I think I've mentioned my first girlfriend in this thread before. Not exceptionally crazy but certainly not the spokesperson for level-headed thinking. Simply put she loves her some drama, to the point that during an argument towards the end of our relationship about how crap our relationship was, I told her I felt like we hadn't been physical in some time to which she responds by ripping her top off and angrily telling me that if I want to fuck her I should go ahead and fuck her.
Mixed messages, there.
Anyway it's been three years since we broke up. Last September I was back in England and she clearly hated me. The fact that her and her fiance were sharing a house with my sister and her boyfriend didn't help things - when i went to visit my sister my ex was there being passive-aggressive and generally rather shit. I tried to have a conversation with her, being civil and so forth. She wans't having any of it.
About two or three months ago she contacted me on MSN Messenger. She told me, haha, that she doesn't hate me anymore and she's going to be a Bride's Maid at my sister's wedding and she's quite looking forward to seeing me again.
I know exactly what this means - she's bored with her relationship, and she's looking to do something naughty. She did it towards the end of our relationship by cheating with me with a few people of indiscriminate gender, and she did it with the boyfriend before her by cheating on him with... well, me.
A few weeks later she comes onto MSN and tells me she's done something horrible. She's a horrible person, Paul doesn't deserve her, and she should just die. I say very little - I tell her she has some personality issues she needs to work through and that she has to figure out who she is because clearly she's not comfortable being the sort of monogamous person she thinks she should be. She logs of without responding.
I recently found out from my Mum that she slept with my sister's fiance's best friend, but her and her fella are "working through it".
A year ago I might have laughed. Now I just feel sorry for her.
I will never understand why people keep in contact with exes who have fucked them over, from relationships that ended poorly, when continued communication isn't necessary. Boggles the mind.
If I had it my way I wouldn't see or hear from her at all, but it's something of a problem when one's sister takes a sort-of MySpace approach to real-world friendships (namely, that quantity is better than quality). Even though my ex fucked me over in our relationship and actually fucked my sister over when they were living together - refusing to pay rent for scurrilous reasons and generally acting in a wholly unpleasant manner - my sister still forgives my ex and invites her to take semi-important roles in weddings.
I don't use MSN Messenger enough to justify going through the hassle of removing someone from my list. These days I'm pretty much Google Talk and Skype.
I don't use MSN Messenger enough to justify going through the hassle of removing someone from my list. These days I'm pretty much Google Talk and Skype.
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I will never understand why people keep in contact with exes who have fucked them over, from relationships that ended poorly, when continued communication isn't necessary. Boggles the mind.
I'd like to point out that my first GF is now currently my best friend. It didn't work out (she ended it), we didn't talk for a few weeks, then we just started hanging out. This was like 2 years ago so I think I'm good.
I think it was more of a case of "Well, romantically it didn't work but you're an awesome person and we share interests so let's keep in touch."
Of course, we're hardly normal people (but nothing worth a story) and this is probably the exception.
I will never understand why people keep in contact with exes who have fucked them over, from relationships that ended poorly, when continued communication isn't necessary. Boggles the mind.
Despite being fucked in the head, these are people you had pretty significant emotional attachments to. That doesn't go away easily just because you stop being romantic with each other.
I will never understand why people keep in contact with exes who have fucked them over, from relationships that ended poorly, when continued communication isn't necessary. Boggles the mind.
Despite being fucked in the head, these are people you had pretty significant emotional attachments to. That doesn't go away easily just because you stop being romantic with each other.
Goes away a lot faster if you stop talking to them, though. I had a girlfriend (discussed waaaaaaay up-thread) who, in addition to other problems, maintained contact with every single guy she'd ever dated, going back to a playground 'boyfriend' from elementary school. At least one of them was a creepy stalker and every single one of them caused her regular emotional distress because, by continuing to talk to them all on a regular basis, she'd never really gotten over them. The stalker guy would periodically send her messages about how he hadn't seen her around campus, which wouldn't be weird except that she went to school 3 hours away from where he lived in a town where her school was literally the only reason to be there, and she was the only person there he knew. They'd been broken up for upward of 4 years at that point, after dating for a few months in highschool, but she not only wouldn't call the cops, she wouldn't even stop answering his messages.
