[Alice]

PS: as to R’s situation. Do I have the right to pretend how anybody processes grief? Can I get beyond my ego, and hope he gets some joy, even with this person? Although he definitely behaved childishly and exposed himself in public, also to punish me? Although I do not think he is conscious of this. He also did it to get revenge on the people in our circle who have judged him and even distanced themselves from him. Yes, he acted out of anger, loneliness. I can understand that. But it is not an excuse, is it? It is just a sign of emotional immaturity and distress.

[Alice]

Well, Heidi, I think / feel that I would have wanted us to separate in a conscious way, without a catalyser. But as I write this I realise that we were so stuck, myself so guarded, himself so hurt by me ignoring him, all the resentment buildup, the fear, that it probably could not have happened otherwise. So in this aspect, it was fate – our unconscious patterns pulling us in certain directions.

So I guess I would have wanted more emotional maturity. Maybe being able to separate, take our time apart, and maybe, return to each other from different positions. Or at least grieve without reaching out to others, in public. But apparently men throw themselves in other relationships, to get over a disappointment.

As for this girl she has some issues herself, otherwise she would not have gotten attracted in this dinamic. If it were not her, it probably would have been another one in our circle, because as I see it now, proximity is always at work…

I would have wanted him to find solace somewhere else, not so close to me. I would have preferred not to know it, not to happen so close to “home’. I see it as a matter of respect. So the need for revenge I guess comes from this. My ego is hurt. My honour in public has been touched. So there is some shame in there as well. Yes, it is shame. So I want to break them, her to realise that she can not interfere in such things without damaging herself, and to punish him, by taking away this experience from him. For him to grieve without crutches. These are thoughts that cross my mind. I know they are ego driven, but for the sake of my healing, I accept them.

I also try to look for some good in all this mess. Painful as it was this year, I also had 2 wonderful months with A, which showed me that different dynamics are possible. For how long, I do not know. :)) With him, until a certain point, obviously, when he chose his past. I guess that is his unconscious strings pulling him, and it is a story that is not of my concern anymore.

So, the conclusion is that we are such complicated beings, and that maybe we should not have expectations of anybody. To be so grounded, that whatever anybody does, does not faze us. Accepting that we are flawed, that at a certain point anybody can dissapoint us. But is this realistic? Can we function like this, and still be involved with life? Can a life partnership function like this? How about commitment, shared goals? Don’t they become expectations? How to navigate this? What type of life can this be? For a certain reason, the phrase “with eyes wide open” comes to mind. Can we really gain such clarity? How?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Alice.

[Alice]

How are you feeling about R’s fling now? Now that you expressed your anger and hurt, do you feel more resolved about her?

I have ups and downs. Sometimes I just dream of revenge, boycotting them, just so that it does not work between them. As it did not work before, because he still had feelings for me. This was early in the year when we separated, and out of anger I left to see A. Sometimes I just feel like giving it all up, not caring. But truth is I still feel the hurt because of the betrayal. I spoke with a friend last night who had no idea about this whole story, and she asked a question that just made me pour my heart out. So obviously there is still some healing to do from this episode.

[Alice]

I will try to do the exercise tonight. See what comes up.

[Alice]

HI Heidi,

I have been busy with work, and did not really make the space for the recommended exercise.
Of course I have had moments of vulnerability and anger during the past weeks, but I try to stay centred and really engraved this KEEP YOUR POWER motto in my mind.
I accept more my polarities, and I am using your question: Is it loving for me to… ? whenever I have doubts about something I might do / feel.
I also accept (quite hard for me) that I can not control others :), and that I am also not responsible for other people’s actions and feelings. (quite a relief).
I feel that slowly the hurt I felt from both sides (A and R) is fading. I maybe will remain friends with both of them.
With A I restarted talking online,I am not sure if I wrote that. Maybe we will see each other in a few weeks, maybe not. He is still roaming around that woman + her kid, so what I understood from here is that you can not fight a man’s history. 🙂 But I feel that not cutting contact completely is better for me right now. A writes back, even offered me a place to stay if I need, on my travels, so yes, I do not know what is in his mind, but I confess that I am at that point where I do not care. I mean, it is his life, he is free to do whatever he wants.
I might go and see him during one of my travels, just to test myself. To see how I feel when he is in front of me, physically. Will I still find him attractive, or I will see him as another male friend. You could see this also an attempt to “deconstruct” what is left.

