How do you know when something is well and truly over when you really need to call time on a relationship?
Or when it is just the moment to think elsewhere – whether it be a major personal or professional.
I met an ex recently for coffee. We have remained friends. I left her in 2011. We got back together in early 2017 and then she decided not to pursue it further… so it was me who got dumped. Some years later she was back in Paris and suggested lunch. She had met someone. They were having the day to day life that she wanted with a partner. We had a long talk about the year we were together, my departure, our rekindling of our romance, her departure. We became friends despite the fact that we had both suffered.
I saw her again recently. The attraction between us is still clearly there – but she is now five years with her new fellow, and we are now just good friends. We had an interesting exchange about many things – most tellingly that, when we were together, our timing was both right and wrong… that we needed different things at the two moments that we were together… and how it was sad that our timing was off, and how we both made errors… and how life indeed goes on..
A subtext of sadness informed the conversation… but also a realization that this might have been for the best. And how good it was that we now had a strong friendship. Life: comings and goings. Connections/disconnections. And always those bloody ‘what if?’ questions. Which, of course, makes it all rather interesting indeed…. You know how everything seems to remind you of them? That'll slowly happen less and less, but only when you're not paying attention to how frequently it happens. Then one day, when you're least expecting it, you'll have one of those flashbacks and realize that it doesn't bother you anymore.
If it was true love, I don't think you can ever get over them. The feelings will fade, but not completely. They will remain in the dark corners of your mind and every now and then they'll come out of their corners and wander into the light. Not to worry though, they'll go back to their corners where they belong. But they will always be with you. She was a whole person before (in my mind), and a lot more at one point. But over the time, that person's been reduced to but an idea, as if all those memories with her are just figments of my imagination now. I can't say I've completely gotten over the person, but I sure am close to getting there.
Surprisingly you do eventually get over somebody, just stop stalking them. Your brain does haunt you for a few years than it gets bored thinking about them and you come out of it. There are different kinds of love. But if you're talking about longterm/committed partner kind of love, then I'd say that if you have been involved with someone for longer than a year or two, and you are a significantly better person with them around (they support and inspire you to want to spend your life making the world a better place), and you are willing to go to therapy (or some other equivalent form of outside relationship help) when things are difficult between you and them, then you're probably in the deepest, most lasting, most passionate love possible.
The kind of love all the love songs are about apparently ALWAYS includes the effects of pheromones in the beginning: special scents that attract one sex to the other. Our immune systems are always looking for mates whose own immune system would be an ideal complement to our own in any progeny we produced together-- for such children would have hybrid immune systems superior to either of its parents.
That's evolution in action. And will push at least some of your lust buttons, depending on how complementary the other person's immune system is to your own. If ALL your buttons get pushed, you will definitely know it: because the desire WILL consume you-- maybe a lot like how heroin consumes a heroin addict.
Unfortunately, the pheromones thing doesn't last forever: it just gives you time to try developing other emotional attachments in addition to the lust. If you fail to develop those other attachments, then when the pheromones part dies down, so will all your attraction to your mate. Yikes!
Note that in those 'other' emotional attachments, it's possible to actually develop your own mutual sexual bond which will feel quite a lot like the pheromone thing even after the true pheromones effect is long gone. But it seems only a relatively small portion of couples succeed at that for decades, much less a lifetime.
There's also the 'best friend' aspect which some lucky couples develop with one another. This can be awfully good itself, as in best friends with benefits. This can be a whole different thing from the long term passionate sexual bond mentioned just previous. But still VERY nice and fun and comfortable, and something lots of couples would like to achieve, after the initial pheromones frenzy dies out. I just recently got divorced, and was over my ex husband within two weeks after it happened. I think the situation of why you broke up has to do with how fast you get over someone as well. In the past because I loved him so deeply, I was sure if we had ever broken up that it would take me years to get over him. Fast forward to now- where I had learned he cheated on me with my best friend (my best friend whom I had known since I was in elementary school- I’m 25 now) and I think because I was so disappointed and angry at both of them I immediately threw both in the trash inside my mind and stopped caring about them both pretty much immediately. I also knew because those feelings of support, love, and admiration I had for both of them was completely gone- as well as I had a dream two weeks after that I was making out with one of my classmates in school that I never realized I had been attracted too 😂
When I realized we were strangers now. I didn’t know what he was up to or if his current hobbies or views were the same because time passed. I was over it when I looked around it my own life and realized I was in a new chapter myself, but realized he wasn’t a character there, and he wasn’t missed. Turns out he wasn’t crucial to the plot of my life story, but I learned some good lessons from when we were together
When I started to imagine myself with someone else and when I started to think of someone else. In my experience I’ve usually gotten over someone by getting under someone else, right up until I met my current boyfriend. I know I’m over someone when I stop caring about what they’re up to, and I stop hoping that they show up where I am, and I stop hoping that they’ll message me to make things right again. It stopped mattering whether I saw him or not. What he thought, what his opinion was , did not give a damn about it anymore. There was a lot of toxic manipulation from his end. It lasted till i felt that i love him. Once i started to put more thought into it, it all made sense. I lost respect for the person and a time came when calls from him were like a burden. I realized it was time to break up while I had the right mind.
