Closure

[mrbloke]

I have posted about online dating, but thought I'd ask for some advice about another matter.
I was brutally dumped by text about a year ago by a woman I was in love with after a very short and intense relationship. I won't go into the details of it, but she spurned any attempt I made to contact her at the time or when I tried again a few months later and I never learned the reason why she dumped me.
I was very hurt and to be honest I still think about her a lot and wonder why she did what she did. I've considered writing her a letter telling her how I feel. However, I don't know if this is a good idea or not as part of me feels like I shouldn't give her the satisfaction of knowing I still feel this way as I guess if she'd have cared she would have perhaps explained at the time. But maybe it would give me closure?

I'm still in love with her even after how she treated me.

I would write the letter and then burn it as this might give you closure.

As she dumped you and does not want contact with you, i would not try to contact her or give her the letter. I know its hard but you need to put it in the past and move on as the relationship was not right or it would have worked out.

Yes I suppose you're right. It's just that during the relationship she told me she loved me and I find it very difficult to reconcile that she could have told me this, only to end things so suddenly the way she did. I think it's that which has made it hard for me to move on.

I've been there, MrBloke. I ended a stale relationship to be with a man who pursued me relentlessly. The relationship was very (too) intense and lasted only a couple of months. He was very quiet the last time I saw him and never contacted me again, in spite of my texting and calling him a few times to find out what was going on.

I was devastated at the time because I'd become swept up in all the itensity and really believed he was 'the one'. It took me over a year to get over it (it was about 6 years ago) and now I'm mortified by the whole thing when I think back. It held me back from dating other men as I was still 'in love' with the other guy. But now I realise it was more infatuation/obsession.

I'd agree with the advice of writing a letter and burning it. I wouldn't contact this woman again, and in time (I promise!) you'll be very glad you didn't...

Yes, and I suppose it would seem a bit weird/stalkerish if I did send it.
I prided myself on the fact that I didn't deluge her with calls and messages after the break up, even though if I'm honest at the time I felt like doing that.

My DH had an ex do something very similiar. She was very intense, all over him, introduced him to all her family including her DD, took him to family gatherings etc, all within the initial weeks and then dumped him without warning or reason. It really affected him badly and for a long time - turned out she had "previous" and had done it to other men . Indeed a mutual friend attended a party where DH and this ex were and a girl there commended on them to mutual friend and said "I give it two weeks", when mutual friend question questioned the girl, she turned round and said "she does this with every bloke she goes out with ....." and it turned out she was right.

Didn't take the pain/hurt away but helped my DH realise it was her and not him. Put him off dating for a long time....

To have closure (about anything) means accepting that what happened, happened.

This is obviously easiest to do at the end of a relationship if the other party gives you a reason, and that you are eventually able to accept that reason.

In your case, the other party has dropped out, and much as you may want it, you're clearly not going to get what you need from her. So, you have to gain acceptance from within yourself, alone.

There are plenty of ways to do this; you may hit upon the one that works for you spontaneously.

Some things to try could be:

• writing a letter to her and then ritually destroying it, as others have said.
• writing just for yourself, eg. in a journal, where you explore your feelings about the break-up
• talking, to a trusted friend or family member, to strangers on the internet, to a counsellor... anyone who can listen non-judgementally and validate your feelings
• destroying / packing up / burying any symbolic possessions of hers or representing the relationship (photos...)

Basically, anything that gets your feelings OUT and acknowledged, somehow.

Have you been out with anyone else since? Been out on dates with other women? How long did the relationship last for? Could she have been married?

I really would not contact her as you may come across as stakerish. You could always go to Relate on your own to talk about this and get it out of your system?

I agree about it looking stalkerish (look at last post I made) which is another reason why I won't do it. Yes, I've been out with quite a few women since as I have dabbled with online dating. I thought this would help me get over her....but it didn't.
She's not married and it only lasted a few months.

Do you think you could be making it in to something special in your head, like remebering only the good times and not the bad bits? Is it easier to love the image of this woman than seeing her for who she was?

I also think that the more deeply you like someone the longer it takes you to get over them. If you could change your POV to thinking it was a good experiance as it was and that it was not for long term but a point on the journey to find the person you are ment to spend the rest of your life with, could letting her go be easier?

