What do you do to get through the next hours, when you've just broken up with someone and feel like utter cr*p

[OCDspecialist]

I just split with DP. Still D because although it wasn't working and we were totally wrong for eachother, I still love him.

I have ended it a few times before but this has to be the last one. It was a truly awful day culminating in him pursuing me down the street as I was leaving to go home, and refusing to let me go quietly. I ended up shrieking at him to please leave me alone, and running away from him :(. Apparently, he tells me, I made such an awful scene that he got loads of sympathy from passers by and people telling him 'she's dangerous mate you're well rid of her' :( Everyone hates a madwoman, eh...

I can't be like this any more. I want to pull the shreds of my stability and dignity back together for the sake of myself and more importantly my dc's.

So what do I do to get over this horrible period. It's so dramatic, but all my nerves are shrieking with pain. Half of me is longing for him to beg me to come back, all is forgiven, just so I could have all the good things again just for a while and forget how it always turns to shit. But no.

I am so scared to be alone, and there is no one I can turn to. (Sounds dramatic but actually true. I am very isolated since my divorce. My parents and sister are very cold people and didn't approve of me having a partner anyway).

I don't want to take the route as that way addiction lies methinks and possibly an embarrassing email/phone call to xP around midnight. I don't feel much like eating so probably not a night for chocolate.

Any recommendations of good songs to sob to and good escapist TV ( I am thinking something gripping like The Shadowline ;)) might help. Plus anything that other MNers have used to get themselves through the initial pain and fear of being alone.

(btw the DCs were NOT with me when I ran shrieking down the street today...have just realised it might read like that. they are at their dad's until tomorrow)

I don't know but I am where you are at. Very similar story actually.

It's difficult to do anything because that brings inevitable reminders of him.

My situation is particularly crazy as my xp is evil to put it succinctly.

I don't have great distraction ideas because I go super fruit loop in this situation, from getting claustrophobic in the bath to wanting run out of the hairdressers sobbing when trying to get a mood lifting new hair 'do'.

I'm a few months in and still sleeping on the sofa for dread of going to bed, and not eating.

15 mins exercise a day will probably help, as will nice warm baths and hair cuts, unless you are me of course .

I sort of find trying to make your space nice good. At least then you can wail in the comfort of a csy living room or candlelit bedroom.

sorry to hear that hobbgoblin.

Ah a hair cut!! the traditional way to mark end of relationship. I'll try to book one tomorrow. And a scarlet red colour methinks :D

xp is not evil just f*ing difficult and chaotic. As am I. So it couldn't work.

Are you still hung up on XP despite his evilness then? Or is it the fear of being alone that is most dominant?

I feel as if I'll never experience love again etc. All the teenage dramatic shit that rationally I know is crap. The fear of being alone is so strong. And I think difficult men can be very much there, that is the thing, you go from never alone to totally alone so suddenly. And you chose to do it.

I can't cry either atm. Just feel hollow which frankly sucks.

Poor you. It's awful. Following my major split I had a lot of practical things to sort out (new home, re-directing post etc) which helped to keep me occupied, but it sounds like you lived separately anyway (?).

I found weekends particularly hard but getting some swimming in helped. Avoid sentimental TV/films at all costs - Sex and the City always made me well up and want to run back!

Good luck.

Baths, books, chocolate, cake. Make a big effort to do fun things with your DCs to take your mind of it. Try to stay strong, you will be determined and get through this x

It takes time to get over somebody, you have to go through the grieving process, sometimes you just have to reach the point that you know it is never going to work.

Yes it hurts, we aren't made of stone, and it can take weeks sometimes months to move on.

If you truly believe there is no going back, start afresh in the morning, if he has stayed at your place in your bedroom, change it round, if you can afford it buy a new duvet cover, paint the walls, make it your room, and not a room where you remember him because it looks the same.

God, I sympathise
Awful isn't it.

thanks all.

It just feels like dealing with the pain of multiple broken bones without anaesthetic.

he's sent me a number of emails this evening justifying his behaviour and saying (I LOVE this) 'I will try to forget all your abuses...I hope you find peace'. Patronising shit!!! History is being rewritten and he is now a blameless victim of a madwoman. I have my problems, but it wasn't me who tried to physically block him from leaving the house today.

God. Why does he have to be so fucking beautiful??? (And yeah before you all start I know attraction is a crap reason for a relationship).

the evening was spent on the phone with a friend whose problems are far greater than mine. This helped distract me from my own more minor crap- although I am still worried for her.

