The Magic of Timing

Yeah – I think that’s really good advice @John1. I’m 11 days into NC and have experienced a whole range of emotions from loneliness to anger to apathy and everywhere in between. Clearly to be able to lead the situation through ‘false friend’ to hopefully somewhere successful, I need to have emotionally stabalised. In my case, I have so much else happening in my life in the next three weeks anyway – buying a new place, getting the divorce from my almost ex-wife finalised, that it’ll be better to come back into contact as the guy who’s got the loose ends in his life sorted out and is carrying on with moving on. In her case, she is also coming to terms with the death of someone close to her, so leaving the whole thing well alone for a decent amount of time is undoubtedly good.

Best of luck @John1 when you come to the end of NC.

So, after 40 days of no-contact (including one pleasant, but ultimately unsuccessful date with another girl), I made a move to re-establish contact again with a letter. Who knows if I pitched it right? – I talked of the feelings that I had for her that I’ve now let go; told her about some of the exciting things happening in my life; re-iterated that there is no bad feeling between us as a result of the break-up; talked of how good the friendship part of our relationship was and that I think this is worth pursuing and left her with an invitation to respond. The letter was posted three days ago; not heard her of her so far – no texts, letters or emails. Who knows what effect it will have? Will she just ignore it? I really have nothing to go on; we weren’t established enough to have any mutual friends who we are both still in contact with; we live on opposite sides of the city, so meeting by chance is slim; she does not do Facebook or any other social media, so no clues there. Time for the waiting game…

Well, Kaila, I just hope she says something. Every day that passes, it just seems more and more that she’s just not going to respond at all. But I’ll leave it until the end of the week before considering another move.

Still finding myself overwhelmed by feelings – although I’d done a good job of distracting myself over the past 40 days (and being happy with my life), I drove home yesterday through her area of the city and all of the feelings that I had for her came back even stronger than ever. I try to distract myself through online dating and my other hobbies – maybe I will meet someone even more special than she was – who knows – in some ways I’m just open to any kind of success. If a doorway to my ex opens up again and it is successful, great – if not, just got to keep meeting and chatting to people – who knows who I will meet and what will happen – I certainly wasn’t expecting to meet and fall for my ex just 10 weeks after my former marriage ended, but it happened…

OK – started a new post in the ‘Reconcillation’ section to talk about what happens next. But basically, yes, a really light touch email worked to get her talking again. I think in many ways the letter, although it was good, was still too emotionally heavy for her to want to respond to. Going in with an email that was light, chatty, short, showing no bitterness about the split (and also briefly alluding to a fun time we had together when we first met) was enough to start communication again.

Kind of obvious really, looking back I think the only major things that killed the relationship were neediness and not enough laughter (we both had difficult things going on in our lives outside of the relationship). So short, light, chatty, fun, positive was best to kick-start the conversation again. More as it happens in the other thread…

Well, brandy, there’s always a chance. Maybe a very small one, maybe bigger – who knows – none of us know what’s going on inside his head or his heart.

But you do have one advantage over me – that of the length of your relationship. 10 years is a long time – you will have a lot of shared experiences and good memories that you can hopefully make some use of when you finish NC. You don’t mention any major arguments in your relationship. So there aren’t really any fundamental points of conflict or differences in values that mean that he wouldn’t consider a relationship. No, in some ways it sounds like my relationship and just a loss of attraction – maybe in the longevity of yours, it all got a bit too routine for him. Then travelling to America, having a fling – all these things were a novelty and gave him an emotional high.

So yes, I think attraction and connection can be rebuilt. No guarantees, but we all have to give it a good shot. So take Kevin’s advice – use the NC to develop yourself in a different direction – try something new, meet new people, try and figure out what fundamentally makes you happy apart from him. This is the basis of a new connection and new attraction. I hope it is possible – in your situation as well as my own.