No contact is killing me. Doesn't it hurt him?

They are definitely not my friends anymore. I’m so shocked. SO shocked. The four of us were such good friends and always shared holidays and weekends together. Now I’m cut out and replaced and lied to. That is fucked up and hurtful.

1-2 weeks after a breakup is too soon! And it’s not like I want to know that. I can’t even go to the gym or a walk around my house without running into them.

Man, this just isn’t very nice at all.

Thanks for your suggestions everyone I appreciate it. I really am doing the best I can and all I asked for from them was a little bit of honesty and loyalty and time and instead they’re whooping it up wine tasting and having a blast and celebrating like I never existed.

Gemini – why do you say “I’m sure he misses you on some level, although not like you miss him.” how do you mean ‘on some level’ and why doesn’t he miss me like I miss him? I don’t understand.

And why do you say “because it is very unlikely that you will get back together and actually stay together”?

Just want the answers to those questions because I feel it will help clarify things to me to hear from outsiders perspectives because I am way too in my head.

I’m so angry and hurt, goddammit :( my worst fears coming true.

I do need new friends that is for sure. I actually thought she was more my friend than his. I was wrong.

It’s just too soon for this it feels so awful.

All my friend needed to do was get together with me for lunch and be like look, we’re going out a couple times but I can’t invite you and I feel bad about that and awkward but I’m not going to lie about it or hide it from you because I care about you I want you to know what’s going on. Not hear it from the other girl unexpectedly while out for a walk so you have to pretend to be polite and pleasant about it and then walk home in shock and pain and feel further rejected by me.

You know?

I am upfront with everyone and super honest and I expect people to be the same.

I can’t wait until I don’t remember this anymore. I think I need to move.

oh honey, I feel your pain… although I haven’t been in the situation where even my friends leave me. I’m sure it does feel awful… But you will get over it some day, i promise! If I only could, I would take you out to the drink and we could laugh about all of this :)
And to those who suggest theraphy and think that it’s too intense… people feel pain in different ways. It’s not wrong to search theraphy of course if needed, but come on – it has been only 2 weeks, you are allowed to be a little crazy (just don’t show it to him or his friends). After some more weeks and months you will be so much better.

Thanks for your support and sage wisdom everyone. I really don’t like running into her and trying to put on a good face, I don’t like reaching out to friends only for them to lie and exclude me for whatever reason, and I don’t like any of this. So I’m going to pull back and take care of myself and close myself off to that whole world, as they have closed off to me.

I was in panic and shock mode earlier, being told by a new interest that she spent several nights last week getting drunk with my recent boyfriend. Now, after tears, therapy, yoga, and meditation, I can say that is super shitty, hurts a lot, and let it go as much as I can and wish everyone peace, including me.

And I do think he will miss me. Terribly. She may be interesting because she is new, but that is more about him and his preference to chase illusions over working through intimacy. He’s avoiding himself and swimming in the shallow lane. He will miss me because even if they have inside jokes (which they sickeningly do and flagrantly demonstrated one night while flirting in front of me) they don’t have our intimacy, she doesn’t know his likes and hopes and fears, she won’t be there to nurture him in the way only I can and have for so long.

And what’s more – he doesn’t know my likes and hopes and fears, he only thinks he does and only some. If he really knew me and could see me this wouldn’t have happened. He is only able to see parts of me after all. And if I hadn’t been so perceptive and picked up on this, and yet also so insecure about myself, I still have to wonder if I want to be with someone who gets infatuated with someone else right at the good point of our dating. Who experiences intimacy and doubts and questions everything.

If he ends up happy with her, fine. But I think he will find himself lonelier than ever. Everyone can make a choice to leave if they don’t feel like being with someone – but good luck to him if he leaves every person that has emotions or that dates him more than a few months. He has a lot of issues of his own.

I’m going to try to forget him, as sad as that is, and let go of my hopes and dreams.

I’m okay without him.

It really sucks knowing I was sad last night even though I did all kinds of things to try to be happy and get my mind off it and work out and spend time with family — while he was out drinking and flirting with her and probably messing around or at least trying to.

