futility of romantic 'love'

I think zach may well have summed it up there, they guy is worth the fight, but if the fight is turning into the hundred year war then mayb backing out is the option. i would however still say that for as deep seated an issue as the one you are trying to deal with 2 yrs may not be quite long enough for things to change noticably. (though if i remember correctly you did say he had given up some habbits?) also when he asks what is wrong with it just tell him that it bugs you, mayb then he will stop talking to you about it, and if he isn't making the comments will then move on to just not thinking about it.

"So Schrodinger's Cat is not only neither dead nor alive, but might also be sexually aroused by elbows and peanut butter?"

yes two years is not too long in real time. but considering the fact that i have talked to this man more than i have spoken collectively to everyone else in the rest of my life, that two years is quite enuff. and i talk a lot to everyone !

right at the start of the relationship this issue cropped up and it has not been resolved. we are still at the stage where he denies that it "shud" have any impact - so the point where he will acknowledge it and the situation may get better is a few light years away.

in the meanwhile, while i fight, it has also impacted my psyche and have gone a bot crazy. so everytime i see a woman dressed sexy - it comes back to me as 'wud he find her fuckable ?' - women on the road, women in the media are all personal threats to me as seen thru his eyes. this damage is a bit wild - and i have never competed or felt threatened in this way ever before. so while its a great love, its also pretty scary.

whether a guy IS in love or isnt. its not something to be negotiated. and if he IS in love, i cant see how he'd let hismelf so easily out of control. in the first place his head shud be so full of me, that there is no space for anyone else.

if that hasnt happened, maybe there is someone else out there for him who will do this.

and as for me, i can love him, but the bridge of a relationship - built on words and acts, which wud deliver my love to him, must be shut.

two years we fought to keep this bridge open - without arriving at a solution that worked for both. now the love can remain within our souls and does not need to be communcated.

its time to give up.

"live this day as if it were your last"

Spicesoup - Do you hope to find someone else who can love you for who you are and all in all? To find someone who can meet your expectations? (atleast the "essensial" ones?

Or are you going to give up completely on everything?

I hope its not the latter.

its a hard stage right now.

i know that he is my final destination. and i think also that i am not his.

my love for him remains. for things that he stood for. for things that i fell in love with in the first place. bad things that did not suit me have happened but those qualities still remain in him.

i think i will not stop loving him. and so my search and my lifelong quest is done. i gave it my best so that we cud be together in day to day life as well. but if that is not to be, then its only one part of the whole story. the other part is love i live in my soul.

the interaction and the relationship i give up on. there needs to be no more access to each other anymore. because in a reduced format its only going to bring more pain.

but there was the infininity of this experince which i am not giving up on. there was a feeling of 'this is all i ever want to be doing'.

and so i am ok to live in the memory of that part. which i still think i am lucky to have experienced at all.

i am giving up on expectation from him. i am giving up on his presence in my days in the future (except as a memory). but i am not giving up on the love he has evoked in me. or the experience and how real it was once.

i think that is the most fulfilling path forward. soon my anger and the hurt will be gone. but the pain of missing him will remain and will get overcome by the memory of what we had.

am somewhat content to live like his widow maybe (not in the sense that decius meant widow) ? and its not for him. its just the only thing i want to be doing.

i'll live my truth while he can go and live his.

"live this day as if it were your last"

I went through the same problem as you, Spice soup. I was with my ex-boyfriend for 3 1/2 years before I broke up with him. Throughout the entire time, I always loved him. Eventually, I fell out of love with him. I always thought that he loved me, and there were just certain aspects of him that I thought I could stand. For example, I always treated him better than he does to me. I put in more effort to accomodate him, and him less. But I was okay with it, because I loved him, and I figured, "Well, I can accept that side of him." However, in the end... if someone you love is hurting you and they know it, they don't REALLY love you. Maybe he does REALLy love you, but if that's the case, do you want him to continue his actions and hurt you in the name of love?

"Don't tell me there is only black and white."

exactly my point too

if he KNOWS he is hurting me - which he does - and still continues, his love is questionable.

and so i react my not letting him get the benefit of my love anymore.

loving him is something i am driven to do - and is happening involuntarily right now - it hasnt stopped just becos of the hurt he caused me.

the hurt he caused - only points to the fact that he did not love me enuff or in the way i imagined. and i think its not something we can change.

the emotions we have evoked in each other at steady state - after two years are in their mature stage and i doubt i can stop feeling love for him.

but the relationship is what can be managed and i have withdrawn from that. so that i dont expose myself to more hurt and him to my anger.

