~YOUR THOUGHTS
I’m glad to see that WHN is running again. I’ve thought about asking for your advice for quite a while now. When the idea first occurred to me, I was still in a relationship. A relationship I was unhappy with, with a person that I had and still have a deep connection with, but where love had given way to friendship, and passion really was never that much involved anyway. So after four years I ended it. One and a half of those years I was unhappy, but I didn’t know how to get out of it, how I could hurt somebody so badly that still meant so much to me and of whom I knew how much he loved me. I was able to end it and not to drag things out even longer in no small part because of somebody that I met.
He was only there for a few months, so whatever it was that was between us had a limited timeframe right from the start. At the beginning, it was harmless, I knew I didn’t want a new relationship, but he gave me so much of what I had been missing during my relationship. The
fighting was as fierce as was the sex. And while certainly not being the reason for the end of the relationship, he was a catalyst that enabled me to finally take that step that I had been unable to previously. If one could plan everything in life, including ones emotions, him leaving for another continent three weeks ago should have been a necessary end to something that was incredibly good and helpful at some point, but really had absolutely no future. But as life goes, things don’t always go as planned, and out of physical closeness comes more closeness. And perhaps it was exactly because I knew of the limited timeframe, I didn’t really watch out, wasn’t guarded enough, and feelings sneaked up. And now he’s gone and I’m hurting. We still have contact, sometimes more emotional sometimes less, sometimes more guarded sometimes less. We both don’t want to have a long distance relationship, we both miss each other and we both keep dragging this thing out, both keep
playing games of trying to establish distance, and then sometimes not being able to. The funny thing is that if a friend would tell me this story, I knew exactly what kind of advice to give: if he is hurting you, cut contact, let go and move on. Because just as is the case with closeness, out of distance comes more distance. I was hurting so badly at one point with him being ambiguous in his statements and actions that I actually followed my own advice for once and cut contact. And while it hurt at first, it really started to get better, and I thought I was getting over it. But then he re-established contact, and I haven’t been able to be as consequent as the last time since. My real problem is that while rationally I don’t want a relationship, and I don’t think its healthy to keep hanging onto this, and I know he doesn’t want anything serious under these circumstances either, emotionally, I can’t help but wanting him to fight. Fight for me, fight for a relationsh
ip that can’t be, fight for giving us a chance. It’s like secretly I’m hanging on because I’m waiting for him to give me a reason to throw sense out of the window and give it a shot even though it would be incredibly stupid. So I guess the question to this very long-winded story (I’m sorry for that!) is whether I should just cut contact now once and for all, or just let it go on and hope it will come to a natural end as time goes by? And most of all, where did the strong me go?
~MY THOUGHTS
There will be no natural end to this type of relationship. It is one that I am very familiar with. Make no mistake about it, drama is addictive. It’s a fix. Because even though it is painful and excruciating, in the moments that he leads you to believe that he wants to be with you (that ambiguity that you spoke of), you feel like he cares. Who doesn’t want to feel that someone cares about them? Not to get all Cheap Trick on you, but you want him to want you.
Your need to feel loved is normal. The way in which you are seeking that feeling isn’t healthy. In the framework of a functional, mutually respectful friendship or relationship, you will feel safe, secure, loved without all the drama. I promise you this: If you can manage to break free of this endlessly dramatic dichotomy, you will realize just how emotionally exhausting it is. You wonder where your strength is; it is being depleted by this ridiculous dynamic. You need real distance.
FAT FREE VERSION: NO CONTACT!
