Breaking up, with love.

Join me as I try to navigate post-breakup live while holding onto the healthy parts of love.

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I had a dream about him last night. We were in some post apocalyptic hellscape and it felt like the cliche thing from action movies where the lead guy and girl fight the whole movie and get together at the end. 

And it shifted from being right in the middle of this battle to being in bed watching footage of a battle and he was explaining the different characters. The threat of danger was still in the air, but I realized I was dreaming and we broke up and I won’t get to be in bed with him, just cuddling again. And all the tension and urge to fight left me and I rested my head on his shoulder. We don’t have long and I just want to hold on to him. Which is how I felt like when we were together because I never felt that he was 100% in it with me. 

I keep wanting to reach out to him and ask to start over. Because life is so short and we should hold on to love when we find it. 

I don’t understand why he doesn’t want to hold on to love. 

Logically, I know we want different things in the long term, but he didn’t even try. He didn’t even want to have a conversation about it until we were fighting. He never wanted to open up to me. 

Life is short and dumb but it’s what we have to work with. And I just want to be with him. 

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I was leaving work today and I left out the exit where I usually would wait for my ex after work. 

And I’m sad. I miss him. 

But as I stood there I reminded myself I wasn’t waiting for him. Tonight I was waiting for a car home. 

I’m not waiting for him to pick me up after work. 

I’m not waiting for him to want to marry me.  

I’m not waiting for him to want to move in together. 

I’m not waiting for him to love me anymore. 

And it’s weird realizing how much time I spent waiting for him to come over or waiting for him to text or waiting for him to be ready to start a life together. 

I’m not waiting for anything now. 

And it is such a weird feeling since that’s all I’ve been doing for 2 years. 

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I really miss him. 

I’ve been trying to talk to other guys, but it just keeps breaking my heart more. 

Logically, I understand why we broke up. I keep telling myself I deserve someone who loves me as much as I love them. 

The problem is, I really love him. Very deep down inside me. 

I used to tell him every day I was falling more in love with him. I feel like that hasn’t stopped since we broke up and it’s not fair. 

I took a break from writing about this because I thought maybe I just needed to push it out of my head, but that hasn’t worked. 

He used to stay over every other night. Now every day just feels like the days in between visits. Like I’m holding my breath and trying to keep myself together until he’s here and I feel safe and I will be able to get a good night’s sleep. 

Except for a month or so before we broke up I kept having nightmares that we had broken up and I was with someone else. 

When I try to talk to other men, it is just like reliving those nightmares. 

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

Last night I talked to someone on Tinder. 

It brings up a lot of feelings. I hate the idea of moving on and loving someone else. It feels like that would be such a betrayal to my ex and everything we had. 

And I know texting with someone from a dating app is not the same as moving on or being in love with someone else. It is just a text. A nice conversation that could lead nowhere. 

But that’s how it started with my ex, too. He sent a polite message over Tinder and I responded. I didn’t think it would turn into anything. I just found relief in how easy he was to talk to. Something I really needed at the time. 

I had a good conversation with someone on Tinder last night. Even if it goes nowhere, it is a step away from a relationship that was important to me for so long. 

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I keep thinking about my ex and how I wish he was here. 

I hope in 2019 we both find the things we need that our relationship didn’t give us. 

I hope we continue to grow as people. 

I hope we learn to communicate our needs accurately.

I hope we both find love. 

I hope that he goes into this new year with hope. 

I hope we can leave the negative parts of our relationship behind. 

I hope we can carry the good parts with us. 

I hope we find what he needs to be happy. 

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

New Year’s Eve is a day where I try to set the tone for the upcoming year. It has always been the big holiday in my family. Last year was the first time I ever invited someone home for it. In my mind, it was me committing to a future together. I’m not ready for the new year. I’m not ready to be in a year in which him and I weren’t together. I’m not ready to go into the new year alone and face all of the challenges that being single will bring. I honestly thought I would ask me to marry him this year. I thought we would be moving in together next year. We had talked about moving in together so much it seemed like a sure thing. It still doesn’t feel real sometimes. I’ve spent most of this past month at my parents’ house. I’m not sure how I am going to be at my apartment for extended periods of time. I miss him. I don’t know how I can be just as in love with him as I’ve always been when he walked away from me.

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I don’t know how not to be in love with him. I find myself worrying: did some one hug him today? Did someone tell him he is loved today? Did someone tell him he was handsome today? Because he deserves all those things. That was my responsibility. To love him. To hold him. To tell him he was perfect for me. To tell him everything would be okay. To comfort him. I can’t turn that off.

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I keep having nightmares about my breakup. This moment of betrayal played out in different scenes. For a year, I was super communicative about what I wanted as I became healthy enough to actually want things again. And in a moment, it was like I had never said a word about it. As if every thing I had said was never taken seriously or just completely ignored.

