teresaa

I don’t know if anyone is reading this at this point, but I have another update.

The other mutual friend between me and my ex is his brother-in-law. Actually, I met him because I was friends with this mutual friend (I’ll call him H.) He lives abroad but today he is returning to my country for just a short period. My ex lives at his apartment so they will inevitably bump into each other.

I’m kinda terrified at this point, to be honest. Afraid I’ll never see him and afraid I will. Our mutual friend will likely visit me and I don’t know if the subject of this break up will be brought up or not. We kept the relationship a secret, but now that we cut ties, I’m afraid H. will realize what happen and want talk about it. I’m really confused and don’t know whether I want to open up about it or just shut up forever.

Anyone can spare me some advice?

Update: P. (the other guy) called this Sunday after a month of silence but I didn’t pick up since I was in a meeting. Called him later, he didn’t pick up and I texted him asking if everything was alright. He also replied with a text saying he was just checking up on me and seeing how I was doing. I replied cordially and thanked him, wishing him well.

I wish I could force myself to like P., but he’s not intellectually stimulating and he bores me to death. He keeps showing off, boasting about stuff that really doesn’t interest me, which makes us incompatible – there’s just no chemistry, but he’s a really good person and I’m lucky to have him as a friend. This sounds horrible, but it’s the truth. 🙁

@Wondering412 Thank you for sharing your experience and giving me a male perspective! I really appreciate this. I haven’t written any letter nor do I intend to resume any form of communication. I started browsing the web searching for answers that would give me closure and found this forum by accident and posted here because everyone seems to be very supportive, friendly and intelligent. We’re all still hung up on our exes, so I knew no one would be harsh and make me feel ridiculous about this. I also know most of you guys are on a plan to recover your ex back. However my plan is to get closure and forget him.

I think that’s why I’m searching for answers in the most inconspicuous way I could think of (this is not my native language and he doesn’t even speak English – also my name is not Teresa either – I’m paranoid like that). I refuse point blank to give him any inkling that I saw the block and that it upset me. I think my last message (on my birthday) pretty much said everything I wanted to say: that he wasn’t a real friend to me as I had been to him and that I didn’t really know him, that I needed to accept that, give up on the friendship and move on for self preservation. He issued a curt apology in the next few minutes and that was it. Wait, he also posted a song on his FB about a girl who had been the best mistake in his life, the sincerest lie, the simple yet complicated affair that he would always revisit in his memories blah blah blah (there’s not an English translation out there, but you get the gist). I assumed that was for me, I don’t know. I think it was a really cowardly, half-assed attempt to convey a message, if that was the case. A bunch of people rushed to leave him comments, teasing him and he played along, laughing with them all the way.

Just so you see the kind of guy we’re talking here, in the early days, when he would be all flirty, he rarely exposed himself emotionally. I think he’s the type that is really proud and likes to keep everything buried and protected. It was me who said first that I liked him more than a friend and he fessed up saying he felt the same but he’d never have the courage to say that if I hadn’t. On another occasion, when we decided to break up, I said we had to keep a physical distance because it was hard for me to have him touch me as a friend and don’t confuse things, he replied with a “and do you think it’s easy for me?”. So, yeah, the only bursts of emotion usually followed some admission of mine. But beyond that, he’s a pretty cold fish.

In fact, the silence that followed the next few days showed me that I meant very little and that he had no intention to see how I was coping with my aunt’s death. He continued posting on FB publicly about trivial stuff (he’s very active there, because it’s his only means of communication with his friends from his country). That’s when I decided to unfriend him and make a clean break. Out of sight, out of mind I thought. I was doing well, too. That is until I noticed the block, because it was just so senseless and out of character. If he doesn’t care, why go out of his way to block me? And if he does care, what the hell did that mean? You guys have posted a few ideas here, and for that I’m grateful.

@starlight, thank you for your reply. I won’t remove myself from any social media because it would be another way of saying that he cut me deep and I don’t want to give him that satisfaction. It would be another ego boost for him and I gave him plenty already. I also don’t post personal stuff, only political things, scientific stuff, art, music, gaming, etc. I like to keep my private business private. Only a few friends in real life know I had this short relationship, since we never went public because of that other friend P. I guess it ended as soon as it started, since I couldn’t cope with having to lie and sneaking behind a friend’s back. I’m not a teenager and I wasn’t doing anything wrong and since he’d rather end things than to admit to P. we were dating. We were acquaintances since November 2014, started to hang out very frequently in May 2015, in June we sneaked around and couldn’t get our hands off each other, in July I said I couldn’t do that, but kept falling in the same traps whenever we got together alone, and by August we had cooled down because the job offer was imminent, and that was his priority evidently. My 10 day trip abroad also helped him significantly to distance himself from me, because when I came back, he was basically a wall of ice. September 10 was my birthday, so yeah, we’ve been NC for a month and a half. He blocked me only last week, though. And since that upset me, I’ve been trying to get answers to give myself closure. I’ve even used my mother’s account (she is not his friend either) to log in and confirm he was still there with no changes whatsoever – to everyone that isn’t his friend, that is. And since I was the one who unfriended him and couldn’t possibly see anything anyway, I saw no rhyme nor reason for his actions.

