thecurtainfalls
Senior Don Juan
UPDATE: 7/27
Thank you all once again for your replies. As now 3 weeks have passed since she broke up with me, your advice has resonated soundly and helped me manage this difficult time.
I'd like to quickly share some thoughts and updates for anyone who is interested, or who has learned something from the experiences and advice in this thread.
After she broke up with me, she had a trip planned to visit her family in her home state for 2.5 weeks. She broke up with me 10 days before this trip, so as you can imagine, it was a difficult 10 days to get through.
For the first few days, she was out CONSTANTLY with her new friends... coming home either at 2am (not drunk, thankfully) or not til the next day. Intentional or not, I'm extremely glad she gave me some space during this period, as I was extremely upset and likely to revert to AFC tactics in a misguided attempt to save our relationship. However, at the advice of my "real life" friends, as well as the excellent advice on this board, I stayed "no contact" with her. If she was home briefly, I did not talk to her or even make eye contact with her. After about 3-4 days of being out of my hair, she spent an entire weekend at home. During this time period, she started trying to talk to me more. Also during this period, I was just beginning to heal a tiny bit from this traumatic experience, and so was able to look at things from a pretty objective standpoint.
She stayed home the entire weekend, but I went out. Every fiber of my being wanted to stay home, to be around her, to hope that my presence would trigger her emotions into feeling like she'd made a horrible mistake. Logically, I realized this was horse crap of course, because my presence is what made her want to break up in the first place. So I went out a lot, way more than I usually do (or care to do, to be perfectly honest). When I was home, I was polite and brief if she had anything to say to me. I got home in the late afternoon on Sunday, and I noticed that she was trying to talk to me a little more. It was weird. I could hear the hesitance in her voice, almost like she was nervous or shy around me in a way, since I hadn't made an effort to talk to her in a week. She was trying to bring up harmless topics in conversation, just to start a conversation. I was polite, but still very detached and refused to be baited into a full fledged friendly interaction with her.
Things continued this way before she left for her trip. She initiated 100% of our limited interaction before she left. Before she left for the airport, she said bye to me out of nowhere, and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. This left me for about 14 hours taking a U-turn towards AFC-ville. All sorts of thoughts started running through my head, including "it's working! Going no-contact has driven her crazy about me again, she regrets this whole thing, and she's going to come back from this trip with a huge apology".
Of course, that was nonsense. Her trip is almost over now and I have not attempted to contact her once, in any way... and neither has she attempted to contact me. Unfortunately, I was still checking my facebook (and therefore, her status updates) for the first part of her trip... I don't check anymore, because I don't need to see. She never usually posts this much ****, but she's constantly posting about being out at bars, with her friends, etc. It was making me sick. Such a shallow and transparent, childish action.
You see, I really fought through the clouds of emotion with my logical mind in regards to this breakup. I've never been burned so badly before, never felt so taken for granted, and never been so SHOCKED by the callousness with which someone I would have died for 6 months ago can suddenly cut you loose like a ribbon in the wind. But at the same time, I forced myself to logically evaluate our relationship on an objective level. I realized that I was putting WAY more into it than she was; that I had felt slighted for months by her dropping interest level, lack of sex, and seemingly unpredictable and volatile moods. My sense of dependency on this person that I invested my self worth and happiness in was out of control.
Being able to really understand that, coupled with a few amazing opportunities I have in my life right now to actually better myself as a person and expand in new and exciting ways, has really helped me to get over it. I'll be honest -- she still occupies all my dreams at night, and sometimes I find myself swinging wildly between vitriolic resentment and gripping nostalgia for the past. But overall, I have begun to emerge from this mess with a profound sense of realization about myself, who I can become, and what I should and deserve to demand out of life.
If anyone out there is reading this after getting dumped -- you WILL be fine. You don't realize it yet, but she just did you a huge favor.
See you all in the field.
Thank you all once again for your replies. As now 3 weeks have passed since she broke up with me, your advice has resonated soundly and helped me manage this difficult time.
I'd like to quickly share some thoughts and updates for anyone who is interested, or who has learned something from the experiences and advice in this thread.
After she broke up with me, she had a trip planned to visit her family in her home state for 2.5 weeks. She broke up with me 10 days before this trip, so as you can imagine, it was a difficult 10 days to get through.
For the first few days, she was out CONSTANTLY with her new friends... coming home either at 2am (not drunk, thankfully) or not til the next day. Intentional or not, I'm extremely glad she gave me some space during this period, as I was extremely upset and likely to revert to AFC tactics in a misguided attempt to save our relationship. However, at the advice of my "real life" friends, as well as the excellent advice on this board, I stayed "no contact" with her. If she was home briefly, I did not talk to her or even make eye contact with her. After about 3-4 days of being out of my hair, she spent an entire weekend at home. During this time period, she started trying to talk to me more. Also during this period, I was just beginning to heal a tiny bit from this traumatic experience, and so was able to look at things from a pretty objective standpoint.
She stayed home the entire weekend, but I went out. Every fiber of my being wanted to stay home, to be around her, to hope that my presence would trigger her emotions into feeling like she'd made a horrible mistake. Logically, I realized this was horse crap of course, because my presence is what made her want to break up in the first place. So I went out a lot, way more than I usually do (or care to do, to be perfectly honest). When I was home, I was polite and brief if she had anything to say to me. I got home in the late afternoon on Sunday, and I noticed that she was trying to talk to me a little more. It was weird. I could hear the hesitance in her voice, almost like she was nervous or shy around me in a way, since I hadn't made an effort to talk to her in a week. She was trying to bring up harmless topics in conversation, just to start a conversation. I was polite, but still very detached and refused to be baited into a full fledged friendly interaction with her.
Things continued this way before she left for her trip. She initiated 100% of our limited interaction before she left. Before she left for the airport, she said bye to me out of nowhere, and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. This left me for about 14 hours taking a U-turn towards AFC-ville. All sorts of thoughts started running through my head, including "it's working! Going no-contact has driven her crazy about me again, she regrets this whole thing, and she's going to come back from this trip with a huge apology".
Of course, that was nonsense. Her trip is almost over now and I have not attempted to contact her once, in any way... and neither has she attempted to contact me. Unfortunately, I was still checking my facebook (and therefore, her status updates) for the first part of her trip... I don't check anymore, because I don't need to see. She never usually posts this much ****, but she's constantly posting about being out at bars, with her friends, etc. It was making me sick. Such a shallow and transparent, childish action.
You see, I really fought through the clouds of emotion with my logical mind in regards to this breakup. I've never been burned so badly before, never felt so taken for granted, and never been so SHOCKED by the callousness with which someone I would have died for 6 months ago can suddenly cut you loose like a ribbon in the wind. But at the same time, I forced myself to logically evaluate our relationship on an objective level. I realized that I was putting WAY more into it than she was; that I had felt slighted for months by her dropping interest level, lack of sex, and seemingly unpredictable and volatile moods. My sense of dependency on this person that I invested my self worth and happiness in was out of control.
Being able to really understand that, coupled with a few amazing opportunities I have in my life right now to actually better myself as a person and expand in new and exciting ways, has really helped me to get over it. I'll be honest -- she still occupies all my dreams at night, and sometimes I find myself swinging wildly between vitriolic resentment and gripping nostalgia for the past. But overall, I have begun to emerge from this mess with a profound sense of realization about myself, who I can become, and what I should and deserve to demand out of life.
If anyone out there is reading this after getting dumped -- you WILL be fine. You don't realize it yet, but she just did you a huge favor.
See you all in the field.
