Feelings for Ex Girlfriend

RonnieWould

Hi,

This is going to sound mental but I’ve developed feelings for my ex girlfriend in the last week or two. We were together 5 years and broke up 6 years ago. I had a nervous breakdown this week 6 years ago and this time every year since is very tough on me. I’m currently in a relationship, we’ve a house and a great relationship together and I love her very much. I think I know what’s happening and why I’m feeling the way I am.

Each year around this time I wish I could go back in time and never break up with my girlfriend because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have gone through a breakdown. I think this year it’s especially tough because I’m dealing with the extra stress of dealing with Covid and I’ve my own business that I’m trying hard to keep afloat. I think my longing for my ex is due to the security I felt at the time I was with her. Young, carefree and in college. I didn’t have the stress or the doubts that I have now all these years later. The thing is, the feelings I have aren’t physical or anything, I haven’t seen her in years. It’s the comfort and the safety I felt when I was with her that I think I’m missing.

I feel like I’m going crazy the last few days, the only thing is I know the strange feelings I have will pass because they do every year around this time. Can anyone tell me if I’m going crazy or is this normal? To put things into context, my breakdown was described to me as a “car crash effect” by a doctor at the time so it was a fairly bad experience and it altered my life most definitely.

Any advice or comments are welcome, like I said this is a weird time of year for me every year and I know it’ll pass but I think the stress of Covid and everything this year has made it worse.

Locotastic

So sorry to hear about your difficult time, I do think recent events have exacerbated the stress that people feel and raises a lot of anxiety.

It's perfectly normal during those times to attach ourselves to what we perceive as better times in our lives. The good thing is that you recognise this for what it is.

"I think my longing for my ex is due to the security I felt at the time I was with her. Young, carefree and in college. I didn’t have the stress or the doubts that I have now all these years later".

I find myself doing the same during difficult periods too but am aware that I also rose tint the memories as well.

I do wish you all the best and as you said this will pass with time.

Idle Passerby

I think you should reframe how you look at the break up. I assume there's rose tinted glasses involved. If you genuinely felt secure and content in your life at that time a break up shouldn't have been so catastrophic. You were in college so I'm guessing early 20s? In that case I'm guessing there were no shared assets or kids. You were young, the relationship was unlikely to last forever. The fact you were so reliant on it that its absence caused a mental break down, suggests you weren't in as healthy a place as you think. Try to look at the positives. If you hadn't gone through all that you wouldn't have met your now partner.

RonnieWould

Hi both,

Thank you for the replies. I probably should have added that in the lead up to the break up I was on the verge of a breakdown but I just didn’t know it. The break up was caused by me trying to make things better on a personal level as I thought my GF at the time was the cause. She wasn’t and the fall out from it is something I still feel immense guilt over. I wanted the break up to be a potentially temporary thing but the manner in which it happened it was done and done for good which was a regret and in some ways still is because I lost a very good friend first and foremost and a friend I have probably never been able to replace.

I still feel immense guilt and probably always will because despite how I felt at the time, the girl was an amazing person whom I still miss sometimes. Taking full responsibility for what happened is something that I’ve only been able to do in the last year or two because I’ve got myself into a good place with my life but my ex GF hasn’t seen me in so long that any words I could give her wouldn’t wash and there’s still resentment there I would imagine and i don’t blame her because it was a bad break up and it’s something I’m ashamed of and still embarrassed over. For the first time I really want to pick up the phone and just say “do you know what, it was my fault and I’m sorry” but I don’t see what good it would do. My current GF wouldn’t understand me doing it and I don’t want her knowing what’s going on at the moment.

redfox123

If my boyfriend was speaking like this I would be heart broken. You really need to either go do some counseling or really think about what’s missing from your relationship that you’re speaking about an ex from 6 YEARS ago like this. Romantic relationships come and go especially when young, you are putting far far too much emphasis on this one and energy and focus you should be putting into growing yourself as a person and on loving your current girlfriend. You are being dishonest with her.
People need to stop obsessing about romantic relationships so much and focus on themselves. They are not the problem. Obsessing about an ex is a form of distraction from your own issues and stress in your life. Deal with that, hard work but necessary.