She tried to do the same thing with me after we broke up, but she took every comment I made about my personal life as a dig at hers, and went out of her way to talk up whatever guy she was interested in at the time. I didn't need the hassle, so became her first ex to cut her the hell off.
I will never understand why people keep in contact with exes who have fucked them over, from relationships that ended poorly, when continued communication isn't necessary. Boggles the mind.
Low self-esteem, low self-worth, desperation, an active imagination...etc.
I will never understand why people keep in contact with exes who have fucked them over, from relationships that ended poorly, when continued communication isn't necessary. Boggles the mind.
In my case, I was freaking stupid. No matter how much you change or how better you think you are without the person around, soon as they come back you start turning right back into what you were when they were around. I was stupid and to be honest, I was horny. That's what all relationships come down to, just some ol sex. My friends constantly go back to their exes just because they know they are going to get something sexual.
I will never understand why people keep in contact with exes who have fucked them over, from relationships that ended poorly, when continued communication isn't necessary. Boggles the mind.
Low self-esteem, low self-worth, desperation, an active imagination...etc.
Or, you know, you just decide to be a nice person and be there for someone.
Just because it didn't work romantically doesn't mean you can't still help someone out if they need it. He didn't fuck her at the wedding or anything and he gave her as little help as possible while still giving her help and being a decent guy.
I guess my question is, how can one be so callous towards someone they had a lot of feelings for initially? Yea they fucked you over and all, but get over it. Worse shit happens to better people. Who entitles you to block someone because things didn't work out like you wanted?
I will never understand why people keep in contact with exes who have fucked them over, from relationships that ended poorly, when continued communication isn't necessary. Boggles the mind.
Low self-esteem, low self-worth, desperation, an active imagination...etc.
Or, you know, you just decide to be a nice person and be there for someone.
Just because it didn't work romantically doesn't mean you can't still help someone out if they need it. He didn't fuck her at the wedding or anything and he gave her as little help as possible while still giving her help and being a decent guy.
I guess my question is, how can one be so callous towards someone they had a lot of feelings for initially? Yea they fucked you over and all, but get over it. Worse shit happens to better people. Who entitles you to block someone because things didn't work out like you wanted?
What doesn't? Whom I, or anyone, associates with is my (or their) choice. For me, and I'd imagine a lot of people, romantic feelings are an integral part of their feelings for a person in general by the event of a breakup. If most of what I feel about a person is a feeling of betrayal and emotional pain it's a bit ridiculous to ask me to ignore that and treat them as a friend instead.
Even in the case of an amicable breakup where one party just isn't interested anymore it's entirely possible for the other party to continue harboring romantic feelings. The way to get over that is not to continue associating with the person you're pining over.
I guess my question is, how can one be so callous towards someone they had a lot of feelings for initially? Yea they fucked you over and all, but get over it. Worse shit happens to better people. Who entitles you to block someone because things didn't work out like you wanted?
There are a million variations, but neither approach is innately wrong. Depending on the people and personalities and issues involved, one view is simply more appropriate or pragmatic than the other at times.
In relationships where things ended poorly due to simply being different people or at different stages of our lives and not communicating clearly, why would I want to remain associated with these people? Having positive feelings for them at one point does not absolve them of the hurtful things they may have said or done. I'm not even talking about cheating or dropping our bank account on the roulette table, but when a relationship turns sour, why would you want to remain in contact with someone you discovered you weren't compatible with on a multitude of levels?
Then there are the relationships that ended civilly, on mutually agreeable terms, and that simply didn't work out through seemingly little fault and based on a number of reasons and factors. Hell, some of them might be the same sort of issues as in the first scenario, but instead of hurtful words or deeds, things get talked out and eventually compromise can be met. It's not always easy, and it might take a while to settle back down to a more casual friendship, but I'm not one to argue that it can't be done.
