes a lifetime. We can be otherwise functional, but part of us gets 'stuck" emotionally at whatever age it was that the event happened and it's like this because we still need to form the proper coping mechanisms to heal and get over it.It seems like you need to learn this stage and I do wonder if you've got a nice and comforting relationship with your Mum? Or is she cold with you? Is there anything else going on in your home life or school life that would be making it difficult for you to get over this split? Please give us a bit more information and we can try to help.
...............................
A
female
reader, oldbag +, writes (9 June 2014):
 At your age you should be carefree. Its always hard to get past a first love, but that's what he was. Your FIRST love.
Focus on you and your life, your job,friends and family. Try a new look, new clothes,hair and a fresh attitude.
Things didn't work out for a reason so it's pointless thinking you can go back. One day you will meet somebody and fall in love again,get married the whole thing.
In the meantime look forward, not back. Date but don't have a relationship, there's nothing wrong with being single.
...............................
|