"live this day as if it were your last"

Good girl. I know that it feels like you can't help but continue the feeling of loving him. But, I went down that road and continued for a while. I realized that even though I loved him, eventually it turned into disliking him. So, it was actually easier on me emotionally when I decided to part ways with him because I alreayd lost all those feelings. When a person has had enough, that's what happens. The point of the matter is, you love him and treat him the way YOU want to be treated, and if he doesn't love you like he would LOVE himself... WHY would you want to stay. YOu deserve so much more. If you give 100%, then you should receive 100%. My point isn't that you have to count everything to the tee, but at the same time, it's important to preserve your dignitity and not feel taken advantage of. If you let that happen, you lose more than you bargained for.

"Don't tell me there is only black and white."

Spicesoup- Im am amazed that you have the strength to pull through in the way you have described. I think that must have taken enormous amounts of strength on your part. Im glad you are no longer letting him take advantage of you in that way. You got people on this forum who are here for you, even though we are only text on a screen. ^^

Digital_Kitten- I was with my girlfriend for 2years 2months and she broke up with me for, what sounds like the same reasons you broke up with your ex. I didn't give my all to her and I let her down numerous times, yet she never let me down once. She deserved better, but now she is dating my bestfriend. Terrible situation + both her and my bestfriend knew I wasn't over her when got involved with each other. It had only been a lil over a month since we broke before all this happened. I think it was terrible of them. Anyways, thats not the point. I had issues with porn throughout our relationship and I always struggled to keep my mind in complete control. This was because I didn't realize what I could have had. Once she left me I knew I made a huge mistake by not giving my all. I thought I was giving my all and I was except about the porn. I now realize this and have changed. Just some food for thought.

may i commend you on coming to such a well reasoned and thought out decision on the matter. thinking through matters that concern your love life is always a hard thing to do.

it seems ironic that guys seem to be stuck in one of two mindsets, either we appear to be complete assholes and never give as much as we take, or we try far too hard and attempt to give so much that women just find that we get irritatingly under their feet. I would count myself as in the latter of the two (as the lesser of two evils) but still wish there was some way of finding a middle ground.

"So Schrodinger's Cat is not only neither dead nor alive, but might also be sexually aroused by elbows and peanut butter?"
[  Edited by Cynic-Al at   ]

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it seems ironic that guys seem to be stuck in one of two mindsets, either we appear to be complete assholes and never give as much as we take, or we try far too hard and attempt to give so much that women just find that we get irritatingly under their feet. I would count myself as in the latter of the two (as the lesser of two evils) but still wish there was some way of finding a middle ground.

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my dear "texts on a screen"

it is good to put my thots thru this fire of discussion. all my analysis i do on my own, but when u 'texts-on-a-screen' argue it out, it builds my convictions in my own argument or otherwise, shatters it. either way, the outcome is a stronger thot.

i love the man like crzy. the tears will never stop i guess. but if i am restricting his life which is the only one he has known for 49 years, its not worth it for him. and if he is making me sad with using other sources of pleasure thru fantasy then it is not worth it for me.

so on grounds of mutual 'not-worth-it-ness' and the axiom of 'being true to myself' which applies to him as well, i think the path we take of separation is the only one to take. we manage what we can i.e. the relationship, and what is uncontrollable - i.e. the feelings, we will live with.

all u young people are using yr experience to learn and change for the next experience. i think i will just wallow in this tremendously fulfilling and yet debilitating experience for ever after. and keep busy with day to day activities, which dont require soul contribution.

there is usually a mismatch of how much each of the partners gives in a relationship as both of u mention. in our case we had reached a level where both of us gave equally. the positive was all there and perfectly balanced. it was hard to tell who was more impacted by the other. and who was more surrendered than the other and who had let the other person into their soul deeper.

so the positive was great and perfect. but the negative did not go away. it just did not go away - maybe the habit - maybe his confidence that he loved me so much that HE knew it didnt matter - tho' it did to me - i dont know what went wrong. but the negative remained.

so here we are at this awful place. having moved away from a compromised solution.

will never know if this is right or wrong and will never understand everythign there is. but i know its easier to cry out of love for him and out of missing him, than to cry out of anger despair of having been let down by him, and having been compromised by him.

