Ex moved on MUCH faster than me, what do?

[Glides]

Hello folks.

It is I, here to deliver a post I never thought I'd ever be writing, but then again the last time I seriously posted here Obama was still president, so who the fuck knows.

Here's the sitch: previously referred to myself as "incel" before it became associated with the Elliott Rodgers of the world, primarily because I was a virgin and hated myself and was really terrible at talking to the opposite sex. Never was full red pill but definitely had some misogynist tendencies, which I'm still working through.

Finally lost my virginity at the ripe old age of 20 in 2016 to someone I met via Tinder, attempted a relationship with said person who turned out to be what I could politely call "not ok" and did some really hurtful things that effected my self-esteem even more, mostly insulting me for developing ED and for the years of trauma and abuse I experienced as a child, resulting in some severe mental illness (depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, the works).

Rebounded with someone I met via Reddit, someone who had also been abused as a child and largely had the same mental issues I did. Dated her on and off for about two years, long distance at first and eventually IRL when she moved to the city I lived in to be closer with me, planning to eventually move in together.

The relationship ended pretty violently (not literally) about a month ago after a lot of stupid shit pulled on both sides. On her end, she actively refused to get help for her mental illness and was actively delusional, to the point where she believed people were saying things about her that they never actually said, imagined events that never happened, it was getting to the point where it was outright disturbing. I'm more than certain that on top of depression/anxiety she also suffers from something like bipolar or BPD, and it got worse the longer I knew her. She'd fly into hysterical rage or burst into tears without warning, would have explosive outbursts publicly without warning, to the point where she was scaring the shit out of everyone we both knew. A lot contributed to this, mostly a former job in which she was verbally and emotionally abused by her supervisors and forced to drive three hours there and back to get to it. Their work ethic was so utterly disgusting that her bosses should've been put in prison for the way they were screwing over their employees, to the point where she nearly became homeless on several occasions and attempted suicide twice while working there. I didn't help matters much considering my own explosive temper to the point where I was overheard on the phone threatening to physically assault her supervisors, and by some miracle they just didn't seem to care.

On my end, I spent the entire relationship obsessively holding her at arms length, refusing to ever include her in my life in any capacity, and became so emotionally unavailable near the end that it really effected her and made everything worse. I was utterly convinced that she hated my guts and only stayed with me out of stubborness, refused to believe she actually cared for me or desired me, and tended to drink way too much way too often. My own chronic illness (psoriatic arthritis) intensified at the same time, to the point where I had lesions over 75% of my body and I was beginning to have inflammation in my joints, to the point where I was having some difficulty moving and was in constant severe burning pain, which only worsened my mood and the way I treated her. I only just started Humira injections last week and already the chronic pain has lessened and the inflammation has receded a bit, but this was after weeks of fighting with insurance over the rate of pay and making sure I could actually afford it, which didn't help at all.

As I mentioned before, I also have an explosive temper which I need to get a handle of, and though I never once directed it at her, I reacted to any request for emotional support by angrily threatening to hurt anyone who had messed with her, which only made her more distraught. Examples include threatening to torture and kill her roommate's dog after it had viciously attacked her without warning, deep puncture wounds in her leg that were so bad that she nearly had to go to the ER and only didn't because she couldn't afford it, with the roommate overhearing this and flipping out on her, threatening to physically assault her supervisors at the previous job, threatening her friends because of a perceived slight, even for comparitively minor things my immediate reaction was to angrily declare that I'd hurt anyone who messed with her. It was the worst possible way to be comforting and supporting, and though I never actually intended to do any of these things, it was incredibly toxic and it's a miracle I didn't end up in jail after the amount of people I was freaking out with these outbursts. I'm in therapy addressing all of this so hopefully I can get my rage under control, but the damage was already done.

Naturally her friends were terrified of me, even though I never once physically or verbally abused her, only because my protective tendencies were so intense that I'd fly off the handle instead of providing comfort. I don't know how to comfort people, and as a child the only way I could solve issues was through fighting (I almost always lost but I was taught that violence is the only proper form of masculine expression). This is obviously not OK and I'm addressing all of it.

I also have severe self-sabotaging tendencies, deliberating doing things to destroy anything that's going well in my life that I feel like I don't deserve. In her case, I ended up carrying out an emotional affair with a waitress I'd met for a couple months, to the point of immediately trying to seduce this person the second the breakup happened because I was so desperate for any kind of validation, and she found out and lost it. This was unquestionably wrong of me, and I never saw myself as a cheater but here I am, having done something absolutely despicable specifically so the person I loved would hate my guts, as I felt like I deserved. As it turns out, I was right. To the waitress' credit, the second I came clean about everything, she was incredibly respectful and wished my now-ex the best, and was incredibly kind and understanding despite everything. She had every right to curse me out and call me every nasty name in the book and she treated me far nicer than I deserved. Even when I do despicable awful things to prove how everyone should hate me as much as I hate myself, I'm treated decently. It's almost not fair.