When I read some wishy washy quote along the lines of ‘maybe it was that we were meant to be but all about the adventure along the way’ and smiled because I felt like that about a love I’ve pined over for years. I still will always love him but our short time together has a more happy afterglow than a painful tinge.
Healing the heart after a painful breakup is no different from any other healing process. You make a little progress and then regress a little. At first this cycle is so heavy on the regression that you seem to gain nothing. To the contrary, you are making gains, they are just so small that the pain overshadows them. As time goes on the regression becomes less and the progress more, until you can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. If you continue to persevere, you will wake up one day and realize that there hasn't been any regression in a while. It is at that moment when you realize the emotions, or maybe lack thereof, that OP described here.
I had the worst break up ever 4-5 years ago (I don't even remember clearly now lol). I did the craziest things like sitting on a ledge contemplating suicide, almost causing a car accident, and starving myself to distract myself from the emptiness/longing. I lost several kilograms. I tried to get my ex back for months thinking that person was the world. I worried so many of my friends and family. It was the darkest and most emotional period of my life and I thought I would never get better.
Fast forward to the present, I am in the healthiest, happiest and most stable relationship I could ever ask for. I never imagined that I could have such a loving relationship. The past pain pushed me to build up my self-esteem and love myself even more, as well as taught me how to have a strong relationship. I love my SO more than ever and we are always in our own little world.
It always feels good when you realize you’re over your ex. It’s just been 1 month but I’m over her. One thing that can help out is online dating. Just creating a profile, see people who like to do the things you would do with your ex, and seeing people are attracted to you. Nothing serious so not really a rebound, just a good way for reassurance. I barely thing about my ex anymore.
So happy for you! I can't wait to be in that place too, but I think the road ahead is still very long. I don't have a single one of those things on your list checked off yet. I wish I could rush the recovery, but that's not healthy and doesn't work. I'm just trying to immerse myself in my own favorite activities and let the time pass one day at a time. How do you know when to call it quits in a relationship?
Let's face it. All relationships require work. People are imperfect and all come with their own baggage and bad habits and attachment styles and ways of dealing with things in less than perfect ways. Psychologists call this, "paradox." And all humans are a paradox. We do counterintuitive things. We say one thing yet do the opposite, etc., so how do you know when to call it quits and when to stay and work on it? I have no clue, and I just would like to hear some advice. Because we're all so quick to be like, "Deal breaker!" over small things, but no one is perfect. How does anyone strike a balance between being disappointed and hurt and finding a way to move past in hopes that things will improve?
I met an ex recently for coffee. We have remained friends. I left her in 2011. We got back together in early 2017 and then she decided not to pursue it further… so it was me who got dumped. Some years later she was back in Paris and suggested lunch. She had met someone. They were having the day to day life that she wanted with a partner. We had a long talk about the year we were together, my departure, our rekindling of our romance, her departure. We became friends despite the fact that we had both suffered.
I saw her again recently. The attraction between us is still clearly there – but she is now five years with her new fellow, and we are now just good friends. We had an interesting exchange about many things – most tellingly that, when we were together, our timing was both right and wrong… that we needed different things at the two moments that we were together… and how it was sad that our timing was off, and how we both made errors… and how life indeed goes on..
A subtext of sadness informed the conversation… but also a realization that this might have been for the best. And how good it was that we now had a strong friendship. Life: comings and goings. Connections/disconnections. And always those bloody ‘what if?’ questions. Which, of course, makes it all rather interesting indeed…. You know how everything seems to remind you of them? That'll slowly happen less and less, but only when you're not paying attention to how frequently it happens. Then one day, when you're least expecting it, you'll have one of those flashbacks and realize that it doesn't bother you anymore.
If it was true love, I don't think you can ever get over them. The feelings will fade, but not completely. They will remain in the dark corners of your mind and every now and then they'll come out of their corners and wander into the light. Not to worry though, they'll go back to their corners where they belong. But they will always be with you. She was a whole person before (in my mind), and a lot more at one point. But over the time, that person's been reduced to but an idea, as if all those memories with her are just figments of my imagination now. I can't say I've completely gotten over the person, but I sure am close to getting there.
Surprisingly you do eventually get over somebody, just stop stalking them. Your brain does haunt you for a few years than it gets bored thinking about them and you come out of it. There are different kinds of love. But if you're talking about longterm/committed partner kind of love, then I'd say that if you have been involved with someone for longer than a year or two, and you are a significantly better person with them around (they support and inspire you to want to spend your life making the world a better place), and you are willing to go to therapy (or some other equivalent form of outside relationship help) when things are difficult between you and them, then you're probably in the deepest, most lasting, most passionate love possible.
The kind of love all the love songs are about apparently ALWAYS includes the effects of pheromones in the beginning: special scents that attract one sex to the other. Our immune systems are always looking for mates whose own immune system would be an ideal complement to our own in any progeny we produced together-- for such children would have hybrid immune systems superior to either of its parents.