With R, I must admit that I had some moments of jealousy when he started going out with a girl that he was flirting/ getting close with when we were still together last year. It mostly bothered me that they showed off in our community (when I left him for A, I consider that I least had the decency to go in another county, did not post anything on social media, and had my little healing adventure in complete privacy.) This girl is a bit of a narcisist and posts photos of herself made by R, he does not post but says he can not control her. SO this bothered me, until I realised that social media is not reality (although I work in marketing, a friend had to point that out to me). I actually met that girl recently and she is ashamed of me but in the same time continues her social media show. I even gave in to anger and resentment one day, and lost a mobile phone, which led me to conclude that anger is expensive!!! So these are moments when I felt the need to write something to A, just so that I feel I have an emotional backup of some sorts. I really did not care what and if he would think of me, I just felt like being in contact with a man as well. So after I expressed my anger to R, and having an emotional episode, he proposed that we spend some time outdoor next week.

So, here are my updates. I am really happy that the emotions connecting me to A have faded, that I understood that there is nothing wrong with me, he just has his complicated story – actually the more I read about relationships, the more I discover there are people in all sort of non-traditional “combinations” so … whatever, I guess this world is more complicated than I thought.
I wonder if he did not have this history, if it would have worked, as I was that much in need and into him. Can I say a bit addicted? 😀 You might say that I was on rebound… or something like this, looking back, to make it look not realistic.

I also feel happy for the small progresses I make in letting go of the anger and resentment that I had built during the years against R.
It makes me feel lighther in my body.
Talking to him right now, in a more honest note, I realise how much each of us had tried to change the other one, which led to frustration and a very poor sex life for both… Things he tells me now, I somehow always felt them, but could not name them. Like not feeling able to express myself/ some wishes if it would not have been in line with his ideas (inner child – authoritarian father) for fear he would not like me anymore. Him, telling me he always felt he had to ask for permission, or somehow explain his need to be outdoors and do his sports, away from me…I am active, but he is hyper and he has his own issues related to ambition. I wish somebody taught us about relationships, authenticity, interdependence and inner validation when we were children/ youth so we do not have to use precious years learning these painful lessons and literally consume energy and health on them.

[Alice]

Your question caused some discomfort as I had to think a bit. So here are my answers:

– first of all, she does not know she can refuse this “task”. His adult energy, the sadness / frustration are overwhelming. She does not know there are options because she emphatisez strongly with him. Because she cares. And if he becomes well, then he can pay attention to her, be patient, listen, try to discover her world, show affection and play together. 🙂
– is she failed, she would have to watch him suffer and that is heavy. The child can not leave home, so she is stuck in that atmosphere.
– if she failed, he might try to find a solution elsewhere. but she does not know to tell him that.
– she might just put a wall and stop caring, become insensitive to emotions. to dismiss them. to have no empathy for “weak”, emotional men. to leave. Which I eventually did in my young adult years. All of the above.

Is it possible to be peaceful in the middle of chaos? Is that what you are asking? Yes. I can handle stressful people in work environments. I had to, and my attitude was always to not get emotionally involved. Recently I watch people/clients stress, listen and do not react to their reactions. 🙂 I just do not take it personally and let it pass by me.
But I do not know how to do that in personal relationships, where I am more invested emotionally. And then you add the day to day more or less busy life – and how can you be “zen” and balanced?

[Alice]

Thank you for the books recommendations. I already went through them. One seems to develop the Jungian shadow concept. Interesting.
I had a similar aha moment 2 years ago, when I realised that I was also drawing value from Doing/ being Useful. What life brought to me, more or less consciously, was a sabbatical year with unexpected financial support. 🙂 For the workaholic in me, it was just what I needed.

To answer your question: What would happen if I couldn’t make “him” happy?
I believe the correct answer is that it is not my responsibility to make anybody happy, anymore. Or to fix anybody. Although I like to help and I believe it is part of my feminine energy to do that, to nurture. And it is also part of my life s mission.
My responsibility is to take care of myself and always watch myself (my internal dynamics). I am not sure this is easy to develop and maintain while being immersed in the world. But maybe I could see it as a challenge. How about this approach? Have you met people getting to this level of peace while in action? Real people, not ideals and philosophical / spiritual models. 🙂

Thank you.