I'm not even arguing why we broke up, or whether or not I deserved it. We were two severely mentally ill people who found comfort in each other, but our illness ultimately drove us apart. I did some unforgivable stuff, she did some unforgivable stuff. I don't think she's a bad person, just very mentally unstable like I am.

I'm writing this because she called me today to tell me she had entered into a relationship with someone else. This wasn't done maliciously, this had been something we both requested of each other when the breakup happened. She told me some details about him, how he makes $80,000 a year as a computer programmer, how he had long hair, how he paid for her meal when I barely ever could. I know when she's actively trying to make me jealous or upset and I didn't hear any of that in her tone, I think she was just so excited about the new guy that she had to tell somebody and that happened to be the last guy she dated.

She did apologize for her own toxic behavior and promised to get help for it, and gamely tried to give me some advice on what to do in my next relationship. She knows full well that I kind of fall to pieces when I'm single, and she knows I stayed in the relationship longer than I intended because I'm so terrified of it, because I'm incapable of validating myself.

I've responded to the breakup by almost ruining my friend's graduation party by drinking myself almost to the point of unconsciousness, where I was barely able to function at all, forcing her to call me an Uber back to her place because I couldn't even stand up. I spent money I really shouldn't have spent buying her drinks (not for any nefarious reasons, I just didn't want to be the only fucked-in-half drunk person there), I had probably the worst hangover of my life the next morning. Even though I had more than likely ruined her and her roommates' celebration, they responded by making me breakfast and coffee, staying near me most of the night, making sure I was lying on my side, and then buying me lunch and taking me to another graduation party and went out of their way to make me feel welcome.

As Humira makes it so you can't drink alcohol without literally poisoning yourself, I've basically had to stop drinking altogether. I didn't drink frequently enough to the point where I was an alcoholic (once every couple weeks) but in those times I'd go way overboard and spend way too much. I'd developed a beer belly from it, my health was severely affected by it, and I've been an irresponsible asshat ever since the breakup a month ago.

So the main problem is gone, in that I can no longer cope with alcohol. I desperately spend my days thinking about anything that'll distract me outside of work long enough. I think of weed and other hard drugs, I think of casual sex, I think of self-harm and suicide attempts (haven't done either one, my self-control has been decent). I'm in therapy and trying to work my way through all of this. Since the breakup, my own creative endeavors have completely gone by the wayside. The day of the breakup, I'd finished my second feature-length screenplay (ironically right before she told me she wanted to end the relationship). Since that day, I haven't written a single word, until now. I'd planned on starting a podcast as a hobby with a longtime friend, and I skipped out on the recording sessions. Luckily, said friend has had similar issues and was understanding. I was given a potential contact for a REALLY fantastic job that was basically everything I wanted and didn't bother contacting them. I've mostly stopped socializing with most people, and have scared the shit out of everyone due to my incredibly unstable behavior since the breakup. To top it all off, I was already struggling with gender dysphoria (I don't feel like I identify as a man anymore, instead as gender nonbinary) and it's only been intensified now that I'm single and struggling with all the negative tendencies I developed trying to fit into a hypermasculine ideal I never wanted for myself in the first place.

On the contrary, she's doing absolutely fantastic since meeting Mr. Sexy Rich Programmer. Her health seems to have improved, she's moving into a neighborhood she really likes, complete with a German Shepherd puppy. Her job is paying her more and she absolutely loves it, her social life has expanded and she's planning on starting back in college by the end of the year. Mr. Sexy Rich Programmer lives in the same city as her (she lived about an hour away from me pre-breakup), and doesn't come off as a mentally disturbed wreck who sabotages every opportunity handed to him (I dunno how I feel about pronouns right now). The dude not only seems completely together but also capable of supporting her through her own issues. All I know of him is his job, his income and his "Fabio long hair" (my words, not hers) and he sounds like an Aryan wet dream compared to my own neurotic Jewish self living in the Deep South.

NOTE: As Enail knows, I have a massive complex regarding my religion/ethnicity, and I'm what's known as a self-hating Jew. Growing up as the only Jew in a hyper Christian environment where everyone is better looking than you tends to do that. Also I got beat up a lot as a kid for my Jewishness, complete with pale skin, curly hair and hooknose.

I'm falling back into a lot of my old tendencies of constantly insulting myself instead of committing to any self-improvement. I should be working hard to improve myself, to make myself a happier person alone so the right person can come into my life, so I won't fuck up this badly instead. I have no motivation to do anything at all, the only times I've socialized is when friends have gone out of their way to bring me to things in a futile attempt to make me feel better.

My ex is happy, and she deserves to be happy. I'm jealous, obviously, jealous of the new guy being better than me (aren't all next boyfriends better though?) and jealous that she was able to shrug me off so easily. But she does deserve this, and I just wish that I wasn't falling to pieces, having no earthly idea of what to do next. I want her secret of being able to completely move on and fix herself so goddamn fast.

