The heartache thread
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So I was inspired by reading H&A all this time. Pretty much everyone at some point in their life has some terrible thing happen that it feels like they won't get over. In a lot of cases, the worst thing involves a paramour fucking us over in some way, but there are also things like death, failure, or whatever.
So, this is a thread for discussion of such things. What makes some minor things so hard to get over, when comparitively enormous problems don't bother us at all? How have you coped with traumatic events, and how would you have coped differently? Why does having your heart broken completely destroy your taste in music? etc...
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So, this is a thread for discussion of such things. What makes some minor things so hard to get over, when comparitively enormous problems don't bother us at all? How have you coped with traumatic events, and how would you have coped differently? Why does having your heart broken completely destroy your taste in music? etc...
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He stood me up again, and when I got back home, seething (I had gone to a coffee shop near his place of work, for convienience, nad it was a half hour drive away), I logged onto MSN and saw him signed on with the display name "I GOT LAID AT WORK!"
When we ended up meeting, not as a date, but just as friends, he said he had never strung me alone, and by the way -- he found me intellectually appealing but physically repulsive.
I spent the next couple of months sulking and listening to Mad World more than is good for any civilized person. I also asked out a boy who was very attractive, but we had absolutely nothing in common just to try to take my mind off it. When he said no, I was even more unhappy.
It was pretty shit. Thank God I found the current Boy.
As much as I may whine and moan about my girl troubles, or lack thereof, there are a lot of times that I'm glad I don't have to deal with heartbreak, or with any relationship issues whatsoever, and never have.
Man, it's that whole gambler's frame-of-mind. Like, when you start losing, you have to play looser and faster so you can make it all back. I have totally done this exact same thing with girls. Except, I got turned down by one, and went after 7 more before realizing that maybe I was being a bit desperate.
Also, at this point, I'm so familiar with it that it no longer bums me out. Like, I've just come to realize that if someone turns you down, there's probably a good reason for it. Why would you want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with you? It just kind of hit me, recently, that, no matter how great their attributes are individually, they as a person, aren't right for me. If they were, they would have said yes. It's sort of like the anthropic principle, but for dating. Kind of.
Anyways, it's made it a whole hell of a lot easier to take rejection, and I never end up pining for some girl anymore. I'd like to think that this is because I've come to a more mature, holistic view of dating, and not that I'm just rationalizing everything. :P
I'm embarrassed to say this, but the song 'I want you to want me' from 10 things I hate about you pretty much sums up how I feel/felt. : /
Avoid at all costs.
was a twat, you're better off without them" is a mystery to me, because it's the least useful advice possible.
Why is it though, that people who treat us so badly still retain that level of power over us?
When I was at what I would consider my worst, which probably won't be my worst farther down the road, I thought to myself about all the other shit times I had been in and yet I still got through whatever it was and I was still here. So whenever things get bad I always think to myself, "Its never over unless you die or go to prison, and even in prison it isn't completely over."
I'm not trying to be overly optimistic, but it has truth. Regardless of circumstances unless you're dead nothing changes. You slog through and look back later and think, "hey I'm still here kickin.'
When it comes to females though I've noticed that whenever things ended badly due to my own fault it all began as soon as I stopped being me. We were doing so well and then I stopped being myself and went back to that "gotta be cool" mindset and everything unraveled. So I just go from ex to the next and take my time with each one. I do like the fact that I am still friends with every girl I've dated/been with. Except for one, but that bitch was out of this galaxy.
Shogun Streams Vidya
That was three and a half months ago, and I'm just about over her.
But, and this is a big one, I can't listen to "Hearts in 3/4 Time" by The Avalanches, "Tallulah" by Sonata Arctica or "Love's Tragedy Asunder" by Demons & Wizards anymore without suffering a complete teary eyed breakdown. It fucking sucks. (it's an improvement. For a while I couldn't even think her name without suffering)
Why do some things affect us more than others? Like Cat says, could be to do with unfinished business. I think it might be about how we deal with regret and missed opportunity.