Gosh that just isn’t very nice and makes it harder to heal. It is hard not to think about them together – two weeks is too soon.

I guess I didn’t mean much to him if he was crushing on another girl he’s liked for awhile. I was the stupid idiot who kept bending over backwards to nurture and support him while he flirted with her. I mean, crushing on people at work and flirting with them and wishing you could sleep with them – that’s not a normal part of relationships, I mean beyond just a passing innocent little butterfly in the tummy.

Anyway this really hurts. He’s not contacting me in No Contact because he’s getting his kicks elsewhere. Jesus.

Juniper you wrote earlier you were OK without him and now all this?

You are obsessing and it’s not healthy. You have no idea what’s going on between the 2 of them.

This will sound harsh but he didn’t split up with you because of her did he. In your words, it was because of “my constant and exterme insecurity, clinginess, neediness and jealously”. So this is on you. You pushed away a man you loved by your behavior and now you’re showing exactly that side of yourself again.

Stop looking outwards and start looking inwards.

What he’s doing is no longer your concern. He walked away because of how you acted so fix how you act and think.

Also, he himself told me it wasn’t my fault and not to blame myself, that he knew I would blame myself (by saying the reason was that I was clingy, needy, intense, moody) and that I shouldn’t do it.

So maybe he just didn’t feel in love the way he wanted to and missed the spark of the new, and found it in this new coworker… :(

So is it my fault? And is it normal to hurt to soon after a breakup and have your mind rattling all over the place? I’m not always like this. The breakup has spun me into pain and obsession.

I need to get control of it but… I don’t know. This is just too much, no contact and him being so close, a block away from me. And our friendship. I just miss it. I think a little time will be good but I am going through anger and peace and anger and indifference and hurt and longing all at one time.

I am so glad you are telling us what you are thinking. It lets us know where you really are.

Where you are is early in a break up and all you can see is pain. That is normal.

I can also see you are trying very hard to get to the other side…and are using your logic and rational self to see. That is admirable.

I am also using my rational side to help you. I know you are terribly hurting and am so sorry. But my empathy for your raw feelings will not help you now. I need to tell you the truth.

Again, you are in a place where you are swinging wildly and basing many things on certain toxic thoughts that you believe to be true. You are using your imagination to come up with scenarios that are the most painful to you. You claim he did not care about you…you claim that he and she are just “whooping it up” now that you are out of the picture. You claim that these co-workers are working really hard to get the two of them together.

I question these claims. I question if you are right. I don’t know what is truly going on but neither do you. You and I cannot see into the minds of other people…oh, we may get some clues but we do not know everything. You are taking a couple of facts and running down the street with them and using your creativity to come up with a story.

By the way, you could probably be a great writer with your imagination – but I digress.

You are telling yourself thoughts that may not be true….that is what I am trying to get you to see. The truth is that the two of you broke up. The truth is that this guy had some feelings for another girl.

Those I can agree are true…but the rest is questionable. If it is questionable would it not be reasonable in your mind to question it? Question your assumptions – they may not be true as you see it right now.

You are basing your worth and self esteem on another person and an imaginary scenarios of what they are thinking or doing. That’s “other esteem”. You are completely ignoring “self esteem”. Your worth and self esteem is based on how you feel about yourself and no one should be able to take that away from you. If you were born to good parents who nurtured your self esteem, this would come natural. You would think to yourself, that your boyfriend made a decision and you will respect it, but he also made a mistake and he will probably regret it, but it’s really his loss. He has a right to make this decision and you wish him all the best.
Instead since you lack self esteem you are coming up with scenarios that further damage your core beliefs about yourself.
It’s a type of “codependency”, look it up. And read books on it. Melody Beaty and Darlene Lancer have written great books. Also look into self esteem workbooks.
Great job on no contact, stay that way until you no longer care, but you have a lot of self esteem building work ahead of you. Good luck to you!