I could've written just this instead of the rant, but fuck it: what the fuck do I do now? I'm in therapy, I'm not drinking. The fuck do I do? I don't want to be like this, I want to be better, i want to not be a slave to my emotions like this.

[Enail]

Glides, good to hear from you! Really glad to hear you're in therapy and not drinking and working on dealing with this stuff, and that you have friends who are being understanding and trying to be supportive, that sounds like a hell of a time.

A thought: your ex's new boyfriend has nothing to do with you and your desirability. Her being happy has nothing to do with you and your ability to be happy. Her doing well right now doesn't mean something bad about you, even if you're struggling and wish you weren't. You know that you guys breaking up was about your various stressors and unhealthy reactions, and your choices about how to handle those things, intersecting badly, not about you not being good enough in whatever way.

And also, it's okay not to 100% commit to self-improvement in every moment; if right now you're feeling like you want to do something, make yourself work on it, even if it's only 10 minutes. You don't have to go all out for it to be worth putting some effort in when you can. Dealing with major health problems and gender dysphoria and mental illness and a breakup is a lot, and it's okay to be struggling with it. Do what you can, when you can, that's okay. Your relationship wasn't the source of your value, and your break-up doesn't take it away.

Have you looked into DBT at all? It seems like that's a lot about handling intense emotions, so maybe talk to your therapist about if it'd be something worth trying to add in at some point.

Also, congrats on the screenplays and on figuring out more about your gender identity!

[K-J]

Hi Glides.

I read all of this and I hope this doesn't seem intrusive. If you wanted to blow off steam or hear advice from a random internet stranger.

I'll just say what my impression here is.
Firstly, there's no denying you're not in the best of places but for all the pain and negativity in your letter, I thought I saw positives too.

I'm writing this because she called me today to tell me she had entered into a relationship with someone else. This wasn't done maliciously, /.../ I think she was just so excited about the new guy that she had to tell somebody and that happened to be the last guy she dated.

I wager it's possible, despite everything you did to each other, you've been each others lifeline?

Like you said

We were two severely mentally ill people who found comfort in each other, but our illness ultimately drove us apart.

, and I'm betting she knows this, and how difficult she's been too.
That's just how I'm reading this because if she calls you and excitedly tells you about her new relationship, doesn't sound reluctant: "I suppose I have to tell you..." or spiteful: "In your face! Payback for your cheating. HAH!", the only sense I can make of it is this:

It's gratitude and respect, to you.
Maybe she's trying to tell you that she believes in you, and that you will be able to get there too?
Maybe she wanted to tell you she'll be alright now and that you don't need to worry anymore for her sake?

You really shouldn't feel jealous about that guy, or the situation she's in for too long, though I see this happened recently so it's very understandable, but maybe there's something good here that you don't yet see?

You talked a lot about your anger and aggression. I'm of the belief that all traits we have carries a negative and positive side. I believe that if you work with therapy and self care your capability of anger and aggression will start to show in it's positive. That would be: strong resolve, drive, sense of purpose(?)

Perhaps you have more of that stuff in you than most people. I think it's possible anyway.

[Glides]

Glides, good to hear from you! Really glad to hear you're in therapy and not drinking and working on dealing with this stuff, and that you have friends who are being understanding and trying to be supportive, that sounds like a hell of a time.

A thought: your ex's new boyfriend has nothing to do with you and your desirability. Her being happy has nothing to do with you and your ability to be happy. Her doing well right now doesn't mean something bad about you, even if you're struggling and wish you weren't. You know that you guys breaking up was about your various stressors and unhealthy reactions, and your choices about how to handle those things, intersecting badly, not about you not being good enough in whatever way.

And also, it's okay not to 100% commit to self-improvement in every moment; if right now you're feeling like you want to do something, make yourself work on it, even if it's only 10 minutes. You don't have to go all out for it to be worth putting some effort in when you can. Dealing with major health problems and gender dysphoria and mental illness and a breakup is a lot, and it's okay to be struggling with it. Do what you can, when you can, that's okay. Your relationship wasn't the source of your value, and your break-up doesn't take it away.

Have you looked into DBT at all? It seems like that's a lot about handling intense emotions, so maybe talk to your therapist about if it'd be something worth trying to add in at some point.

The big hurdle now is feeling like I don't deserve to improve considering I freaking cheated on her and that's what ended the relationship. Going back through it again I understand my rationale at the time. We'd essentially devolved to having panic attacks in each other's presence because we were so terrified of being inadequate to each other, and in that moment it was so goddamn relieving to encounter a person who wasn't constantly obsessed with my approval and didn't even treat me like a person so much as a series of objectives to be completed.

The other major trigger which contributed to it was her plans of introducing me to her friends, who are overall all mentally healthy and generally successful in their lives, while I am, to say the least, not. This resulted in weeks of all of them being as encouraging as possible before I was to hypothetically meet them, saying how much they liked me, what a good partner I was to her, a bunch of stuff that was objectively not true yet they believed because she was only telling them good things about me. Being around people this goddamn happy with themselves and the world, people this willing to accept me with no reservations, that scared me. I was not worthy of such adoration, so I thought. So I'd do something despicable, two birds with one stone, and then they would hate me like I deserved.

