"Spiraling"

Dear Aunt B,

Hi, I'm writing you this email for advice. I've nearly talked all my friends' ears off and don't really feel I can go to them anymore.

It's about a guy. We've been dating since September, but broke up in January when he found out he's going to Afganistan. I didn't want to lead him on to think that I would wait for him. But we've been kind of seeing eachother since then anyway. Well in April, he broke it off with me again, but we had been going back and forth so much that I didn't know if it would last. Then I find out he's married (on myspace no less). He had mentioned something about getting married a couple months back for security reasons while he's over in Afganistan. So I obviously get really upset and tell him I don't want to talk to him ever again. Well I can't stand the thought of not talking to him so we break the silence, but we just start fighting about what he was thinking so we choose to stop talking again. So then I get the bright idea to email his wife, just to have her pass it on to him that I did love him and that I don't want to have any harsh feelings toward either of them. Because, to my knowledge they're just friends that are married for these circumstances. Well she emails me back this really nasty response saying that I have no right to email her and that she merely "tolerates" the women that he dates and all this stuff. So I vow to remove myself from all that drama. But later he texts me saying he wants this to be an impartial breakup and that we shouldn't hate eachother. But how am I not supposed to hate him? Am I wrong? Did I deserve all this? And I know it's my fault for looking, but there are now all kinds of pictures of them kissing on myspace and I'm even wondering if he was cheating on me with her the whole time.

I'm totally lost.

Thanks.

Dear Reader,

I can see why your friends would be tired of hearing about this, I imagine with all these months of going back and forth with this guy it must have been very frustrating for you, and you would have tried to make sense out of it regularly.

Okay, there are a lot of questions I kinda wish I knew the answers too. But regardless of that, i am pretty sure my advice would be the same, given this outline. You have three questions here, and a statement that you need clarified to move on. So I will try and answer them as I see it.

How are you not supposed to hate him – well. This one comes from within you. You have a choice to hate him for the drama, or the choice to forgive and forget the drama and move on. Honestly though, I would cut ties all together now. He is married, it was made clear that the relationship isn’t purely friendship, don’t involve yourself with that. It will make things worse for you, guaranteed.

Are you wrong to hate him – yes and no. It’s not wrong to hate things that have happened, we all get like that. Things don’t *go* our way, and we get mad. It happens. But, to let it eat away at you, that is doing you a grave disservice. What happened has happened, you can’t change it. Move on.

Did you deserve this - what is “this”? I want you to answer that question first. Define *this*. Deserve is a strong word to use regardless of the situation though. Generally speaking, no you didn’t deserve to feel the way you are now, which is lost. No one deserves to feel like that. But often we are lost because we have made choices in the past which when we look back, haven’t made our lives any easier. Looking back, you see that writing to his wife was really not a good idea. You know it was wrong, and you regret it. Regret is much different than deserve, and the sooner you figure that out, the less pain you will find yourself in. You can regret something, learn from it, and move forward. If you stay in the mode of * I deserve to be unhappy because of this*, you will never get back to life. And your life deserves better then that.

And the statement – you wonder if he was cheating on you the whole time. I want you to really think about if you need the answer to this. Would it help you in any way? Does it really matter? I don’t think it would, and you will continue to drive yourself crazy if you keep looking at the MySpace page, and calling and texting, etc etc.

My advice to you, is move on. It will be hard to do because you care about this guy, even through all the ups and downs, you care. You are hurt that he chose to get married and have a relationship that is deemed rather serious, and didn’t hold out for you. There is no shame in that feeling, it is totally acceptable. But now that you know why you are upset, and you know that he is married, you need to move on. You need to take this as a learning experience, as cold as that might sound, and live your life without this guy. Erase the MySpace page. Delete the e-mail. Get rid of all of that. It is behind you, and you do not need to go through it over and over and over. Doing this is what is called “spiraling”, where you keep dwelling and spiraling down into unhappiness because of events that will not change. There is no changing the past, only the future. GO and live your life! Leave this behind you.

You DESERVE better.

~Xmichra.