And to make it absolutely clear, you cannot tie your healing process on how he feels or what he’s doing. Can’t you see that’s a lose-lose situation for you? If you think he misses you, you’re stuck, living off of crumbs of (possibly imaginary) hope and will never get over him. If you think he’s moved on, you’ll end up right back in that self-pitying and self-loathing that you’re now doing. The only way to move forward is to focus on YOU and no one else.

I agree with all that except the part that he’s not hurting me and she’s not hurting me.

He broke up with me. He promised not to pursue or hang out with this girl and if anything to go meet new people. He sometimes wonders if he is gay, and that was part of the problem, so he promised he would be pursuing that and not her and avoiding these alcohol situations.

This wine palooza drunk fest was for the girl’s birthday party. On a weekend. She’s a coworker and he had been cycling. He did not HAVE to go. He must have known it would hurt me. She had plenty of friends there. He did not have to go and get wasted with this girl. He knows it will hurt me. He wanted to do it anyway, he wanted to party with her. And if he wanted that who knows what happened after that or will happen – next time he’ll take her for drinks alone.

All because my friend keeps putting them in situations where they dont both have to be there but she invites them to be there, drinking, together, getting to know each other, tempting them, giving him an easy person to flirt with and connect with. She didn’t have to invite this girl to her husband’s party, she could have just invited my ex, his bf. She didn’t have to throw this girl a party (never did anything like that for me in all our years of friendship despite me having done so many acts of kindness for her). And if she did throw the party, she didn’t have to invite my ex. Couldve been a girls thing and couldve invited me. Instead she intentionally brought my ex to this chick’s drunk fest.

And then? Everyone lied about it until the other woman herself guilty mentioned it when I pulled it out of her. She said she had gotten so drunk and had so much fun with my ex and that it had carried on well beyond the wine tasting, and that’s all thanks to my friend.

My friend is lying to me, excluding me, putting this girl on a pedestal, and meanwhile my ex is clearly chasing her when he promised he wouldnt.

So they are hurting me. The only way I would be hurting me in that situation is if I could suddenly not care that a block away from me my ex is chasing a girl he promised he wouldn’t chase, every day, thanks to my own friend who is setting them together and lying about it and ignoring me and not seeing me, just cutting me out and not even feeling bad about it.

You’re right that I have very little self esteem. This affirmation of my friends excluding me and lying to me and setting up my ex of two weeks with this girl and having a grand old time and this guy not hurting or missing me or regretting but excitedly chasing this girl and going out with all my friends every couple days doing fun things, while I am excluded, well that doesn’t hurt my self esteem. The fact that he wanted to hook up w her even while hooking up with me. But yes I do need to work on that.

I do need to write positive things and I will work on that.

And I have been writing all the negatives about why I can do better than this guy. This behavior isn’t worthy of me.

I hope I meet someone better, it seems so unlikely. I know I always feel like that when I lose someone. But it ends up being true, I don’t meet anyone for years. I don’t like 90% of people and I have these specific diet/activism/beliefs/worldview that are mandatory in a partner and it is not often to find a men with these foundations (outdoorsy intellectual vegan animal rights for one)…my age in my area that I connect with. They are mostly gay.

I will try to use the artist mind to imagine a happy scenario and him as someone who isn’t right and would leave down the road. When we were dating I wanted to be with him forever. When we were friends I felt that way too. I like his company so much, I just wanted to be around it always, and thought he was a good match. He wasn’t my physical type so we stayed friends. Then I realized physical types are stupid and here I have a kind wonderful guy who cares about me who I’m attracted to so I realized I had everything I wanted right there. It took me years to find someone like him.

I will try to question my thoughts. I will try to read those books you suggested. I will try to heal without thought of him. I will try to exercise and do yoga and meditate and find happiness through all of this and strength. I will try to make new friends. I will close off all these people until it doesn’t hurt me anymore.

This is a confusing time. In experiences like these normally he is the friend and confidant I turn to for advice and support and his wisdom is usually right. Hard not to have his friendship. I imagine he would tell me everything you guys are telling me though.

I think I need new friends, people to do things with. That would be helpful. Maybe even laugh. Express new sides of me that aren’t this rejected and excluded and potentially unvalued and potentially sideswiped and replaced by another woman.

