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Heartbreak is painful. It is an inevitable part of life. I am in a constant state of heartbreak. I am a romantic at heart, but I am heartless, cold, and closed off. I am selfish. I don’t know how to love yet I am in love with love. Oh the irony.
My last relationship failed so dramatically, it gave me whiplash. We were oh so wrong for each other. Yet we stayed together for as long as we did because we genuinely liked each other. Unfortunately, our life trajectory wasn’t going in the same direction. He wanted me to be a step-mother to his children. I didn’t. I wanted him to travel with me. He couldn’t afford it because he had 3 kids to care for, financially. It was a mess.
I grew cold.
I never wanted to grow an attachment to the kids either. He didn’t want to re-marry. I wanted to marry for the first time.
In my mind, I am not going to put it wifey efforts if I was never going to be married to him. I was never going to act like a wife if I was just going to be a girlfriend forever. I could not accept the fact that he did not want to re-marry. So I barely put in effort in trying to get to know his kids. I never wanted to be a mother. I had zero maternal instincts or desires. I figured that if he was not going to try, then why should I?
Eventually, he did break up with me because of our constant fighting and the fact that he noticed I never wanted to care for his kids.
This is the eventual result of a relationship where neither he nor I were getting our needs met.
This was a very difficult pill for me to swallow. After our breakup, I took it severely hard. I put myself on Lexapro. I hired a therapist. I was (ahem, still am sometimes) in a dark hole and I needed to climb out of it desperately.
It’s been about five months now since we broke up. I am feeling so much better nowadays after I said I did not want to be friends anymore a month ago. I think that was the best decision I made.
Upon reflection, I realize now that I need to make sure my needs are being met in a relationship. Otherwise, I am prone to turn into an empty shell of a person. I do not want that. I cannot sustain a relationship on that.
I remember the emotional rollercoaster that he and I used to go through. He has kid issues, ex-wife issues, financial issues, and work issues. He treated me like his emotional support human and I was there for him. Now I am not without faults. I cheated on my boyfriend to be with him. I was unhappy in that relationship too.
Unhappy people tend to enter miserable relationships because they are miserable themselves. Like attracts like. My unhappiness permeated my entire being and it made me hate him even more. I resented a lot and placed blame on him for things that he was not at fault for. See? I’m not a perfect person. I wanted to hurt him like how I was hurt. It was an unconscious thing. I wanted to repel him because I repelled myself. I was angry at myself. My anger projected outwards. I was impatient, irritable, miserable, and always negative.
All of this contemplation has come to me through many months of therapy and hot girl walks. I have spent so many moments alone, constantly ruminating over what went wrong and how things keep going wrong. I also made the terrible mistake of dating my co-worker, so yes, I unfortunately do have to see my ex everyday. We don’t talk anymore.
In my moments of deep despair and loneliness, I found myself texting him and calling him over Father’s Day Weekend. He did not reply. I don’t blame him. We had a huge fight in the beginning of May and we haven’t been alright since.
I am trying so desperately hard to have self-compassion and move on from this traumatic experience. I maintain my therapy appointments. I try to exercise when I can (and when I mean exercise I mean going on walks because I’m not a very athletic person). I try to talk to people at work. I keep up with my two closest friends. I focus on my career (I’ve actually been quite productive due to the lessened mental load of being single and no longer having a disruptive relationship full of conflict).
I guess the hardest thing for me to swallow is that the end of my relationship is definitely something that I also contributed to.
That’s part of growing up and maturing, I guess. Is realizing who I am.