Yesterdays post was about the first commandment: Thou shalt cut off this ‘Let’s be friends’ mallarky, a call to action for any woman who has been caught up in the confusing world of being friends with their ex. Today’s post is for all of the ladies that love an assclown Mr Unavailable, and especially for women who have started the No Contact Rule. The second commandment of breaking up and moving on after a break up focuses on the tricky subject of women who can’t and won’t stop thinking about their exes.
Ladies, ladies, ladies, LADIES! There is a fundamental reason why I implore you to heed the commandment of ‘Thou shalt not obsess about your ex’:
If you become the woman that thinks obsessively about whether he’ll call and when, worrying about what he’s doing, or imagining scenario after scenario that could possibly happen, not only do you stall yourself from connecting with the reality of the break up and waste precious time and brain energy, but…
Obsessing about your ex after you’ve broken up, especially if there was anything dysfunctional about the relationship (assclowns, bad boys, Mr Unavailables, all of the these lumped together and more), is like switching one type of dysfunction for another.
Instead of being in a dysfunctional relationship you switch to an alternative universe where you alone in your dysfunction focusing on thinking about every little, itty, bitty, thing about this guy.
What do you have to gain by spending almost every waking moment thinking about your ex or fantasising about him turning up and what you may or may not do?
Nothing. But you have everything to lose, particularly if this goes on for an extended period of time.
So what do I mean by obsessing:
Constantly wondering where he is, what he’s doing, who he’s doing it with, or even worse, who he is doing.
Constantly trying to out-think the situation – Trying to work out when he’ll call. Preparing yourself every day for a possible call or an email. Trying to predict his every last damn move.
Fantasising about what you think you would do if your ex were to turn up.
As I explained to a reader yesterday, much of the obsessing is about rendering yourself as hopeless. Shooting yourself down before even giving yourself a chance to grieve, heal, and reassess the situation from a distanced, positive perspective.
Instead, a common situation I come across, is cutting off contact with a guy, thinking about him constantly even though you think he’s a complete assclown, obsessing about when he’ll make contact, fantasising about when the moment happens, and then deciding that you just WON’T be able to resist!
Oh hell no!
This is called writing yourself off and negative thinking.
Wouldn’t it be more constructive to envision telling these guys to take a run and jump rather than thinking about him contacting you and you both ending up in bed together because he’s just sooooooo irresistible?
You can be in as much control as you like in this situation, and unless you’re with a hard of hearing psychopath, you can let the possibility of him making contact or not making contact, as big or as small as possible.
You will slow your progress to a tortoise crawl if you go to the trouble of starting the No Contact Rule and then obsess about him making contact. It totally defeats the purpose of cutting contact because one of you (that would be YOU) is keeping up an ongoing dialogue…even though the object of your obsessing isn’t listening…
The only reason why we obsess about these assclowns making contact is because we want them to validate all of that emotional expenditure that we’ve doing!
We want them to rise up out of the ashes, go from a cockroach to a frog to a prince, jump on his white horse and say,
“Baby, I know I’ve been an assclown. I’ve been emotionally unavailable, I’ve screwed around on you/not returned your calls/refused to commit/ignored you/given you bad sex AND made your life hell but because you haven’t been taking my calls, I realise how valuable you are to me and I want us to be together….”
You could be in for a mighty long wait….
If you have the time to think about your ex for most of the day, you have too much frickin time on your hands. Hard to hear, but true.
Instead of making him the focal point of your life, even when he’s not around, you would do better to make YOU the focal point of YOUR life.
Unfortunately when we focus all of our efforts and emotions on one unavailable assclown, it is an indicator that all is not well within.
This time of grieving, healing, and regrouping with you is an opportunity to get real about the relationship that has just ended. Take off the rose tinted glasses, the fur coat of insecurity, and look at you and your relationship with real eyes.
Be sure of who you are, what you want, and why.
If you don’t love you, if you don’t want to be around you, you’re gonna have a really hard time connecting with someone that does.
Get busy – I’m not suggesting you turn into a worker bee but as women we tend to throw our social lives down the drain, and sometimes our quality of work when we are engrossed in an inappropriate man.