I have always, however, felt that most relationships end for a reason. While I'm not one to believe that it's impossible to remain or regain friends(hip) that have evolved into an intimate state, I do think that the efforts of regaining ones sense of self and breaking some of the close bonds that make a relationship aren't overly conduscive to remaining friends at the same time. It's tough, it's often messy, and it's rarely without its share of simply extending the heartache that is the natural grieving process for the end of one chapter in ones love life, and starting strides to beginning a new one, including getting over the last girl/guy and starting anew with finding your base/grounding and eventually trying again with someone else.
Those who strive to retain the friendship of every single person they've dated seem, annecdotally, to often be far too focused on people pleasing. While it's admirable to be concerned for the feelings of others, it's often done (in my experience) by such individuals to the detriment of their own feelings and happiness. Being a doormat just so you can keep trying to perform figurative CPR on what should occasionally be a corpse of a former relationship (if just to "be friends") is no healthier than shutting out everyone you ever date who has the audacity to snub the glory that is you. Two sides of the same unhealthy coin.
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
I guess my question is, how can one be so callous towards someone they had a lot of feelings for initially? Yea they fucked you over and all, but get over it. Worse shit happens to better people. Who entitles you to block someone because things didn't work out like you wanted?
Because dealing with them often dredges up some emotional pain and in some cases can make closure on the relationship much harder. When I broke up with the girl in the me being crazy story, it was because we wanted different things out of life. She wants marriage, kids and to be a stay at home mom. I don't want kids and I don't want to be married. So we broke up. She's a nice girl and we stayed in touch, but it made finding closure in the relationship a lot harder for both of us.
Or it could be that an ex represents a danger. I could go hang out with my ex-wife but my taste for having my life threaten has cooled. So while I had strong feelings for her, keeping her in life would be sheer stupidity.
It's been three years since we broke up. I don't have any problem talking to her. There are no hurt feelings resurfacing, no bad memories bubbling back to the surface, no negative emotions. That's not because there weren't any at the time, but rather because it's been three years and I have changed in a lot in that time. I've moved on. To used a delightful British colloquialism, I have slept since then. Moving on is by no means an easy thing to do, and not everyone is capable of doing it (twelve years after my parents got divorced and they still occasionally use me as the Middle Man), but I have.
By strange coincidence while I was typing that paragraph I got an email from Facebook. She's added me to her friends. I did not refuse.
NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
edited November 2009
Funny thing that... when my ex broke up with me earlier this year (like January), I was hurt, and a little angry, sad, whathaveyou. Then a few months later, I get a call. She's hit a rough patch (REALLY rough, as in enough to relapse back to alcohol after 10+ years in AA) and she called me up to bring her some more booze. At first I'm not willing to do that, but I decided that it would be better if I went up there with my stash then her driving to a store to get more so I head over to her place.
We get drunk (actually, she gets plastered, I catch up) and we have drunk sex. Funnily enough, after that... I felt like I had closure for some reason.
And we still talk and are fairly decent friends (decent in the fact that we don't really have a whole lot in common which lead to the original break up in the first place).
It's been three years since we broke up. I don't have any problem talking to her. There are no hurt feelings resurfacing, no bad memories bubbling back to the surface, no negative emotions. That's not because there weren't any at the time, but rather because it's been three years and I have changed in a lot in that time. I've moved on. To used a delightful British colloquialism, I have slept since then. Moving on is by no means an easy thing to do, and not everyone is capable of doing it (twelve years after my parents got divorced and they still occasionally use me as the Middle Man), but I have.
By strange coincidence while I was typing that paragraph I got an email from Facebook. She's added me to her friends. I did not refuse.
by the same token, often times by the time the feelings are all settled and you're in a place where you could be friends (only) in a healthy way, you have changed quite a bit as a person and you may find you no longer share as many interests.
based on my experience, your experience here is unusual but not unheard of.
