I Can’t Walk Away, 2

Your probing questions have led to a lot more thoughts… 😆

It feels like I’m abandoning a situation that has potential before I’ve had chance to decide if the potential is there or not. This was my initial response, but I think this only a small part of it. It’s a strong point for me, though, and taps into my need to feel in control.

It is rare for me to have these feelings and sensations in my romantic relationships which makes this situation seem worth something to me. But I can’t work out whether that’s true or if I’m overstating things in the absence of anything else. In my own keenness to share my life with someone.

I feel wistful. I feel I deserve someone who is prepared to take a risk on me. Someone who puts the possibility of us over their own fears of getting hurt or working through the inevitable ups and downs of a new relationship.
I feel frustrated, that it always seems to be so difficult and complicated and, ultimately, unsuccessful for me when (it seems to me) all around me skip happily from one relationship to another. And then I start falling down the “what’s wrong with me” trap.

These feelings are on repeat. They’ve been present and correct in all my recent, vaguely more meaningful relationships. I always feel let down, dishonoured, taken for granted. And I feel exhausted. These unhelpful thoughts are constantly buzzing around in my head, distracting me and pulling me down. It feels so unhelpful of my brain and body to be reacting this way. I cannot solve the problem of “missing life partner” by adopting a particular strategy. I’m reliant on fate which feels ridiculous and unfair, even though that seems to work perfectly well for the rest of humanity!

I think I need closure. I was going to say to this relationship, but it’s more like I need closure to my brains’ reaction to the facts. One problem is that I know he is feeling similarly and that fuels my thoughts about whether I should attempt to rekindle things with him. Actually, having this knowledge that he is also struggling with the situation, is strangely comforting to me and makes me question whether some of my angst when I reached out to Ask a Coach in the first place, was driven by my feelings of rejection, that I wasn’t good enough, or the “right one”, or someone else was better than me.

The facts are that we don’t fit together, and we’ve agreed that. But my insecure, needy self isn’t satisfied with that.

One thing I have realised is that I feel much less tense around the other person I mentioned. I still don’t know what, if anything, is going on there, but I know I don’t want to stop someone else finding happiness with him.

 

 

Answer:

The only issue I see here is the part where you think that just because you’ve made a decision, and you like your reasons for it, you shouldn’t feel any uncomfortable emotions.

What does closure really mean to you? What are your beliefs around it?

What if you just keep letting this be messy and painful and you ask yourself a lot of questions and you compare yourself to other people as long as you need to? Sounds like a great way to process a break up to me. What do you think?