That's evolution in action. And will push at least some of your lust buttons, depending on how complementary the other person's immune system is to your own. If ALL your buttons get pushed, you will definitely know it: because the desire WILL consume you-- maybe a lot like how heroin consumes a heroin addict.
Unfortunately, the pheromones thing doesn't last forever: it just gives you time to try developing other emotional attachments in addition to the lust. If you fail to develop those other attachments, then when the pheromones part dies down, so will all your attraction to your mate. Yikes!
Note that in those 'other' emotional attachments, it's possible to actually develop your own mutual sexual bond which will feel quite a lot like the pheromone thing even after the true pheromones effect is long gone. But it seems only a relatively small portion of couples succeed at that for decades, much less a lifetime.
There's also the 'best friend' aspect which some lucky couples develop with one another. This can be awfully good itself, as in best friends with benefits. This can be a whole different thing from the long term passionate sexual bond mentioned just previous. But still VERY nice and fun and comfortable, and something lots of couples would like to achieve, after the initial pheromones frenzy dies out. I just recently got divorced, and was over my ex husband within two weeks after it happened. I think the situation of why you broke up has to do with how fast you get over someone as well. In the past because I loved him so deeply, I was sure if we had ever broken up that it would take me years to get over him. Fast forward to now- where I had learned he cheated on me with my best friend (my best friend whom I had known since I was in elementary school- I’m 25 now) and I think because I was so disappointed and angry at both of them I immediately threw both in the trash inside my mind and stopped caring about them both pretty much immediately. I also knew because those feelings of support, love, and admiration I had for both of them was completely gone- as well as I had a dream two weeks after that I was making out with one of my classmates in school that I never realized I had been attracted too 😂
When I realized we were strangers now. I didn’t know what he was up to or if his current hobbies or views were the same because time passed. I was over it when I looked around it my own life and realized I was in a new chapter myself, but realized he wasn’t a character there, and he wasn’t missed. Turns out he wasn’t crucial to the plot of my life story, but I learned some good lessons from when we were together
When I started to imagine myself with someone else and when I started to think of someone else. In my experience I’ve usually gotten over someone by getting under someone else, right up until I met my current boyfriend. I know I’m over someone when I stop caring about what they’re up to, and I stop hoping that they show up where I am, and I stop hoping that they’ll message me to make things right again. It stopped mattering whether I saw him or not. What he thought, what his opinion was , did not give a damn about it anymore. There was a lot of toxic manipulation from his end. It lasted till i felt that i love him. Once i started to put more thought into it, it all made sense. I lost respect for the person and a time came when calls from him were like a burden. I realized it was time to break up while I had the right mind.
When I read some wishy washy quote along the lines of ‘maybe it was that we were meant to be but all about the adventure along the way’ and smiled because I felt like that about a love I’ve pined over for years. I still will always love him but our short time together has a more happy afterglow than a painful tinge.
Healing the heart after a painful breakup is no different from any other healing process. You make a little progress and then regress a little. At first this cycle is so heavy on the regression that you seem to gain nothing. To the contrary, you are making gains, they are just so small that the pain overshadows them. As time goes on the regression becomes less and the progress more, until you can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. If you continue to persevere, you will wake up one day and realize that there hasn't been any regression in a while. It is at that moment when you realize the emotions, or maybe lack thereof, that OP described here.
I had the worst break up ever 4-5 years ago (I don't even remember clearly now lol). I did the craziest things like sitting on a ledge contemplating suicide, almost causing a car accident, and starving myself to distract myself from the emptiness/longing. I lost several kilograms. I tried to get my ex back for months thinking that person was the world. I worried so many of my friends and family. It was the darkest and most emotional period of my life and I thought I would never get better.
Fast forward to the present, I am in the healthiest, happiest and most stable relationship I could ever ask for. I never imagined that I could have such a loving relationship. The past pain pushed me to build up my self-esteem and love myself even more, as well as taught me how to have a strong relationship. I love my SO more than ever and we are always in our own little world.
It always feels good when you realize you’re over your ex. It’s just been 1 month but I’m over her. One thing that can help out is online dating. Just creating a profile, see people who like to do the things you would do with your ex, and seeing people are attracted to you. Nothing serious so not really a rebound, just a good way for reassurance. I barely thing about my ex anymore.
So happy for you! I can't wait to be in that place too, but I think the road ahead is still very long. I don't have a single one of those things on your list checked off yet. I wish I could rush the recovery, but that's not healthy and doesn't work. I'm just trying to immerse myself in my own favorite activities and let the time pass one day at a time. How do you know when to call it quits in a relationship?
Let's face it. All relationships require work. People are imperfect and all come with their own baggage and bad habits and attachment styles and ways of dealing with things in less than perfect ways. Psychologists call this, "paradox." And all humans are a paradox. We do counterintuitive things. We say one thing yet do the opposite, etc., so how do you know when to call it quits and when to stay and work on it? I have no clue, and I just would like to hear some advice. Because we're all so quick to be like, "Deal breaker!" over small things, but no one is perfect. How does anyone strike a balance between being disappointed and hurt and finding a way to move past in hopes that things will improve?