Take what you have learned from her and move on.

Can i ask how old you are?

Old enough to know better.

If she didn't have the decency to talk to you and explain her actions before then chances are she won't do it now.

As others have said, write the letter then burn it and try and move on.

I've been there, too, and it's so painful. The only thing that helped me was thinking that he was now making someone else unhappy. (Sorry, don't like to think he's making someone happy!)

The fact is that the person who can do this is a coward. If someone fixed you up on a blind date and said, "She's pretty and bright, but emotionally is a real coward. She didn't even tell her last boyfriend why she finished with him" would you want to go with her? I wouldn't. She's behaved badly and you won't ever know why - if you asked her, she wouldn't tell you the truth. You are far better trying to write down your feelings but not actually contact her. Later, when you're with someone lovely, you'll realise that actually she wasn't that nice.

TBH mrbloke if she did this to you she's probably done it before, classic avoidant behaviour and it wasn't anything to do with you, it's just how she does relationships. I suspect you may have been a rebound romance in which case you could take everything she said she felt with a large pinch of salt .

Write a letter, save it then remember how you felt when you were suddenly and rather unceremoniously disposed of. Then re-read the letter. Do you really think she is worth the energy you are expending on her all this time later?

Hi Mrbloke,

Once you have burned the letter, gone to counciling, hugged a tree

You might want to check this thread out regareding Mn dating.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/1239964-Does-anyone-know-of-any-single-blokes-in-their-40s

you sound like a really nice guy so i hope you get over her and find someone that suits you better.

Good luck and all the best

Cheers Velvetunderground. That's a nice thought. :)

Going to go against the grain here but you are still in love with her, yes? Why not give it one last shot.....nothing too intense perhaps an email or text saying "I'm sorry things ended on a bad note but still think of you from time to time and hope you're well"

I am a bit of an emotionally avoidant person and I would respond to this if I either regretted how I'd ended things or was tempted to give things another go.

True love is rare, perhaps if you give her one last chance at contact and she doesn't respond, you really can put this to bed and start dating with a clean slate...

I think if you re-read the OP, londontipton, his ex treated him very badly and has given no sign that she regrets that. If he contacts her again, the chance of a repeat humiliation is really high.

She's not a nice person, OP. She doesn't treat people well. Keep away from her!

I wanna say ((hugs)) but I hear that's not done here !

In more helpful (but still not very helpful, sorry) mode, my ex did similar- claiming to be madly in love, talking about having kids/the future, introducing me to family etc. Then dumped me completely at random (just after getting me pregnant...) Except when I thought about it much later, it wasn't entirely random; the preceding period had been one when I'd started standing up to him on issues where he'd been giving lots of crap and trying to make me feel bad about trivial things/past relationships/etc. You've not given enough detail to see whether something similar happened here, and probably you'd have mentioned if she was controlling in that way, but the way she ended it really shows no love or respect for you, I'm sorry to say. One of the best bits of advice a friend gave me was to point out that actually, in situations like this, you're not in love with the person- no one would be in love with someone who behaved like a complete dick!- you're in love with the way they were or the idea of that earlier on in the relationship, who did seem to love and respect you in return.

I'm not sure there's any point in actually sending a letter to her, because if she's like most people she's constructed her own narrative around what happened, and your reality of it won't penetrate into that at all. Writing one and destroying it might help. Also counselling. Also reminding yourself of all the good things about you and how you don't need anyone who's not going to respect and care about you for those rather than treating you as disposable (and if you can't think of any good things, taking up new things you've wanted to try can help you with that and with distraction too).

To be fair to Londontipton it was a friend of mine who suggested something similar that made me think of sending her a letter. The friend thought it may give me closure of some kind. The thing is I think it would probably make me feel a lot worse as she would likely not respond and it would feel like I have lost my pride. It would also look stalkerish and at the end of the day despite how she treated me I don't want to scare her or freak her out.

I really feel for you OP. Other people ruin lovely people for others by their own selfish actions.
I've had something similar, twice going out with somebody... then dumped.
In one case, I wrote a very long email letting it all out, glad that I'd said what I needed to at the time. He never responded. I doubt he even read it to be honest, as he'd dumped me by email! I kind of regret it in hindsight, laying myself open like that and making his ego puff.

