Our gorgeous friend, Brooklyn, is wondering if things would be different if she had just put up with his excessive drinking and partying. She's wondering if the breakup was really her fault.
Here's what she wrote:
Hi Jane,
Your blog has helped me enormously after my recent breakup.
However, I have a lingering question. Was it me? Did I make our love not worth fighting for? Did I take the fact that I thought my boyfriend would never leave me for granted?
To give you some background, I was with my boyfriend for about 9 months. I have never loved someone as deeply as I loved him and he said the same to me. However, our relationship started to get rocky a few months ago.
I felt alcohol and friends were his priority and I was always second best. To give an example, one night a few months ago I was grieving the birthday of my deceased mother, as well as other life stresses and he chose to go out with our friends to drink that night despite me voicing that I really needed his company/support that night.
He ended the relationship due to excessive fighting, however I am strong enough to admit I was rarely the culprit of the fights.
We recently took a vacation together as a couple and he left me during the day to get absolutely black out drunk with other men he had just met (I'll have you know it was Valentines Day as well) and he proceeded to come back to the room about 6 or 7 hours later and vomit on every surface in the room and verbally and physically abuse me.
I'll admit I should have taken a step back from the relationship then, but I could not bring myself to do so as I felt I NEEDED him in my life.
A few weekends ago, we had dinner plans with a large group of friends. I had only seen him a few times in the past 2 or 3 weeks after our vacation, due to him being out of town and my being busy with University.
He went pre-drinking with this group, and I met them a little while later. He did not sit with me at the table that night, or make an effort to speak to me for the 3 or 4 hours we were there. A friend of mine even mentioned so.
Afterwards, he was planning on going to one of the friends houses to continue drinking for the night. However, I was craving "couple" time with his at this point (perhaps wine and hot tubing at home, or a funny movie).
He was going to go to the party whether or not I was going to go, which made me feel like he was choosing his friends over me/ our relationship.
So here's my question- was this my insecurity talking? Was I feeling like he didn't care whether I was there out of insecurity or for a valid reason?
So here's where I'm trying to get at...I recognize that he may be emotionally immature (we are both 21) and may have an alcohol problem, but I know that is not something I should ever try to change or control.
I can't help but ask myself, should I have been more laid back and accepted who he was, and wait for him to mature while still being in the relationship? What if I had jut gone to that party Friday instead of arguing that I did not feel important...Where would we be then?
Thank you so much Jane,
Brooklyn.
My Response:
Dear Brooklyn,
You're so welcome! I’m so glad you’re finding help here. What you’re asking is a question familiar to most of us who’ve wondered the same thing when we find ourselves in the midst of a breakup we didn’t ask for and never wanted.
“Was it me?”
The truth is that it’s never you and it’s always you; this is the paradox of the role we play in every single one of our relationships. We bring who we are and we reap who we are.
There’s a dynamic that we contribute to simply by being who we are. So if you look at what might have been different or what your relationship might be like instead if only you had just gone to the party and not made a big deal of him choosing to go instead of wanting to spend time with you, you’ve got the paradox right there in front of you.
Yes, it would have been different for that particular moment and on other particular occasions just like this where you were able to respond in the way you wish you had. But no, it wouldn’t have been any different in the end if you weren’t able to sustain that kind of action, if you weren’t able to act the way you wanted to consistently.
Being in a relationship with someone isn’t an act, it’s not something you do, it’s who you are.
And if that person isn’t what or who you want to be, then use that feeling as motivation to change what you want to change about yourself or to work on your own insecurities so they no longer dictate your behaviors.
Don’t beat yourself up for what you didn’t know or couldn’t have known at the time. Someone who loves you, loves YOU! Yes, you. You with all your imperfections, all your perceived weaknesses, and everything you wish you were.
That’s the message I want you to take from this. What we call our insecurities or all the stuff of our own inner dialogue of "woulda, shoulda, coulda" is really our intuitive selves knowing there was something there even if we can’t quite put a finger on it.
Unless you wanted a drinking, partying, buddy-prioritizing kind of guy, this so obviously wasn’t the guy for you!
