Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Hello Doc,
I have a hard time moving on from my last relationship. As a guy in my late twenties that was never in a relationship before, it was everything that I ever wanted, she was so much into me and me into her. It was the period of time when I was the happiest. But based on some incompatibilities, she decided to end it after we were together for around half a year. That was almost two years ago.
Many people gave me the advice that time will help, but it did not make that much of a difference. She is still the last thing on my mind when I go to sleep. I find myself daydreaming about the moments we were together and what I could have done differently. I’m tired, Doc.
Part of me wants to get flashed by the MIB neuralyzer. But until that is a thing, what I have tried is to distance myself from her: I blocked all her social media accounts, all the things I got from her are put in a box in a hard-to-reach part of the drawer, all the pictures of us I exported to a detachable drive. One of the issues is that both of us live in the same neighborhood, every time I have to go anywhere, I either have to take the main road and go directly in front of her apartment or take a side road. But even with me taking this precaution, we still bump into each other. In that moment, I feel lightheaded, my knees start to shake, and my stomach hurts. She avoids my gaze, and that’s that. Moving will probably help, but I own my place and I’d rather not go again on the house market, the search was one of the most stressful periods of my life and something that I hope the next time I need to do will be together with my partner. Also, we will still bump into each other at the hobby place we share and where we’ve met.
I’ve had my biggest crush out a couple of weeks ago. I was browsing the local subreddit when I’ve seen a post from a guy, he was looking for a place to rent with his girlfriend. He started to describe the location, his girlfriend’s peculiar work-from-home job, things she owns, and choices of pet. I’m happy that she found someone, but it did hurt a lot.
I tried going into therapy, with the main goal being trying to move on from her, but after around one year and a half of no progress, my therapist had to go into maternal leave, and I decided to take a break. So many times I left our sessions crying and thinking about self-harm, with the main reason being that I think that I lost the only opportunity of finding a relationship. Besides the therapist, I shared my thoughts with my family, friends, and even the owner of the bike shop me and my ex used to frequent. Also, with you in a prior letter.
I did observe that the moment I start crushing on another woman, my ex takes a back seat. But I did not have that much success, I had one first date after a blind date event, but the connection was not really there. Besides that, it is just a string of rejections.
I’m not the first person that is still stuck, that still bumps into their ex, so how do they do it? Two years just seems too long to still feel so bad. I just want some peace and quiet from my brain.
Lost In The Fog
It sucks to feel stuck in a situation like this LITF, but there comes a point where you’re basically wallowing rather than moving on.
I know from which I speak, trust me. I’ve been there, done that and had the really embarrassing LiveJournal posts to show for it. I’ve had relationships that I thought were going to be My Last Relationship (Positive) and My Last Relationship (Despairing) come to a screeching halt so sudden that they left me with emotional whiplash, and those were the ones that hit the hardest.
And here’s what I’ve learned in the years of having endured, then getting over a lot of heartbreak and endings: healing is an active process. Healing doesn’t just happen, it’s something you have to decide to do. You have to take it on like a project, with the full understanding that it’s going to be a project of indeterminate length. You can’t predict how long it will be, because there are a lot of variables that you can’t control for. All you can do is just resolve that you’re going to take it one day at a time. You take each day as it comes, focus on the things you can do for that day, and keep putting one foot in front of the other.
The first step, however, is that you have to stop reopening the wound. The level of dwelling and wallowing you’re doing isn’t helpful; all you’re doing is reinforcing the fact that you broke up and ensuring that it takes up more mental and emotional bandwidth. Thinking about her before you go to sleep every night and daydreaming about what you could’ve done differently aren’t helping. These aren’t even fantasies that give you some fleeting form of catharsis; they just reinforce your feeling of helplessness and unworthiness because you know damn good and well that this is just impotent what-if-ing. And worse, indulging in these just carves grooves in your brain that make you more likely to return to these thoughts.
This is why much of what you need to do is start taking control of your own thoughts. You may not make the conscious decision to start daydreaming about her, but once you realize you are, you need to make the decision to redirect your thoughts without judging yourself for having them. This is the point of noting and naming these thoughts; you realize that you’re having them, then name them to remind yourself that they’re just thoughts and feelings. To name them is to define and limit them and to remind you that these thoughts aren’t core to who you are; they’re just what you’re thinking about in this moment. You give them a name and thus establish their dimensions and boundaries, and then you gently but consciously turn your attention to something you do need to be devoting thought to. It could be your plans for dinner, your current project at work or whatever you were doing before you realized you had drifted away; all that matters is that you’re reminding yourself that you’re not at the mercy of random daydreams and impulsive decisions to ruminate over the break up.