OCD: that's one method that does work, getting caught up in someone else's troubles (unfortunately). Otherwise, when you think of your XP (who sounds a prize knob to me and you are well rid of him) try to think of him in a ridiculous, undignified situation, such as sat on the loo with skiddy pants round his ankles, picking his nose and farting like the Trumpet Voluntary.

I would stop contact with him, and if you can you should block his email or have it redirected to another address/folder that you can read/delete asap. Don't bother engaging with him over his changing perspective. If you're trying to get over this person staying in contact will set you back each time you speak to them or read an email. It'll stir up all the feelings you have about the relationship and break up. It will be very hard but I think it helps to sever while you're recovering from the split so you can focus on yourself and what you want and need, rather than going over old ground with the ex.

Also, further proof that this man is a knob is his email blaming you for the row and trying to make you come back - he doesn't love you, he just wants to jerk you around.
FWIW in future if you want to date good looking men, pick the ones that were seriously fugly in their teens (spotty, greasy, slow to have their growth spurt or whatever). Men who have only recently blossomed are much less arrogant about themselves than the ones who were the fittest boy in the school.

I never usually 'pick' good looking men and normally my idea of good looking is early-period Jarvis Cocker- pale skinny nerd. By some weird twist of fate I ended up with an Italian male model type- and yes he has always been gorgeous. He is balding though, I must remember that :D

Well today he has entirely reneged on last night and sent me one of the nicest emails I've ever received from anyone. But don't worry I know that if I went back all the shit would start again.

The email wasn't pressuring at all and he says he understands why I have ended it and it seems sensible in the circumstances now that he has given it thought.

I really don't think he is a total knobber at all although he can be a right idiot in practical terms and has a terrible Southern Italian temper. Matched with me (neurotic middle class Brit divorcee with lack of tact and impulse control) it is a match made in hell alright...

he acknowledged all this today, he says he knows it has been shit but the good bits were so good (this is true), and he still loves me. God. This sucks so very much.

I really wish I could take Bromide or something to stop myself obsessing about him so much. An anti-love potion. GAHHHHHHH.

Were there more good bits than bad bits? And what were the bad bits?

oh god fab....I don't know really. We are stuck in a horrible set of really stressful situations. We met at a crap time in eachother's lives basically, he is a mature postgrad student from Rome, I am working but in truly horrible ongoing (2.5 years now) unresolved unamicable 50/50 custody divorce situation with ex husband which effectively traps me in one small area of the country for the next 12 years (I hate to think of it especially as I will have to change career to get work here, it seems, and go right back to the bottom again :().

So, I am depressed (added to OCD, natch, and agoraphobia = nightmare to live with...

Jobs in his field are very rare (as they are in mine, and I am 'lucky' to have a job with a 2 hour commute from London, which wears me out). In his field I doubt he'd get anything in the SE. So to be with me, he'd basically have to change career before he's even started, really. I would do a long distance relationship - and we were doing so- but as you can imagine with kids (and with an uncertain future ahead) that becomes really awkward. I can't travel much.

His (single) mother is penniless and currently living in a Rome council flat under threat from some bizarre mafia-type organisation who want protection money to 'allow' her to live there (you couldn't make this stuff up, eh.) So he is stressed as hell about her and doesn't have much energy for anything else right now.

We try very hard to accommodate eachother's stresses but we are not patient even-tempered calm people, either of us. When we fight it always escalates. I think some of his ranty Sicilian argument tactics are awful and embarrassing- and he thinks my habit of withdrawing coldly and throwing in the towel constantly ('right that's it then, I've had it, bugger off') is horrible. Which is no doubt true.

So, we are a right pair!! and also I honestly don't see a future for us either, unless he gives up his career, and I don't want to inflict that on him. I will never leave my kids while they need me, obviously, so I cannot follow him around as another partner might be able to.

I could list more of his irritating traits: hopeless idealism, arrogance about his talents, utter impracticality. Blah. I have just as many faults myself and I see that. However on the good side he is deeply sensitive, extremely loving, intellectually interesting, incredibly loyal, caring to my kids, and has put up with a hell of a lot of neurotic sh*t from me without judging me for it.

I think it is more that you have too many outside pressures to make it work rather then personally either of you being a pain to live with.

maybe Fab. I guess two stress-conquering angels would be dealing with it all brilliantly. TBH I'd be willing to leave it and be 'friends' (as far as we can be) until he in particular knows more clearly what he really wants to do in the long term. And in the meantime if he met someone else (far more likely than me to do that as he's young and living child free in Rome...) fair enough no hard feelings. I would be sad of course but really, why would I want to tie him to me if he ends up unhappy in the long term.

But he's too soppy loyal/overemotional (don't know which) to be able to accept that atm.

Then you need to decide how you want your life to be for the next few months and concentrate on that.