hi everyone, I’m struggling with my feelings and I’m not sure this will help but I’m thinking maybe writing stuff out will be good for me. Right now what I think I need to work through is finding a way to separate all my pain about my breakup from feelings I have about pursuing new women. I’m hurting a lot. That’s something I try not to acknowledge or focus on. I don’t know why because I’ve never been a person afraid to confront my feelings. I suppose the pain is mixed with so many other complex feelings that it keeps me from dealing with it properly. So... here it is. It hurts like hell. I feel like she has basically dragged me through pain and crap for a year now, that it’s just been one long drawn out experience of dragging my heart through the mud. She has found a new partner. All that pain and hurt that she’s given me, and now she has turned all her love and desire towards someone else. It feels so painful. And it makes everything between myself and her feel so false and so devalued. I feel as well that she has taken my brightness and love and devotion and optimism and support and desire and affection and basically told me it’s all worth nothing. All that love I gave her, believing that she loved me too underneath her pain, but it feels now that she never really did. She can’t posdibly be this lost, this unsure about who she is and what she feels but also have had real true feelings about me. She has always just been lost and confused and threw herself at me as if that would propel her into a path that made sense, but it was really just throwing her faith towards something, anything. I meant nothing to her, I was a thing she used to make a leap forward. And you know what, none of that is true for me. I loved her, so completely and totally. My love was real, profound, deep, my desire was all encompassing and sustainable through pain and heartache. I could care for her most vulnerable parts and I loved her heart, her soul. I cared for her through grief, and that is something she could never understand. She could never love me that way, love me through pain, stand by me through anything real. All of that is sitting there in my heart all the time. All that hurt and disappointment. My love was real and so deep and ran through every part of me. Hers was not, hers was a lie, was selfish and false. Now, if I take my head away from that, I can see some other truths about my life. The life I’m building now, the one without her, the one that is basically me looking to find myself; searching for meaningful connections with women, embracing fun and sex with women, getting to know me better, and eventually looking for the woman who can really love me, who can give me something true and deep and lasting - that life is quite beautiful. It fills a deep need that I was feeling for a long time. Being with H was a detour in the life I was supposed to be leading, the one I’m leading now. And there’s so much to soak in and embrace and enjoy in my life, I have such a rich life, I have beautiful opportunities with my daughter, I have a good relationship with her dad, I have the most amazing wonderful queer friends, who I can see now on a regular basis. I have times in the week where I can relax and have quiet for me. And I have time and opportunities to explore being with other women. I want yo embrace all the feelings that go with what I’m describing. But here’s the block - my ex is fucking with my head, seeing that she’s with someone new, knowing she has moved on, it makes me feel an urgency to meet women in a rush, have sex now, etc etc. I’m not saying that now is too soon, it is what I want for all the healthy reasons. But the unhealthy reasons are also driving me and that is turning my drives into things that are fuelled by resentment and rejection and that just feels like crap. I also feel all this internal pressure to prove to myself that people want me, desire me. I need to find a way to break away from that unhealthy stuff, to get her out of my growth process, to get her to leave my head alone. That’s where I am right now and I’m working on it through quiet reassurance to myself... it’s the best I can do so far....
I know you're hurting love, and that kind of pain is hard to heal. but it can heal it does take time, its been 5 years for me and sometimes it just hurts deeply. but I rejoice in the good times, the moments even of joy and laughter and yeah sexual encounters. you're doing the best you can, that's all any of us can do TBH. and as a personal observation, H didn't deserve you.
You feel she did not love you because she moved on quickly? Why do you think that? Love does come and go. It’s not everlasting. At the same time she has a need for companionship, and she is acting on it quickly. Not sure how that should diminish the good times you both had together. What she is doing is in no way a path that you should follow just for the sake of trying to do the same. Your needs are different. Your feelings are different. You are two different people. You gave it your all. She was the for you while you were going through your own process with your ex. You had a mutually beneficial relationship while it lasted. Don’t rush if that does not feel right to you. Take some time for yourself if that’s what you need. Your not in a Competition.
I think you, like I, love completely, with everything we have to give. I accepted her flaws and could still love her, but ultimately she rejected me based on some core features of mine: "You are too open, too intense, too deep". Makes we think she loved only her image of what she wanted me to be, as these aspects were evident from day one: I didn't conceal them. I supported her through coming out to her kids and wider family and an anxiety provoking operation. Then, when my job situation deteriorated and my mental health took a downturn, in the depths of that she broke up with me. I have learnt so much about what I want and need from a woman, but it hurts so much and I find it hard to imagine myself loving like that again, with such ferocious and passionate intensity .
I think it is just time that heals a pain like this. Due to the fact it hurts so much we want to rush in and heal it faster but I'm not sure that is possible. I do agree with Onthehighway, I don't think that her having found someone else means anything in relation to what you had together. She is probably hiding and masking her pain by jumping straight into the next opportunity which has arisen to her. I'm not condoning the way she dealt with things whilst you were together but having followed your story I would probably say that she is now you've broken up trying to box up all the hurt and bad things that have happened to her in the last couple of years in with your relationship ending and trying to store the, away like that, which ultimately long term I'm sure won't work but is a thing the mind likes to do. Of course after the year you have been through, you want someone to want you that is totally natural and understandable but I also think you are right in trying not to become obsessed with trying to find it, there is nothing wrong with putting yourself in situations where it may happen but when you become set on having to find it either you become miserable in the process or you blur the lines of what you want and need. If you have a good group of friends I suggest hanging out with them as much as you can, having fun with your daughter and then I am sure you will find what you are looking for.
