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I didn't like what the way he acted, I didn't like that he drinks, I didn't like that he didn't want to be partnering. I screwed up. How do I get him back? Hi there. I was reading your site and decided to ask you this question. I am hoping you are able to answer me. I have been in a relationship with a wonderful guy I met when I was working in Great Britain. He moved to ___ with me for two years and then decided to go back to school in in Europe to finish his degree. I was upset at first because I did not want him to go but then finally accepted his decision. He was also younger than me by a few years. Okay.. our first year apart was fine. We saw each other as much as we could but his second year (last year) the calls have become infrequent and less interesting. I found that I was always fighting for his attention. We even went to vacationing together last fall and all was fine.. I thought. He would write me a note saying that everything would work out after school was finished etc. He had plans of working here, in ___, etc.. But then something happened late in Feb. He stopped calling and then we I reached him via phone he was busy etc... I blurted out I just want to break up. Well i guess that was a huge mistake because we did. He came out saying to me that he does not want a relationship with me anymore, we want different things in life (he doesnt even know what I want), and he does not see any point in seeing one another to discuss this further. It hurts so much because I was supposed to spend my time off with him last month. I asked him not to do this.. We are very compatible and don't have alot of problems but then he emails me that if he wants a drink after school he should be able to do it without a million questions, if he doesnt call me for awhile, he should not have to answer to me of why? where were u? I know I am a toxic gf at times but I really love him. I am aware of the mistakes that I have made with him. I can be controlling and that is awful. But mostly I think my insecurities are because of the distance, the what is going to happen, and the fact that I hate him drinking. But i know that is wrong. I come from a strict background growing up and I hated when my parents told me what to do and what not to do.. So I am becoming like them. Well anyway, we are broken up and i love him so much because I truly feel we belong to one another and the relationship just needs to be worked on but he doesnt have time for me anymore. He says that he does not feel like himself when he is with me. That hurts because i know how that feels because i feel that way around my family -- always pretending. So i would never want to do that to a loved one. I hate myself for screwing up this relationship because i love him very much and everything around me reminds me of him. There was a time when he was crazy about me... but now, i think it is finished. most of our future promises were his vows too. Soooo what do i do? I want him back. is he too young to understand. Any help or advice would be appreciated.
Love hurts. Even the best of love affairs will have a great deal of hurt in it. But you don't have the best of love affairs, you have what started off being something that you felt could become a great love but it didn't. This isn't you screwing up the relationship -- this is just you screwing up your head and your heart with recriminations. You start out in a relationship with the feeling that this might work and it feels very good to feel like you've found someone you can partner with and love and share life with. Most of us have a drive to find the partner we can share our lives with in love and happiness. But none of us has the ability to pick out a face in the crowd and, if we do everything just absolutely right, we have the great partnering, love affair we want. What happens is you look around and find someone who looks like they might be the person we can love and partner with. That is based on looking and seeing a hundred or so of the ten thousand parts of a person and because the hundred or so are perfectly compatible with our hopes, we begin to fall in love. Then over time we find out more and more of those other nine thousand, nine hundred aspects. And if we find that some of them aren't going to work, we try to negotiate with ourselves or with the potential partner about changing. We ask the person to change. We ask ourselves to change. And sometimes that does work but sometimes neither can change -- or one or the other makes changes but more and more things that need changing come up on the radar and those things aren't changeable. You don't, in spite of your declaration, love that guy. You actually mean you love the guy you hoped he was. You don't love a guy who doesn't want to be with you, who drinks, who is insensitive, who complains he has to pretend to be someone else to be able to be with you. You love the hope, the image, the hallucination of who you thought he was -- and now you need to face that fact. You have to mourn losing the dream -- not the loss of a person. He wasn't the person you wanted. He isn't the person you want. You can try drugs, brain damaging substances, creative imaginative imaginings, or full force denial but none of those will do anything but make life more painful and confusing. You need either a magic wand capable of making a prince out of a toad or you need the capacity to move to an alternative universe where the person you wanted him to be actually does exist (if that universe exists). Or you need to mourn the loss of a dream and you need to move on. There may be the exact right guy out there but if you have your eyes buried in a soggy handkerchief, you are going to miss him. It is a wonderful thing to be in love with the right person. This is part of the danger of looking. You will get hurt again and again and again until you actually find the guy -- the one that turns out to actually be who you hope he can be. Try to avoid the quest altogether and you will probably just get blindsided one day by some predatory male that spots the hunger for love in you that is being suppressed and denied. Try to avoid the reality of who a guy is when you find out he is not the right guy and you will sentence yourself to painful hell that might be very, very costly in keeping you busy with the consequences of an ugly relationship while you don't notice the perfect guys that would have been the guys to be in love with. If you look over the articles on my site you might notice that I like to promote the idea of being practical. One of the things I find very practical is counting on the fact that there is likely a) no purpose to life at all -- in which case one of these days all suffering will be over and whatever is missed out on will no longer seem missed -- or b) big purpose to life and in the context of eternity, all good things will come. I find it very practical to assume that if I am wanting something that I cannot have, then I will probably be best off without it (and I will be happy someday to be without it) or I will get it one day, one life. I desperately love my wife and we have a great love together. I desperately wanted kids but every kid my wife and I started died inside her and almost killed my wife in the process. So I am resolved to not have kids this life. If I were you, I would be trying my best to be open to finding the right love for my life but also I would try to trust in a higher power being in charge of making sure I get what is best for me -- and I would trust that, if there is no higher power looking out for me, that when I die