One of our gorgeous readers, who has called herself "RasberryRush", is feeling empty and sad that her ex has moved on, even though she knows he was not right for her.
Her story:
Hi Jane
I am baffled by myself, truly baffled.
My ex and I have been on-and-off for about 3 years now - he couldn't give me what I wanted in terms of a future together and I knew we were going in different directions in life.
We stayed intimate here and there (for the 3 years) and we would talk/text frequently every day. I think we fooled ourselves into thinking we were doing the 'friends' thing really well, but we weren't friends.
We were an oddly formed pair who acted like a couple in all but name.
Distance was a factor as we live around 3 hours apart - he's unwilling to move and for family reasons I can't. I feel like we knew we were each other's Mr/Ms Right Now as opposed to being the real deal.
So why then am I so totally crushed and angry that he's been out on a couple of dates with someone?
Since we met 4 years ago he's never dated anyone else, but he met a girl from my city online in the last week or two and traveled here to meet her. I gather things went well and I've made a conscious effort not to interact with him since.
Just before he met her I was chatting to someone online and my ex got very weird about it, saying he still had feelings for me (when I probed he said he didn't know if he loved me, just that he feelings for me and wished things had worked out). And now he's traveling to my city to go on dates with the new girl he's met.
This rage and emptiness is out of left field though.
I know he's not right for me, I know we want different things and when he first started chatting to this girl I even encouraged it because I want him to find happiness.
I wonder if part of me hoped one day we'd finally get it together and be happy?
How do I stop feeling so angry and empty and sad?
- RasberryRush
My Response:
Because what we know in our heads and what we feel in our hearts are two very different things, RaspberryRush.
There is nothing – nothing! – that gives us a reality check quite like seeing someone we didn’t want to have to let go of – but knew intellectually that we must, move on himself. It bring out every possible emotion within us, even the ones that we didn’t even know we had.
Allow yourself to feel these deep feelings. They need to be felt if you’re going to move on from them.
It hurts. It feels so insulting. It feels whatever it feels like to you.
Validate them.
Don’t try to justify or excuse them away. Allow yourself to feel every one of them instead.
You may have told yourself that if he moved on, it would make it easier for you to move on. After all, you couldn’t possibly have known what this would feel like without experiencing it firsthand.
Go easy on yourself here.
It’s so easy to look back at what you could have done differently, but now is the time for compassion instead of regret.
This intense rage and emptiness usually comes out of what you’re feeling more towards yourself than at him. Yes, he’s the object, but there’s always more when it comes out like this. Loving yourself through this, having compassion for yourself, accepting that you did the best you could with what you knew at the time will all help.
There’s such a fantasy vs. reality part to this that we’re rarely aware exists until something like this happens where he actually moves on with someone else and we see what’s real and what no longer is the potential fantasy ending that he comes back to you fully capable of being everything you wanted him to be and wanting the same things.
Yes, this is exactly what a part of you still obviously was hoping for or you wouldn’t be experiencing such an intense emotional reaction to his moving on.
What you’re experiencing now is cutting through the fantasy of what could be to the reality of what absolutely is.
He’s moving on. Without you. And with someone – ouch – in your own town.
That’s painful!
Don’t deny what you’re feeling. It is painful. It absolutely hurts. How could it not? When you love like you do, when you feel like you do, could it possibly feel any less?
How do you stop feeling so angry and empty and sad?
Well, ironically, it’s by allowing yourself to feel so angry and empty and sad. It’s by writing out all those feelings as they come up for you, it’s about journaling around everything you want to get out about those feelings as you feel them.
It’s by listening to the music that makes you feel alive, and free, and expressive so you can feel not quite as alone in what you’re feeling anymore.
You’ll know those songs I mean. They’re the ones written by the ones who experienced this, too. The ones who understand.
Find the tears behind the rage and anger and emptiness you’re experiencing.
There’s always our own fears behind such emotions as these and when you can find the fear, you’ll find the release of tears that follow when you discover you’re not as much angry as you are scared.
It’s through our tears that the healing comes, the resolve comes, the strength to face the next moment comes.
He wasn’t the one and you knew it, RaspberryRush.
Oh you might have tried to keep it going, you might have talked yourself into believing those differences could have been overcome. But in the end, the truth always comes out. That’s why it hurts so much. That’s why you’re so angry and empty. You knew, but you didn’t want to.
And you didn’t want it to end like this.
Love, compassion, acceptance and validation. For you.
This is how you get to the good stuff. Going through what we always fight and never want, but always, always need to get there.
I hope this helps.
Love,
Jane
Do you have any other words of compassion, encouragement, and/or advice for RasberryRush? Please share them with us all in the comments!
I am sorry!! This is how dating goes. I take them as lessons to help me better myself.
Best wishes to you! The right guy will come around.
Thanks for the support and kind words! He and I have communicated a little since, and really there's no fantasy ending for us. I'm two weeks in now and am finally back to feeling a little bit more like myself.
How did I know he's not the one for me? We got on like a house on fire, each other's best friend, phonecall from jail and the one I thought would walk over hot coals for me. But in other ways we just didn't - emotionally he's very immature and although we were exclusive since the day of our first date committing to anything beyond that was too much for him. Long term I wanted marriage and a family and he would change his mind on it like the weather....yes no maybe. He was at my side through the worst time of my life (losing my Dad) and there are pockets of true greatness in what we had for a time. But the day to day was tough, we argued and he would frequently pull back on me on various things leaving me let down and disappointed. I used to joke with him that it wasn't that I wasn't top of his list....it's that I wasn't even on the list! We're both guilty of the mixed signals.