"live this day as if it were your last"

for all that big talk, i had near breakdown conditions today.

after dealing with that one question and there seem to be no . i was weak and made the mistake of breaking the silence. and we went into a spiral of hurt-anger-frustration-breakdownof talk - feeling of abandonement - total despair.

the situation is unlikely to improve. and with the communication pattern we have fallen into, life may not improve either.

no one thing leads to the point of giving up. its not this one man. and its not this oen experience with him either. its probably 40 years of screwed up living with this one experience as the last straw.

who knows what happens next. incidentally i stumbled upon this site when i was looking for a self destructive chat forum a day after i broke up. and the philosophising of the problem helped a bit.

but the all encompassing dread of having to live another day is too much. and to plan for the rest of my life in this meangingless state seems like too painful.it might be better (for me at least) to inflict the pain once and get out of this mess forever. IF i can find the guts. it has become clear to me that commiting suicide needs more guts than living does. that huge amount of resolve needed at that one moment is elusive. btu all this is possibly a digression ...sorry.

"live this day as if it were your last"

Spicesoup - This situation makes me so sad to hear. The fact that you feel as if your life is meaningless scares me. We all needs a purpose in life to be happy. Something. Anything. Without purpose or the hope of purpose we die.

You see your life without purpose and it seems to be not worth it? I don'tsee how my life has any purpose anymore either. I have to hope of romantic love but somehow I feel like I houldn't rely on that for purpose. When you put your meaning into a relationship and that relationship fails... you will be damaged so badly you will not want to live.

Recently I have had a dosage of what this feels like when my girlfriend left me. I know I may be only 19 but I really gave that girl my heart and life. She had everything and she broke it. ALL my happiness was through her and my lifes meaning was to make her happy. Nothing else. Now she is gone. Where is my purpose? What am I to do?

You are in a similar situation. They key I think lies in the realization that we MUST not rely on romantic love to create our life meaning. It can't be. Its too dangerous.

I had a breakdown today too. On the way home from school I almost lost it. I have to see my ex bestfriend in class everyday. He is the one who is now with my ex girlfriend. Its by far the cruelest thing life has done to me so far. Everyday I see him and my heart gets ripped out all over again. I don't know how to survive but I know I must.

You can't give up on purpose. You can find it. Its out there somewhere. Find it. Don't give up. Please.

Love - Zach - from across the world.

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the situation is unlikely to improve. and with the communication pattern we have fallen into, life may not improve either.

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no one thing leads to the point of giving up. its not this one man. and its not this oen experience with him either. its probably 40 years of screwed up living with this one experience as the last straw.

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zach !!! who wud have thot that u r 19 and i am 40+ !!!

u have said many many sensible things. tx

x x x x x

yesterday in my meltdown, i talked to him. and for the first time, he admitted that he had erred. up until now, he had always denied that my jealousy was justified -in his point of view i wasalways wrong - and he kept repeating that i shud not be hurt becos his actions were of no consequence to what we had.
he mentioned an extremely useful thing - that he has erred, but the unless in my own head i am able to forgive him, there is no cure for me.

both these things came together - that he believes that i am not a lunatic fighting for unreasonable things. this made me feel infinitely better - becos in his context of 'live and let live' he had adamantly refused to see that any woman in love would be extremely jealous of her man giving himself even in fantasy - to another. in my obsession to prove myself right i have dragged in his whole earlier life which had sanctioned his playboys and had sanctioned single women friends wanting to come and spend the night at his bachelor pad in another city alone with him. all that potential for intimacy had me going nuts but his first wife was okay with this. and so i had lashed out his whoel life.

him admitting his errors has taken the pressure of me having to prove that i was not a lunatic. for 2 years we have fougth long and hard on this issue.

so what followed is that i have forgiven - knowing that he never did DO anything wrong. and that the monster it became in my head was as much because of his act that had potential, as it was, because of his refusal to see my hurt and do anything to end hurting me.

my anger that followed thru the two years damaged him.

so now with yesterdays episode i think i have found closure on this issue. there is forgiveness on my part. i am released from this grip of obsessing about the bad things that happened between us. and its good to not feel the frenzy anymore. there is no more anger or pain.

of course i am not a fool to deny that the past two years have been made miserable by the way we both handled it. and there is no changing that. we have ruined what we had. both were at fault. him for thinking that i had no right to be hurt . and me for not managing myself and letting myself turn into an angry witch.

so today i am fine. have forgiven. NOT forgotten - for that wud be foolish. we do have very different paradigms. we do come from different planets and possibly even different solar systems. so if we stay together two things will happen - we will see many many more clashes. and second we will not have any common process of solving these since we are from different worlds. and we will make each other very very unhappy. instead of the objective we both started out with - which was happiness.

but the best thing is that i have been released from my anguish and despair by this one change - his admission of error and him showing me that only my forgivenss in my head will release me.

it has. and i feel like a normal person again.

"live this day as if it were your last"
[  Edited by spicesoup at   ]