The same thing applies as you try to fall asleep at night – just in a form that allows you to drift off, instead of keeping you awake. I recommend counting your breaths; you inhale and exhale, picturing the cool air coming in and the efforts of the day leaving you to drift away with each breath, and mentally say “one”, “two”, “three” as you let your body relax and your muscles to unclench. If you realize you’re thinking – about your ex, about breakfast, about the next season of Strange New Worlds – you note and name those thoughts, then return to focusing on your breath, starting at “one” again.
This will help you recognize when you’re falling into these loops and to turn away from them, without bringing them to the fore.
The next thing you need to do is to stop trying to avoid signs of her existence. Avoidance does nothing but make the anxiety worse. It rips the scab off the wound while you increase the things that make you anxious – first it’s seeing her, then it’s going past her apartment, then it’s just living in the same neighborhood, then it’s going to be living in the same city. Even if she moves out, you’ll still be seeing it as attached to her, and it will become a new and different sort of anxiety as it becomes a symbol of how she moved on and you didn’t. It will haunt you like a wraith, taking on whatever form it needs to inflict more pain.
You will start seeing connections everywhere because that’s how confirmation bias works – you subconsciously seek out these things and highlight them in your own mind when you encounter them, giving them more prominence and significance when you wouldn’t think twice about them or even notice them under other circumstances.
The more you try to avoid anything that might remind you of her, the more you build it up in your mind so that when you inevitably see something connected to her – and you will – it throws you into a spiral that sets you back and reopens the wound.
Instead, you just need to resolve to push past it and through, to not let the anxiety of it all rule you. You accept that there’s going to be a sting as you go by, but you just grit your teeth and let it wash over you, then through you and then leave it behind you. The first time or two your heart will pound and you will think that this is the worst feeling ever… but before long, as you simply allow it to exist, it will lose significance and importance as your brain focuses on things that actually matter for a change.
The same applies with if and when you encounter her out in your day to day life. If you see her, you notice that she’s there, then just resolve to go about your day as though you’re already over her. If she sees you or you are in a situation where you have to interact with her, you are polite but distant; you don’t need to linger, you just politely acknowledge her and say “hey, nice seeing you, got to go do my thing” and continue on. Yeah, it’s scary to contemplate, but again: this is because you build it up to titanic proportions in your mind when she’s just a person who was in your life for a little while. Yeah, you cared about her and things didn’t end the way you wished, but she was just a person who was there for less than a year. She only has the importance and significance you give her, and you are giving her far more than is warranted.
But more than that: you need to start living. You aren’t living right now, you’re existing, and that needs to change. You have made avoiding her and feeling the pain of the break up central to your life and given up on everything else. So now it’s time to reclaim the time and energy you’re giving to this break up and apply it elsewhere.
One way to do this is simply to focus on treating yourself well and engaging in self-care. This doesn’t just mean huddling under the covers with a mug of hot chocolate or binging your favorite cartoons from childhood; it means taking care of yourself, maintaining your mind and body like a vehicle that requires maintenance and tuning. Exercise, fresh air and sunshine, healthy food, time with friends… these are all going to be vital parts of your self-care. So too is keeping your home clean, making sure you’re showering and taking care of your grooming and presentation. By treating yourself with the care you deserve, you remind yourself you deserve good things – and to enjoy those good things, you have to be in good working order.
Another thing to do is find a project or purpose to devote your time to. You want to remind yourself that you’re more than just someone whose relationship ended, and that you’re not just at the mercy of the cruel and uncaring winds of fate. Having a project and a purpose means that you see the impact you make in the world, even it’s just something small. Being able to say “Hey, I did this thing that made the world a different, better place” is not just satisfying, but it’s a reminder that you have agency and impact. You are potent, able to do more than just exist or make meaningless gestures like moving numbers from one column on a spreadsheet to another. Even something as simple as helping your neighbors clean their yards or volunteering your time for a worthy cause on weekends will go a long way to make you feel better.
The last thing to do is to break character and do something unexpected. You have a whole host of options here… what is something that you’re curious about or interested in that other people would never expect from you? What’s something that’s so unlike you that folks would be amazed you ever gave it a try in the first place? Pick something simple and easily fulfilled – decide that tonight you’re interested in trying that Indonesian restaurant and have nasi goreng for the first time, or go see a movie in a genre you normally never care for. Whether you discover a new favorite or reaffirm that this just isn’t for you, you will have expanded the boundaries of “You”, taken steps that change your sense of self and add layers and complexity that weren’t there before. You may even discover that this thing you’ve never done before is amazing and wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.