Since I wrote to Jane I spoke with him, wrote him a letter and conversed with him by email. On the phone he was sad, we were both sad, and he said he still had strong feelings for me, thought about me all the time, he had wanted a family with me in the future, he had stuck around because he still had wanted me, that he didn't know for sure what he wanted right now but he didn't want to hurt me. On foot of that I wrote a letter a week later saying that if I'd known he wanted those things it might have been different, could we talk about it and that I still had deep feelings for him too (which I do in some way).
Well, talk about switching off your feelings like a light switch! He replied to the letter basically saying he's moved on now, he's wanted to move on for a long time, he doesn't have any feelings for me anymore, I made him unhappy, going back would ruin us both, he's moving forward etc. He said various other things trying to blame me, but my therapist tells me not to focus on those! I asked the ex how he could switch off his feelings so quickly (keeping in mind a week earlier he was telling me he might want to get back together as he still had feelings for me!) and he said after 'years' of feeling bad with me he just decided he didn't want to feel like that anymore.
The girl is real, when they first started chatting he sent me screenshots of her dating profile to see if I knew her. We're out of each other's lives totally now and I'm keeping it that way for my own benefit. Ironcially our last words to each other were that we both had thought one day it would come together at last for us and we'd make it - and I'm pretty sure neither of us hold that opinion anymore.
Take my late husband advice he gave me right before he died. Never look back always go forward.
My ex of 14 years met someone one month after we broke up so he says. They dated for 10 months and got married. Two months later he was calling me up and showing up mysteriously on the highway on my way home from work. We have met for coffee and talked a few times a week in the last 5 months. He would text me pictures of things that would interest us in his whereabouts to pull at my heart strings. I listened to how miserable his life is. He never said he wants me back or is going to leave her but don't understand what he wants from me. I finally just told him that I have had enough and please don't contact me again. He said he married her for financial reasons only. He has quit his full time job and she makes a boatload of money. I see pictures of them and neither one of them are smiling in the picture and it strikes me as odd. I thought we were really into each other but the reason why I left was because I felt that he was being unfaithful. I want no part of him. He will keep doing this to everyone. I am telling you because men just don't change, as bad as you want them to.
Rasberry Rush - He just met her. Most people go all out in the beginning. She'll be thrilled that he drove to visit her, but then he'll visit less and less until she's not happy anymore. I think you're feeling that he's willing to give her what he didn't want to give you. But it's rare that someone 'unique' comes along and makes us want to totally change for him/her, especially as we get older. I think our egos get hurt when we feel our so called partner picked someone else over us, but only time will show you that he probably does the same thing to her. You can swallow your pride and beg him to move closer to you or you can give up your family and move to where he is. But it seems to me that you don't 'really' want either of those choices. However, letting go of the 'crumbs' (or fantasy) can still be difficult. Time thinking about other things and doing other things does help us see more clearly. I wish you well.
Thank you, RaspberryRush for putting into words what I was feeling this week. I feel not as alone and really will take Jane's advice to heart. I have heard bits and pieces of it from other women in my support network about validating my feelings, taking the time to let them evolve so that I may heal, and reaching out so I'm not alone in this.
I got word that my ex (who did terrible awful things that I won't go into) will be attending my 4-day work meeting next week and also a week long work trip next month. First, I burst into tears at the heartache, then I was fuming angry. The emotional scales were off the chart and I felt just as lost and scared as I did when we broke up 5 months ago! I can't believe there was so much emotion still right there being triggered just by seeing his name on a list!
I am grateful to have read this and remind me of the power of journaling. I have been avoiding writing my feelings down this week, probably because I am scared to admit that I secretly hold in my heart that fantasy that somehow he shows up as everything I need and it erases all the horrible memories of the past.
I guess I'm not superwoman, and I too need to walk through the painful stuff to get to the space of acceptance and be able to move on.
Blessings to all!
Hi Raspberry Rush... I know it's painful. I think what worries me is "why didn't you think he was the one?" You did say much about why? It honestly sounds like, from what you wrote, that he did care for you but wasn't sure because of signals he might have been receiving. You decided to start looking for someone else and he decided to look also. Maybe he knew you weren't sure so he kept his distance a little, emotionally and logistically.
I think you are questioning yourself about how you feel for him. You are hurt because he found someone else so close to you to pursue. I would be upset too because the distance thing was a hurdle for you two. He wouldn't move closer to you but yet he is willing to pursue a relationship with someone next door. There is definitely something missing between the 2 of you because he would have looked for someone sooner who was closer to him "if" the moving closer to you was an issue. It sounds like it isn't.
Have you seen pictures of the girl? Is there really a date or is he making it up to push some buttons? Guys like to push our buttons to see if we have an emotional connection.
Have you been calm throughout your courtship not reacting with upset when he does things that bother you? Do you keep your feelings closed up?
I am sorry you are facing this after a 3 year relationship with him. You know him and for me it is the hardest thing right now trying to start over.
Is there a chance that maybe this disconnect "could" connect you back together with a stronger path moving forward?