Relationship Is he coming back?

[Justmehere]

Can you speak more to this? Because it is the exact thing that has haunted me ever since my ex-gf broke things off.

For me, surviving the trauma was being numb, like if one’s body is shoved into ice. Hurts. Never stops hurting. But the body adjusts and goes numb. Then when I got out of the trauma, it was like getting out of the ice. If you have ever had a body part freeze, you know that warming up can hurt like crazy. With trauma, there can be a process of warming up, and then beginning to feel all the pain that had been stuff for so long to survive. When surviving trauma, one has no time or space to grieve what is being lost. It all eventually comes, sometimes when someone feels safe.

What I don't understand is why, when the symptoms calmed down, wouldn't she (or you) look back at the relationship you just left and be like, "Wait... that WAS a healthy relationship." And contact that person? If you think they'd be open to reconciliation, why would you go out into the dating world in search of a good relationship when you have one waiting for you right there!

Sufferers vary wildly. There are so many possible reasons for someone not contacting an ex.

Several of a million possible reasons: they haven’t figured out it was a good relationship even when it was, the person hasn’t worked on what triggered them, their stress cup didn’t have room for the stress of rebuilding a relationship, they just were not into the person anymore, etc, etc.

 

[WTF Happened]

Thanks for that insight, @Justmehere. What strikes me about you, @EveHarrington, @LovingH, and all the sufferers who post here is how self-aware you guys are. While I'm sure it's a different story when you're symptomatic, when you're on here at least you're able to objectively say, "this is what I tend to do, this is why I do it, this is something I have to work on, etc." I imagine this has something to do with the fact that you're all, I assume, in therapy.

Unfortunately, at last check my ex dipped her toes into therapy and immediately ran away after a session or two, coming up with excuses for why she wasn't going to pursue it any further. I know from reading posts on here that unless she gets treatment, she'll never be able to manage her symptoms properly, let alone have a healthy relationship, and I'll never get any kind of answers or apology.

 

[LovingH]

Thanks for that insight, @Justmehere. What strikes me about you, @EveHarrington, @LovingH, and all the sufferers who post here is how self-aware you guys are. While I'm sure it's a different story when you're symptomatic, when you're on here at least you're able to objectively say, "this is what I tend to do, this is why I do it, this is something I have to work on, etc." I imagine this has something to do with the fact that you're all, I assume, in therapy.

Unfortunately, at last check my ex dipped her toes into therapy and immediately ran away after a session or two, coming up with excuses for why she wasn't going to pursue it any further. I know from reading posts on here that unless she gets treatment, she'll never be able to manage her symptoms properly, let alone have a healthy relationship, and I'll never get any kind of answers or apology.

How long ago did she bolt? You really seem to still not be over it. I get it, but i really hope you are being good to yourself and doing things to help your own healing.

Im not in therapy, but I have been in the past. I just am acutely aware of my own irrational reactions and impulsive behavior because i have yet to retrain my brain to behave in a different fashion 100 pct of the time. I can do it sometimes and not others.

I also spend a lot of time meditating.

I strive to be an empathetic person but sometimes too much empathy can be painful.

Your ex may have realized therapy would dredge up painful feelings she would rather suppress and wasn't ready for that. Or she may have picked a bad therapist. Hard to say. Only she knows.

 

[Freida]

What I don't understand is why, when the symptoms calmed down, wouldn't she (or you) look back at the relationship you just left and be like, "Wait... that WAS a healthy relationship." And contact that person? If you think they'd be open to reconciliation, why would you go out into the dating world in search of a good relationship when you have one waiting for you right there!

embarassment, shame, guilt, fear, blah blah. Plus a sense that this person is now tied up with whatever feeling made me bolt in the first place. So I don't look back and see a good relationship. I look back and see what made me bolt and who was in my world at the time, then count myself lucky for getting away. Totally unfair to the person - but there ya go......

nd I'll never get any kind of answers or apology.

Nope. Sorry. But nope.
Well -- maybe if they get a lot of therapy.....

Your ex may have realized therapy would dredge up painful feelings she would rather suppress and wasn't ready for that.

therapy sucks. Totally sucks. It's way easier to give up a relationship than go to therapy. Sad but true for me at least.

 

[WTF Happened]

Way too long ago, @LovingH. My embarrassment for not being over it cannot be overstated. I tell my therapist (who is awesome) this all the time. Her position is that it takes as long as it takes. Recently, she's been supportive of the idea of reaching out to my ex in hopes of resolving these residual emotions. I did send my ex a short, friendly email, but didn't receive a reply. Like Freida says, embarrassment, shame, guilt, fear, blah blah. I get it. Being ignored always sucks, though.

 

[Hojay]

@WTF Happened
I understand what you’re going through. It’s tough wrapping your head around these things if you measure them by “healthy” and “normal” standards. But that’s the thing. You can’t measure these types of breakups by those standards. Much, if not most, of it will not make sense.

What can make sense is working through your own shame, guilt, fear, and embarrassment—cause I bet you there is some—and viewing this experience from a larger perspective of your own growth. Because really, if the relationship ended, it means there was nothing you could have or should have done. She wasn’t ready and may never will be. As close as you felt/feel to her, she’s on her own path that has nothing whatsoever to do with you, your worth, or your lovability. And the fact that you’re still hung up on it, to me, doesn’t mean she was oh-so-special (we can quickly get that confused and become even more stuck,) but that there’s something about the whole scenario that struck a deeper cord within you, and that’s got nothing to do with her either.