What do you think happened? One of them literally threatened to stalk and kill me after discovering it, the rest of them hate my guts, they all go wherever they can telling anyone who will listen about Glides and what an abusive cheating asshole he is. To my ex's credit, she hasn't encouraged any of this and has actively tried to stop them, but whenever anyone is nice to me, I immediately conclude that there's something they're hiding. I did find it, didn't I? I proved that it wouldn't take much for these people to hate my guts.

The big problem I have is that it takes a lot of effort to get people to like me, and not much to get them to hate me. The amount of people I've alienated and turned against me is insanely massive, and it allows me to control how they feel about me. Anyone can like you, but once they hate you they're gonna hate you forever, and it'll never change.

That's what's so odd about my pathology, my obsession with self-sabotage and destroying my own life, because self-harm (even if it's not literal) is the only way I ever feel like I'm in control at any moment. And since I am incapable of believing I can succeed in any way, then I must fail. If someone likes me, then either I tricked them or they're trying to take advantage of me and I must make them hate me in order for the universe to be right. Being bullied for as long and as intensely I was as a kid created a complex in which it's impossible for anyone to truly like me.

And in a way, I proved the same about my ex, because we had plenty of conversations where I insisted she'd abandon me like everyone else. What did I do? I did everything in my power to get her to finally give up on me and after two years, she finally cracked just like everyone else did. Now obviously, you treat anyone badly for long enough and they have to kick you to the curb to save themselves, I've created a pattern where I can achieve the result I believe I deserve every time with pinpoint accuracy. I cheated on her, that's all it took for her to see me as I see myself. And even now she doesn't really hate me, ironically she probably understands my motivations to do what I do better than anyone else.

I think that's why any friends I still have tend to be people also suffering from severe mental illness and have better emotional regulation than me, because they can objectively see my erratic and irrational behaviors as my illness and not as a personal affront. Most recently I reacted to the news of discovering my ex's new relationship with Mr. Sexy Rich Programmer by grabbing the list of goals I had for the year and writing over it with a sharpie something to the effects of YOU'RE A DISGUSTING PIECE OF PATHETIC FUCKING GARBAGE YOU FUCKING FUCK AND YOU DESERVE TO BE TORTURED TO DEATH (I'm paraphrasing) and then posting it on ever social network at once, then hanging out with a couple friends and completely forgetting about it until I woke up the next morning to dozens of messages from people I hadn't talked to in years asking me what the hell was going on. As it goes whenever I have a fit, my family found out through my four cousins who I'm connected to on social media (and they're the only ones who know about the breakup) so once again I get messages asking if I'm OK.

I'm not in a good place mentally. I was in a better place until about a month ago, but since then I've regressed. Any major catastrophe and any progress I've made goes completely and totally out the window. I've since deleted said inflammatory post, but I've only ever done crap like that when I'm afraid I've tricked people into liking me and I must do something despicable to place the universe back into its correct place, so my mind tells me. I had a girl tell me she was in love with me and wanted to spend the rest of her life with me, that I was her soul mate, and I responded by cheating on her. I have her friends telling me how they can't wait to meet me and how great it'll be to hang out, and I cheat on my girlfriend so that they'll hate my guts. I get offered a contact with a really fantastic job and I ignore it, I'm told how good I do at work and immediately stop coming into work until I'm fired (not recent). Any positive reinforcement results in me making sure that person hates my freakin' guts soon enough.

it comes out of nowhere and people are left dumbfounded, and I last the longest in relationships where I'm given no positive or negative feedback whatsoever. Positive feedback makes me sabotage myself, negative feedback makes me combative, no feedback keeps me in a stable state. I think that's why my remaining friends are emotionally distant people who rarely say anything nice or mean about me, and that's why I haven't driven them away yet.

I'm a sick guy. Not in a good place, and I recognize that. I've been having suicidal thoughts for the first time in years, the breakup brought so much of my old pathology back that I'm left reeling and barely able to function. My ex is happier than she's ever been without me, I'm doing a job a trained monkey could do, and my mind continually throws these back in my face, saying "I was right all along, I was right all along, I was right all along." Who am I to deny it? Who am I to say no, because I don't have anything to fight it with. I had a girlfriend for a while, and while I was with her, as difficult as I was, I could combat that voice by saying that she loved me, and therefore I deserved the gift of life. She became my sole source of self-esteem. Now that she's gone, that negative part of my brain has full control again. I've spent more time trying to hide this from my boss than actually working on stuff because the last thing I need is to get fired from another fucking job.

I'm still in therapy and my therapist is at a complete loss of what to do with me considering I was doing really well before the breakup overall, and within a couple hours every bit of mental progress vanished. One week we're working on my childhood and how I developed my tendencies and the next week I'm near tears insisting I don't deserve to be alive. She's completely flummoxed. I can't really blame her. It must be so frustrating to see your worst client slowly develop into something resembling a functional person and suddenly he's not at all again, suddenly he's right back when he first met you.