I will work on this thank you. I’ll try to see things that aren’t negative. Hard…

If they were really my friends and really wanted him to be happy they would encourage him to work things out with me. We were all friends, we were good together, they said he seemed happy with me, they know I’m the first person he’s wanted a relationship with in years (same for me). Not encourage him to screw the one person I’ve specifically asked them not to push his way and for him not to pursue.

Why don’t they see him being a little sad and say hey talk to juniper, can’t you guys work it out, go do something with her, etc. Not hey here’s this young girl you work with, have at it. I mean it has to occur to them that this would hurt me.

And frankly, this friend that I speak of, we know he is bi and has spoken for years of wanting to date men to see if he would have a closer emotional bond and be able to have emotional intimacy with a man since he struggles with it so much with women. My friend said, even when we were dating, that she wished he would just buck up and date a man so he would know. So why isn’t she encouraging him to either work things out with me, her friend, who she knows is in love with him and who she knows he has liked for years, and who she knows has a good foundation with him, OR pursuing men. Why on earth would she encourage more womanizing of this young girl, since we have always rolled our eyes and shook our heads at his serial 2 week to 1 month dating of women.She should encourage him to monogamy with me or experimenting with men, knowing that both those things are best for him.

And if not that? How about someone new? A yoga teacher, someone online, etc. He is good at meeting people online and used to do it all the time. No reason to ignite fire on purpose knowing it would hurt me.

I went on a date the same week he was doing that. I too wanted to stop having feelings and hurt and staying home alone. It was with a woman and she kissed me and it was a nice kiss. But I’m not into her and see her as more of a friend. There was no spark there. It only made me miss our dates and the person he is, how smart he is and our connection and how we laugh at ourselves.

For some reason, I think that if he was dating online, meeting a man or woman here or there and seeing if he’s interested, that wouldn’t bother me as much. It would make me sad but it would mean he ended things because of a need to explore himself more and that he would be on equal ground with me. But having this girl thrown at him without any effort, someone I know and was hurt by during our relationship, someone that means I am excluded from friend events, someone who just hurts me… it puts us on an unequal ground that is very painful.

Like if he contacted me every once in a while to say hey how are you, this is all awkward and moving to date new people sucks, but I’m looking online again, that would be fine. We would be equals, with a little friendly and supportive contact, going through the sadness of a breakup together and healing on our own similarly and taking awkward steps to move on.

But this sort of flirtatious, drunken, outings orchestrated by my friends of a girl that’s thrown at him and that they all put on a pedestal and who has replaced me (took my job and my status as cute single girl he had a crush on and the center of our friend circle). That is driving me bonkers and I can’t get it out of my head. I try and I meditate and then 3 am in the morning I wake up with that thought on my mind.

No contact to me means he wants to forget me and doesn’t miss me and wants to start messing around and doesn’t want to hurt me by mentioning it and he is going to do whatever he wants regardless of his promise, and regardless of my friend’s promise. It is sad to me that this girl is so irresistible.

This is going to sound stupid. But not only did she take my job, take my boyfriend’s interest while I was dating him, take his landlord, take my friend’s celebration (they never got so excited about me it seems as they do about her despite her being the most bland person you can ever imagine), take my place at fun holiday work events, take a house around the corner from me, with apple trees every one raves about (I just lost my large country home which had an apple orchard and which loss of the home devastated me and led me into this depression, to move into a tiny crowded depressing home) and will be hosting parties she says with a firepit for my ex and all our friends to go to and they’ll help her put it all together, and of course I can’t come. And clearly if I had such a party they wouldn’t come because this pedestal girl couldn’t come or because my ex couldn’t come.

It’s just all so much easier for everyone if I am erased. And so they are doing it. Erasing our friendship, erasing my presence, erasing the memories I have with fun ones with her.

And that hurts. And that’s why no contact hurts. I can heal and take care of myself, alone, always alone, knowing I’ve been erased and they’ll carry on having so much fun, all friends and lovers, and I’ll be half a block away, alone. No contact from him means someone else is getting all his contact. I’m erased.