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Well, I don’t know how good my frame of mind really is right now; I haven’t been able to stop crying since the impromptu guitar lesson. I think I’m really starting to accept reality and the reality is very hard. Halloween is also tomorrow which is hard for me… two years ago, we had this intense encounter on a Halloween and it’s very bittersweet for me to remember it. Especially now that I understand that it didn’t mean what I thought it did.
Anyway. Do you guys think I ought to tell him I love him before I tell him that I’m moving away or vice versa?
Also, about him blocking you as a way to hurt you or because he’s confused… I just don’t know. He’s not an idiot; he know you unfriended him because he was so cold about your aunt’s passing. He knows YOU were hurt because of something HE did (or didn’t do). What would it have really taken to man up and make it right? Either he truly didn’t care or he was afraid that if he showed you he cared he’d be leading you on again. I have no doubt that he was attracted to you and valued the time you spent together, but I think him blocking you was more to remove the temptation to contact you and lead you on further/hide his own business to avoid hurting you. After all, just because you unfriend someone doesn’t mean you can’t still creep them on Facebook…
I don’t know about your ex being a player and only being interested in you because you were “forbidden fruit”; I think it was probably more that he was attracted to you but on a less serious level than you were attracted to him. I think he was maybe having some fun/indulging his attraction to you but wasn’t looking for anything serious and the consequences – harming his prospects in your country, hurting you by leading you on – became too real and when you said you wanted to go public, he bailed. There are so many different levels of attraction; sometimes we assume that if a man is attracted to us and enjoys spending time with us that it means he wants to be with us seriously.
I half-wonder if P tried to win your ex’s loyalty as a way of cockblocking YOU. Is that too diabolical? Anyway, it seems like limiting contact with him is a good idea. He’s got WAY too much power over your life for someone you’re not even interested in….
My best friends in Italy know, but they’re not from the town I live in; they’re all from the next town over so they don’t know F. Or, rather, they didn’t know him before they met me. By now they’ve heard that name so many times that they can’t stand it anymore.
My friends who are from the town where F and I live don’t know. Except for snaky S, but only because one night he noticed me looking at F and teased me about it; I was desperate at the time so I confided in him. Big mistake. At first his advice was really insightful (“this guy is used to easy prey. That he couldn’t get you is his failing, not yours”) but then things got totally weird so I had to stop talking about it with him. As for my other close friends here? They’ve never asked, I’ve never told them. It kind of feels ridiculous now that I never even told the girls, including C. C *might* have guessed; when we first met, I told her that I also liked someone in the music scene and she was with me that night when I saw F and his ex together for the first time but she’s never said anything to me. No one has ever said anything to me. Only Marco, F’s close friend who knew us when we were dating. Marco has, over the years, tried a few times to bring F up to me but I always changed the subject. And lately, PG – another of F’s friends who works at the music school – has dropped some hints that he might know but I could just be reading too much into things….
I have to change my focus. It’s not telling him I love him because I think I can get him. It’s telling him I love him to get the closure. But please keep in mind that I’ve been trying to do that for years. If you recall, I even came to this message board in the first place to ask how to do this. I decide it’s time for closure and I get ready to go get it and then something ALWAYS happens to suck me back into the fantasy that I can actually have him. Two years ago when I reached out to him after our two year Cold War… my intention was to get that closure. But then he was, to my shock, so open and warm and we’d have those long talks into the wee hours where he never mentioned his girlfriend and gave me rides home and invited me to his school… I read too much into it. I thought those encounters were about ME and OUR connection, but now I realize they were probably much more about him and his relationship with his ex. Maybe they just weren’t getting along or something and I was there and available to distract himself with.
Anyway, I’ll tell him and soon. I don’t know when, though – one thing I’ve noticed about him is that it NEVER goes well for me when I try to initiate meetings. Even when we were dating and he really wanted me he didn’t like this; I’d invite him to dinner and he’d always make me sweat a bit before accepting. And we saw how well it went when I tried to invite him to dinner last month; he didn’t even let me get the words out. Who knows what he thought I was going to say?
Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending how you look at it – I have a LOT of experience in love confessions. Not mine, of course. Other men. Sometimes I think my situation with F is karma punishing me for how many men I’ve disappointed. A lot of men have wanted the chance to love me and I haven’t been able to give it to them. 🙁 However, that means I’ve seen a wide variety of love confessions and I know what’s good and what isn’t.
So.
It needs to be in person. Not that I have a choice, considering that I don’t have his phone number. But no letters, either.
We need to be alone in a neutral place. It can’t be at school with people running around or on the street or what have you.
It needs to be brief and to the point.
Ask him for nothing, only to listen.
Don’t touch him (last May, a friend of mine was confessing his feelings to me and kept trying to hold my hand… I was not pleased)
Don’t argue about it with him (I’ve had men demand explanations and keep me talking about it for hours… terrible)Of course, as you know, I rely on luck to find him so that makes it more complicated. And I don’t have much time. But sometimes I get lucky and we end up alone and together for a long time. Last June when we had dinner together would have been perfect; I mean, I did try – the intense hug, which he didn’t return. Last September when we had that fun random day would have been good, too. I tried to piggyback off that, too, but he wasn’t receptive or even very respectful. If I don’t get lucky, if we don’t have any encounters like that soon and time runs out, then I’ll ask him to meet me somewhere.
Do the good moments feel great? Not anymore. After the impromptu guitar lesson I cried myself to sleep and spent most of yesterday in tears because I was trying so hard not to let myself feel the joy of feeling his hands on mine for the first time. I know that these things are much more important to me than they are to him.
I guess it depends how close you are to H. If a close friend of mine was suffering, I’d want to know about it. But if you think it might put him in an awkward position or blow your ex’s chances of keeping in good with P then it’s probably better to keep silent. If H asks you about your ex, you could say, “I haven’t seen him in a while. He’s been focusing on work.” It’s not a lie, right?
This thing with P is interesting to me. I understand your position; I have a lot of Ps in my life. If only we could make ourselves love them… how much easier life would be. Sometimes I think my ongoing heartbreak with F is bad karma for how many Ps I’ve disappointed over the years. 🙁
I just think it’s so strange that P never picked up on the chemistry between you and your ex. Usually people in love are jealous and can sniff out potential competition a mile away. Why do you think P has never accepted it when you’ve told him that you will never be together? Have you been direct enough? I know it’s hard to hurt them but sometimes you’ve got to be crystal clear and even remove yourself from the situation if it’s what they need to get over you.
Years ago, one of my Ps wouldn’t accept the truth (let’s call him J). We were coworkers in New York and I knew he had a crush on me; I wasn’t interested at all but always tried to be kind. I moved to Japan and got into a serious relationship but I chatted online with J frequently and despite the distance and my unavailability I could feel that he still wasn’t over me, especially when I went home for the holidays. I confronted him a couple of times about his feelings for me and he always said I was delusional/full of myself and I’d say, “okay, great, sorry I offended you” but then time would pass and I’d always feel his love for me again. I was so frustrated and he was frustrated and we started fighting all the time. Then, a mutual friend told him that I had said I was only using him for an ego boost – a baldfaced lie. While it might have been a cruel lie, however, J believed it and stopped talking to me. We didn’t talk for almost a year; I guess he was putting me in NC. But that year of absolutely zero contact/zero hope was what he needed to get over me. We started slowly chatting again and now we’re better friends than ever because we are actually real FRIENDS now; he has no more hidden agenda.
I know you value P as a person – just as I have always cared about any guy who has had unreturned feelings for me – but sometimes the best way you can be their friend is to definitively remove the hope through words and by actions. Using your ex as a cockblock SHOULD have worked but P didn’t even appear to notice. As long as he’s “friends” with you he’s going to think there’s a shot… especially if you hide your relationships from him. Do you want to lose another shot at love for fear of upsetting P?
Hi, Teresa…. I understand why the relationship was kept a secret from P but why was it kept a secret from H?