The only good thing I can say is that I'm not back to the constantly insulting myself rants yet, but I'm worried I'll be there. I'm worried I'll slip back even farther. Enail and Werel and a few others remember that Glides, and the way he abused everyone on this forum, and all of his bans. I don't wanna go back there.

[Hielario]

There's a thing that I've noticed in these last years and it's that the time people need to recover from a breakup and get back into a relationship seems to differ a lot from one person to another. Some will spend a lot of time moping around or at least profoundly uninterested in dating, and others will aready have a photo with a new partner on ther whatsapp after just a couple months. It's just how they are. And it seems that your partner seems to be one of the second type, while you just...don't. You recover slow, she recovers fast, and there's nothing wrong with either. (Although I wish I hadn't learned that the way I did).

Also, another thing, related to your ex and how you talk about her. Between the fact that she's in the earlier period of a relationship, when everything's new and amazing, and that she can be (according to you) delusional at times, ¿don't you thing you should take everything she told you with a grain of salt? I'm not saying she is lying or in complete denial about her new relationship! But her perception could be a bit...edulcorated.

I read some of your old posts, so it's good to know you didn't abandon cinema completely. What's that screenplay about?

[Enail]

The big hurdle now is feeling like I don't deserve to improve considering I freaking cheated on her and that's what ended the relationship.

Why would improving be something you deserve or don't? I mean, if you were already 100% perfect at every moment, you couldn't improve, so it doesn't really make sense to have to reach some bar for it to be okay even to improve.

Going back through it again I understand my rationale at the time. We'd essentially devolved to having panic attacks in each other's presence because we were so terrified of being inadequate to each other, and in that moment it was so goddamn relieving to encounter a person who wasn't constantly obsessed with my approval and didn't even treat me like a person so much as a series of objectives to be completed.

That makes sense. So, you understand why it happened, next step is how could you handle that feeling in the future? Are there other ways you could get some relief from that need for approval, or do you think you'd do better not to date people who are dealing with such an intense need for approval for the moment, or what? (that's not an "answer this immediately" question so much as something to think about)

The other major trigger which contributed to it was her plans of introducing me to her friends, who are overall all mentally healthy and generally successful in their lives, while I am, to say the least, not. This resulted in weeks of all of them being as encouraging as possible before I was to hypothetically meet them, saying how much they liked me, what a good partner I was to her, a bunch of stuff that was objectively not true yet they believed because she was only telling them good things about me. Being around people this goddamn happy with themselves and the world, people this willing to accept me with no reservations, that scared me. I was not worthy of such adoration, so I thought. So I'd do something despicable, two birds with one stone, and then they would hate me like I deserved.

What do you think happened? One of them literally threatened to stalk and kill me after discovering it, the rest of them hate my guts, they all go wherever they can telling anyone who will listen about Glides and what an abusive cheating asshole he is. To my ex's credit, she hasn't encouraged any of this and has actively tried to stop them, but whenever anyone is nice to me, I immediately conclude that there's something they're hiding. I did find it, didn't I? I proved that it wouldn't take much for these people to hate my guts.

Everyone is capable of behaving badly, every one is capable of making someone hate them or at least not want to be around them anymore. There isn't some kind of inner goodness people have or need to have in order to be liked, there's just doing your best to avoid doing things that will hurt the people you care about. If someone likes you it doesn't mean they have some perfect image of you that's false and will be shattered at some point (which a perfect image always would be, no one is perfect), and it's not about what you do or don't deserve, it just means they like the parts they've seen of you; they still know there's going to be parts they don't like as much (because everyone has some), and they still know that maybe you could do something shitty enough that it would make them mad or make them not want to be around you, because anyone can. Taking those actions and experiencing their reactions isn't proving anything, it's just doing a thing that people sometimes do that has some crappy consequences.

You're trying to make every relationship a referendum on your inner worth, but it's just about what you do. That doesn't make it easy to not do harmful things, of course, but it's a question of choices of what to do and skills to be able to make the choices you'd like to, not of some intrinsic goodness or badness.

The big problem I have is that it takes a lot of effort to get people to like me, and not much to get them to hate me. The amount of people I've alienated and turned against me is insanely massive, and it allows me to control how they feel about me. Anyone can like you, but once they hate you they're gonna hate you forever, and it'll never change.

That's what's so odd about my pathology, my obsession with self-sabotage and destroying my own life, because self-harm (even if it's not literal) is the only way I ever feel like I'm in control at any moment. And since I am incapable of believing I can succeed in any way, then I must fail. If someone likes me, then either I tricked them or they're trying to take advantage of me and I must make them hate me in order for the universe to be right. Being bullied for as long and as intensely I was as a kid created a complex in which it's impossible for anyone to truly like me.