Catch up on work, hang with friends, take up a new interest, go on a holiday, get drunk and do some MJ walking on the dance floor at the nightclub, chill out on your own on a Friday night in some great lingerie with a great movie, and revel at being at one with your own company. But more importantly, do something that benefits you. Do something that loves you.
Figure out whether you have any issues that are standing in the way of having healthy, positive relationships, and do something about it. Come to Baggage Reclaim, see a counsellor, read some books (I can recommend a good one called Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl by me 😉 ), write some unsent letters, and move towards getting to a happier you, because you do know that one of the golden rules of new relationships is that you must be over your ex….
Being over your ex means that you have no emotional attachment to him. If you aren’t friends, this means you should have no positive or negative attachment – it just is what it is.
And of course, never obsess about a guy and then try to start up something new with someone else – get over him before you end on easy street to another dodgy relationship!
Check out Commandment 1: Thou shalt cut off this ‘Let’s be friends’ malarkey
Check out Commandment 2: Thou shalt not obsess
Check out Commandment 3: Thou shalt stop fearing the pain of breaking up and confront it.
Check out Commandment 4: Thou shalt stop doubting yourself and get angry.
Check out Commandment 5: Thou shalt be accountable
Check out Commandment 6: Thou shalt understand WHY and do something with the knowledge
Check out Commandment 7: Thou shalt forgive…but not forget…but don’t cling.
Check out Commandment 8: Thou need to get a life!
Check out Commandment 9: Thou mustn’t give up on love.
Check out Commandment 10: Thou must close the door and move forward
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NML.. great posting.. w/o a doubt this is what i struggle with…. i have told friends over and over again.. i can’t stop obsessing.. it’s ridiculous really, but i know time will heal as well as me wanting to change it..
Can you give more insight to “rendering yourself as hopeless?:”
I’m assuming you mean, you believe you are hopeless but not the realationship?
I read a book (one of about 10 thru all this), that said you must give up hope, b/c once you do that, you have no expectations and no disappointements. Makes ton of sense..
Sheila, your relationship is hopeless, you just won’t let go. You believe there is a chance it may work and as long as you think so and keep on waiting for him, you will never stop obsessing. I think you feel hopeless in this situation, but you are the one that can stop all the madness – not him. You are not hopeless unless you suffer from the “poor me” syndrome? 🙂
This is not good for your health, you really need to stop.
You need to take control, all the blocking/unblocking, changing phone numbers – you are giving him the control.
Yes, time will heal only if you stop obsessing and stop waiting on him, if not, a year will go by and you are still obsessing. 🙁
you’re exactly right.. i am truly working on it.. i can do this!!!
I think the only reason to ever be friends with an ex (or even try) is a) if you work together (and shame on you for dating someone you work with!), b) you had friends in common before you dated, or c) you were friends before you dated. If you never had any interaction besides dating before, why should you now that you’re not together? In the past I have let myself obsess for a little while because I’m human, but you can give yourself a cutoff date for obsession just like you give yourself a cutoff date for contact.
I met my ex thru one of my good guy friends. The three of us hung out all the time, as well as other friends. Well we dated and then broke up and now i have no BF and no friends. I am still friends with our mutual guy friend, but it’s difficult and we all can’t hang together anymore, so i lost that too.. sucks.. it is impossible for us to be friends nor do i want to give him that satisfaction..
i like the cutoff date theory..
I agree with Honey. Give yourself a time limit. Not too short, not too long. But, during that time, sit, think, grieve. Look at the old pics. Then near the end of your time limit stop and remember all the reasons why YOU shouldn’t want to be with him, why YOU will be happier. Think of all the stress, anger, insecurity this relationship has brought to your life. Then take all of those memories, pack them in a box, burn them, whatever. But do something cathartic, not angry, cathartic to help you get closure.
(and get a friend to support you, so you don’t add days…lol…and put it on your calendar!)
You will still love him, you will still miss him. You just won’t feel that you need him in your life anymore. And the loving and missing will fade. Trust me. It will.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, so be gentle with yourself!
Hello ladies! Thanks for your comments!