The most ridiculous bit is that both before and since then more important major things have happened that haven't caused such an upset, yet here I am all abloo-bloo about a fat waitress.
Doesn't that just keep them in your mind?
Not dating someone isn't that bad. But rejection is tough to cope with.
It does, but even though we keep friends close, we keep enemies closer. I'd rather be someone's enemy than nothing at all (just a piece of shit blowing by in the wind).
Although I guess that's true with everyone.
The problem being that we were and still are great friends. I guess she can't help that she doesn't
have feelings for me, but it still really sucked.
This is absolutely true. This is the part that tears me up and keeps me up at night. In my case it was a beautiful german girl I met at school. We were perfect together and it seriously was, in my case, a dream come true. Then I got drunk at this party with her and I managed to completely ruin everything in a matter of minutes. It sucks because of hindsight. We always know what we should've done but I didn't do that. Instead I acted a fool.
Paradise lost, is how I look at it. But we're still friends so I don't see it as all bad because you never know what is going to happen/who you're going to meet. The girl I sat next to freshman year in highschool told me I would burn in hell yet years later we got together in college.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Yeah, there is that level of thinking you understand that the other person feels the same way you do. You spend time together, you are both genuinely happy to be around one another. When you finally get to the moment of truth, and things work out, everything seems right in the universe. Things make sense. Which is why when you realize (or god forbid find out by expressing your feelings in no uncertain terms) that this person does not feel as you do, nothing makes sense. It is the dizzying moment of clarity that send some people to meetings. It crushes you in a way that is purely emotional and yet, physically destructive.
When it is said "gamblers state of mind" I can't help but think of every conversation I have with people. It all seems like a win or lose situation...but when your heart is in it, you've found yourself at the high stakes table.
edit: on hating the source of it - I can not see this as being the best route to any amount of solace. Initially it may be but I don't think in the long run this will help you.
Why not in the long run? I don't know if I'm "in the long run" yet but I know it sure as hell has worked every time I've tried it.
Yeah. And of course as you think about that person you process how your future could look, and it spirals out of control....
We'd have had two kids, one called Kitty (after Kitty Pryde) and the other with a traditional Slovakian name. We'd live in Southampton in the apartments above Ocean Quay, and own a catamaran which we take to the Isle of Wight every other weekend. I play for a pub football team, she's in a book club. We collect records together and spend spare time trawling record shops together. She runs a restaurant and I'm a domestic vet, and we have a cat adopted from the Blue Cross. I still speak to my college friends, and we go twice a year to .sk to see her family.
And then you realise that that isn't how it ever would be, that's simply how you wished it could be and it was never going to happen like that, whether you told her how you felt properly, or you did manage to catch the train that one time, or you didn't push her boyfriend down the stairs and then stove his head in with a lump hammer...
....Sorry, drifted off course a bit there.
You forget that Thanatos is human.
But seriously CT, if you don't mind me asking, provided you could replay the scenario would you stay the course? I'm curious about your quick jump to the extreme action as it is what humans seem to do quite often. I was very bad about this with driving a couple years ago. Whenever something I should've considered minor occurred I always leaped to the extreme that I hated that person and if they died it would be grand. Incredibly angry and probably the worst attitude one could have. Since then I've learned to let go but people are very bad about doing that as well in relationships and I actually find it interesting.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Specifically about heartbreak though, its easier because you stop thinking 'oh god, im going to spend my life alone' which is bullshit. Theres always someone interesting around the corner if you get up and go out. Having said that, Im just about celebrate my 1 year with my girlfriend
This is the main point of why I do not get the romance movies where the guy (or girl) keeps on trying to get the person "they love" so badly that they keep on trying and trying, going to the extremes for them to like them. Than at the end they end up getting together and it's true love. This is also why I hated the level/story in Elite Beat Agents with the painter and the Queen's song.
