NC support

@mike2014, i agree it must be done face to face. i think i will definitely do this with my ex at some point but i am nowhere near ready yet. I’m happy youre thinking of doing it soon! its been a long time for you and I’m sure youre just ready for answers to to lay it to rest if its a lost cause. i think doing it in february is a good idea when youre ready. I’m rooting for you!!

And then before I left she had the nerve to say to me you are kind of different and weird. I just said to my self, nope you are just a slapper. I may have laughed out loud a bit after thinking that.

Thanks Atea,

It’s good you have self respect. Their are a few guys out their who respect woman and will wait for a girl to be ready. When I met my ex the first 5 or 6 weeks we would just hang out and got to know each other. I knew she was a good girl and never pushed anything. I remember it was January of that year and we started hanging out end of November and she said to me are we exclusive now and can we date. I said most definitely I would like that. We would kiss and cuddle and stuff but nothing more than that. We didn’t start to be pysical until probably a few more weeks after that. It was actually more attractive to me that she waited till she was ready and I didn’t push it. She was just like no one else I ever met. I still don’t know how I allowed myself to lose that feeling. I know I just wasn’t right at the end.

Thanks for pulling for me, I,appreciate it. I’m pulling for you too. Your ex seems like a genuine guy and a nice guy. I’m a person who doesn’t put a lot of faith into others and really don’t trust alot of people. The fact you guys started to date so young and made it that long through college really means something. Most couples don’t make it that long especially with the temptations in college. I hope he comes to his senses before it’s too late, because you are definitely a catch. I beleive my ex was the one and I knew that from the first time I saw her. I think your body just lets you know stuff like that. I never even talked to this girl before I first saw her but had butterflies and I always told her this… When I first saw her I told my friend sitting next to me in class that I was going to date that girl. That is a true story! It took me a long time to build up the courage and if it wasn’t for my roommate at my house that had a picture with her ( both were dancers) in the car and set us up I might have never got the chance to be with her. I don’t know if on my own I would have had the courage to approach her in class because she never went to parties.

Haha memories

She also texted back last night:

I completely understand why you feel that way. It hurts because I wish we could still communicate because I never want to not be able to reach out. I hope everything is going well with your family member. She didn’t say family member but who that person is to me.

@mike2014, your story sounds similar to mine except we were a bit older. i saw my ex first at a camp we were both working at over the summer. i knew his name but didn’t know him because we went to the same high school he was a year older than me. i never spoke to him all summer but constantly told my friend she somehow had to befriend him and set us up. she did just that! starting talking to him, became friendly. at the beginning of the school year she asked him if he wanted to be set up with any of her friends. he was so clueless but when she suggested me and said i was interested he said he couldn’t believe it. he was a nerdy and awkward guy in high school and i had lots of friends, very popular, and was the homecoming queen type. he thought i was way out of his league. we always laughed how he was so nervous when he first started texting me that his hands would shake for months. we spoke for months before we even kissed – probably because of our young age and we were both living at home so didn’t really hang out. i still remember that night. its so weird. i remember going to bed that night and somehow just knowing he was the one for me. I’ve never had such a sure feeling in my life. i told my friends and mom about it and they all thought i was crazy, i mean who says that stuff at 15? but youre right, i think your body just knows. i knew from seeing him from afar that i would date him and something about being with him just always felt so right. even throughout our years of long distance in college, we hit many rough patches with fighting and jealousy and my friends would always ask why i do it, tell me to just let it go and for some reason i couldn’t. even when it felt wrong to be together, it always felt right if that makes any sense. throughout college i think he always had this struggle internally about whether we should really let it go and see other people or not. i never let him leave easily and he used to always say to me that he loved me too much to let it go even though he had nagging thoughts that we would need some time apart. when we broke up after this time he asked me about a week later if i knew he was “the one”. i told him i did and he asked me how i knew. i gave him some examples over the years of times i validated knowing this but overall i said i couldn’t explain, that i just always somehow knew – from the first night. going through this break up though it just scares me that he doesnt feel the same way. some of my friends have said its a biological difference between girls and guys, but I’m not sure. he seems genuinely so confused over it. i think he’s hoping after some time away he’ll have these doubts out of his mind because i think they have been straining our relationship for years. i want to respect him and be patient enough to give him all the time he needs but its killing me. I’m doing much better recently, but I’m such a happy person overall and this whole ordeal has made me feel so not like myself at times. sorry for the rant but what you said really resonated with me!
as for her text, i think it was really nice and genuine. she needs to respect your space to move on but it does hurt knowing the person who was always thee for you and who was your go to person for so many years wont always be there for you anymore. that was her choice of course, but its sad to think about. my ex has always said he’ll be there for me if i need him but its not the same anymore and any way you look at it, its just sad. she seems like a good person though based on her response and i think you’ve handled the break up really well. i think a face to face meeting will hopefully answer a lot of your questions.

@belle, im so happy youre feeling good!! i do believe this is your exes loss and i hope he will be back here! haha if he does come to this site, i can imagine ill still probably be here and tell him what an idiot he was for all of this! I’m glad its been a few consistently good days for you. you deserve it after all you’ve been through! keep it up!

Yea I figured you meant that. It’s one of those things where we know how we feel and how we felt when we first met them. We just don’t know how they feel now. I know my ex was scared because I did change and as she said I didn’t know how to dig you out of the hole you were in at the end. She said I never saw you like that before. At the time she was struggling too. Getting old sucks lol! New independant pressure and such can really change you and how you act.

Atea,

I’m going to say something to you. I can actually really relate to your ex based on what you just said. I really wish no one else can read this lol.