Sheila – when I say “rendering yourself as hopeless” it’s the whole deciding that you are helpless to the situation, that you can’t resist him if he does get in contact, and that everything that happens is out of your control, as if powerless to do anything. The reality is that if you have spent enough time envisioning yourself as hopeless then the likelihood is that you are not actually hopeless, it’s just that the idea of giving in and not resisting still holds an attraction for you. So for instance, a reader tells me the other day that if her ex who is now married gets in touch, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to resist and could end up being a OW! I was like, hold on second. You are fantasising about different scenarios – it’s an adjustment in mentality – instead of saying you can’t resist, won’t be able to etc and rendering yourself as helpless in your fantasy, she should be thinking positively and saying “If he gets in touch with me, he won’t stand a chance”
Astelle – I love your honesty and what I would add to that is commit to your decision Sheila. Commit to you and commit to the decision instead of committing to the concept of him and what he could be, if only, or committing to the fantasies.
Honey – Amen! Have your obsessing period, and then shake it off and move forward. We’re human but it’s a step too far to become so embroiled in it for so long – it’s fear of letting go. An ex used to play the whole best friend card then I suddenly thought “hold on frickin second, we were never friends before we hooked up!”
Sheila – Absolutely. Call it your official period of mourning. I have had to let go of groups of friends before over an ex, but you know what, I have my sanity and my self-esteem so it’s better this way.
Cheekie – Amen, amen, amen! Man, I have been weeping like a mofo in the past and now I wonder what type of crack I was on!
NML… great advice as usual, and Astelle is always brutally honest, but we need that sometimes… I had a good night last night, kept busy, excercised, and had a good nights sleep… I feel better today, and feel like I’m finally making progress in this whole mess. When I find myself thinking of him, I catch myself. Before I go to bed, i watch tv and sometimes keep in on, so my thoughts are not consumd lying there. I also put a pix of my little nephew by the side of my bed who makes me so happy, and always makes me smile. This situation is sht and nonsense when i look at his little face.
If feel good ladies.. thanks for the posts and the advice..
Stay strong!!!
Nicely done NML! The fact that I did this after my break up with the ex b/f literally turns my stomach! When you add the fact that the assclown is NOT spending any time thinking about/obsessing over you, it helps to put it in perspective a little bit. Why would you give that much time and spend that much energy on someone who is already going merrily about his way? UGH.
I love Cheekie’s suggestion about doing something cathartic. I’ve been know to put those things in a box, take them outside, and light the damn things on fire! Controlled of course. Damn, that crap felt good!
Oh I have done it too, trust me. Spent way, way, waayyyyyy too much time thinking about someone that frankly wasn’t worth the effort. If he was, we would still be together right? This isn’t a romance novel or poem ladies.
He never came up to my door begging forgiveness, seeing the error of his ways and there was no gd white horse. Or even white taxi cab.
Do you really think he is sitting there doing the same about you? No frickin way. I garuntee it.
One of my fave methods for that catharsis is to write a letter to him. Say everything you want to say. You love him, hate him, his breath stinks, he has a nice bum. Everything. Last paragraph add how you are feeling-exactly-and how he has made you feel. Then seal it up. Hide it on yourself, or put away with a ‘do not open til – insert 3 months date’…then no contact at all, nothing, then at the date re-open and laugh at yourself. TRUST me, you will. And that’s a good thing.
Or just burn the mofo, along with a pic of him and you. and roast some marshmallows over it. mmmmm ‘heartache s’mores’……
xo
I don’t obsess about HIM as he is a worthless creep, but I keep going over in my mind what I did to deserve such a bad relationship. I walked away so many times but I went back just as many, AND I’ve done this with another guy many years ago. I recently emailed him to see if he had an answer as to WHY he cheated, lied and stole from me – I know I wont hear back but I needed to send it. I dont care what he thinks about me – he can think I am obsessing about him but this isnt about him – its about ME and why do I allow jerks in my life. I actually hope the azzhole falls of the face of the planet but I would like some answers from someone as to why do I allow abuse when I know its wrong?!? I need to spend more time on just myself and be around good, moral, decent, loving, loyal and hopeful people. I would think in my 50’s I should have figured this out by now.
Ugh, after a year of being on an off w/ an EUM, I found this website!!! Thank you!!! I finally get it and am ready for no contact and to move on…but it definitely makes it harder that we work together b/c I have to see him and hear his name numerous times a day…
I am having trouble with not obsessing…what are some tips to make this stop? How do you stop yourself when you mind drifts to him and his newest victim…and Facebook and MySpace are not helping – please share some tips, how do I stop this?