The bigger question for you to ask yourself is why are you trying to convince yourself he was? What is it about you that makes someone who behaves like this so attractive and appealing to you that you’re sitting here spending your beautiful time and energy thinking about what YOU should have done differently in an attempt to hold on to someone you obviously knew wasn’t worth holding onto when you were with him real time?
I’ve been there, Brooklyn.
I had my own bag of regrets that I used to hold onto and take everywhere with me. I've been with the guy who loved to party, who loved to drink, who loved to go out with his friends, and always seemed to choose them first over me.
I always felt like I came second no matter how much he would tell me it was all in my head and he wouldn’t be with me if he didn’t want to be with me. But I knew there was something more there, so that feeling always stayed with me and I always tried to keep my own insecurities at bay, but of course they would still come through at times when other stresses or other triggers would arise.
So when I look back on all this now, while I can say that if I had only kept my own insecurities in check, we would have had an entirely different relationship and everything would have been so much better than it was, the other side of it is that I was who I was at that time. I had to grow through my experiences in order to become more secure, in order to overcome those insecurities, and no amount of acting would have changed that if that wasn't who I was ultimately capable of being.
Could I have kept him and the relationship if I had been able to?
Only as long as I could pretend, maybe. But as soon as the real me came through that didn't fit in with who he was and what he was looking for from me, it would have been rocky again.
My point is that each of us are who we are. We can either accept or reject that.
But the bigger question here, is that if you can’t accept yourself, if you can’t look at who you are, the real you , all of you, including those parts that feel insecure or needy or whatever else you call them, you will always be second-guessing yourself and setting yourself up to be rejected for the very things you find so difficult to accept in yourself.
I hope this helps, Brooklyn, even though it may be more of an answer than you were looking for. It’s a big question!
Love,
Jane
What are your thoughts? Was is her fault that the relationship ended? Or did she do the right thing? Tell us what you think in the comments!
Hi Brooklyn please do not feel bad for breaking up with this guy, to me it seems like he was a total jerk. I've once experienced something similar to this. Where everywhere we'd go with this guy his freands would be there always drinking, I don't I can't even think of a single day where he was sober, it went to a point where he would book his friends to the same hotel that we were meant to spend some alone time in together. As much as he was a cool guy monied and all, I had to cut ties with him, he wasn't a Man for me.
And to the abuse part there's also one guy I've dated for about 2 weeks like literally two weeks, I left him because I could see red flags of the emotional abuse, he made me feel like I'm stupid, sometimes he would ask me things just to rest my inteligence, and he had his own idea of how our relationship should look like and whatever ideas I had to him didn't really matter... I realized that even though he had all the qualities one would want in a man in terms of success, goal driven and all but I just couldn't see myself with him at all...
Now like the other lady has commented here, physical abuse or any other abuse thereof for me it's a deal breaker, so please don't blame yourself, this guy is nowhere near ready for a serious relationship, and no matter how many times you'd complain to him for he'd blame you for overreacting, He is only 21 he is still at that stage where he wants to party till morning, and unfortunately there's nothing you can do to change that.
So my advice to you is hold your head up high, focus on yourself, your studies, find something that makes you happy, go out with your girls, clean your space, cook, bake, put down on paper all your goals and plans for the next 6 months and make sure they don't include any man, stay focused... And if you meet someone along the way then it's ok and if not that's still ok, it will all happen at the right time.
I've been doing the whole focusing on myself and my kids for the past 3 months and it works like a charm, I have my lonely days but I've come to realize it's part of life. The good thing is I'm at a point whereby having a man in my life doesn't difine who I am.
Hope this helps!! ?
Placing blame is too easy to do. Had you taken the time to know him better you would have known he was not the character that you thought he was. And vice versa. It takes time to know someone and it takes communication sharing time sharing events becoming friends. It is important to know who you are and what you want before you start having expectations. When we expect nothing we don't get hurt. When we put out effort and the other side doesn't then we have set the pace where only what he wants happens. You became second because you allowed it. This is the time when you should have closed the doors. Effort n expectation are two diverse events. Just because you put out effort does not mean you should expect things to happen as you want them to. He knew what he wanted and he got it and he didn't care if you had walked them or walk now. Time to close your doors to him and open them up to someone new. This time know what you want first before you give your heart and expecting the same. This happened to me. My regret is that I did not close the door on the first date. BBL
I did that to myself, those same questions...
