Not so much a question as how I felt when my long term boyfriend and I broke up... I hope that if helps someone feel better or atleast know their not alone.

Visitor's Question from a 21-30 year old Female
that taste. that god awful morning after gritty and grimy taste in your mouth. But mine is not the remansiant taste of alcohol or greasy food. It is the taste of failure and heart break. My mouth tastes of regret and fleeting memories. Twenty years old and mourning the loss of my existence, my world for the last 2 1/2 years. My first substantial relationship, the man who took my virginity with such care and compassion to the man that will barely look me in the eye and tell me its over. Such hate and resentment reside in those eyes. A piercing stare to the soul of my being. Such pain, some caused by me but mostly self inflicted, seeps out of his eyes and burns a hole in my chest where my heart is. Except my hearts not there. I invision him doing a tap dance on it as he finished out his goodbyes. But what do I know of love? A young woman not yet old enough to buy a drink in a short 2 year relationship. That in the grand scheme of things is but moment of your life. One that will fade into obscurity with each passing year. Until your old and gray and all you remember is what you see in the few photographs of the time you had with that person. So much I have yet to learn about people, about relationships, about men. And I guess naively I thought I would be spared the burden of heartbreak. I looked at my relationship with him threw rose colored glasses and never did quite prepare myself for this inevitability.

I cursed and screamed my way home at 3am. A passing driver surely thought I was crazy. But I cursed not in anger but in frustration at the choices that lead you down your path. And how hindsight can really be 20/20. I screamed for the little princess in me who sat inside the deep recesses of my soul in a frilly pink gown with a rhinestone tiara on her head. Who looked at him for the first time in November of 2003 and immediately jumped for joy and started building a future within her world for them both. I screamed because she died. I invision her laying on the ground of her pretty castle in her pretty dress staring up with empty eyes at a picture of the man she loved best. I cursed for the mistakes I made that led me here and I curse for the mistake he makes now. I scream for the voice in my head who told me a month into this relationship that maybe he wasn't the one. And I cursed because I ignored it. I ignored this voice even as it reared its head several times over the years. I cursed because I could have spared all of it. And was to afraid to be alone and to listen to it. I scream for the frustration of not being a quitter and having him quit on me.

The shakes are a dreadful thing. Never had them before this week and now I shake like I'm in the arctic in a bikini. From the blind eye I appear fine but to the distinguished eye the tell tale signs are prominent. I've always been over weight. Struggling to lose a pound. Who knew that this week would be my most successful dieting technique yet. I call this technique, depression. He is an ugly bedfellow a nasty companion for the strongest of hearts. He pushes you to the deepest darkest corners of your soul and leaves you there to find your way out. Some do find their way out. Others trudge threw that labyrinth the rest of their lives and are never quite the same. Some give up looking and choose a whole nether darkness, in death. I dont know where I a stand in this blackness. I hope my heart is strong enough to wander the maze and find the light. I think I can...I hope I can.

I've long pitied the pathetic girl. The one who begs her lover to take her back, to forgive her for invisible trustpasses. Just so she wont feel the claustrophobic walls of loneliness sink it. How i pitied them. How annoyed I was by their behavior. My inner feminist baulked at the idea of women cowering and begging for the affection of some man. How truly sad for our gender. Its hard to believe that I became what I thought so little of. One of them. A sad shell of a woman with out her man. Well, I groveled and I begged, I cried and I pleaded and then the man who was supposed to love me for the rest of his life simply stared. In blank disinterest. And when I seen myself in his eyes that inner feminist stood up and said "I will not be quiet anymore" and she walked me out the door with what was left of my pride and dignity. I dont think she'll ever let me walk back in.

I imagine like most relationships but as I am new to it, I can really only imagine. That when all is said and done you forget all the reasons you were fighting and weren't happy and focus on the fleeting moments of passion and love. You build this mountain of great things in your mind and bury the bad at the base. You remember his touch and taste. But you forget the cruel words and empty promises. What inner mechanism does this for you? is there a mean little old man who plays back dillusions of grandeur in your mind?

How unfortunate that heartbreak doesn't count as a sick day. Because I could function at work with a cold, cramps, migraines, and viruses better then I can function now. I am like a kid with ADD hyped up on sugars and sweets trying to sit still, minus the happiness. Shouldn't this fall under a mental health day? I dont know. These days, the quiet, unplanned empty days are the hardest. With no one to keep you company but your empty thoughts and dreams.