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

Today has been a pretty good Christmas in a lot of ways. A hard Christmas in a few other ways. I’ve burst into tears twice because someone said something completely innocent and I thought of my ex. Once was when we were trying to decide on a movie to watch as a family and someone suggested the movie my ex and I saw on our anniversary. It was the straw that broke me. I had already been thinking of him because I was looking through movies and being reminded of stuff we saw together and stuff I wanted to see with him. The other time was at dinner when my sister was telling our parents meals I have been cooking. She was trying to share good things I have been doing and to build me up, but one of the meals she mentioned was the only meal for him that he actually liked. It just reminds me that in all the things I was trying to build I had him in my mind.

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I don’t know if there’s ever a good time to break up, but breaking up during the holiday season is rough. 

I still keep having nightmares about breaking up. 

All the other stress factors in my life are getting worse and I don’t have my usual outlet of texting him and letting him know how bad my day is going and getting reassurance that he loves me and things will be okay. 

I feel like he put me in the past tense very fast and I’m still struggling to remember the breakup was real. 

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

He picked up his things and dropped off a blanket I had left at his place. 

We talked briefly. We hugged. I told him I love him. 

He told me he loved me. That he really did. 

I believe him. I believe he loved me as much as he could. 

I told him I miss him but I understand why this happened. We tried our best. 

He said he still cares about me. 

We both want to be friends. It is just too fresh and raw right now. 

He said he would have stopped by sooner, but he never got my other texts. I’ve spent so much time thinking that he hates me because of a glitch in a phone. 

I cried a lot more than I expected, but this gave me a small sense of closure. Last time we parted with a kiss so part of me felt like it was just a really bad fight. 

We didn’t kiss tonight. We were both feeling pain and dealing with it in our own way. Me being outwardly emotional and him being withdrawn. There was no fighting. Just accepting what we’re dealing with. 

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

He finally responded to a message about his stuff. 

He asked if I would be able to handle seeing him. 

I asked ‘why wouldn’t I?’

I keep thinking that I love him. Because I do. I want him to be safe. I want him to be okay. I want him to be happy. Those are all stemming from love. 

I just wanted my apartment back. But now that he is coming over tomorrow to pick up his things and I know I will have an apartment free of his things, it is sinking in that this is actually over. 

No matter how much I want us to be friends. No matter how much I love him. No matter anything I do. This is going to be painful. 

I don’t know why that keeps blindsiding me. We both lost something. 

He said seeing my dog would be too difficult. 

I think I convinced myself his silence meant he never loved me. 

I’m not sure I’m ready to be confronted with the realty that he might be in as much pain as I am. 

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I haven’t been in my apartment for over a week and the thought of going back is making me panic. It was suppose to be a place of my own to raise my puppy. A stepping stone to my future. I give too much of myself away. What was mine quickly became something I shared with someone else as they wanted. My future became a shared future. My apartment hasn’t felt like mine in a long time. My future stopped existing as I’ve slipped into a routine of just trying to survive day to day.

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I think relationships are a lot of work. I like to think I put the work into my relationship. I think I tried really hard. I don’t understand why he didn’t want to put in any work at all. I don’t understand how he could tell me the future was really important to him too and then walk away the next week. I don’t understand at all.

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I’ve been traveling a lot the past week. I haven’t had much time to release my emotions a lot. I have missed him though. I went to a family event and wished he was there. He hadn’t planned on going to begin with because he had work so I would have missed him this week anyway. I’ve been thinking about how much I invested in my relationship. He met my grandma before she died because he was everything to me and I wanted her to know I met someone and was happy. He got me through the funeral. There are big life events he has been with me through and that’s a lot to let go off. Whoever I end up with will never meet my grandma and that makes me really sad.

[recoverywithanasterisk]

The other day I saw people posting pictures from a Christmas party at a bar I used to be a regular at.

This is the first year I didn’t get invited to the party.

It was like pouring salt in the wound of my post breakup feels.

I’m not sure if I should be surprised. I hadn’t been there in over a year. I stopped going because my ex didn’t like it the one time I took him. Then, I moved out of the neighborhood and didn’t feel safe/couldn’t afford to travel that far after drinking.

I know my ex isn’t responsible for me being as isolated as I am now, but finding comfort in him gave me permission to create distance from the friendships that were not helping me.

In the past two years, I haven’t made new friends. I only briefly talked to my ex’s friends when we would go out, but then eventually we stopped going out.

Between my ex not speaking to me and not getting an invite to this party I’ve been invited to 5 years before, it just feels like it is exceedingly easy to walk away from me and never look back.

[breakingupwithlove-blog]

I keep having nightmares about breaking up with my ex. Last night I dreamt it was the night before our wedding and he still wouldn’t talk to me about having kids or not. We were also looking at houses to buy. On the way to one of the houses, we were in a car and he was in the driver seat but wouldn’t touch the steering wheel or do anything to actually drive the car. I had to take over and drive the car and discovered I was wearing heels which prevented me from hitting the pedals the way I wanted. My dreams don’t really mess around. It’s usually always clear what my brain is trying to work out. I wish it would give me a break. In other reality based feels, his silence is causing me panic. I just feel like I never mattered.