RonnieWould

redfox123 wrote: »

If my boyfriend was speaking like this I would be heart broken. You really need to either go do some counseling or really think about what’s missing from your relationship that you’re speaking about an ex from 6 YEARS ago like this. Romantic relationships come and go especially when young, you are putting far far too much emphasis on this one and energy and focus you should be putting into growing yourself as a person and on loving your current girlfriend. You are being dishonest with her.
People need to stop obsessing about romantic relationships so much and focus on themselves. They are not the problem. Obsessing about an ex is a form of distraction from your own issues and stress in your life. Deal with that, hard work but necessary.

I agree, I would feel the same if my girlfriend told me she was feeling this way. The thing is, the feelings aren’t ones of lust or anything. It’s a case of my life was so much simpler back the, however despite a simpler life I still managed to have a serious breakdown so perhaps looking back things weren’t that great.

The last 6 years have been tough. I’ve lost family members and have had setbacks with my business and my mental health. Like I’ve already mentioned, I go through a tough couple of weeks every year At this time but I’ll get through it. I just think things are exacerbated this year due to what’s going on at the moment.

On a side note, I haven’t mentioned my current girlfriend. She’s a wonderful person and I found happiness with her in a time of my life where I was strongly weighing up my options as to whether I wanted to continue on with life or not. That’s how bad things were for me back then. As someone alluded to in an earlier response, if things didn’t happen the way they did then I wouldn’t have met my current girlfriend and that’s true and it’s something that I am grateful for. It’s just what happened has scarred me mentally, probably forever and I do wish I could go back and deal with things better. Maybe having feelings for my ex is the wrong way of wording it, it’s the feeling of safety, comfort and innocence of life before I discovered how powerful, dark and dangerous the human brain can be when things get bad in life. Maybe that’s all it is.

Mongfinder General

You've moved on - think about what you stand to lose now if you were to make a move in another direction.
Take it from somebody who has been conflicted in the past - you're on a hiding to nothing if you develop interests outside your current relationship.

Locotastic

Your guilt about this seems to be what's eating you and its only punishing yourself.

You have to think about what's triggered all this, the negative opinion of yourself around what happened and the regret you feel.

Everyone makes mistakes and decisions that they might later regret, nobody is perfect.

You are not benefiting from treating yourself like this. You need to forgive yourself for whatever happened and focus on gratitude for what life is offering you now.

Focus on your goals, your future and everything you have going for you right now.

You cannot change the past, accept it and discover what you really want now and for the future.

I know what it's like to have a time in your life that was carefree and void of any issues, but I don't think it's really like that when we are living through it. Are you getting any help/support or counselling at the moment?

Thelonious Monk

It sounds like you were pretty messed up if you were thinking of killing yourself until you met your girlfriend. A girlfriend is never going to fix whatever problems it is you have, so I'm sure there's still a lot of difficult stuff going on in your head.
As per the usual relationship issues response - get therapy.

RonnieWould

Locotastic wrote: »

Your guilt about this seems to be what's eating you and its only punishing yourself.

You have to think about what's triggered all this, the negative opinion of yourself around what happened and the regret you feel.

Everyone makes mistakes and decisions that they might later regret, nobody is perfect.

You are not benefiting from treating yourself like this. You need to forgive yourself for whatever happened and focus on gratitude for what life is offering you now.

Focus on your goals, your future and everything you have going for you right now.

You cannot change the past, accept it and discover what you really want now and for the future.

I know what it's like to have a time in your life that was carefree and void of any issues, but I don't think it's really like that when we are living through it. Are you getting any help/support or counselling at the moment?

Really nice reply and I’ve read it a couple of times before coming back to you.

I have absolutely no reason to look back, I should be looking forward but every September it’s almost like an anniversary for me. I feel like I need to think back on a really bad period of my life to help me focus on the good things going forward but this year feels different.

To answer your question regarding counselling, no is the answer. At the time I saw someone and was taking medication for a while but I had to give it up. It was a horrendous experience on that medication and it hollowed me out to the point where I had zero emotion. That took me a long time to come back to normal after and I didn’t ever want to take medication to improve my moods ever again. I felt like an empty person with a hole in me and I had absolutely zero emotion.

Thankfully I’ve not been on any medication for the last 5 years and until last week I didn’t ever feel the need to even think about it. In the last week or so, something has clicked inside and has brought even more memories of those carefree days back to me. I’d love to get to the bottom of it and find out exactly what’s causing it but a lot happened back then it’s hard to pinpoint one thing. The breakup just added to the pile.