[Alice]

Heidi, I read your answer yesterday, but did not know what to reply.
The only thing that came to my mind was – RESISTANCE. To what, do not know.
Then, I woke up this morning, and the first line that came to my mind was: I need to make you happy. This is related to some inner reflections I had after reading a book about the inner child. I start to see how R resembles my late father. No surprise I chose him 7 years ago! :))

During the last 10 years I had a good relationship with my father. He was rather old and I spent the last months of his life by his side.
SO I believe he left in peace. But I come to see ambition, the inner critic, introversion, some lack of social skills/flexibility, pedagogic inclination & other traits they both had in common.

I also came to realise how despite the positive mindset I have, when I feel not seen/ accepted I enter a defensive mode, focusing on the bad experiences (which I understood now, is our primitive brain trying to keep us alive).

So I need to keep on focusing on my needs and having them met.
This moment s conclusion is that R is still linked to something deep inside on me, that is connected to my father. 🤓

[Alice]

What in particular do you think makes you a lousy human being?
All this lack of clarity, blindness to what has happened, getting to burnout without seeing it coming. I actually somehow did but did not act. It was in the back of my mind. Basically, living so caught up in stress (fear) that … I wasted time. I could have done better. 🙁 I could have existed more alive. I wish I could have been more honest with myself.

Do you really want to work that hard?
He asked me what I am up to, and even considered changing his job.
He says that he thought a lot while we were apart, tried to work on himself. But I was still fresh after my interaction with A, that I did not feel like hearing about it. I was honest and told him how I felt about A.
So now he restarted talking with that other girl, she came to visit him. They are just friends, because obviously whatever they tried to do did not work out in terms of a relationship. And what I have noticed, is that it really bothers me. I could just look away. That was my strategy always, with anything, just do not bother and focus on myself. But now I am curious to look into it. Why do I care that he spends time with this girl? I understand that he tries to have a closure with her, because he kind of used her and that backfired on both of them. And he feels bad about it. Maybe I just need to stay away of it all?

[Alice]

I just wanted to add that with R, the tipping point was when being in a relationship with him, I realised I had a crush on somebody. It was all in my head, and it happened just because that particular guy showed interest, made compliments, etc and I realised how unseen I felt. In my head this lasted for 3 months, while I was with R, moving out in another country. 🤓 I felt completely lost, I did not understand what was happening, how did it come to happen, it just struck me. So I went into an emotional freeze mode. I did not pursue that impulse of cheating, what happened with that man was just a platonic kiss, and then I felt all this guilt, remorse about me being dishonest. That just added to my confusion. I went to see a therapist for a few sessions, too try to understand what the hell was happening to me. My mentor recommended to take a sabbatical year, which I did, starting with the pandemic. I did a lot of reading, started talking with friends, did things for myself, while putting up a wall between me and R, which let to his emotional affair.

Tell me I am not the only one who has gone through this. 🤣
We are such complicated beings… I feel I just want to hear that I am not such a lousy human being and that others have gone through similar things …

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Alice.

[Alice]

Heidi, I do not know what I would have liked to hear. :))

The story with R is long, and I have not elaborated on it since everything with A was so fresh. The situation I am in with R – I understood my responsibility, after 5 years of relationship, I was in doubt, I pretty much pushed him away, trying to find myself as I had followed with projects and work (he is hyper focused and competitive). He tried to work things out between ourselves, but I was not sure as I was afraid not to continue to be trapped in his life. Then he had an emotional affair with somebody, he broke up with me in November and said that he used that girl to try to get over me. In July he was still not over me, so the girl ended up suffering quite a bit (that is her responsibility, she should have known better, not to get involved with a man who is not available completely).

In May, when I returned to take care of him after his accident, and after staying with A for 2 months, R said he wanted me back, that he felt lonely, he had enough of feeling lonely in a relationship, etc and that is why he went for that girl.

The good thing for me, after all this mess is that I found myself, I made peace with the idea that maybe I will, maybe I will not have my biological children and realised that I actually function very well alone. But I do want a healthy and thriving partnership.

SO now that I have made a plan for the rest of the year, where I work, how I continue my studies (I will sign up for a master degree in philosophy), continue a community project that also involves working with children, decided that the man that will join me, will need to be more open to my interests and willing to follow me as well. Not me, losing myself in another s life. So now I think to myself: could there be a way to transform this relationship with R?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Alice.

[Alice]

Well, I did not really like what you wrote but that is not a bad thing. 🙂

I will let it sink in.

Thank you.

