January 4, 2013

• Why is it So Difficult to Let Go?

  
  This post was submitted by Amelie.
  
  I have been with this guy for almost 3 years, and we have always been in a long-distance relationship. He is from Canada, I am from Colombia and we met in the US. When we met I instantly felt something very different for the guy. We had very intense days together and then he left. We kept talking and texting all the time and he would be very sweet with me. When I was dating other people, I always had him on my mind; I could never really forget about him.

  We had stretches of time where we wouldn't talk and I just missed him very much. But he wouldn't come to see me again (I was not able to go to him due to visa issues). So I decided it was time to move on and stop waiting for him. When I tried to break off communication he wouldn't let me; he promised he would come and asked me not to leave him. Finally, one year after we first met, he came back to see me. It was so exciting and those days were amazing. He told me that he loved me and I told him the same. 

  It may seem a little premature but considering that we talked to each other all the time over the phone and Skype and that we texted often, we felt very connected. When he left again I felt devastated but then we met one month later. He took me to Vegas! The trip was a disaster, however. We fought a lot because all he wanted was to sleep and relax and I just wanted to party so I ended up hanging out by myself. After the trip it was like everything felt apart.

  he would ignore all my attempts to fix things and I ended up asking for one month off. The deal was if he missed me after the month, he could contact me again. If he didn't then I would understand. The month passed and he didn't call... it broke my heart but I tried to get over it by meeting other people and traveling around. After another month, he messaged me to tell me that he loved me so much and I never gave a damn.

  I felt really bad because I did love the guy so I reached out to him. We talked and fixed things. He said he never contacted me before because he was really mad at me for asking time off.

  After we were talking again, things were never really the same. We fought over trivial things. He was rude to me which didn't mesh with my strong character, meaning the fights were rough. I was getting very hurt and tired of the situation and met another guy that treated me like a princess. When guy number 1 took a three week trip and I didn’t hear from him even once, I decided to give guy 2 a chance. We dated for one month, but he was a foreigner. When he went back to his country, I ended up alone again.

  I had an amazing time with guy number 2; he was the sweetest of all! But in the back of my mind, guy 1 occupied my thoughts and it hurt so much that he wouldn't contact me during his trip. When he came back I decided to end it and I told him about the guy I met. I wasn't expecting a reaction like his. He started to cry and told me that he always loved me so much and gave up so many chances to hook up with other people for me.

  Even though we never said we were official, we always said that we loved each other and that we didn't want to see other people. Sometimes I did see other people but I could never feel something for someone else.

  After what happened with guy number 2, I felt like crap and we didn't talk for one week. I couldn't resist it and texted him telling him that I missed him. We talked again and he said that he loved me. He knew he had screwed up and he was going to change and be the best guy for me. He really changed; he was very kind and sweet! He came to see me again and we made plans for the future. I was about to come back to my country and he was going to come and visit me as soon as possible.

  He was going to help me to go to his country and we were just so in love. I left for a three month backpacking trip alone and sometimes it was difficult to be by myself, but he was always there on the phone being very supportive. We had a few fights but we would always make up. I came back to my country and he came to see me right away and stayed for one month. We celebrated my birthday and traveled around. Since I was broke after my trip, he paid for everything.

  One night we were at Hooters with one of his friends, when the waitress comes over. He was staring at her boobs like a pig and I got mad at him! He asked me to leave the restaurant! I got so mad that I just went back to the hotel and packed my bags and left to catch the first bus back to my city, but when I was half-way there, I felt bad leaving him alone in my country. He doesn't even speak the language. I went back to the hotel and waited for him.

  He came back very late and he was very drunk. His behavior was really lame. The next day we talked, he apologized and I asked him to never do that to me again. If I am mad just let me be mad and then calm down... do not make it worse. But then the next week disaster came. I saw something suspicious on a Facebook message from a girl and when he was not around, I read his Facebook messages. What I discovered was something that still I cannot get over.

  He had a girlfriend the first year after we met when we were always in contact and he would be so sweet and nice to me. During the three week trip when he disappeared, he hooked up with a girl that was a whore before. And I learned about other girls he kissed and hooked up with. It was terrible.

  I also dated other guys but it was horrible to know that he did, too.  After I confronted him he cried and begged me not to leave him. He said that he loved me. That the other girls were back-ups but that they never meant anything. He said he was scared of falling in love with me because he was hurt in the past. The pain that I felt back on those days is something that I can’t describe. Only someone that has gone through the same would be able to understand.

  Since we had 10 more days booked to keep traveling, I didn't want to call off the trip. On some level I felt guilty because I also dated other people, but those were the hardest days of my life. I also thought about the good things that he did for me and I didn't understand how someone could do that. I never understood his feelings. After a few days, we started to talk again and tried to be friendlier, but it was so difficult to be close to him.

  When the end of his trip came, he asked me to be his official girlfriend and give him a chance to make it up for me. He promised me the Earth and I felt guilty and also had strong feelings for him so I said yes.

  The process after that was very difficult. Every time he was out I became so paranoid. I also had the chance to check his email and found many messages from the ex girlfriend he had when we met. He seemed so in love with her, all the love messages were so pretty that it was hard to believe that he was forcing himself to love her like he told me. His argument was that she was so nice to him that he just wanted to love her, but that he never could.

  Reading his emails, I also found out that the night he kicked me out of the restaurant he went with his friend to a strip club. I felt so humiliated. I felt like I couldn't live with so much pain anymore, but somehow he managed to convince me that he was going to change and be the best guy for me.

  I gave him another chance. I decided to see this as a reset of the relationship. I was not going to see more people and I was going to expect the best out of us. I just loved the guy so much. We worked it out for a couple of months. He came to see me again and spent another month with me. We traveled more around and didn't fight at all. He paid for everything again and gave me very expensive gifts. We had the best month together and made more plans for the future.

  He helped me to apply for my visa to go with him but I was denied. He promised to be back in few months and after a while, he was gonna be able to live in the same place I was. But somehow things started to slow down. We grew apart, we were fighting a lot over small things again like messages that he wouldn't reply to or other small things. He was not being sweet with me anymore. However, he would always help me out with money since I am broke and unemployed.

  We had many days where we wouldn't talk; things just weren't right. I tried to talk to him about it many times but did not succeed. He said that he was stressed from work and that our fights were adding to his stress. One night he was so mean that I told him I did not want to be in the relationship anymore. I was so mad at him but when I calmed down, I realized that I didn't want it to end like this. We were three months away from finally moving in together.

  I reached out for him and we talked and cried over the phone. We decided that we loved each other too much and were going to try to fix it. But one week later we fought again over a stupid message that I sent telling him how much I loved him, which he didn't reply to (it was the 3rd one). He said that I should shut up and grow up. It was so hurtful that I told him I don’t want to talk to him anymore.

  It has been three weeks that we've been apart and it's killing me. He says that it was my fault because I was always mad at him, that he is very stressed from work. That he didn’t have time to give me more attention and he is emotionally tired of the roller coaster that we were having. It is like he just fell out of love with me. Or maybe he never really loved me.

  This relationship has had so many ups and downs that I can’t see clearly. What I know now is that it hurts so much to be apart from him. So many memories of our trips. So many plans for the future. He was moving with me so soon and we were going to travel the world together. It is so hard to just give that up

  I don’t know if the guy is good for me or not. I don’t know if I should just let go and move on or stay and fight for this. It hurts me so much that I had to endure a lot of pain for so long to fix our relationship and start all over to end up like this.

  Why is it so hard to let go? How to know when it is worth the fight or when you just need to move on?

  • 8:30 pm
  • 18 Comments