Desperately seeking redemption
Dear Counsellor,I find myself in a desperate situation which has affected me emotionally for the past eight months. My girlfriend of two years broke up with me last year and cut me off like I never existed. She even went as far as to change her number. I am at a loss, and to this day I am yet to come to terms with it.
It has affected my health in that I hardly sleep at night. I hardly eat and I don’t have any emotion to love or fall for anyone else. She was my best friend and we had a disagreement and I said some things. I may have taken things a bit too far by also talking to her mom and telling her mom what had been happening.
From then it was downhill fast. I tried everything to get her to talk things over but nothing worked. The sad truth is I love her and still care for her because we were like a closely knit family and I know her family and she knows mine.
Help me to understand what’s happening and how I can regain her trust — even to call me to talk even if we never get back together. It’s driving me crazy and I think she also needs someone mature to talk to her to show her that what she is doing is wrong.
It is truly a painful experience when you are trying to get through to someone and they shun you. It causes much frustration and distress and as you indicated, you have had many sleepless nights.
The question is, is it that your girlfriend is saying that you deserve what is coming at you? That you caused her much emotional hurt and this is her way of paying you back for the pain you put her through? You did not say what you might have done or said to prompt such a drastic reaction from her.
Surely she would not just get up one morning and decide that she wanted out and left. Obviously, she reacted to the “some things” you said, but was this a culmination of those “things” and she had enough and decided to walk away from the relationship? Was it a case of enough is enough?
When someone has gone as far as to change their number and in other instances block you on social media, they are in fact sending a decisive message that you can’t ignore. They obviously don’t want to see you or hear from you and so any effort at trying to reach out to them is only going to make matters worse. Communicating with her mother was a desperate move on your part and understandably you were hoping that she could advocate on your behalf. It does not appear as if this strategy worked in your favour.
It is always best that when a relationship is terminated there is definite closure and both partners can walk away with a sense of dignity. In your case it seems that as far as your girlfriend is concerned, she has put a closure lid on the relationship but you have not and so you are anxiously waiting for her to “light a candle, sing a sankey and find her way back home”. The truth is, like Bob Marley, you may be waiting in vain.
It would be in your best interest to stop pursuing her as this is only going to drive her further away from you. Sometimes in life things happen and we will not get the answers to the questions we pose and so we just have to leave them be and maybe sometime in the future we just may get the response we needed.
Do you think she is half as concerned and worried as you are? Chances are she is not, so as difficult as it may be to accept the reality of the situation, the sooner you let go the better it will for you to move on.
She may or may not return but if she does it has to be at her pace and time. No amount of pressure is going to make it happen. And if she does come back, a long, serious discourse must take place before the relationship resumes. No doubt resentment on your part would have to be dealt with for any semblance of progress to be made.
In the meanwhile, take the time to analyse and assess your contribution to the break up of the relationship so that you don’t make the same mistakes again and say “some things” that may have caused your girlfriend to flee.
Wayne Powell is a relationship counsellor. Write to agapemft@gmail.com. Check his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/MFTCounselor/.
