“I can’t make him see, or feel, or relinquish his own pain. It’s sad, it’s a fact, and it’s his own torment to bear alone. I’m working on mine. Feel sympathy but don’t get dragged into propping him up. The kindest thing that you can do for your self or for the ex is allowing them to discover (or not) their own ignorance” (I keep thinking, “Can lead the horse to water, but can’t make them drink… My ex would wouldn’t ‘drink’ out of pure stubborness, an unwillingness to admit he actually needed me. There is no fixing a relationship like this, where one person will knowingly, willingly, and consistantly burn it to the ground, time and time again. I watched him destroy our love because he wouldn’t deal with his fears and issues. And I was powerless to stop him, because I can’t control what others do. I genuinely feel sorry for him, sorry for us, sorry for me… So many people in this world want love so badly, and EUMs who are lucky enough to have it, just throw it away like it means nothing, and like he has ‘so much’ love in his life, he can afford to throw it away. So sad.)

and Trinity practically read my mind with:

“I have lost all respect for this man , u see him now for exactly what he is and always was and I think that scares the crap out if him. That the one decent and kind person he had in his life, the one person that stood by him and believed in him now thinks he is a worthless man.” (I actually said the above to my ex, several times, again trying to ‘convince’ him of my worth…. How stupid of me… “How can you turn against and throw away, the one person in your life that truly believes in you, supports you, understands you, is always there for you, and loves you so much, like I mean nothing to you??” How utterly heartbreaking and devastating to be treated like this by the person you love. I truly have lost all respect for him now, seeing what he is capable of)

Ugh. It makes me sick to my stomach to think of how I gave everything I had to him, was there for him, and put up with so much awful treatment from him. I can see now how I never deserved any of that, and that he also never deserved ME.

Thank you to NML for showing us the light, and for all the survivors out there for posting and sharing their (oh-so-similar) stories. Coming here gives me strength to not contact, not go back, and learn to take care of me… As it should be.

Don’t you go be un-official with him now!

Unfortunately, I have learned that the hard way again! I am a smart woman but have not been the most smartest with the ex. I do not intend to and will not contact this person if they contact me even to say no to him and wish that I would have done that in the first place. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience!

Six years is too long to just be in a relationship especially if we are not moving forward to marriage. We have got to stop letting these ass clowns come into our lives. They are only getting free refills without dealing with any of their own issues and constantly keep treating us the same. When you close that door you need to leave it close. I have an ex of mine that I dated over 5 years ago who has recently tried to contact me. I have not answered any of his calls and don’t intend to ever! Why because an ex is an ex for a reason and this is not the ex that I just broke it off with almost 2 months ago. He’s probably waiting for the chance to pop back up as well but he won’t have any access bacback into my life. You have to mean NC when you enforce it. Reconnecting months later doesn’t mean that anything has changed.

To add insult to the injury, my self-esteem went into the toilet and I started to drink to relieve the constant pain and loneliness I felt and have now become dependant upon alcohol to keep the pain I feel internally at bay. For nearly three years I managed to stay away from this guy despite his several attempts (long periods in between) of contacting me via email wanting to get back together again which would leave me feeling conflicted and confused. I would respond to him telling him no and then feel like crap for doing so always wondering if things would be different between us because of the time spent apart and thinking that maybe both of us had grown up. Earlier this year I gave in to the temptation believing that I must have unfinished business with him. He seemed like a changed sincere man that was so happy to hear from me and I was willing to take that chance again. He charmed me right away and despite a few things, I was back into the game with him only to have that door slammed in my face again two days before my birthday back in April.

Before that happened he told me that he was looking for a long-term relationship with me and more happy than he had been in along time because were together again but it didn’t take long before he fell back into the same patterns again. I began to see that I was settling and that he somehow was managing to manipulate me into accepting less than what I deserved from a man when in a serious relationship. Everything was on his terms and I saw clearly the controlling and manipulative behaviors that I hadn’t clearly recognized before. I should consider myself lucky that he dumped me out of the blue during a heated argument that escalated beyond what it should have been on his part as a result of him making plans with someone else on the evening of my birthday and not wanting to do anything to make it up to me.

Yes, I cried the day after and am still hurt and have been trying to get through this again. However, I am resolved to never letting him do this to me again. My self-esteem has taken another blow over this and I hate that my thoughts are consumed with getting over him while still trying to function and deal with my day-to-day responsibilities without letting on to the enormous hurt I feel.

One of the things that I have been bothered with is whether or not he will contact me again and how I will handle that. I now know that the only way to handle him is to not respond to him at all not even to say never again. I doubt that will be the end of it but at least I now understand exactly what I need to do to avoid ever falling back into this repeated pattern again. I also hope that I can break the pattern of forming relationships with men that are not emotionally capable of being in a relationship and spot the warning signs before I get hooked into another situation that is hard to get away from. I wish it was as easy as it is when dealing with salespeople or hearing fantastic deals that sound too good to be true and wonder why it is so easy to see through people like that than it is to see through men that are not good boyfriend material.