Sure, it's safe. It's giving you a feeling of control you want or need enough to create situations you don't like and don't feel good about. So, how could you live in a universe that feels wrong? How else could you have a sense of control? What would happen if you were wrong, if you can succeed and be liked, if being bullied was just about some other people doing shitty things that had nothing to do with you deserving them?

I'm still in therapy and my therapist is at a complete loss of what to do with me considering I was doing really well before the breakup overall, and within a couple hours every bit of mental progress vanished. One week we're working on my childhood and how I developed my tendencies and the next week I'm near tears insisting I don't deserve to be alive. She's completely flummoxed. I can't really blame her. It must be so frustrating to see your worst client slowly develop into something resembling a functional person and suddenly he's not at all again, suddenly he's right back when he first met you.

The only good thing I can say is that I'm not back to the constantly insulting myself rants yet, but I'm worried I'll be there. I'm worried I'll slip back even farther. Enail and Werel and a few others remember that Glides, and the way he abused everyone on this forum, and all of his bans. I don't wanna go back there.

Dude, you are way too full of yourself I doubt you're your therapist's worst client, and therapists are used to ups and downs. It's normal to be struggling after a breakup, especially when you were also having a hard time with aspects of the relationship, too. The progress you've achieved hasn't disappeared, it's things you understand better about yourself, it's skills you've developed for dealing with emotions, just because you're struggling with a big change and had your coping skills shaken up by it doesn't mean that everything you've worked for all this time has been wiped away. It's okay to be having a hard time, you can recover from this and keep progressing.

[Glides]

There's a thing that I've noticed in these last years and it's that the time people need to recover from a breakup and get back into a relationship seems to differ a lot from one person to another. Some will spend a lot of time moping around or at least profoundly uninterested in dating, and others will aready have a photo with a new partner on ther whatsapp after just a couple months. It's just how they are. And it seems that your partner seems to be one of the second type, while you just...don't. You recover slow, she recovers fast, and there's nothing wrong with either. (Although I wish I hadn't learned that the way I did).

Also, another thing, related to your ex and how you talk about her. Between the fact that she's in the earlier period of a relationship, when everything's new and amazing, and that she can be (according to you) delusional at times, ¿don't you thing you should take everything she told you with a grain of salt? I'm not saying she is lying or in complete denial about her new relationship! But her perception could be a bit...edulcorated.

I read some of your old posts, so it's good to know you didn't abandon cinema completely. What's that screenplay about?

I'm just worried that she's gonna keep on making the same mistakes she made with me, and that other guys won't be nearly as patient with her as I was. She's not an easy person to be around (for the record, Enail and Werel can attest to the fact that I'm not either, I've been a thorn in their sides for over half a decade), and I can see a lot of guys getting fed up with how easily panicked she can get. It's not exactly fair, but as someone who spent 22 years identifying as a man, I know that we're not exactly known for our vulnerability and our patience. I know her triggers, I know how to calm her down, I know how to comfort her in those moments and ironically despite how things turned out she ended up really unlocking a nurturing side of myself I didn't know that I had before meeting her.

She's made me a better man, despite how much I feel hurt by what she's done. I have a confidence in myself I didn't have before, even if it's still not like total self-esteem, I've got a little tiny bit of it now. It's a change. I'm not as much of a doormat as I used to be, I don't obsess over people's approval anymore, I express the more androgynous parts of myself more clearly and publicly (haven't gotten any backlash for it for some reason). I still think I'm ugly as sin and that I don't deserve to be loved, but there is that.

My friend and I saw a film called What We Do In The Shadows (it's really good) and we got curious to try and make a version of that taking itself seriously. Since my friend is gay and hates that every portrayal of a gay character in media is either them being brutally murdered or portrayed like a sex object, she helped me write a story about someone turned into a vampire who happens to be gay. It was the first time I ever wrote a character who is nothing like myself (extroverted, social, very witty and charming).

So yeah, it was fun. I'm trying to think of something else to write.

That makes sense. So, you understand why it happened, next step is how could you handle that feeling in the future? Are there other ways you could get some relief from that need for approval, or do you think you'd do better not to date people who are dealing with such an intense need for approval for the moment, or what? (that's not an "answer this immediately" question so much as something to think about)

I'm not really sure what to do. I don't even think I want to date for a really long time. You run into the issue of it being pretty tough to find someone who just wants to hookup without developing feelings (we started off as FWBs so yeah, I'm not sure I can find that again). Honestly in general I have no earthly idea where to go from here and I'm currently patiently awaiting the moment in which people start asking me if I'm married or have children. I live in the Deep South (*cue banjo*) so the obsession over these two very disgusting things is almost pathological.

[Hielario]

Oooofyeah, I'm in the same situation. After my last failure, I'd want to put dating in the backburner while I figure everything else beacuse I have too many troubles already, but I have no other avenue for my sexual needs then.

[Glides]

Oooofyeah, I'm in the same situation. After my last failure, I'd want to put dating in the backburner while I figure everything else beacuse I have too many troubles already, but I have no other avenue for my sexual needs then.