[Alice]

PS: I talked with A about some health issue he has and I told him about R’s recent surgery and he seemed not to hear or want to hear about it.
He just changed the subject. If we talk again, I might just tease him again with it. I know it is childish, the child in my trying to nag him a bit, but I might still do it, just to show him that he is not the only one having ex- friends.

[Alice]

Hello all,

Indeed, it has been a month now since I did not check the forum.

Well, the first 2 weeks after deciding to cut things completely with A were the worst. But thank you for guiding me to do it. It was like getting off a drug (never did them, but I imagine it would be a similar physical/emotional sensation). Then I spent time with friends, focused on myself, went back to the other country, and had a nice brief holiday with a male friend, who knows A as well and whose advice and listening were also very helpful. I made peace with myself and understood that you can not make somebody get into a relationship if they do not want to.

So I called A, as on our way to the ocean, my friend and I needed a place to stay overnight, and honestly that was a good reason to get in touch with A, without losing my face. 🙂 So we talked, he told me again that I misinterpreted the context he was in, he showed me pictures from the climbing gym he goes to, with this kid. I showed him a photo with the mountains around my place yesterday and he called back with video (that is rare of him, to use video) to show me the mountains from his weekend trip. And funny, the kid popped up in the screed, curious to see who is A talking to. The boy looked quite happy and honestly, I naturally smiled back at him. After that I talked a little more with A and next, I heard a female voice telling him that he forgot to do something. Which apparently was to prepare breakfast. 🙂 So he put the phone in his pocket, video still on, started making breakfast and then we closed the conversation. So he shows me the kid, but not his ex, and I believe he is aware that it would be a bit weird for both of us to see each other.

What I gather from here is that he spends time with them, definitely wants to be a part of their lives and has a strong bond with this kid.
Since he talked with me in front of her, then she probably knows about me as well, so it is possible they are in a sort of convenient relationship. He says that he is helping them, but that he does it for himself, and does not want to be in a relationship.

So to me it looks like this: He likes the idea of a family but does not want to commit now to one, so he will just fill an empty male space in one. I do not know what was the dynamic he had in his previous 2 relationships with the mother of the kid, commitment level, but apparently they are good friends now.

He said that in spring he returns to his house in the country I am currently in, and until then he will not finish his projects in our home country.

Have you encountered this kind of dynamic between exes? It is like they play family without physical intimacy between him and this woman.
To me it seems that you do that, until somebody else (on both sides) comes up and takes your attention away. And since for her it is more difficult probably – single woman with a young child – to find somebody else, she will not cut it off. Anyway, it seems that she left him twice, but he kept on going back to her/them, and now they are just friends. From the perspective of an avoidant, that I believe he is, it makes perfect sense for him to keep returning. But then again, as long as you are in this type of dynamic, how would you find/ show yourself available to others? He tells me that his doors are open for me, if I need a place to stay. But it is not an invitation, and I told him that I will add him on my list of available places too stay in our home country.

____

On the other side, with R, I told you we still share a flat. He waited for me to come back, hoping we would get back. The emotional barriers and hurts were not gone yet, I was still longing for A, so I told R no.He then gave me the ring he had held on to for a while, and said he has nothing to do with it, and in any circumstance, it should me mine. So here I am, carrying a ring in my bag, contemplating it, sometimes I put it on my finger to see how it looks like.
I hesitate to go back too R, because he is now depressed, he has an anger problem, a bit of a hater 🙂 – i went into the inner child literature and I understood some things, but what was dysfunctional in my relationship with him, was that I lost myself in my need for harmony (i grew up in a rather tense – conflictual environment between my parents). All the time in the relationship with R I was the uplifting one, doing extra things just to make him happy, which obviously drained me and got us to where we ended up.

So now R is depressed, and I feel like helping him, as a friend now, but if I were to consider trying again being in a relationship with him, I do not thing it should be from a place of suffering. What would I be doing, being the saviour again? 🙂
So I want to help him, but I also understood from my brief relationship with A that I want by my side a man who is calm and kind. Somebody who R is not (he is not violent, he just criticises a lot, and obsivously does not love himself and I told him that).

How do you handle a person in this context, while remaining centered?

Thank you, your advice is valuable.
Alice

[Alice]

As for A, two weeks have passed and I still miss him but in the same time, I start to become angry with him. Two times I showed up in his life, two times he did not choose to fight for me. I feel that if he showed up in my face today, right now, I would just want to slap him, or more figuratively, smack him with a frying pan. 🤣 These are contradicting emotions.
Is this normal “grieving” process?

[Author]

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