But you guys have been excellent and at least now I have some clues. I also want to thank your support in this difficult time. I’ve been having trouble concentrating because I overthink things and keep analyzing past mistakes and feeling utterly dejected, when I should just be moving on and forgetting he exists.

The reason why I don’t talk to P. these days is a mix of a third rejection (he played dumb and said he just considered me as a friend when I tried to clarify again he was acting like a boyfriend without benefits) and he probably realized something went down.

The last time I talked to P. he wanted to do another outing with us three – that is, until I explained I no longer talked to my ex and refused to give details on the matter. He was oblivious once, and even playing dumb, but I don’t consider him as really stupid.

I do know my ex is a natural liar. It’s his coping mechanism. He shared stories in the past where he lied through his teeth to get out of sticky situations (I guess I should have picked that up as a strong sign that he was wrong for me – I’m stupid like that). Regarding P., for instance, he found himself inventing a story about a girl he liked, just so P. wouldn’t suspect he was in a relationship with me! He kept digging himself in lies because he was so convinced P. loved me obsessively that I felt he was a bit afraid of the consequences if P. ever found out. Added to the fact that he would likely be gone in a few months and that P. was probably his only chance to get a job in my country, he didn’t want to take the risk of telling the truth. So, yeah, I was never really that important. He literally picked a possibility of a job over me. This really sounds like a crappy soap opera, but it is what it is.

Like you said, he’s probably not mad, but I can’t think of anything else. Our FB profiles are private and we weren’t friends anymore, so it’s not like I could check up on him when he blocked me. I was the one to unfriend him in the first place! There was nothing to stalk when we were not friends. Just a profile picture (which is the same if I log off). So yeah, I think it was some kind of retaliation for truly giving up on him. Perhaps he thought I’d add him again (I was always a true friend and very supportive, even when he cooled down significantly), and when I didn’t, he just blocked me like “ah, I can be even worse, see what is like to be erased”.

No, he wasn’t angry. In fact, I don’t think we ever actually fought, even when we broke up. It was all very civilized. The only time I showed a negative burst was in my last exchange and I was very upset (my aunt dying on my birthday really shook me).

I hope you bear with me, because our story is very complicated and yet simple:

We met at a time when that other guy (I’ll call him P.) was in love with me. When I say in love, I say almost obsessed. I don’t think anyone has ever loved me like that and it was kind of scary. I always had trouble rejecting people and P. seemed oblivious to the fact that I simply only liked him as a friend (although he did ask us to be more and I rejected him twice).

Anyway, P. was so upfront and insistent about about his infatuation that I started inviting my ex, at that point a mere acquaintance, to cockblock our outings. So whenever P. asked us to go out as friends, I’d invite my ex as well to string along. I’m stupid, I know! I should have just said NO, but I had trouble refusing a good guy who made me feel good about myself. Anyway, eventually I started to confide in my ex and we became friends and soon enough we realized we liked each other as more than friends.

To put things in context, my ex is actually a foreign student and is only in my country for a short period just to get his PHD. I also need to say that P. became friends with him (he’s really that nice) and was helping him get a job to stay in this country. Long story short, we created this awful triangle. None of us wanted to hurt P., and my ex felt like a cheater. I also didn’t want to go behind anyone’s back, particularly since I did nothing wrong and was always upfront. So we had just 2 options: be together and tell P. or don’t tell P. but break apart. Considering my ex would only be staying a few more months in the country, he figured he didn’t want to ruin things with P. since we basically had no future either way. So, very amicably we decided to break before we got serious.

We slipped up a few times. We live in neighboring cities, so the few times we were together without being in the presence of P., we would end up making out and promising that it wouldn’t happen again. Because that was the thing, we got along really well together. He would pick his guitar and serenade me, kiss me hard and hug me tight, stuff like that. So we stopped meeting and stuck communication to Facebook only.

I went abroad on vacating 10 days without communicating with him and when I got back he’s more colder and distant (allegedly due to not knowing about his professional situation and whether he’d have to go back or not to his country). I asked if he started to like someone else and he said he didn’t (but he’s a bit of a coward and awful at confrontations – he tends to protect himself and shuts up or lies, so who knows?), and he added that didn’t matter whether he liked me or not and wouldn’t change our situation. In his own words: “I can’t like you”. I replied that we either liked people or not, we don’t choose to do it. He just said “it’s the only answer I can give you” and “don’t get your hopes about us”.

So I went NC for a bit (I haven’t read any of these things on the web at that point) and contacted him occasionally (I don’t know how many days, I didn’t really count), all the while watching those awful public interactions on FB. By the way the girls he talks to are in his country, so the only contact they have is online. He could have a deep emotional attachment to one of them, but I know for a fact he wasn’t sleeping around.

From then on, things only deteriorated. There were’t really any rows, just cold detachment. Now and then he would post romantic songs about missing loved ones which could be directed at me or some other person (who knows, really?). Whatever he meant, he never told me directly. And that day when I snapped, his apology was brief and rather lame. And the rest you already know.

Kinda lame, isn’t it?

p.s. P. is not in the picture anymore either, as he finally got the hint and has been in NC for over a month now. They’re probably best buddies at this point, I really don’t know.