Which is exactly the issue I'm having. Being in a relationship/FWB situation fulfills a lot of needs that are otherwise never fulfilled. When I'm alone long enough I begin to feel a physical ache, and it's not even a sexual thing. Just having someone around who values your existence is an intoxicating and addicting thing. Considering I've gone a little more than a month without any kind of intimacy, no cuddling, holding, etc, it's basically driving me nuts because I have to transition back to a mindset in which I know I will potentially never ever be intimate with another human being ever again (not that it's guaranteed, just possible).

Update on the ex front: she called me a couple days ago drunk and sobbing because she'd had sex with another guy, then when he attempted to make things more serious, she cut him off. He proceeded to threaten to kill himself if she wouldn't date him, sent voicemails, began ringing the doorbell at her home, might be stalking him. She met him almost immediately after the breakup.

On the one hand, she doesn't deserve any of this. On the other, she'd insisted when we broke up that we did so so she could be alone for a while and work on herself, but she immediately involves herself with someone else almost instantly. I wish she'd just been honest and say "I wanted to fuck someone who wasn't you."

It's not like I haven't made attempts myself, but I have the ol "can't read people so can't ever tell if they can like me thus no one likes me" syndrome so I can never tell if anyone is interested, so I'm forced to believe that no one is interested. It's not healthy to want to get with someone just to get back at your ex.

She'd keep making comments to the effect of "I know we shouldn't get back together but goddammit I miss you," and I miss her too. I know all of the shit she'd do if we decided to do that, all the pathological lying she doesn't realize she does, all the hurtful comments she forgets about, the way she'll trash talk me behind my back because she's convinced I'm doing the same to her. I know what she'll do and a part of me still wants to risk it because it hurts so goddamn much to be alone. Hurts worse than during my virgin days because at least then I had no idea what the actual thing would be like.

The problem is that she won't be easily replaced, even if I could easily attract other people. And I know full well the reason I haven't found anyone else is because I've barely done any looking, I don't really meet people anywhere, no one ever swipes right on Tinder. I don't know how to be alone, and it's probably killing me.

I just feel really betrayed by her really backwards way of trying to sleep with other people, then turning around and insisting I was the best she ever had once that immediately blows up. Complaining to your ex about how awful your most recent partner was in bed is actually not nearly as flattering as you might think.

[jcorozza]

There's a lot going on here, and I don't want to put on my clinician hat too much by diving into the specifics, but I second enail's recommendation for DBT here, if you haven't tried it. Your therapist might not be able to do it, but might know someone that can. Also, have you tried any group therapy? A lot of what you're noticing is related to how you interact with others, not just women/partners, so that might be valuable as well. Maybe even a DBT group. Either way, spending healthier time with others would be a plus.

[Glides]

I wanted to update on all this because it still more or less hasn't resolved itself.

We've admittedly hooked up a couple more times since my last post on my subject, mainly because we were both incredibly lonely and neither of us know anyone else we could do this with.

She called this morning, and I know she did because it's Father's Day and neither of our fathers are around. Mine travels for work and is currently in...Utah, I think? Hers has been dead for several years and he also physically abused her when she was a kid. Mine is ostensibly better but is also very emotionally distant, hers alternated between being very affectionate and buying her things and viciously lashing out for no reason.

For the record, neither of my parents have ever physically abused me, that's not the point of this.

Point is that she called because the rest of her friends are off doing shit with their dads and she had no one else to talk to, and the conversation eventually devolved into an incredibly convoluted attempt to explain to each other why were effectively incompatible in the first place, and eventually some very bizarre statements came from her end that have begun to explain all of the strange behavior that led to all of this:

Since she started her new job and made friends there (I will only say that it's a VERY religious organization catering to childcare), her personality and habits began to change very noticeably to the point where she had stopped acting like herself. Anxiety was replaced with anger, a relative apathy towards fashion, trends, things that were incredibly "bougee" was replaced by an obsession with her own looks that had never existed before. She would randomly stop eating for days at a time until I'd have to convince her to eat. She began mentioning concepts about reincarnation, karma, fate, and this slowly escalated to talks about how ghosts and demons both existed, the astrological signs were real, dreams tell the future, weird New-Agey bullshit that was ringing alarm bells. I didn't say much at the time because she appeared genuinely happy for the first time and these were the first friends she'd made in a while.

But looking back, her behavior and personality, everything about her, changed so drastically so fast that I should've been a lot more worried. She would begin to deliberately ignore me if we ever had a disagreement, she was formerly cuddly but would suddenly refuse to touch me in any circumstance unless it was strictly sexual, would constantly go on about her new friends and relationships and describe her new social life, all of which involved activities I knew made her incredibly anxious and were way more expensive than she could reasonably afford. Her new friends were all very Christian and seemed to be uncomfortable with the fact that I was Jewish, and very uncomfortable with the fact that I have friends who are LGBT.