We had planned a future together. That is what makes it so much harder in my case. No one plans for good bye. But not everyone openly says yes, we'll be together 1,5, 10 years from now and truly believe that would happen. I am by far no means unworldly or naive but I am still just a young woman and no matter how wide you keep your eyes open to the world around you somethings, you just have to go threw to understand. Because if we all learned from each others mistakes then everyone would be happy. Everyone. We looked at homes and envisioned them in our minds. What would go where, the colors of the bedrooms, to have a entertainment room or not to? Questions that befall married couples or deathly serious ones atleast. i thought we were there. But in fact we were two kids playing grown up with no idea how the pieces fit together. It took its toll and we payed the price of it.

LIAR! Its such a ugly word and yet in my relationship it was yelled, suggested, implied and spoken threw our eyes. I never learned to fully trust him and he never took the time to try to gain it. I never took the time to understand his concerns and fears and he never took the time to realize I didnt have the relationship scars he had. A moment came around the 1 year mark that told of unfinished business and unclosed doors. My trust, that fragile, hard to obtain commodity of mine. Was laid on the table for him to abuse or bask in. He didnt bask. The thin string that holds my trust together was broken and though he thought he got it back he never really did. Not wholly. From that moment on until 3am last night. I never 100% believed him when he told me something. I still checked on him and his where-abouts. Something I had never done before that and I hope never to do again. This is one of the mistakes I made. The choice to forgive and move on together. When I hadnt really forgiven. The spark in my eyes dimmed on that day when lies where exposed. And the resentment stayed in a fire in my belly always glowing ready to explode forth if need be. He asked me once why I was so angry at him and quick to fight. I never gave him a valid reason. Usually some lame line about stress or being tired. But in my soul I knew what it was. It was that he had made that mistake and had never tried to mend it and I never let him know that it was still broken.

Friends are a pitfall in a relationship that I did not see coming. Though most want only to help some really could care less and spout poison from their lips to invoke chaos in your life where there is chaos in theirs. I think my other half was getting advice from a poisonous identity and thus it poisoned his hopes and his belief that we could make it. i've had those poisonous voices but I always took advice with a grain of salt and he well, he took advice like it was the only cup of water in the sahara. Greedily sucking it down and not questioning it.

Ahh. The cliche "dont date the people you work with" I had heard that line my entire life from movies, to friends, to family. And I said to myself, not me! We're different, we can make it and if we dont we're adults we can be civil. Ah yes, the word civil. 2 1/2 years of every range of emotion, honesty, and passion to this one word, civil. How does that sum up everything? How do you be civil? Pretend that he is just another face in the crowd when your out? To put on a mask and act like seeing his face doesn't break your heart? To exchange pleasantries because neither of you know how to say the things you really want to say. Civil. I hate that word.

It always seems like these events occur at a great time for one person and probably the worst possible time for the other. Guess what? I didnt get the lucky end. Probably why the loneliness is so unbearable. Having just started a internship downtown away from all my friends and family and being out of classes for the summer so away from my school friends as well. Where he has a support group around him always. I have to pick my support group from all around, in bits in pieces. I resent him for that. For him to so easily move on and have fun. Even if he hurts inside. He has that outlet to forget for even a moment. I have more times to think then outlets.

myspace. what a double edged sword if ive ever seen one. The ability to reach out and communicate with long lost friends and distant relatives. But also the ability to suck you in and hinder you from moving on. Allowing you to see the daily goings of the person you loved, a proverbial fly on the wall. With each message, he's left you analyzing it for any hidden meaning. You listen to his song choice and you wonder is it about me? Are you trying to communicate something, that you couldn't? WHAT IS IT?! This is the conundrum that my generation finds themselves. The generation of open resources and knowledge. From google maps and computer trackers, to blogs and online journals you can safely from the comfort of you room tip-toe threw their lives without them even knowing. And never move on.

My hope is that by the time I am done writing this, whatever this turns out to be. That I will find my heart beating again and the sun shining again. And maybe, just maybe, finding the strength to stick out my hand and say, "Hi, Im _____. You wanna grab a bite to eat sometime?"

More then anything, I'm lonely. I can do with out the sex, the cuddling, the hugs (though they were great) I cant seem to do without the conversation and just the simple knowledge that someone is at home waiting for you. That is what I'll miss. That theres no one to care if Im running late now, no one to notice if i havent been around lately, no one to complain to when work sucked, or the traffic was bad. Or that some jerk in a SUV cut me off. Those are the things that I will miss deep in my soul and those are things that keep me lonely.