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Yes, I think I would have. As a corollary, the other situations I would have changed would be, whenever she asked me back on previous times we'd broken up, I would have said no, and told her not to speak to me again. I think the relationship should have died a long time ago.
Part of the puzzle is that, knowing this, I still think about her a lot, far too much, and a number of people who know me well have told me they think I'd still take her back. They could well be right.
Where does this disconnect come from? I'm the smartest person in the world, but I can reliably make incredibly poor decisions regarding this person, and I don't imagine this is something that only happens to me.
I hate those movies, too.
Especially since they often show one of the characters engaging in really, really unhealthy behaviors in the meantime. I've talked about this in D&D before - I especially hate You've Got Mail and Bounce where the male leads lie and act like stalkers but it all turns out okay because they did it for luv.
Every once in a while, though, it actually happens where somebody who turned you down once comes back years later and says, "I was stupid, you're a wonderful guy and I want you back." In fact, it keeps happening to me, and I have some theories about that but anyway...
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I thought I was being supported and giving her "space". In retrospect, I wish she'd just told me to fuck off. I wasted a year of my life waiting for her to "come around", all the while she was keeping me around as some kind of security blanket.
You always hear about how guys have commitment issues. Well, I was fine before, but now I have commitment issues.
I've been lucky, but I'd probably shrug the heartache away if I had it. I just can't stay attached for long to something I don't 'have'.
I had begun my first "real" job at a large company fresh out of college, and my manager was amazing. She had one of those laughing, bubbly, just-ditzy-enough blonde personalities that I love, but was smart as a whip and (fairly) professional at work. Her figure didn't hurt, either.
To make what could be a really long story short: we flirted. At first, just a comment here and there; later, almost every e-mail relayed between us had some personal in-joke or suggestive addition attached. I worked under her for almost two and half years: I reported directly to her for the first year, and then went through several other managers as she moved up in the company (but she was always somewhere above me in the chain of command.) By the end of those two and a half years, the flirting going on in our e-mails was anything but subtle.
I included that part of the story to emphasize just how amazing it was to have two people make up for years of fantasizing, which is what we did exactly five days after she was moved to a different department. Not only we were perfect for each other in bed, but we became fast friends as well. The added spice of keeping it a secret from everyone at the office certainly didn't hurt. In fact, this relationship was my longest by far (we dated for just shy of three years.)
The thing that hurt the most about this relationship ending is that, in a big way, I did it. Thinking myself hot shit, I positioned the relationship early on as merely a casual relationship: we would both still date other people (if we chose), and we'd get together for some dinner, maybe a movie, and (of course) sex once every week or so. She was fine was this arrangement, which made our long relationship even more amazing: how many people can you get drunk with, fuck, and then while relaxing in bed afterwards, laugh at each others' stories about the terrible blind dates you both had the weekend before?
Unfortunately, one day (as I knew would happen eventually), she went on a date that wasn't terrible. It was so un-terrible, in fact, that after a few months they got engaged - thus sounding the official death-knell of our "casual" relationship. Although I assumed this would happen some day, I didn't count on just how much I would miss her.
And that's that. I'd love to say we're still good friends, but we've pretty much concluded that we can't hang out and not have sex, which means we don't hang out at all. The end of our relationship was about eight months ago now, so although I wish her the best there's no way I could be in the same room with her and be happy. Three years from now, maybe. (Hopefully.)
That's my story, and perhaps a cautionary tale to others who might try to have their cake and eat it too.
I also hate those movies, because they tend to be chick flicks.
Suffice it to say, I'm going through a bit of heartache right now.
Depression, as they say, is anger turned inwards. So I can understand the desire to focus that anger outwardly. But depression is something that can help someone look at themselves and understand why things have happened the way they have.
Sometimes I think anger toward the other person is justified and appropriate but to make it a standard response, void of context can, as you suggest, amplify the alienation of hate.
I have avoided them, largely, but partly because I am a deeply passionate person, and thus prone to internal melodrama.
