5 months past d-day.
I (w) and XBF (b) are not together. He broke up with me, actually I think he broke up with me 5 times in the last 3 months.. each time more finally than the last. It has been super hard.
With the quarantine, we can’t meet in person. I don’t reach out to him much, but I respond whenever he texts/calls me, which is a few times daily most days.
It seems like the drama between us has finally cooled down. He’s still angry and upset but we’ve learned to talk about tough stuff in shorter sessions instead of marathon talks. He also knows that I won’t freak out when he tells me what he’s really thinking.
I’m much better at listening, hearing what he says. I’ve run on to a couple of mindfulness things that really happen to work for me, and when I start getting triggered, I’m able to realize it and settle myself down so he can say what he needs to.
We are also trying to take some time where we don’t talk about heavy stuff... just talk and keep it light.
Sex and heavy flirting is off the table for now, (his decision) just to create some emotional room, less intensity. I initially objected to that decision but I’m finding it actually is good to lower the intensity level for a while, and I’m fairly sure that it would be easily revived if we work things out.
Every once in a while I send him a love letter, which he seems to like. I don’t ask for a response. I think he needs to know where my heart is.
My feeling is that i owe him some grace, for the injury I did to him. So I’m trying not to get unhinged that he is present one day, and distant another. I read a good piece of advice that “it’s not the day to day ups and downs that matter so much but rather is the overall trend positive and negative.”
Right now, we’re on a positive trend. I feel like he reaches out when he wants to. I’m warmly receptive to that. When he doesn’t reach out, I just try to go on about my life.
When he broke up with me, and I changed my fb status to single... several prior bfs popped up and that was a big speed bump. Even though we are not together, I let him know about them contacting me. That was a point of contention because he felt if those relationships were truly over, why would they pop back up? He felt I must be encouraging that somehow.
I disagreed and felt that because he broke up with me, and I am now single, it was not my fault that the change in status brought people back to check and see..
but right or wrong ... ultimately, I decided that my goal was/is to still put things back together with him, so I told the prior BF’s that I was not going to carry any xbfs as friends forward (I said it nicer than that). I then told xbf that I had closed the door on the possibility of friendship or more with them, just wanting to make sure there was clear air for us to reconnect.
The other part of that is that my xbf now is aware that if we truly can’t work things out, that I won’t be bringing him forward as a xbf-friend either. He was hoping to keep the friendship if we broke up. But, It’s just too much. I can’t bear it. So there’s some fish or cut bait decision coming in the future. But again, I don’t really have to make a decision until spring of 2021 for a job change. He has to decide when he knows.
So even though we are broken up, I feel like things are going much better than they were a couple of months ago.
I am open to the possibility that things may be getting better, but I’m prepared for him to flip flop and run again too. I haven’t decided how long I can do it, cause it does tear me up each time... but so far I’m handling it.. because I love him.