breaking up struggled

[PomPom]

So, i broke with my gf, like a month ago. then we went back together and then she broke up with me 18 days later. it was also very random, like we went on a date but i was a bit late and we had a little fight about it, then she told me that it’s better for me to leave and after a few hours she told me that “i take too much space in her life (i asked her to not cancel out dates and see each other once-twice a week like we used to btw) i need too much of her attention, and i’m also insecure and i want people to pity me.” okay we broke up.
recently she started reaching out to me randomly. like begging me to block her on tiktok so she can’t see my reposts, asking me if i were putting magic spells on her because she can’t believe that she was so sad after our break up. she also told me that she’s going in therapy because she realized that she is avoiding intimacy and connection with people, and that was the core reason of our break up, not my minor insecurities. These texts were giving me a false hope on our future so i blocked her. we talked it out again (she reached out via calling me) and she told me that she’ll stop and that she didn’t text me to get back together.
okay cool, out of sight, out of mind.
here’s the thing though, we have the same friend group. after we broke up i stopped going on hangouts, choosing to spend time with just my bf and her gf (they’re also in this group btw).

and it upsets me, the fact that they all hang out together, have their own jokes already, while i’m choosing isolation for the sake of my sanity and future-moving-forward-from-a-breakup. they still invite me but i don’t want to go if my ex is there, and she’s ALWAYS there. i know it won’t do me any good if i see her. but i’m still upset that i lost all this group. i’m also upset because my ex prioritized THEM over our relationship, even though everyone knows that as soon as another couple in the group breaks up this whole group is prone to death, cause no one except me and my ex will be okay with their friends hanging out with their exes. i don’t know what to do and how to solve this thing.
one of the guys also invited me to his birthday and i don’t want to go there bc my ex is there. (i also didn’t want to go because we’re not so close and i know that he’s been judging me when we were in relationship with my ex) i don’t know what to do. sometimes i wish my friend also didn’t talk to her but i can’t force her, it’s not my choice.

[char]

Hey PomPom, sorry to hear that this has been troubling you it sounds like your hangout spaces has been rather limited now that you've broken up with your ex. I hear your frustration, especially if you find your other friends good company, but they continue to associate with your ex. You're allowed to be upset over this. You're allowed to wish that your other friends were able to see how badly the relationship between the two of you went, and provide you moral support. And of course, you don't have to go to this one guy's birthday if you don't feel like it.

Speaking of the people in your shared friend group, are any of them aware that the two of you have broken up? How did they react to the news? I know that they've been involved in some way or another, based on the conversations we've had in the past year.

[PomPom]

they know, now they don’t try to get too involved in this, so i don’t know most of their opinions. as far as i know a lot of them aren’t surprised and share my opinion that my ex’s messages are weird and that i was right for blocking her.
i don’t talk about it a lot, my friends aren’t interested in all this drama that much and most of our talks doesn’t help me. they think i’ve done everything i could though and it’s not my fault that she broke up with me.

i know i’m allowed to be angry and upset but it doesn’t help much. i’m afraid that if i stop hanging out soon they’ll stop inviting me and i’ll be alone all summer. i also don’t know if i should or shouldn’t go to this guy’s birthday, because he’s also been nice and maybe i’ll enjoy it a little bit, and i’m also afraid to refuse him. i feel like if i refuse him now, explaining it with my ex’s being there i’ll have to turn off all of the birthdays that follow.

[lilikoi]

Hi PomPom!

First of all, this sounds like a pretty isolating experience! I am really sorry to hear that the break up has bled into how you engage with your friends.

As far as attending the birthday party goes, I do not think that rejecting the invite automatically means you will not receive future invitations. You could say directly something like "I think I still need a few more weeks before I feel like comfortable interacting with my ex". That way the reason is clear but there is a timeline on how long it lasts.

If you do decide to go to the party and use it to test the waters of being around your ex, I would come up with some guidelines for yourself about how to interact. Some ideas could be 1) we won't talk about the breakup/relationship, 2) I want to at least ask how they are doing, 3) if we end up alone, I can break the tension by saying "I don't want to make this awkward. I'm happy we can both be here for our friend."

When it comes to the friend group as a whole, are there one or two people you could confide in about the discomfort you've been feeling? Could you ask a few people to hang out without everyone there? I think it's understandable that you and your ex would want some distance without sacrificing your friends. Is there a reason you have not been direct with your friends about your discomfort? Are there other friends or family that you could hang out with while you recover from the break up?

[PomPom]

i guess so, i’m pretty blessed with amount of people around me. but this company is my closest friends, i can fully be myself around those people. i have my best friend, she knows about all my feelings and she cares a lot about me. but she can’t force other friends to hang out without my ex, even though we know each other long before they met her. like we have a national holiday coming up, and we traditionally hang out on this day despite us not liking the holiday itself. before it was just us four, now even though my bf ready to hangout without her girlfriend, my other friend wants to hand out with her bf, and won’t go without him, that means that my ex will come too.
i’m honestly so angry at my ex now, and at this friend too. like why would you be so fucking depended on your dumb ass boyfriend who treats you like shit and he even forbidden you from coming to your other friend’s birthday?
and my ex too, she thinks she can pour her heart out to me in every social media, telling me how miserable she is, how she wants to get back and how she’s sad that she was annoyed when i wanted to meet her. i blocked her. now she also blocked me but this makes me so angry. i feel like she isn’t suffering enough, she can go out with our friends without talking about me, she even tells that she doesn’t mind to see me, even though it’ll be a little awkward.
I’M SICK. i feel like main character from “Mean Girls” who couldn’t stop talking shit about Regina, like word vomit. i feel it too. i want to talk shit about my ex, i want her to be miserable, i fucking wish i could splash her with a sticky sweet drink, right up in her goddamn face. i don’t know how to deal with all of this.
(i also told that guy that i won’t go, because of all this situation with my ex, he was kind and told me that he understands)

[Becky]

Hey PomPom <3

Wow, I'm sorry you're going through this. This sounds very isolating and frustrating.

