Hi all,
The reason I’m here is because I’m still trying to get myself back together 10 months after breaking up with my ex-gf of almost 1,5 years. It was my first long-term relationship and I’ve never had such an intense connection with someone. I’m a 25 year old student and was 23 when we started dating.
I realize I had a lot of shortcomings and made big mistakes in my relationship that have contributed for a great deal to us breaking-up. I feel bad about myself, I feel a total fail, still, after all this time, and I feel like I am not able to make another person happy, which makes me feel a failed human being and utterly sad.
That is way I came to this forum. I read through Mariposa81’s forum about her getting back together with her ex-bf and eventually breaking up, and I saw the amazing support she got there from you guys, and how helpful that venting all of it was for her and kept her going during the difficult times. I have felt really helpless and hopeless lately, almost resorting to the state I was in right after the break-up (= semi-depressed, not motivated to work, not motivated to see friends, closed off to possible new relationships). My goal to post here is to learn from my mistakes, start to feel a better about myself again and ultimately I really want to grow as a person.
I want to let you guys know that I’m a pretty complex and maybe a bit weird person but I sincerely hope you guys could to some point empathize with me and I would appreciate that a lot. I will also be completely honest with you, even though I am ashamed of quite a bit of things and feel like a failure about a big part of my failed relationship. But I’m going to be honest because I think ultimately that’s the only way to finally face my problems and grow.
I apologize for this post to be so long but do appreciate your reading very VERY much. It's even too long to post, therefore I split it up into 3 posts; to make things a bit clearer I've split it up into 4 parts to make it a bit clearer: 1) Reasons for the break-up 2) Break-up itself and post-break-up-issues 3) Personal issues 4) Friendship?
I've also had my most important questions underlined. If any of you would feel like providing any insight or help regarding this, it would be awesome to get any replies from you guys
1. Reasons for the break up
Let me introduce to you guys how things happened: me and my ex studied abroad in Spain for a semester. She was 22, I was 23 and she had a 7-year relationship going on. She had a huge crush on me and things went very quick from there. The same night she told me – I had no clue, but felt bad about the boyfriend telling her we couldn’t do this, but she didn’t care – we ended up in bed and would secretly have sex almost every night for the next entire month. She broke up with her bf who was back in Belgium that month and we started a relationship.
From the beginning, things weren’t easy.
Our first and biggest issue, I think, was that she felt that I didn’t love her as much as she loved me. I think that came partially from her having a crush on me and me sort of ‘letting it happen’. But it also came from my lack of actions I showed her my love with later in the relationship. We would typically see each other 2-3 evenings a week, with usually at least 1 of these with friends. I admit that, regularly, I felt it hard to fit in the dates together on top of other activities that took a lot of my time and were important to me (studying, practicing my music and piano, working out). I often felt I could never do enough and it frustrated me that she was regularly sad because she felt that I at times gave her the feeling that I didn’t invest myself 100% emotionally when I saw her and that I seemed rushed an preoccupied for other things I had and wanted to do. I must say I always enjoyed being with her, but I also admit that indeed, I’m maybe not the really relationship-ish guy who needs the really regular cuddle-up time and do the really couply things. I do feel a fail for knowing that she invested her heart 200% and I maybe didn’t do what I could… I feel really bad because of that… She even thought I didn’t love her as much up to the point where she thought that I was mostly with her because it was the ‘perfect picture’ next to my friend’s relationships (she being a year younger and a pretty, smart girl, giving me all I want and need in a relationship, being sociable and fun with my friends, etc.). I will also say, without wanting to talk down my ex, that she is quite emotionally needy. She is a very caring, sensitive, loving and very emotionally intelligent person (much more than me, I admit), and she needed a lot to keep her sensitive ‘strings’ satisfied emotionally. I know some of you ladies reading this might frown their eyebrows and think ‘hmmm, sounds like you’re overreacting and she’s just a WOMAN’ and feeling I’m looking at her from a superficial male viewpoint, but from (male and female) mutual friends I have had the confirmation that she is quite demanding emotionally and needs a lot of confirmation, which I, as quite a free, careless, ‘light’ person might not be well placed to give her… Maybe I wasn’t up for that task… and I admit I also feel a fail and sad because of that, because I would really want to be able to satisfy a woman physically and especially emotionally and make her truely happy, allthough sometimes I think I’m just not capable of that… and to be completely honest, sometimes I think I just want to FEEL like being capable of that instead of REALLY being capable… maybe we men are just ego’s… I know I’m not placing myself in good light here, but again, I just want to be honest.
Our second big issue was my sexuality. I had had regular sexual encounters with men before I met her (mostly soft sex, and one 1-month ‘relationship’). She found that out by checking my cell phone messages after 2-3 weeks after we first had sex. I thought she would break up with me and continue with her boyfriend because of that, but surprisingly, she took it very well and was very encouraging of me to explore that side more. The month after that, while I already was at home and she was still in Spain, I did indeed have a sexual encounter with 2 men. When she came home, we started a relationship. She was hurt by what I had done, and I was stupid for not realizing that, although she encouraged me, deep inside she had really hoped for me to realize that I needed her and only her to be happy. At regular times during our relationship – not often, but once every few months – I did feel the need to satisfy my sexual desire for a man, but I have never cheated on her. It remained an issue… We’d talk about it and she had the feeling she was undesireable and couldn’t satisfy me sexually. Even though I tried hard to make her feel better about that, maybe I didn’t try enough… I really loved sex with her, and I’ve never been turned on so much by a girl, but due to some sexual problems (I had a long and narrow foreskin, not retracting over the glans, causing difficulties while having vaginal intercourse as in not getting enough direct stimulation on the glans and therefore being unable to orgasm, sorry for the details), we also could never really explore our full sexual potential. I have to admit it took me quite a long while to erase my sexual fantasies of her after we broke up. But I also, in all honesty, have to admit that I sometimes had sexual fantasies about other women while we were together (I feel really ashamed of that but I’m not going to lie here) and maybe I do have to admit that that might also be a reason that I sometimes thought of ‘greener grass’ and that made her feel undesireable. I always found her attractive though. (I admit, I really feel like a d*ck saying all this… but I guess… I need to be honest…)
Our third big issue was our difference in future plans. She knows what she wants and is in her first year of her lawyer apprenticeship. She wants to marry and have kids in about 2 years and be a young mother. On the other hand, I am a medical student but up to this day I have huge doubts if I even want to be a doctor. This has bothered me for years now and I’ll come back to this more extensively in ‘personal issues’. I see myself having kids somewhere down the line when the time is right, but I know I have years of work in sight before I can be happy with who I am, what I am doing and feel capable of making someone happy in a strong relationship before even thinking about having kids.
I realize I’m a big failure in this department as well, and feel that, if I don’t get this sorted out, I won’t ever be able to have a happy relationship.