But more then anything. How do you say goodbye to your best friend? And I mean your best friend. Not your best friend cause he's your boyfriend but you have a another best friend to. No. Im talking you have friends, some better then others. But you have one, uno best friend and now their gone. How do you cope with that? Cant go to your boyfriend, cause that was him to. You could go to your "friends" but do they really care? Do they really want to get involved? Then that brings you to the mutual friends. How does that work? Does one have to stop being their friends? Or can you rely on the god awful word civil to keep everyone together? I guess these are questions that only time will answer.

In the optimistic world I imagine. We can one day be great friends and only friends. Not great friends with emotional baggage or simmering attraction. Just friends. Who can see the other move on and fall in love again and be happy. Thats the ideal. How realistic that is? Who knows.

But the pessimistic side says, you'll never lose this ache and all the stuff you hear about how you never stop loving your first love will pertain to you and you will be some crappy shell of yourself, pathetically aching for a man and a relationship that was no good to you.

For me, it is all the what could have beens that wont happen. I dont live in the past so no "what if's" for me. But what could have been? thats another story. I know where I plan to lead my life and I know that he has plans that he will make come true and the image of us doing great things together, in our future. That is what keeps me up at night. What could have been...

As I hugged him for the last time last night and my arms wrapped around him and i laid my head on his shoulder, I could feel the tenseness in his muscles and the rigid "I wont be soft" message repeating threw every pore of his body. He said, "ok thats enough" and it made me think as I drove home threw my cursing and screaming. What exactly does that mean? Was my hug softening him to me? Did he feel the pang in his heart? Or did is simply feel the way are bodies reacted in comfort to the others embrace? And tried to push it down and act like it didnt exist.

The one thing I guess I fear more then anything, is that he will move on, quickly and easily and I, I will be still be here. Going threw the motions of moving on and not quite getting my heart on board with the process. He said to me he didnt know that one day we couldn't get back together. When his anger and resentment are gone and that which protects him from the real loneliness is stripped away and he remembers everything with open eyes. Then he might come calling. What a message to leave with. I feel so torn between moving on and just waiting it out. Oh, if I waited and he never came back. How much I know I'd hate him. But what if I move on? And just when I can finally see him or talk about him and my heart doesnt twinge that he strolls back into my life ready to forgive and forget and try again? Its a catch 22.

But i guess you cant go on not living. Im sure he wouldn't want that, as i wouldn't want that for him. And god i wish he would just ask me to wait for him, and I would. But he doesnt say that and I cant blame him. why would he tell me to wait, if he isn't sure he'll want me when the waits over?

Love is different after a traumatic event. Though ares was no where near any large scale blow out. On the eventful meter it would range low. In fact the story wouldn't even be exciting. It would be empty and sad. "I'll love you forever" he said and I believed him. But like most things in life, you can never say forever. Things change, people change. And though a part of you will always care for them, love, at least this kind is reserved for that one person who will be your wife, your husband, your companion. And when you meet that person, I truly feel that the "love" you say you will always have. Will fade. It will die off as this new person fills your heart and thats the way its supposed to be. If we went around staying in love with all our ex's. Well, thats a mess I couldn't even begin to fathom.

A part of me so completely wants to start anew with him. But another part, the part thats seen how he can be when he's hurt and when he doesn't love you like he used to can be...that part was dark and scary and mean and selfish and I just dont know if I could stand ever seeing that part of him again. Another part says why are you worried about him? Your 20 years old, a lot to offer, attractive and smart. What did he ever bring that was substantial to the table? Not much. Besides his charisma and humor there wasn't much and you cant live off either of those attributes, no matter how much you loved those things about him. A part of me says your young and you can go out and meet new people and see wonderful things. But, then viewing the worlds beauties arent so beautiful if you do it alone. I've always imagined going to italy. It is the one place I've always wanted to go. I could never imagine going alone. But why not? Why arent I secure in my singleness to do that? Is it because it's new? Or is there some deep seeded notion that being single is bad, that there is something wrong with you if you dont have a partner.

Maybe now, my parents will be happy. Maybe now, I can set my own course and not worry about another persons plans as well. Maybe now, I can be selfish and think of myself only and what I want and not worry about another person. Now that there arent any self imposed rules, now that there arent any self imposed curfews. Now that I can go somewhere and not worry if he'll be mad because Im there. Maybe now, we can actually be honest with one another.

Who knows, what time will bring. Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. Either way the person I am is partially do to him and I'm glad for it. He showed me how to love and how to open up and give in. He showed me how to truly care for another person and I can never find fault in that.

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RomanceClass.com Advice
As you said, you are not asking a question so I won't try to make up one.

I do hope you find the light and sunshine you speak of.

And, although you might not care right now, you are one hell of a good writer!

Best wishes, George.

-- from George
One of Your Friendly Advisors at RomanceClass.com

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