In second, I wrote the email. Agonised over it, over days, weeks, wrote it, amended it many times but never pressed send. I printed it, read it over and over again until I was so sick of it, and of myself for being so consumed, then burnt it. It worked. I met DP four months later. Get your feelings out, but not to her. She sounds like she never deserved you in the first place as she never had enough respect for you to end the relationship properly. In love with her, are you sure? Or in love with what might have been, the person you thought she was?

OP...2 years ago my 3 year relationship ended. I brought the end on in as much as I said I found his job (Army) very difficult to deal with (separations etc). However, I actually wanted him to listen to my feelings, and try and understand, not to split up. He turned completely cold on me, it was like a different person. He had just come back after 2 months away and it was all dealt with on the phone, didn't even bother to come and see me.

That was that. 3 years wiped out in a heartbeat. I will NEVER understand how he could have been that cold. I used to lay awake at nights going over and over what I'd said and what I'd done, to no avail, I'm still none the wiser, and I will never know his true feelings. It has probably taken me the best part of these 2 years, and yet I still think of him every day. However, I have now accepted it.

Like others have said, write the letter (don't send it) and read it over and over. Eventually you will read it less and less. It does get better and I can honestly vouch for that, acceptance really is the key.

OP, you do sound like one of the good guys, let her go, she isn't worthy of you. Fancy a date?

Hi OP, I am actually going to put the cat amongst the pigeons and look at this from another angle. You state that this was a short and intense relationship and you were/are in love with her, were your feelings reciprocated in this time?

Only that I have been in the position of dating someone, whereas I saw it as dating, he told me he loved me on date 3, which for me and my relationship history was way too soon. I asked him to slow down, which he didn't. I found the intensity overwhelming and had to get out of what I felt was a claustrophobic situation, following one particularly disastrous date. It was a distance relationship and we conversed a lot by email, so I sent a short email to say it wasn't working for me and I didn't want to see him again. There was some conversation following, but it didn't change how I felt. However he continued to try and contact me, to ask for giving it another go, it felt obvious to me that he wasn't taking 'it's over' as 'it's over' and I decided the only way forward was to ignore all of his attempts to contact me in order for him to understand I no longer wanted to be spending time with him. I'm just not up for intense, I like to take the start of my relationships slowly.

So is it possible OP, that she never felt the intensity you did, and by not engaging in any follow up with you she felt she was giving you a clear message it was over? It may have been a cowardly way out as she knew she would hurt your feelings and the lack of engagement was her way of handling it?

That aside, I do recommend writing letters and not sending them, after a particularly bad break up I wrote regularly to my XP in a notebook, and in time you can re-read and realise you really are moving on! I think possibly you need to let go of this relationship fully before embarking on another, it could be why the online dating hasn't been great, as you're not actually in the right place for someone else, although my experience with it is also fatigued!

Take care and good luck!

If writing and sending the letter will give you closure, then that's fine. But it doesn't sound like it would. You say that you'll lose your pride if you send it and she doesn't respond, which is very very likely. You're still caught up in what she thinks of you - will she now see me as needy, will I look stalkerish, etc.

And if she does respond, what answer would you possibly accept?

If she writes back with an explanation like CatAmongst's post above (which I think is very good), you won't consider that closure, will you? You'll want to respond - well you might have seen my invitation to stay the night as clingy but actually I was genuinely meaning you could just crash here, as for that gift, I'm just a gift-giving sort of guy, it wasn't like an engagement ring, etc. There's absolutely no point in opening that dialogue.

If she writes back and says "sorry but you were crap in bed", you'll know for sure that she's not a nice person, but will it give you closure? Seriously, what answer could she give, except "I was wrong and haven't stopped thinking about you", that would help? It's a key question, I think.

To be brutally honest - she probably doesn't think of you much at all. Right now she's not thinking of you like she underestimated you, your dignified silence means maybe she was wrong after all...she was relieved that you didn't push it, and now she's moved on. A letter is probably going to make her think 'oh, for God's sake' and then ignore it. But as I say, I can't see what response she could give that would help. So I think, leave it.