I've only been in love once, and fairly recently. We met on the internet about Fall 98 or so, with quite literally a world between us, distance-wise. She had a crush early on, I developed a lot more as time went on, especially when we had a little disruption in our lives; part of it was that I ended up without internet at home, and so would basically spend ten dollars an hour at the closest thing to an internet cafe in the area back then, and most of it was me responding to her emails, many of which I still have on my account. I had never considered relationships, or even sexuality, worthwhile back then, but at some point I simply realized that I was falling in love with her, and confided it in her as casually as I could. Eventually, plans were made for us to meet, and beforehand she sent some of her diaries from around when we met, and my assumption of her crushing on me was confirmed by her own hand.
We met, with her 18, and me 20, and at the airport I could barely get a hug out of her. We rented Steel Magnolia, on her recommendation, and sat on my bed to watch it. At some point, our hands touched on "accident," and neither of us moved them. Eventually, she pulled my hand up and kissed my knuckle, and soon we were in each other's arms. Of course, I had never even entertained sexuality as being part of my life, so she then spent the next week trying to get me past kissing, but was ultimately successful (though the sex was very meh, even as a virgin). But oh good lord was I in love. If it meant a life time of really godawful sex -fine-. She was beautiful and smart and clever and caring had a mind of her own and hell she was going to start medical school in Australia after moving away from Malaysia. I told her I loved her. She couldn't respond.
And then she left. We talked on the phone a bit. Once or twice, then, she said the most wonderful, ultimately cruelest words she would ever speak to me... she said she loved me. It would soon prove obvious why she needed distance to say it.
Once she moved to Australia, and started up school, she all but instantly found someone to fuck. She didn't even -like- him, she was just horny and needed to get laid, and she felt the need to give me -details-. I tried my best to shrug it off, and to understand her needs, and I never told her about the tears I had every time she got descriptive.
Then she found a real boyfriend, who she was falling for, and it was then, in the two week period between my birthday and hers, that I officially broke it off, as much because I couldn't stand the false hope anymore, and I like to tell myself so that she would be completely free in her relationships without me as baggage.
Without fail, every single night after that, for a solid year, maybe even to the day, I cried myself to sleep.
After that, it would come every once in awhile, but I was trying my best to move on, and was getting ready to restart my college career, so I managed to kill the waterworks a bit.
I hit college, and did my best to slip in to a relatively normal existence. I joined a Japanese appreciation club (which was 50% Japanese exchange students, so not just Otaku), and one Halloween, a member and I hit it off, and, more or less, I had a girlfriend soon after (less than more, but that's another story). But my heart still belonged to the girl who broke it. When the girl asked me about my ideal woman, I just said Her name. When she said she loved me, I could only look at her, sigh, and apologize. We broke up by Christmas, but I did eventually love her, and tell her so, but in the same way one love's any friend. My heart remained with Her. Indeed, at one point, Her (now-ex, thank heavens) boyfriend started becoming abusive. I became so angry that I had I did one-hundred pushups right there in my dorm room to keep from breaking things; my arms were like noodles the next day.
Eventually, though, I came to a realization, through our talks and deduction, that she ultimately just wanted sex from me; we were still friends of course, but it was a fuck she wanted, not making love, and it was all our intimacy ever was. Much of her behavior... her tenderness... was manipulation to get what she wanted. But I still had hopes, and two Christmases ago, I went and visited her, and her new boyfriend, in Australia, for twenty or so days. She barely wanted to be around me. She spent most of our time around each other playing WoW. When we walked together, she required that I stand a certain distance away. At one point, she left me alone in her apartment for several days, so I ended up seeing her roommates more than her for awhile.
And, so, I told myself, if she ever even existed, the girl I was in love with was dead. Buried in my heart.
I don't know that I can love like that again.
I'll grant you that if we're talking about a relationship where the person just has fundamental flaws that you simply can't forgive.
If they're flaws in terms of being a good significant other, said flaws don't necessarily negate the individual being a good friend.