And we still talk and are fairly decent friends (decent in the fact that we don't really have a whole lot in common which lead to the original break up in the first place).
Turns out you weren't hurt or upset. You were just gagging for a shag! It's so easy to get those two mixed up.
by the same token, often times by the time the feelings are all settled and you're in a place where you could be friends (only) in a healthy way, you have changed quite a bit as a person and you may find you no longer share as many interests.
based on my experience, your experience here is unusual but not unheard of.
Personally I think a lot has changed - I've changed, certainly. I've grown up and I have a better idea of who I am now than I did when we were together. She was my first girlfriend. I was nearly 18 and I had low self-esteem and confidence issues. I initially started seeing her because I genuinely didn't believe I'd do any better. A year and a half later I'd learnt she was a self-obsessed control freak with the anger management skills of a Republican at a Town Hall meeting, although it'd take me another year to pluck up the courage to actually leave her.
I'm a much more well-adjusted person, though. I'm confident. I'm happy. I have standards, if you can believe it. I put all my negative feelings towards her to bed long ago, and right now if she feels the need to reach out to me because of personal problems then I honestly have no reason not to be human and civil.
To be fair, I don't have a drinking problem. I did start drinking quite a bit after the break up. The thing is, I felt like I was drinking way more than is healthy, and stopped, but I know if I said how much, a fair amount of people would laugh and say it was barely drinking, while a fair amount of people would gasp in horror. It's all relative I guess.
Funny thing that... when my ex broke up with me earlier this year (like January), I was hurt, and a little angry, sad, whathaveyou. Then a few months later, I get a call. She's hit a rough patch (REALLY rough, as in enough to relapse back to alcohol after 10+ years in AA) and she called me up to bring her some more booze. At first I'm not willing to do that, but I decided that it would be better if I went up there with my stash then her driving to a store to get more so I head over to her place.
This and the birth control H/A thread reminded me.
The ex that is stalking me, when we were together..
With one sip of alcohol she would turn into a completely different person. Some of the times it was super sweet, but most of the time it was raging bitch. By the end of the relationship I would actively avoid being around her she was drinking. Which was amplified by the whole "not having a job and going on ragers every night" situation she had going on.
So, I have a crazy ex. Crazy ex has just found out I told people she is crazy. She decides the best way to respond to this is to A)Break my dvds(we were becoming friends again.) and spread shit about me around school.
At least she's proving my point.
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NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
Funny thing that... when my ex broke up with me earlier this year (like January), I was hurt, and a little angry, sad, whathaveyou. Then a few months later, I get a call. She's hit a rough patch (REALLY rough, as in enough to relapse back to alcohol after 10+ years in AA) and she called me up to bring her some more booze. At first I'm not willing to do that, but I decided that it would be better if I went up there with my stash then her driving to a store to get more so I head over to her place.
Yeah... I was actually thinking about what would happen to her kids if she got into an accident or got pulled over or something. And yes, she did relapse, but she hasn't gone back to the bottle since that night.
I'm a life changer, I tell ya.
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NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
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I figured most of it was fake.
According to the who got banned thread, they are the same person. But that post also says he was (appearntly) banned on October 9th, so I dunno.
Back on topic, very glad I've not had any experiences like this.
See how many books I've read so far in 2010
Mixed messages, there.
Anyway it's been three years since we broke up. Last September I was back in England and she clearly hated me. The fact that her and her fiance were sharing a house with my sister and her boyfriend didn't help things - when i went to visit my sister my ex was there being passive-aggressive and generally rather shit. I tried to have a conversation with her, being civil and so forth. She wans't having any of it.
About two or three months ago she contacted me on MSN Messenger. She told me, haha, that she doesn't hate me anymore and she's going to be a Bride's Maid at my sister's wedding and she's quite looking forward to seeing me again.
I know exactly what this means - she's bored with her relationship, and she's looking to do something naughty. She did it towards the end of our relationship by cheating with me with a few people of indiscriminate gender, and she did it with the boyfriend before her by cheating on him with... well, me.