Towards the end of my relationship I was not right. I had many thoughts about my own insecurities that I started to push my ex away. She felt this most definitely. At the end based on where I was at in life I felt I was not good enough for her. I felt i was failing her. Instead of telling her this, I decided to just bury these feeling and isolate my self. When we would hang out, I started leaving her early in the night. Not wanting to hang out as much. I was not able to be there for her anymore when she was struggling with life as well. A month before she broke up with me I had thoughts of walking away from her. I didn’t want to put her through this, but I decided to try to pick up alittle saying nice things. It was too late and I still wasn’t good myself. It took her leaving me that I was able to get myself back to where I am now.

Do you think his own securities caused him to walk away from you? Do you think he just felt he wasn’t good enough for you? You said he always had these thoughts. Do you think he thought leaving you, was best for you? I can relate to him and almost did the same because I felt I couldn’t be there for her anymore like she deserved. Something to think about most definitely.

@belle, i agree the memories are killer! i keep remembering certain things my ex and i used to do/say and thinking that might not happen again terrifies me! i have been trying to create new memories by myself and whenever i spend saturday night when friends i wouldn’t normally see i remind myself that i wouldn’t have reconnected with so many people and had these memories if my ex and i were still together and thats been a bit helpful.

@mike2014, its really interesting you should say that (both those posts). first, about getting older and the pressure. my ex went straight to grad school from undergrad before starting to work. he actually started his job only three weeks before we broke up. his job is VERY demanding. he gets into dis office usually around 8am and leaves around 9pm – sometimes a little earlier but sometimes even later! i think he was really struggling with this transition. first, his new job was a lot of pressure and people were expecting him to perform. i also will be the first to admit i am a bit high maintenance – i gave him a lot but i expected a lot in return. his friends would always tell him he was so whipped and that he catered to me. his friends would joke with him all the time saying “i don’t know how you do it!” he always seemed to like joking with them about it. but my ex knew more than anyone how much i did for him. i mean i was constant support for him, always so honest and so loyal, always fun, and i truly put him above even myself sometimes. if he needed me i was there in a minute and he’s not someone who likes to open up and discuss problems really with anyone and so he really relied on me to always listen to him and calm him down. i also think the transition out of a long distance relationship was hard on us both. i was so excited to finally be in the same city that i think i had expectations of spending many nights during the week with him and most weekends. he’s never really had to worry about balancing me and his friends and now work so i think he wanted to see me a lot less and i was really hurt and we fought a lot about it in the weeks leading up to our break up. since I’m still in grad school, i have a lot more of a college type schedule with a lot of free time. his free time was significantly reduced and he now had to add me into the equation. when we spoke two weeks after the break up he told me he was just feeling too much pressure from all around and needed some time to himself to just be alone – away from me and friends. he also has many more friends in the city than i do and i was spending a lot of time with his group which maybe smothered him a bit.

i think a lot of what you said in your second post describes my ex as well. i think 23 is a really tough age – i have so many friends who are confused about starting or ending relationships, career paths, relocating, etc. something my friends all always tell me is how envious they are that i always seem to, in their words “have my shit together”. i always knew i wanted to be a teacher, applied to grad school for my masters last year, got accepted to my first choice, and am incredibly driven into finishing grad school and doing incredibly well in it. i know exactly what i want to do career wise and in general i feel i am very stable and mature for my age. my friends often laugh at me because at how much i love cooking and cleaning and tell me i act more like I’m 30. i think my ex didn’t have his life figured out at all really. he doesnt know how long he wants to be at this job, if its really what he wants to do, which city he wants to live in, etc. and the night we broke up he told me we have so many options at our age and the only option he’s ever really allowed himself to follow is me and theres so much else out there that he feels like the relationship is preventing him from exploring. he said not just other relationships, but what if he wanted to relocate? or travel for a bit? he’s told me repeatedly we have our whole lives to settle down and now is the time in our lives to go out with our friends and do dumb things and date people who we know aren’t right for us. i know a lot of people say to do these things at out age but personally i have no interest. i just know exactly what i want and don’t feel the need to experiment. about a month after we broke up he told me that at this point in his life he just feels too selfish and immature to treat me the way i truly deserved because i deserved only the best and 1000% and full commitment from him and he just couldn’t give it to me right now because he doesnt feel ready. i think moving to the same city scared him because it was taking our relationship to the next level. he told me he started to feel like we were a married couple and while that might be wonderful in a few years, he just didn’t feel ready yet to act like that and because we have been together for so long we just kind of fell into it. so yes, i think he had a bit of a quarter life crisis too. i think he is still finding himself and deciding what he wants out of his future and wasn’t entirely happy with himself and felt he really needed ample time to figure this all out. i think he thought leaving now would be fair to me because he wasn’t able to treat me the way i deserved to be and i think he thought our relationship would ultimately spiral downwards and we would fight and i would resent him. so i think there were many reasons for the breakup overall, and i guess it is taking him a while to sort through everything. he told me he was starting to feel guilty about not wanting to put 100% effort into our relationship because its what i deserved and he was confused about why he was starting to feel himself pull away and wanted to end it before things got messy. i know deep down he loves me and i do think he sees us getting married one day but i don’t think he’s anywhere near ready for that and i think he’s still learning how to be an adult on his own.

as for you, it sounds like you just went through a rough period. it happens to everyone and maybe it was too much for your ex at the time because she felt unhappy as well. its great you dug yourself out of the whole and feel more secure now. i think these are all definitely things you need to share with her. it also sounds like you really used the break up to your advantage to change and grow. i know you said she’s left the door open to reconcile before so i think it will be really healthy to sit down and explain everything to her.

Rican27,

I have no idea what that means at all