Something else: I realize how odd it is that I’ve kept this huge secret from my friends here. I never told them about my history/feelings for F because I was too embarrassed. I knew they all knew him. I didn’t want to put them in awkward positions. But it’s a huge part of me that they don’t know about. They don’t know why I have stayed here so long. They don’t know that literally 99% of the time, if they see me looking sad, it’s because of him. They don’t know that they’ll never see me again and it’s because of the famous F!
It’s kind of sad.
P.S. Saw him at school tonight; no big deal. He was in a weird, serious mood with everyone tonight. One of the artists was playing with his curls (bitch!) and he didn’t even react. I hung out a bit listening to the soundtrack one of his musician friends had written but then I went to go look for him. He was playing the guitar by himself on the couch. I asked him to show me how and he did. Touched my hands a lot to get me to do it properly. It was really nice. At one point, I playfully swatted his hand away from me because I wanted to try something he had shown me – “my turn! my turn!” but I don’t think he got the joke… he jumped up and took a few steps away from me. But then he came back and sat next to me again and showed me some more things. Another musician called him away and he left.
I know it means nothing, but it was really nice to spend that time with him and feel his hands on mine.
Hi, everyone. I want to thank all of you for having been so supportive to me these past weeks and even months. I know it isn’t easy to deal with me sometimes; I know I swing back and forth, I know it’s like going in a circle. I really appreciate how kind you’ve all been. These months (years…) have been so difficult. Ever since that night with his ex, when it was so clear to me that I wasn’t the priority, I haven’t been able to tell which end is up. It was also a mistake to talk to my mother about it – her abuse is the reason I’m terrified of intimacy in the first place. I promised myself a long time ago never to talk to her about important things (him), but that particular day I was vulnerable and she did her usual “make Penelope doubt reality” routine.
It makes me happy, of course, that so many of you believe there could still be something between us. I look at the things you post on other people’s posts so I know that you’re not just women who tell people what they want to hear. Maybe I just tell a story well or something. But I have more or less accepted by now that his interest in me – whatever you want to call it – isn’t serious. This has not been easy. I’ve asked myself honestly; do you see “that look” in his eyes? Do you feel “that energy” from him when you’re with him? I feel warmth, I feel interest, I feel happiness, I sometimes feel delight and affection, sometimes flirtatious energy, I feel a LOT of nervousness. But I don’t feel love. When we dated, I used to be able to FEEL how much he liked me. It’s never been that way since.
As Kaila said, what happened between us five years ago is ancient history but we DO have a current relationship. I don’t believe that what happened five years ago would make him be hot and cold with me today. I also like something else Kaila said a few weeks ago: “he either has feelings for you or he doesn’t.” That’s kind of a liberating thought. Also a depressing one.
This all said, however, I’m going to tell him I love him. But not because I have any hopes left that things can work out between us. I will tell him because I can’t bear the thought of all of this dying inside of me. I fell in love with him years ago but I idealized him so heavily; he was almost a god, a myth. In the past year, the fantasy has been shattered and now I see the man. And I still love him. I loved him five years ago when he climbed a tree to get me a pomegranate, and I love him today when he showed me how to play the guitar! I want him to hear it at least once from my own mouth; maybe once I let it out of my body, it will stay out and just leave. That’ll be my closure, my real closure. And then I can move on emotionally and physically.
Hi, Alicia. I’m sorry to hear about your break up. Yeah, untagging the photos isn’t a great sign – it means he’s accepted (or in the process of) accepting the end of the relationship. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s “over” you (look at how many people on this site untag or take down photos of their exes in fits of rage or pain), but it does mean that he is trying to be.
Anyway, it’s facebook. It’s just a site. Photos get untagged, photos get re-tagged. If you want him back, try following the program and see what happens….
according to a lot of people – my mother included, as she just told me a few minutes ago over skype – we had nothing. we only dated for a couple of months. we never even kissed. i blew everything up in my mind, then and now. and if i told him that i was in love with him then and never stopped being in love with him, he would think i was absolutely insane.