A few weeks later she comes onto MSN and tells me she's done something horrible. She's a horrible person, Paul doesn't deserve her, and she should just die. I say very little - I tell her she has some personality issues she needs to work through and that she has to figure out who she is because clearly she's not comfortable being the sort of monogamous person she thinks she should be. She logs of without responding.
I recently found out from my Mum that she slept with my sister's fiance's best friend, but her and her fella are "working through it".
A year ago I might have laughed. Now I just feel sorry for her.
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I think it was more of a case of "Well, romantically it didn't work but you're an awesome person and we share interests so let's keep in touch."
Of course, we're hardly normal people (but nothing worth a story) and this is probably the exception.
Despite being fucked in the head, these are people you had pretty significant emotional attachments to. That doesn't go away easily just because you stop being romantic with each other.
Goes away a lot faster if you stop talking to them, though. I had a girlfriend (discussed waaaaaaay up-thread) who, in addition to other problems, maintained contact with every single guy she'd ever dated, going back to a playground 'boyfriend' from elementary school. At least one of them was a creepy stalker and every single one of them caused her regular emotional distress because, by continuing to talk to them all on a regular basis, she'd never really gotten over them. The stalker guy would periodically send her messages about how he hadn't seen her around campus, which wouldn't be weird except that she went to school 3 hours away from where he lived in a town where her school was literally the only reason to be there, and she was the only person there he knew. They'd been broken up for upward of 4 years at that point, after dating for a few months in highschool, but she not only wouldn't call the cops, she wouldn't even stop answering his messages.
She tried to do the same thing with me after we broke up, but she took every comment I made about my personal life as a dig at hers, and went out of her way to talk up whatever guy she was interested in at the time. I didn't need the hassle, so became her first ex to cut her the hell off.
Low self-esteem, low self-worth, desperation, an active imagination...etc.
In my case, I was freaking stupid. No matter how much you change or how better you think you are without the person around, soon as they come back you start turning right back into what you were when they were around. I was stupid and to be honest, I was horny. That's what all relationships come down to, just some ol sex. My friends constantly go back to their exes just because they know they are going to get something sexual.
Or, you know, you just decide to be a nice person and be there for someone.
Just because it didn't work romantically doesn't mean you can't still help someone out if they need it. He didn't fuck her at the wedding or anything and he gave her as little help as possible while still giving her help and being a decent guy.
I guess my question is, how can one be so callous towards someone they had a lot of feelings for initially? Yea they fucked you over and all, but get over it. Worse shit happens to better people. Who entitles you to block someone because things didn't work out like you wanted?
What doesn't? Whom I, or anyone, associates with is my (or their) choice. For me, and I'd imagine a lot of people, romantic feelings are an integral part of their feelings for a person in general by the event of a breakup. If most of what I feel about a person is a feeling of betrayal and emotional pain it's a bit ridiculous to ask me to ignore that and treat them as a friend instead.
Even in the case of an amicable breakup where one party just isn't interested anymore it's entirely possible for the other party to continue harboring romantic feelings. The way to get over that is not to continue associating with the person you're pining over.
There are a million variations, but neither approach is innately wrong. Depending on the people and personalities and issues involved, one view is simply more appropriate or pragmatic than the other at times.
In relationships where things ended poorly due to simply being different people or at different stages of our lives and not communicating clearly, why would I want to remain associated with these people? Having positive feelings for them at one point does not absolve them of the hurtful things they may have said or done. I'm not even talking about cheating or dropping our bank account on the roulette table, but when a relationship turns sour, why would you want to remain in contact with someone you discovered you weren't compatible with on a multitude of levels?
Then there are the relationships that ended civilly, on mutually agreeable terms, and that simply didn't work out through seemingly little fault and based on a number of reasons and factors. Hell, some of them might be the same sort of issues as in the first scenario, but instead of hurtful words or deeds, things get talked out and eventually compromise can be met. It's not always easy, and it might take a while to settle back down to a more casual friendship, but I'm not one to argue that it can't be done.