So what we now have is someone who was deeply introverted, hated crowds, loved to spend our date nights watching movies alone, cooking meals together, more or less spending all our time together just the two of us, would get extremely anxious if she drank too much or smoked too much weed, pretty much the female version of me, suddenly profess to love going out to bars and drinking herself silly, obsessing over what clothes she wore and her weight.

All of that combined to the point where we were barely seeing each other when the breakup finally happened, and she began asking for things I knew she simply did not like doing. She began spending several minutes at a time staring in the mirror, calling herself fat, obsessing over her own appearance to the point where she'd nearly be in tears.

This was not the person I know, and even in today's conversation it felt more like she was trying to imitate her friends than actually act like the woman I'd fallen in love with.

I had even found out that she had slept with the last guy because her friends had literally bullied her into it, insisting that (verbatim) "the best way to get over a guy is to get under someone else." Said guy, of course, was apparently terrible in bed, smelled awful, had shit stains in his underwear, threatened to kill himself when she tried to break it off and drove to her house despite having never gotten the address from her, repeatedly pounding the door as she called me in the middle of the night screaming hysterically because she thought he was going to kill her.

And to top it off they're all insanely religious, drink way too much, spend money they don't have and seem to have influenced her into adopting way more, shall we say, "conservative" political views despite her privately telling me she's been questioning her own gender identity and sexual orientation.

At this point she's been around them so long she's probably convinced herself she genuinely likes all this shit even though I know this isn't her. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the two years I knew her she was lying about everything. Maybe the girl who panics whenever someone she doesn't know touches her is able to have sex with a complete stranger she doesn't even like without having her friends bullying her into it even though she stated herself they kept on insisting that fucking this random would magically get her over me and stood over her as she downloaded Tinder on her phone.

Maybe I'm misreading everything, maybe I'm just trying to convince myself I'm not the bad guy here. I'm the asshole who cheated on her after she refused to touch me other than sex because I was so desperate for some kind of intimacy, and who's to say she wasn't told by her friends that any guy who likes to cuddle is a gay slur?  

They didn't actually say that as far as I know, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Case in point is that this doesn't feel right, the completely superficial way she acts now isn't like her. She complained about this exact kind of person when she lived in a college town. Our relationship was established by making fun of religious people behind their backs, making fun of frat guys and sorority girls and laughing at how goddamn shallow and ridiculous all the spectacle was. She didn't care how she looked and liked quiet time and didn't give a shit about such pointless bullshit like she does now. She was an introverted agnostic depressive and suddenly she's the complete opposite, and the last six months have been a person I don't recognize in any way.

So I dunno, it's been really bothering me. I'm never gonna meet anyone like her ever again.

EDIT: I completely forgot to mention that the second time we had sex since the breakup happened because she was convinced there was a demon in the house of the kid she was babysitting and she was convinced my place was a place where demons couldn't go. Her friends continually told her that the place she was going to was possessed with negative energies and that she couldn't take on the spirit alone. They also told her that she was abused as a kid because she'd been an incredibly wealthy woman in a past life and this was God's way of punishing her for being too greedy, so she deserved the almost two decades of abuse that left deep scars and burns all over her body that I would kiss softly whenever she'd have a flashback of her mother putting out cigarettes on her skin and locking her in a closet for hours at a time and not letting her eat for several days and making her sit in her own filth.

To top it off they told her that committing suicide was a sin and that it was a sign of an impure soul and that if you killed yourself you were going to hell.

Honestly after I heard that I wanted to find the friend of hers who told her that and put out cigarettes in their skin, but as I am typing this and not in prison, that clearly did not happen. Needless to say, I was quite angry and insisted that this wasn't true but she only responded with "you're not sensitive like they are, you wouldn't understand."

I just, I don't think anything has ever made me this fucking angry. We've had a couple arguments where I've tried to show her how absolutely ridiculous this all is and it's like talking to a brick wall, she's completely fallen for this shit and I don't know how to show her that she's being manipulated by these New-Agey fucks. I don't have words.

Last thing we said at the end of that conversation was that they'd put a curse on me, to which I responded "There's nothing they can do to me that I haven't already done to myself," which probably wasn't the smartest thing to say.

[Hielario]

That sounds like such an horrifyingly fucked up situation. Kinda sorry for your ex and you.

Last thing we said at the end of that conversation was that they'd put a curse on me, to which I responded "There's nothing they can do to me that I haven't already done to myself," which probably wasn't the smartest thing to say.

Maybe it wasn't the smartest thing to say, but it's the best badass boast I've heard in a couple of years. It's true, though. The good thing about being through terrible shit is that sometimes you can just laugh at someone's pathetic attempts at hurting you.

[Enail]

Ugh, that sounds really upsetting, it's hard seeing someone you care about going down a path that you don't think is good or good for them, and knowing that's not something you can change for them.

You won't find someone like her again, (because people are all magical special snowflakes ), but that doesn't mean you won't find someone(s) different who's awesome in their own way, and who you might be able to have a less tumultuous relationship with.

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