Regarding the guilt I’m feeling. I think, given what happened, it’s only natural. I was in a stable and loving relationship that was ended very abruptly with no real warning. I’m hugely embarrassed over what happened and I don’t think I’ll ever not be. A lot of bad mouthing went on about me among a huge number of people and to this day there would be animosity towards me from some of her friends that have remained in our area. It’s a sad state of affairs but that’s life and it happens to a lot of people. I’d like to think I’m a nice person and I deeply regret hurting the girl but at the time I didn’t see that. I was selfish and I hurt her badly, intentional at the time because there was no other way of doing what I did but not intentional at the same time if that makes sense. At the time, she was very much better off without me because as I was a ticking time bomb mentally and emotionally. Something that proved true some months later when I hit rock bottom.

bitofabind

Listen OP, that first love cuts very deeply for all of us. But it was just a break-up. You didn't murder anyone. You didn't commit any cardinal sin. You ended a relationship. At a stretch you acted clumsily, pushed her away, shut her out or whatever. But the punishment does not fit the crime here at all.

I think you are stuck, and we get stuck because it works for us in some way. Sometimes it feels 'safe' to be stuck in the past, safer than exploring the unknowns in our future. Safer than taking control in the here and now. Safer than facing another trauma head on and working through some very difficult and uncomfortable emotions. It's clear that you've been through a lot, with the bereavement and the business worries and the mental health struggles. I can see why you'd choose to rose-tint an earlier period of your life instead of processing all of that.

It's quite revealing that you have this period of trauma every year on the anniversary of your nervous breakdown. It shows that you haven't dealt with all of this pain and it's still all very raw. When we process and do the painful work around these traumas, we let go of the anniversaries and the painful reminders. They stop controlling us.

It's not about your ex, as you've correctly identified. It's about un-sticking yourself of the past and being present in your life today. It's hard work and even harder to do it alone, especially given your vulnerability to mental illness. I strongly recommend finding a professional to work with here. For me, talk therapy has been a game-changer. It's not an overnight job, but getting to a place of freedom from these regrets and trauma and learning how to really take care of yourself and your needs is worth every minute of the process. You don't need to live like this.

By piecing together the timeline, you're in your late 20s now. You have your whole life ahead of you, and you don't need to be falling down this painful rabbit hole of reflection and regret every year for the rest of your days. You're only a young wan! Start the work now. Do some research and start calling around to find a therapist this week. You won't regret it.

RonnieWould

bitofabind wrote: »

Listen OP, that first love cuts very deeply for all of us. But it was just a break-up. You didn't murder anyone. You didn't commit any cardinal sin. You ended a relationship. At a stretch you acted clumsily, pushed her away, shut her out or whatever. But the punishment does not fit the crime here at all.

I think you are stuck, and we get stuck because it works for us in some way. Sometimes it feels 'safe' to be stuck in the past, safer than exploring the unknowns in our future. Safer than taking control in the here and now. Safer than facing another trauma head on and working through some very difficult and uncomfortable emotions. It's clear that you've been through a lot, with the bereavement and the business worries and the mental health struggles. I can see why you'd choose to rose-tint an earlier period of your life instead of processing all of that.

It's quite revealing that you have this period of trauma every year on the anniversary of your nervous breakdown. It shows that you haven't dealt with all of this pain and it's still all very raw. When we process and do the painful work around these traumas, we let go of the anniversaries and the painful reminders. They stop controlling us.

It's not about your ex, as you've correctly identified. It's about un-sticking yourself of the past and being present in your life today. It's hard work and even harder to do it alone, especially given your vulnerability to mental illness. I strongly recommend finding a professional to work with here. For me, talk therapy has been a game-changer. It's not an overnight job, but getting to a place of freedom from these regrets and trauma and learning how to really take care of yourself and your needs is worth every minute of the process. You don't need to live like this.

By piecing together the timeline, you're in your late 20s now. You have your whole life ahead of you, and you don't need to be falling down this painful rabbit hole of reflection and regret every year for the rest of your days. You're only a young wan! Start the work now. Do some research and start calling around to find a therapist this week. You won't regret it.

Thanks very much, you pretty much hit the nail on the head with everything there. It’s difficult to argue with anything you have mentioned.

There’s plenty for me to take on board and at the end of the day it’s up to me to pull myself out of this and make sure that I continue on how I want to see myself, and that’s happy.

Thanks again.