We dated for 2 years and it's been 5 that we are appart. I have met other people and he's seeing someone else, but contacted over and over again me because "I'm a very special person" and he wants to remain friends.
We were young. He broke up because he said he was too young to be this serious and he wanted to enjoy single life.
I've been wondering for all this years, what if I hadn't been anxious, what if I hadn't pushed for something serious... afterall we were happy. Couldn't we be happy now?
I have no idea why he still wants to know how I am doing if after all this time he if still does not want to be with me.
Reading Jane's response helps... I was myself at that relationship, and for 2 years that was just fine for him. He was the one who changed, who didn't want it anymore. And still doesn't. And I have to live with that. And let him go.
It was not my fault, I was a good girlfriend, I am a good person.
As I can see so are you.
It hurts, but that's life.
And to add, in your case Brooklyn. Abuse is abuse. Verbal, physical... and if it happened one, it doesn't matter why, it will happen again. You do not want to be with someone like that.
We deserve to be with someone as loving and as we are.
OMG, Dear Brooklyn! I pride myself for being a flexible and extremely tolerant woman and I can forgive a lot to the man I love. Even occasiobal infidelity. After all we are all humans, we get confused, we make mistakes. But there are a few things that are total deal breakers. I just can never ever picture myself falling in love with an alcoholic ( just completely allergic to it, sorry) or regretting a break-up with a guy, who ditches me on a birthday, Valentine's Day, Christmas or New Years Eve. In fact, I divorced a very handsome, wealthy, hardworking, non- drinking husband after he ditched me on a few holidays and 5 years down the road I still do not regret it. I think neither should you, unless you are a masochist. After all it us better to be single and alone then be alone when it counts, but still imagine and tell everyone that you are with someone, so they would believe it too, even though that someone is not even there. And no, if he loved you, he would not break up with you no matter how many problems and fights you had ( this is all part of life), like you would not cut your head off, just because you have a headache. Yes, maybe sometimes he would feel angry and miserable, yes maybe aometimes he would be stubnorn and not love you the way you like or expect, but if he broke up with you, tgen he just did not care enough. Some people just don't. Do not blame yourself.
This rings so true to me right now. It is exactly 12 months to day I met this person who I have always felt it has been me and he projects it all. I'm insecure, needy, if only I would accept the ex girlfriend everyday, never included in anything so she wasn't hurt as she is best friends with his cousin and family and was basically a substitute for his mum who passed away. I'm jealous and insecure though because all I wanted to do was those couple things and the fact is if they are not ready or willing to put in the effort nothing you will do will change that. I've had so much heartache but you know I've learnt so much about ME and that's the main thing. I've grown from it. Oh and another thing I would call my experience domestic abuse. Something I've never thought I would put up with. Names, shamed, the things I've been called I can never tell anyone about. It's finally gotten to me.
Dance girl,
Both you and Brooklyn's experiences rang true with me. I connected with him but yet felt so insecure and anxious. I lost my mother and thought I finally was getting my soulmate after so much ch grief. But I couldn't accept the ex girlfriend, mother of his child. I constantly asked for priority and was shamed for asking to be above his family and child. I wanted to be the better person who had learned from her struggles and offer support and love. But then I couldn't think of anything else but him or her. He let her dictate his schedule, played nice when she overstepped intmacy with him, answered her calls late evening etc. Instead of looking to my intuition and realizing my confusion and insecurity was due to his lack of care for me. He hurt me physically but told me it was to restrain me when I got too drunk and "hit him" after watching him be nice to an overly flirtatious co worker and let her grope him at an event. He hurt me twice and I blamed myself. I realize now I wasn't listening to my intuition which was really expecting the love I was no longer giving myself. Today I woke up and realized the brain fog is gone. I can be happy if I accept that I was me and I may have clinged but it was not wrong.