 

[LovingH]

Way too long ago, @LovingH. My embarrassment for not being over it cannot be overstated. I tell my therapist (who is awesome) this all the time. Her position is that it takes as long as it takes. Recently, she's been supportive of the idea of reaching out to my ex in hopes of resolving these residual emotions. I did send my ex a short, friendly email, but didn't receive a reply. Like Freida says, embarrassment, shame, guilt, fear, blah blah. I get it. Being ignored always sucks, though.

Absolutely. Being ignored is awful.
And your therapist is right. It takes however long it takes.

Unresolved relationships w/out closure..those are the worst and hardest to get over. And in our cases, when our exes behaved in totally confusing, inexplicable ways..makes it VERY hard to get over.

I'm probably a lot older than you. I've had nearly every ex I've ever parted with, try to come back at some point. One guy--he and I would break up and get back together, over and over, for 4 yrs. Was that healthy? No. But I'm never surprised when someone tries to come back after realizing they treated me unfairly. Or they go out and date, and realize I bring a lot to the table.

Not sure it will happen with my most recent ex, since it seems to be so much about his prior abusive relationship. I'm afraid I'll forever be associated with the very disturbed woman who treated him horribly, then killed herself on his birthday a few yrs after they broke up. Unfortunately.

I have enough years behind me and experiences to know that I was triggered by him, and it was irrational. He is NOT my exes who lied and cheated on me. But he's still early in his healing and couldn't come to that point about me. He was still deathly afraid of me. Dunno if he'll ever come to that realization, and I gotta let go of needing him to.

 

[WTF Happened]

That is the worst, @LovingH. To be associated with their past trauma, when you have nothing to do with it and were, in fact, safe. You want to shake them and make them see. It can be maddening, because we see that it's illogical. But it feels real to them. Maybe as a sufferer yourself you can relate to those feelings being so real (even though in reality, it doesn't make sense).

 

[EveHarrington]

To be associated with their past trauma, when you have nothing to do with it and were, in fact, safe. You want to shake them and make them see. It can be maddening, because we see that it's illogical. But it feels real to them.

It’s more than just feeling real, it is real. I think it’s important to realize that we all walk through life differently and what is real to one person may seem illogical to another.

People think it’s crazy that I feel safe in situations that may be dangerous and unsafe in situations that may be safe. I was traumatized by people I knew, so relationships are unsafe until proven otherwise, being out in public away from people I know feels safer (ie running at night by myself in the city). Is this “illogical”....? Yes, until you understand why I feel unsafe around people I know and safe “out there”, at which point my behaviors are 100% logical. (Most kids are abused by friends, family. Given this fact, it’s a million percent logical as an abuse survivor to feel the way I do. And in fact, to me everyone else is blinded to the truth about who most abusers are!)

It all depends on how you look at a situation.

I think that instead of deeming things illogical, that it would help you move forward if you tried to understand her perspective.

You’re branding her as “illogical” which will never, ever win her over. Even if you’re not saying these things, it will show in your actions towards her.

My last boyfriend and my current boyfriend were the first guys who said “I understood why you do what you do” in response to my reactions. It was indeed comforting. It meant that I wasn’t “crazy illogical Eve” to them. My old on again/off again? He was notorious for telling me I was illogical and that was the fastest way to get me fired up.

 

[Justmehere]

If behaving a certain way helped someone survive life and death trauma, that’s some pretty robust learning. While some behaviors are indeed maladaptive, and no longer useful after the trauma is over, or fitting for the situation at hand, many times, that same behavior helped someone not die. It’s different than illogical or delusional. It’s not fitting for the current time, and not always totally appropriate, but it isn’t a total break from reality and logic. It’s survival mechanisms that are on when they are not needed anymore

Example: Hiding from the people closest to me helped me not die during severe trauma. Hiding from the people in my life isn’t that helpful now. But my brain still has “hiding means survival” etched into it.

It’s takes a lot of work and learning to even begin to override that in my brain, even when I can spell it out here what’s going on. It’s held in the body and the brain very tightly, as if my life depends on it.

And yeah, it is really hard as a supporter to have someone act like you are a potential severe threat to them when you are not. It’s exhausting and confusing to have some react so strongly to a danger that isn’t there anymore.

 

[LovingH]

And yeah, it is really hard as a supporter to have someone act like you are a potential severe threat to them when you are not. It’s exhausting and confusing to have some react so strongly to a danger that isn’t there anymore.

I've been on both sides now. It's exhausting on both. I can't stand when my brain reacts like someone is gonna hurt me or leave me, when they're not.

 

[Sweetpea76]

It’s exhausting and confusing to have some react so strongly to a danger that isn’t there anymore.

What if the danger doesn’t exist at all? Wouldn’t that make the reaction “illogical”? This is the reasoning from the supporter perspective. For example, my vet has a lot of behaviors embedded in his brain from combat. Learning that was definitely reinforced because it saved his life on a daily basis. No matter how logical these behaviors were in Iraq, logically there are no insurgents in my bathroom and never have been. The chance of them being there in the future is astronomical to nil.