These new experiences will help shake you out of your rut and remind you that “you” are a concept that’s always in flux. You are always growing, always changing and – importantly –moving forward, instead of getting stuck in the past.
You can’t live in the past, no matter how hard you try; all you do is neglect your present and leave your future to rot. And your ex is in your past; she haunts you like a ghost because you refuse to let it rest in peace where it lays. Moving on means moving past it, not circling it like ants caught in a death march.
That starts with allowing yourself to heal and to stop hiding from what happened before. It sucks, and it will hurt… but that hurt will fade when you allow it to. But first you have to allow it, not hide from it. It’s time to start living in the present and looking to the future.
You’ve got this.
All will be well.
Hey Dr NL,
I’ve got a bit of a question about my workplace relationship situation.
Short version I (he/him) work for a pretty big organisation with a lot of moving parts. It’s very much one of those bureaucratic nightmares where no one knows who’s doing what for who.
I met ‘Amber’ on a work trip, I do a fair amount of traveling, and we hit it off pretty fast. At the time she knew who I worked for, but I didn’t know that she also works for our company. In fact, she’s a lot higher up the ladder than I am.
She did eventually tell me and it made me kinda nervous, she’s in the department responsible for our corporate security, and has enough pull to fire basically anyone she wants if she can justify them as a ‘security risk’.
She makes jokes about having my colleagues shot if they say the wrong thing to me.
I probably shouldn’t have gotten involved further, but we have really great chemistry, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy her company both in and out of the bedroom.
The issue is twofold.
One, she keeps leveraging her position and our relationship to get me to do her favours at work, some of which have dragged me away from my actual job for considerable periods of time. She can justify it to my boss but it’s starting to look kind of odd.
Two, we have to keep our relationship a secret because it might compromise her position, and to a lesser extent mine.
I’m supposed to be in a leadership and mentor role to some of our newer employees and I’m worried how this will look if it comes out later.
Fortunately my PA is very good at stonewalling and covering for us but I don’t think it’s fair to put that on him either as he tends to get caught up in the work favours.
Neither of us want to leave our roles because we’re both in pretty good places but I do really care for her, and I think she cares for me too.
Any advice you can give would be appreciated.
Thanks
‘Scarlet’
Well congratulations Scarlet, I can tell this is an entry for April Fool Me, but for the life of me I don’t know from what. Maybe my readers will recognize it; if you know or have a solid guess, drop it in the comments.
But the situation you describe? Whoooo nurse, that’s not a good scene. Hey, I get it, there’s nothing like pushing at the taboo, of having a secret you’re not supposed to have. There’s a thrill of feeling like you’re getting away with something – like being a spy or covert agent, or a thief walking around with the proceeds of a successful heist. But while that secret may be thrilling, even intoxicating… well, there’s a reason why the root of “intoxicating” is “toxic”.
A romantic partner who not only works in the same organization as you but is above you in the org chart is someone who has a lot of power and influence over you. Even if you feel like you trust her enough to never use that influence or not to wield it inappropriately, you’re still in a position where you aren’t going to feel like you can’t risk going against their wishes. The fact that she makes jokey-jokes about having your colleagues shot or otherwise removed for “security” reasons may seem cute and silly at first… until the day that they’re no longer jokes and you realize that you have less freedom and choice than you realized.
Similarly, dragging you away to do favors presents a very real risk for you, with very little in return from her. Even if she’s your superior at work, you still have your responsibilities – to your job, your co-workers and others – and now you’re neglecting them. If you’re lucky, it means you end up busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest as you try to balance your responsibilities with the ones she’s foisting off on you. If you’re not… well, you’re endangering your career and possibly the careers of the folks you work with. Maybe you get off lightly and miss out on advancement opportunities or mentorships that you might’ve had if you hadn’t been pulled away for “favors”. Or maybe you and your department get downsized for failing to meet performance standards. Or you become one of those “security risks”.
It’s great that she’s good in the sack and you’ve got chemistry… but don’t forget that chemistry is also what causes explosions, and not the fun kind. The kind that create collateral damage, like, say, your coworkers. She may care for you in her way, but that’s not going to do much good when your relationship with her ends with your burning out, your direct reports being harmed by your absence, and other folks like your PA being dragged into her bullshit with no regard for their responsibilities either.
The likeliest outcome is that this is going to end in tears. And structural damage. And possibly a lot of terms like “forensic reconstruction”, “police inquiries” and “missing persons”.
Were I you, I’d start documenting this relationship very, very carefully and thoroughly and bringing it to your boss before you end things. Yeah, she’s probably only joking about having people shot.
Probably.
But you should probably have contingencies in place in case she isn’t and suddenly there’s a little red dot on your chest today…
Good luck.