I have always, however, felt that most relationships end for a reason. While I'm not one to believe that it's impossible to remain or regain friends(hip) that have evolved into an intimate state, I do think that the efforts of regaining ones sense of self and breaking some of the close bonds that make a relationship aren't overly conduscive to remaining friends at the same time. It's tough, it's often messy, and it's rarely without its share of simply extending the heartache that is the natural grieving process for the end of one chapter in ones love life, and starting strides to beginning a new one, including getting over the last girl/guy and starting anew with finding your base/grounding and eventually trying again with someone else.
Those who strive to retain the friendship of every single person they've dated seem, annecdotally, to often be far too focused on people pleasing. While it's admirable to be concerned for the feelings of others, it's often done (in my experience) by such individuals to the detriment of their own feelings and happiness. Being a doormat just so you can keep trying to perform figurative CPR on what should occasionally be a corpse of a former relationship (if just to "be friends") is no healthier than shutting out everyone you ever date who has the audacity to snub the glory that is you. Two sides of the same unhealthy coin.
Because dealing with them often dredges up some emotional pain and in some cases can make closure on the relationship much harder. When I broke up with the girl in the me being crazy story, it was because we wanted different things out of life. She wants marriage, kids and to be a stay at home mom. I don't want kids and I don't want to be married. So we broke up. She's a nice girl and we stayed in touch, but it made finding closure in the relationship a lot harder for both of us.
Or it could be that an ex represents a danger. I could go hang out with my ex-wife but my taste for having my life threaten has cooled. So while I had strong feelings for her, keeping her in life would be sheer stupidity.
By strange coincidence while I was typing that paragraph I got an email from Facebook. She's added me to her friends. I did not refuse.
We get drunk (actually, she gets plastered, I catch up) and we have drunk sex. Funnily enough, after that... I felt like I had closure for some reason.
And we still talk and are fairly decent friends (decent in the fact that we don't really have a whole lot in common which lead to the original break up in the first place).
by the same token, often times by the time the feelings are all settled and you're in a place where you could be friends (only) in a healthy way, you have changed quite a bit as a person and you may find you no longer share as many interests.
based on my experience, your experience here is unusual but not unheard of.
Turns out you weren't hurt or upset. You were just gagging for a shag! It's so easy to get those two mixed up.
Personally I think a lot has changed - I've changed, certainly. I've grown up and I have a better idea of who I am now than I did when we were together. She was my first girlfriend. I was nearly 18 and I had low self-esteem and confidence issues. I initially started seeing her because I genuinely didn't believe I'd do any better. A year and a half later I'd learnt she was a self-obsessed control freak with the anger management skills of a Republican at a Town Hall meeting, although it'd take me another year to pluck up the courage to actually leave her.
I'm a much more well-adjusted person, though. I'm confident. I'm happy. I have standards, if you can believe it. I put all my negative feelings towards her to bed long ago, and right now if she feels the need to reach out to me because of personal problems then I honestly have no reason not to be human and civil.
Check out my art! Buy some prints!
Hell, it sounds like a typical Friday night.
That's sarcasm, right?
It's wrong either way, but when it's someone with a previous position of trust, I'd say it could be even worse.
Hehe, I think that's me.
To be fair, I don't have a drinking problem. I did start drinking quite a bit after the break up. The thing is, I felt like I was drinking way more than is healthy, and stopped, but I know if I said how much, a fair amount of people would laugh and say it was barely drinking, while a fair amount of people would gasp in horror. It's all relative I guess.
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Yes, it was sarcasm.
He enabled an alcoholic, then once she was plastered, slept with her. But hey, at least he got closure. o_O
Awesome. My sarcasm radar has been on the fritz lately.
At least she's proving my point.
Yeah... I was actually thinking about what would happen to her kids if she got into an accident or got pulled over or something. And yes, she did relapse, but she hasn't gone back to the bottle since that night.
I'm a life changer, I tell ya.
In my defense, we were both drunk.