Hmm, if the breakup was amicable, then i doubt he is trying to punish you or hurt you because it doesn’t sound like he was hurt. Maybe it’s got to do with P… Maybe by blocking you he removes the temptation to flirt with you or get back together with you, thereby damaging the relationship with P/his work possibilities?
Has P really never found out? It seems strange that he never picked up on the chemistry between you and your ex.
I understand! It makes more sense when you add that information. I didn’t mean that he was trying to block you because of mutual friends, just more that he might have blocked you to spare you the pain of seeing what he was doing on facebook in general. but now that you mention that he usually punishes his exes after a break up… was he very angry about the breakup?
I said, (that night in June): “I’ve always been terrified of rejection and love. The men I’ve loved the most have never known how I felt about them. I’m afraid of the life unlived, the words unsaid, the hugs not given.” And, about half an hour later, as we were saying goodnight, I hugged him intensely. Like, a full body, tight, intense hug that lasted… I don’t even know how long. But when I realized that he wasn’t hugging me back, I let go. And he laughed and said, “Breathe! Breathe!”
That night last month I said: “I was thinking about what you said the other night about destiny and fate. I wasn’t sure what you were talking about because sometimes it feels like you and I are communicating on Skype and there’s a ten minute delay [he looked at me like I was crazy], but now I think I know what you meant and I agree with you. And I’d hate for it to take another five years before we -”
That’s as far as he let me get.
Hi, Teresa. Thank you so much for replying to my thread; yes, I know it’s a long one! I should probably be smart like the other people here and make new topics any time something new happens….
I’m sorry to hear about this situation with your ex. Sometimes I wonder if people ever enter into relationships with a clear conscience or open heart? It sounds like it was really painful to see your ex’s interactions with other women on social media… especially how he was so cold to you after your aunt’s death. It seems like you tried really hard to be adult about the way things ended and that you were absolutely within your rights/reason to hope that he’d be a friend to you in your time of need but for whatever reason – probably immaturity and selfishness – he didn’t step up to the plate.
Sometimes when we break up with people, we like to assume that they’re in the same mental place we are. We think that what’s good for us is also good for the other person. I’m guessing that when you decided to be “friends” he was happy to assume that you were over the romantic part of your relationship and, like him, would be flirting with people in social media, not once thinking about respecting the fact that you had actually been together (parroting something you’d said to another girl? That was really thoughtless). Did you watch “How I Met Your Mother”? After Robin and Barney break up and decide to be “friends”, he goes right back to being a womanizing jerk, bragging about all the girls he’s dating now that he’s single again. Robin always excuses herself casually when he does this and everyone thinks she’s just going to the bathroom or making phone calls, but no one has any idea that she’s actually excusing herself so that she can cry… she seems “together” after the break up but she’s actually a mess. When Barney finds out he feels terrible, but he finally learns to be respectful of her feelings. That’s kind of what your situation makes me think of.
You’ll think this is crazy, but I actually think he blocked you because he finally understood that his actions on social media can hurt you. I did the same thing when I broke up with my ex five years ago. What happened was this: my ex was heartbroken and unfriended me a few days after the break up. But we still had mutual friends on facebook and I would post on their walls. Nothing flirty! Just liking their posts or commenting on photos. He went ballistic, though – he sent me a Facebook message that said, “how can I get over you if you’re everywhere on the internet???” He also started posting nonstop on our mutual friend’s pages, like a pissing contest to claim them as his own. I started to feel “observed,” like I couldn’t even like a friend’s status update without hurting him. I didn’t want to unfriend our mutual friends (no way!) so, as awful as I felt, I just blocked him. It seemed like the easiest way to continue living my life without causing him any pain. I also unfriended his mother and brother, which I still feel terrible about, but it was only so that he wouldn’t have to see our names together on his friend list.
I’m sure he’ll unblock you soon (I unblocked my ex, too, when I figured that enough time had passed that he might not be upset to see my name pop up on Facebook anymore). I really hope that the two of you can be good friends again, and that you’ll find someone soon who is with you 100% of the way!
