mr_the_ex

I agree with patricia but I’d also add that this woman seems like a complete nightmare who is going to continue to make you absolutely miserable.

I vote doomed and you’re just wasting time and opportunity by thinking about her or pursuing her. You even moved to another country to be close to her. I know you’d want to justify that saying you might have gone anyway or it isn’t that bad, etc. but we both know you did it because of her.

It is hard to move on but you just gotta do it. Take it day to day. And delete the photos, don’t put her on EP covers, don’t write songs about her, etc. There’s other woman out there who won’t be going out with different guys at the same time, contacting exes and then breaking it off, etc.

Your friends were 100% correct when they said this:

However, a lot of my friends told me it was a huge recipe for disaster and it would affect my health, especially given what I was going through before personally; having feelings for someone who doesn’t reciprocate them, if they’re around you all the time was gonna be bad news.

If it is any consolation, I think you’ve done exactly the right thing.

It is going to be painful. But it does get better one day.

My 2 cents is.. if you are wondering whether you will hurt more, seeing her again or never seeing her again, then it will hurt more to see her again. At some point you won’t need to ask yourself that question. That’s the point it won’t hurt to see her again.

The amount of time is totally variable and depends on the person and relationship. It can take years to get to that point. But you will know when you are.

“It sounds really immature but the heart wants what it wants.”

I was going to post exactly that but you posted it yourself. You know what you have to do, it’s just so difficult and painful. I wish you the best.

It sounds like you did the right think keeping it around a long time and revisit it before sending it.

You asked what would I suggest to do to restart the relationship…

I think it is always possible for a relationship to restart but I don’t think there is always something one can do to cause it to happen. A two year relationship is a pretty long relationship. If you spent a lot of time on the letter, I’m sure you put everything in there you wanted to say. So, it is not a case where she doesn’t know how you feel, where she is confused about the situation or where she think it would be hopeless to try again.

I think at this point, she would have to come back to you and anything you do from here as far as communication with her would just push her away. It isn’t a good spot to be in, not knowing whether she has found someone new or working on that and not knowing how she’s feeling at all, but that’s the way it goes. I think it needs to be her decision to come back at this point. In the meantime, it would be best to work on planning life without her. Then, if she does come back, great but if she doesn’t at least you are moving forward.

I had an ex contact me once about 5 years after our relationship was over. The breakup was a mutual agreement as the situation wasn’t good. I wrote up a letter like yo did but I never actually sent it. I still have it around somewhere.

Anyway, she just contacted me one day out of the blue, we talked a bit and then she asked if we could go on a trip together. I’m assuming she had just broken up with someone. She had always told me she didn’t want to restart a relationship but then she did. I turned her down as a couple years after the broke up, I found someone else and she didn’t have all the issues the ex did.

The new girl had her own issues, of course. LOL. In any case, the ex and I have gone out just as friends a few times. Now she’s with someone she really cares about and I’m really happy for her. I really hope her relationship lasts.

I don’t really know what to say. I lost a good friend to depression over a year ago now. Objectively, he should have been really happy as he had everything going for him, but his mental illness dragged him down into a hole and wouldn’t let him leave. I think it would be near impossible to have a relationship with someone in that situation. I knew him for over 10 years and was reasonably close to him but he never disclosed his illness to me. He was constantly burning relationships over the years. Sometimes he would be very close to someone and then would do something that made them feel he had turned on them.

You sound like you are doing the right things. And it sounds like there are two issues. One is that she seems very insecure. The second is that there were communication issues in the relationship.

It doesn’t sound like the relationship is over for good but that it needs a little time for her to kind of calm down. If and when she contacts you to talk about it, you could ask her what she is feeling and what she was feeling and just listen. And then ask her what you can do to help her deal with her insecurities. She probably doesn’t want to feel like she is stopping you from traveling and maybe thinks you might be resentful if you can’t do it. Or that one day, you might just leave because that’s what you want to do.

That all requires honest talking through where each side listens to the other and also asks what they can do for the other person.

Here’s one little relationship thing I’ve found that can help in relationships. I’ve talked about it once before. It does two things. First it gives both of the people involved equal power. Secondly, it can help stop an argument or disagreement from blowing up into something larger.

You can have some kind of “safe word” where if you are having a disagreement and the other person just can’t take it any more, they can say the safe word and then tell the other person what they need to do. Sometimes for one person, an argument is over something small but for the other person it is really serious and they are about to blow up. They can at that point say the safe word and then tell the other person not to talk about the subject for the rest of the day. Both partners have to to respect the safe word.

Or if one person is pushing someone else to do something they can stop it with the safe word. Or if one person won’t do something the other needs them to do, they can use the safe word to make them do it. If either partner uses the safe word unfairly, it won’t work of course. And if someone doesn’t listen when the other partner uses it, it doesn’t work. And it is a sign of disrespect.

It is a little thing but can be very useful to prevent problems from becoming bigger problems and also allows each partner to feel they have some control because worst case, they can always pull the safe word if something is getting to bad. And for a partner with insecurity, it may help a little bit. If you are arguing with her and you think it is playful and she doesn’t, she can use the word to stop it. The word is a last ditch option. It sholdn’t be used for things like “(safe word) give me the remote control”.

I don’t understand what your plan is for this relationship. You want to live abroad and have her join you or you want to live abroad and have a long distance relationship with her? If so, for how long? Do you want to stay with her or do you want to break up with her when you go live abroad? Or are you thinking you’ll both date other people and then maybe join up later?

It might be she is upset because she feels this relationship is headed for an inevitable breakup. Is she right? Are you willing to commit to her long term? If not, it would be understandable that she would be upset because the root cause would be that she wants a long term commitment where she won’t get dumped and you aren’t willing to give that to her.

Is that the case or am I reading this wrong? What’s your plan here?