Extreme Relationship Conflict: I love him but I hate this.

[blueberry]

I'm starting to realize that I'm placing myself in a very isolated and scary situation. This post is about the person I am now living with again - my first extremely serious on and off relationship. FYI - by living with him I'm a fish out of water in a small town where I don't know anybody but him. For all the time Ive spent here with him, I've felt very amotivated and unhappy. I feel like it doesn't matter what I do here because I can't make a positive difference. Even though I've chosen to live here because I love this guy, my unhappiness and his contrasting contentment from living here has always been a huge source of conflict that would ultimately drive us apart.

In the past, when our relationship is healthy, we've been extraordinary at unintentionally reading one another's minds and sharing our thoughts. When this is the case, we have a utopian dynamic between us that makes the decision to be together effortless - because it feels right. At other times, (sadly most of the time when we're together for extended periods of time), our interactions are strained and very disconnected. I think this is due to the fact that if we aren't on a supreme and effortless level with each other, I'm inclined to want to do something else with my life, regardless of how much I love him and relate to him when we're in that shared state. It's very Jekyll and Hyde like.

I had left him and moved back to my home state after unsuccessfully living with him for over a year. Our relationship was incredibly isolating since I had moved to be with him and our egos refused to cooperate through the entire struggle. I felt like my life was over. It got ugly. Neither of us wanted to admit that we had failed because we had invested so much of ourselves into our dream ideal of being together.

So I left. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do because of the strength of my denial and resistance to what was happening. I guess I was trying to go down with the sinking ship of my broken dreams since I was the captain.

I began a new and brave life and found myself surrounded by new friends and opportunities. It was astounding how all of it had just fallen into my lap when I needed it the most. Even though I had come from a ridiculously broken past of my relationship gone wrong and an unmentionable childhood, somehow I felt I was finally going places. Gaining experiences. Learning what it was that I really wanted to do.

I became independent for myself for the first time ever in my life. I started to feel healthy and even though neither my life nor I was perfect, it was okay and I had faith that things were going as they should be. Being myself with other people was effortless - because I was being true to myself.

Although I had resisted the urge to curl back up to my old love like a yoyo on a string.... as time progressed, I allowed myself to talk to him again and with both of us on not only our best behavior - but enabled with the growth and insight we had gained from being apart, we magnetically rejoined to share ourselves with each other. My ex convinced me that we would know what to do with ourselves and be reassured of our invincibility at this point if we could just see each other and spend some time together in person.

While I was spending time with him, we acted without inhibition in response to our feelings and seeing each other again ultimately brought us back together.

The first handful of days together were great but towards the end of my stay with him, I kept looking forward to going back home to my independent life. Once I had left however, the conflict between my two lives was immediately apparent. No matter which direction I leaned - towards my friends at home and the plans I had made to live my life there or back to my old boyfriend - I was in conflict. I was scared of both options and I was scared to put all my eggs in one basket. I had proved that I could be happy and learn to live life without my old love and I feared that if I got back with him, the same thing as before would happen. The reason I ultimately chose to be with him again was because I was scared of what would happen if I let him go. The entire time he was persuading me as well and I felt weakened to make my own choices because we were both telling me that I couldn't trust myself.

I started isolating myself from all of my friends back home before I left and I even went and split financially on a car with him. Everybody around me noticed that I was going crazy but I didn't want to be helped by anybody. I burned my bridges.

I've told my boyfriend about all of these feelings and he tells me the reason that I look at my old life in the romantic and wishful way that I do is because it's the ultimate opportunity to distract myself with a lifestyle that will never serve me.

I feel like I've just been sitting here convincing myself of one thing or another. The bottom line is that I don't trust myself and I'm perceiving reality with an agenda. One way I know this is that I've cut off contact with everybody from my old life. I don't want to be judged or have to feel like I'm lying about what I'm doing with my life.

I miss myself. My real self. I've been driving myself crazy since moving back here and while I feel like it was a mistake the way I came to the decision to, I don't even know how I want to feel about the fact that I'm here. I should probably be medicated or at least in therapy but I've been living in poverty for years now.

I'm only 19. This guy is 23 and he has his whole life figured out. Just the other day he said something along the lines of how with life he wants to find just one channel that's playing and just watch it. I am anything but that statement. I ambitiously want to explore and be free and know everything I can through direct experience. He believes he has everything figured out for himself and perhaps his right. He has enormous potential but his apathy can be very strong when it comes down to reasoning his way into settling in life. He almost even rationalized killing himself while I was gone after I had left him. And he could again, I'm sure.

*sigh* At this point after having written so much, I'm not even sure of the coherence of my tale any more but as you can tell the main point is that I'm very unsure and I suspect that I'm living in extreme denial. But there's denial of even the denial! I feel like I won't allow myself to know what's really true for myself because I'm scared of what I'll find.

any questions or responses are all welcome.

[m0vingon]

I think it's interesting and somewhat ironic that you say that you don't know what you want- yet you so clearly do. You express it in great detail and very eloquently in your post. Don't doubt yourself or your inner voice. Being conflicted doesn't mean you don't know what you want, it means that you want 2 things that can't exist conjointly.