I will no longer feel any emptiness or lack. Also if I were you I would watch out for my tendency to assume that if life doesn't go the way I wanted it to then I must have screwed up. Telling yourself that is a serious screw up. If you have bad breath because you don't brush your teeth and this gets in the way of relationships, okay -- brush your teeth. But telling yourself that you screwed things up because you wanted them to be the way you wanted them to be and it was your screw up that made him not be who you wanted -- good grief, what a crappy thing to say to yourself. You wouldn't tell a friend that under the same circumstances, would you? Mourn the loss and quit trying to find some way to make him into someone else. It is not likely that he will be anyone but him. And quit telling yourself you love him. You don't. You love someone you thought he was. He is not that guy. It's that other guy you loved -- or thought you could be in love with. And thank your stars that you found out who he really is before you got your lives totally entangled. Count your blessings. Brush yourself off and go out with some friends. Be happy you are not in a nightmare relationship. Enjoy your singleness. That will make you most attractive to non-predatory, non-dependent guys. And assume that about 97% of guys will be absolutely worthless as partners in a relationship. Assume that anyone that looks right will probably, in the long run, be a reject -- and that's not because you screw things up but because most guys are simply worthless as partners in love. Good luck. Life's an adventure. Don't let it get you down. Dr. Johnson she writes back in response to the response: We did have that love affair. I am not just pretending how i feel about him. I do love him and desire that he would see how wonderful a person i really am despite my insecurities. I can be mean and ugly at times with him and I think he is just sick of that. Anyone else would probably tell him to run away from me as fast as he can. However, it is due to insecurities that seem to late to work out with him. I am usually very kind, funny, and sweet, so i am surprised how I can be towards him. It is me not him. I want him back because I really do love him.. not the idea of loving him. I am aware of all that. However, I think he can not handle me at times. I can be wicked. He does drink but not everyday but its the way he drinks when he drinks..it is different from me or most of my friends. but most of the irish drink that way..however, he works out, eats well, and is a very hard worker. he comes from a great family life..but they like to drink too. I think its normal for them but not me. However, I can handle that because I know him. He is the nicest guy around. He makes friends quickly and is very warm. I made a mistake. I want him back. he is faithful and loving. He can not be himself around me. I know there are books out there telling you how to get your ex back. I have gone through why I want him back. It is because of him as person -- him with me -- how he makes me feel comforted and he takes care of me when we are together. He and I are known as the great love here where i live. something just changed because of my personality. the reply to the reply to the reply You did have a love affair. Okay. I didn't mean to suggest you didn't. But it takes years for two people to find out who they are and how they work together. You want him back, you say, but what you mean is you want the relationship to be back where it was when you two didn't know each other as well -- when things were going better. You have him the way he is. You have him now the way he is now and the way your relationship is now. Calls are infrequent. Calls are not interesting. He says he doesn't want to be in a relationship with you. He says he can't be himself with you. You have to fight for his attention to get any and now even fighting for his attention gets you none. That is your relationship with him now. You have a relationship with him now and that's the way it is -- which you do not seem to like at all. You are not paying attention to what you know and are saying. You say you are very compatible. Obviously you are not. You did feel you were when you two knew less of each other. You're not compatable now. You say the relationship just needs to be worked on but he doesn't have time for you any more. How can you be so compatible if the relationship needs work? How can it be compatible when you want to be with him more and he wants to be with you less? How is it compatible when he made you feel insecure, didn't want to keep you involved in his day-to-day doings, didn't care for your negativity toward drinking and didn't want to be honest and relaxed with you because he found that you didn't like who he was when he was honest and relaxed. That's not computability. You seem to have a two part fantasy going on. Part one is that you were a very compatible couple except for a few little glitches, like who you are and who he turned out to be. Part two is that there should be some way to change who he is and who you are, into who you two thought you were when you were first involved together. And you make this outrageous assertion that he says that the two of you don't want the same things but he doesn't even know what you like. How compatible and in love is that then -- that he doesn't know what you like -- and you don't, then, know if he likes what you like or not? I'm sorry, I know you were hoping for some clue as to how to change his attitudes toward you and to change your personality and your likes and dislikes -- and then get you together so you could discover that you actually do fit together. But that's not likely to happen. It is just not likely at all. You dream that if you could just ignore everything that you dislike about him and then pretend to be a completely different person and then get him to ignore the fact that he knows what you like and dislike and would be foolish to believe you could just change all that -- if just those little changes could happen -- you could be happy ever after. Not gonna happen -- not likely, anyway. And trying to make it happen will make your life a million times the nightmare you think it is now. Instead of working so hard to find a way to distort reality, be who you're not, pretend he is someone else, like when he ignores you, like that he drinks, be in love though he doesn't want to be, etc., get your head together so you can move on and find a guy who really is who you want. A guy who loves you for who you are and who won't drink and make you insecure. A guy you really are compatible with even when he knows what you like and what you don't.
Would you be attracted to a guy who told you that you were completely mistaken about who he is -- tells you that you can't trust your own mind and feelings with respect to what you have felt or decided when you have been with him so far? A guy that assures you you can't possibly know who he is? A guy that tells you you are wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong -- BUT if you accidentally are right about anything, he would be more than willing to completely change that part of himself if you would just point the the part you wanted changed? Think about it. Would you want a guy threaded into your life that was saying all that? The only way to have the tiniest sliver of a chance as far as I can imagine is if you go on with your life and get it to a point where you don't want him back. Then Murphy's Law would kick in and he'd be hounding you to take him back. Dr. J |
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