However, I'm a little worried about the vitriol you have for your ex right now. I know you feel super angry and frustrated right now but I promise wanting her to be miserable and suffer is only going to make yourself feel worse in the long run. What if she never shows signs of feeling as upset as you do and you never get that perceived catharsis? Unfortunately, I think that will be just setting yourself up for failure. You're allowed to feel how you feel but I think it's going to be a lot more productive for you in the long run to find a way to heal from this that doesn't rely on getting any sort of revenge or making her feel as miserable as you do. Your healing needs to be about you, not her.

This honestly sounds like a situation that would be very helpful to talk to a therapist about. That would give you a really constructive space to work through all of this "word vomit" as you put it. Is therapy something you have access to?

I also agree with what lilikoi said. Are any of these friends that you have people that you could hang out with just one-on-one without the whole group and your ex being there?

I want to leave a few articles here for you to look through. Let me know about the therapy and hanging out with your friends one-on-one.

Getting Through a Breakup Without Actually Breaking
To Ditch and Be Ditched: Relationships, Friends, and Finding a Balance

[PomPom]

i know it’s wrong to wish all these things on her, most of the time i’m not that angry.
most of the time i feel like i’m stuck in these thoughts about all this thing, trying to rationalize everything, so upset and empty that i can’t even cry, even tho i wish i could.
i know that it won’t make me happy if she’ll be sad and miserable, but aren’t i’m allowed to be angry? i just don’t get where the line is.
she texted me just a few minutes ago, saying that she finally went to her therapist and that she wants to talk about everything that happened. i agreed, but now i don’t know what to do? what should i say? i know she’ll probably be the one talking, and i know that we definitely won’t get back together but still i’m lost and sad.

[Becky]

You are allowed to be angry! It's not an easy line to find.

I would suggest maybe trying to journal first. Write down EVERYTHING. Everything you would say to your friends, your ex... every angry, ugly thought you've had and just get it out of your head and see how you feel. This might help you sort out what is you just feeling angry and wanting her to feel bad too and what is actually hurting and if there's something that can be addressed.

Then shred it or burn it. This is not something to read to or send to others. It's just for your own processing.

As for talking to her.. do you want to do that? Are there strong benefits for having another conversation with her? i.e. Does that feel like it's going to be helpful for your healing or are there things about the breakup you are still confused about that knowing would help you get closure?

If not or if you think it's still too early or it would just upset you, you absolutely do not have to talk to her. Even if she wants to and even if her therapist said it's a good idea for her-- YOU don't have to talk to her if you don't want to. I know that sounds really harsh but you have to focus on your healing right now. It sounds like she keeps reaching out to you and trying to find ways to contact/talk to you but I haven't heard you say that you want to talk to her.

[PomPom]

Hi, thank you for your replies, in the end i decided to go on this meeting with her. i thought that it will be a good opportunity to finally end this whole thing. i thought that she’s gonna say something like “i’m sorry, i realized that i’ve never loved you, this is our final talk”
silly me.
turns out she wanted to get back together. she talked about her two sessions with therapist, talked about how she thinks that we need to build our boundaries, and that if sometimes she decides to see her friends it doesn’t mean that she loves me less. she talked a lot about her feelings, her fears and all this stuff. i don’t know, it felt like she still didn’t grasp the full extent of the things that went wrong and she’s still having hard time when i confront her about her fuckups. she also was upset that i told her that “you promised that you’ll take me out on a date but in the end i bought my own ticket to the movies” nah, i think that if you’re older and have a job, and you make a PROMISE you should pay. it’s my boundary if you want to think about it that way.
so yeah, i told her that even if i agree on “getting back together” this would mean that we might start talking again, but not date, because i don’t have these feelings, it was almost a month since our breakup, it’s just “let’s see where it goes”.
but i don’t know, something in my gut tells me that this is all a massive bullshit and will hold me down again. but something in me also holds onto this conversation and this opportunity of her “making me hers again”. maybe i’m afraid of letting go.
i’m not gonna act on anything right now, but i want to hear opinions of different people.

[Sofi]

I really do not think it's a good idea to get back together with her or even be friends, to be honest. It's pretty clear at this point you're both just hanging on to an illusion of what you wanted the relationship to be, but it doesn't sound like you even like her as a person, let alone as a partner. I don't see you two as compatible romantically and healing these feelings will be much harder to do if she's still around as a friend. So overall, there don't seem to be many real benefits from being in each other's lives and it seems it's more harmful than anything else.

Just FYI, boundaries are personal limits around what is and is not acceptable for you in your relationship (whether that's romantic, a friendship, etc) in order to preserve your own emotional energy, comfort and safety. What you described is a preference - and an acceptable one! - but not a boundary per se. That said, even if you had used the right term, she shouldn't get mad at you for expressing your feelings. Again, this shows that you two don't really like each other for who you are, and you aren't communicating or understanding each other well.

[PomPom]

maybe you’re right. but i just wanted to ask, a few times people told me that they don’t think that i liked her at all/didn’t want to invest into this relationship, what made you think that?
maybe i was harsh in some of my posts after our break up, but after i did what you advised - wrote down everything i realized that most of it isn’t anger, but sadness.
i thought that love meant that you’re ready to be there for your partner, ready to choose them everyday? that when you’re with your loved one you feel calm and “at home”? and you want your partner to get better if you see that they’re struggling?