Hi everyone, It's late where I am right now, and I couldn't sleep, so I'm writing. I wrote a week or so ago about a relationship I was in, which was troubled by dysfunctional behavior. Since writing that, I have ended the relationship. Even though I know it's the right thing to do, I feel so lost. I've been tying loose ends since then, and communications back and forth have been stressed. I don't want to leave things on a bad note, and I'm sure she's reacting the way she is because she's hurt, but the things she says makes me feel like a total jerk. I tried to make our relationship work. I'm from Chicago, and she's in Canada, and she couldn't leave her children, so I went there. I did everything possible to love and care for her and her kids. She had a drinking problem, and I tried to work through that with her. I did all this for almost four years. It just didn't seem like it was enough, so I went back to the U.S. and I'm staying with family now. She wanted to try and keep the relationship going, with promises of how things would be better when I came back. I couldn't make her understand that I had already done all I could, so I just told her it was over. Of course she's upset, and she's making me feel like the bad guy, even though she knows we were struggling before I left. I feel like such a failure. Perhaps I should keep in mind the saying, 'it's better to be alone, than to be with the wrong person'. I had hopes that she was the right person. I just feel like I'm in limbo right now. :icon_sad:
If it's any consolation, the feeling of disorientation will linger for a while. It is so important to remember that the criteria for "success" and "failure" in relationships are fairly subjective and fluid, but one thing is for sure, the failure, such as it is, is in the relationship and not necessarily in the individual persons that form part of the couple. The funny thing about relationships is that you can either not try enough, or you can try too much...the fact is, no amount of trying will ever repair a relationship that just doesn't work, that is not so much a failure as it is an (understandable) illusion. In any case, you learned something about yourself, and that is never a failure. You had hopes, then reality set in. You won't make this mistake again...in that sense you have grown.
Thank you for caring. (*hug*) ---------- Post added 19th Feb 2015 at 01:55 PM ---------- Thank you for this! It really helps to hear something like this to help put things in a better perspective.