What I'm hearing in your post is that the essence of you -who you are, what you need, and what you want to do that is fulfilling- cannot exist within the confines of your current situation. You express that very well. The trick is to determine if there's any way that you can create a reality that contains both you living your life to it's greatest potential and maintaining this relationship. How might you go about creating that?

Only you have answers. The only way you'll find the right answers is to trust and listen to yourself.

[jaamkie]

Originally Posted by blueberry

I'm starting to realize that I'm placing myself in a very isolated and scary situation. This post is about the person I am now living with again - my first extremely serious on and off relationship. FYI - by living with him I'm a fish out of water in a small town where I don't know anybody but him. For all the time Ive spent here with him, I've felt very amotivated and unhappy. I feel like it doesn't matter what I do here because I can't make a positive difference. Even though I've chosen to live here because I love this guy, my unhappiness and his contrasting contentment from living here has always been a huge source of conflict that would ultimately drive us apart.

In the past, when our relationship is healthy, we've been extraordinary at unintentionally reading one another's minds and sharing our thoughts. When this is the case, we have a utopian dynamic between us that makes the decision to be together effortless - because it feels right. At other times, (sadly most of the time when we're together for extended periods of time), our interactions are strained and very disconnected. I think this is due to the fact that if we aren't on a supreme and effortless level with each other, I'm inclined to want to do something else with my life, regardless of how much I love him and relate to him when we're in that shared state. It's very Jekyll and Hyde like.

I had left him and moved back to my home state after unsuccessfully living with him for over a year. Our relationship was incredibly isolating since I had moved to be with him and our egos refused to cooperate through the entire struggle. I felt like my life was over. It got ugly. Neither of us wanted to admit that we had failed because we had invested so much of ourselves into our dream ideal of being together.

So I left. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do because of the strength of my denial and resistance to what was happening. I guess I was trying to go down with the sinking ship of my broken dreams since I was the captain.

I began a new and brave life and found myself surrounded by new friends and opportunities. It was astounding how all of it had just fallen into my lap when I needed it the most. Even though I had come from a ridiculously broken past of my relationship gone wrong and an unmentionable childhood, somehow I felt I was finally going places. Gaining experiences. Learning what it was that I really wanted to do.

I became independent for myself for the first time ever in my life. I started to feel healthy and even though neither my life nor I was perfect, it was okay and I had faith that things were going as they should be. Being myself with other people was effortless - because I was being true to myself.

Although I had resisted the urge to curl back up to my old love like a yoyo on a string.... as time progressed, I allowed myself to talk to him again and with both of us on not only our best behavior - but enabled with the growth and insight we had gained from being apart, we magnetically rejoined to share ourselves with each other. My ex convinced me that we would know what to do with ourselves and be reassured of our invincibility at this point if we could just see each other and spend some time together in person.

While I was spending time with him, we acted without inhibition in response to our feelings and seeing each other again ultimately brought us back together.

The first handful of days together were great but towards the end of my stay with him, I kept looking forward to going back home to my independent life. Once I had left however, the conflict between my two lives was immediately apparent. No matter which direction I leaned - towards my friends at home and the plans I had made to live my life there or back to my old boyfriend - I was in conflict. I was scared of both options and I was scared to put all my eggs in one basket. I had proved that I could be happy and learn to live life without my old love and I feared that if I got back with him, the same thing as before would happen. The reason I ultimately chose to be with him again was because I was scared of what would happen if I let him go. The entire time he was persuading me as well and I felt weakened to make my own choices because we were both telling me that I couldn't trust myself.

I started isolating myself from all of my friends back home before I left and I even went and split financially on a car with him. Everybody around me noticed that I was going crazy but I didn't want to be helped by anybody. I burned my bridges.

I've told my boyfriend about all of these feelings and he tells me the reason that I look at my old life in the romantic and wishful way that I do is because it's the ultimate opportunity to distract myself with a lifestyle that will never serve me.

I feel like I've just been sitting here convincing myself of one thing or another. The bottom line is that I don't trust myself and I'm perceiving reality with an agenda. One way I know this is that I've cut off contact with everybody from my old life. I don't want to be judged or have to feel like I'm lying about what I'm doing with my life.

I miss myself. My real self. I've been driving myself crazy since moving back here and while I feel like it was a mistake the way I came to the decision to, I don't even know how I want to feel about the fact that I'm here. I should probably be medicated or at least in therapy but I've been living in poverty for years now.

I'm only 19. This guy is 23 and he has his whole life figured out. Just the other day he said something along the lines of how with life he wants to find just one channel that's playing and just watch it. I am anything but that statement. I ambitiously want to explore and be free and know everything I can through direct experience. He believes he has everything figured out for himself and perhaps his right. He has enormous potential but his apathy can be very strong when it comes down to reasoning his way into settling in life. He almost even rationalized killing himself while I was gone after I had left him. And he could again, I'm sure.

*sigh* At this point after having written so much, I'm not even sure of the coherence of my tale any more but as you can tell the main point is that I'm very unsure and I suspect that I'm living in extreme denial. But there's denial of even the denial! I feel like I won't allow myself to know what's really true for myself because I'm scared of what I'll find.

any questions or responses are all welcome.

hey,
wow that is quite a story... all by 19... I have to say I doubt the fact that he really has everything figured out at 23- he might think he does now, but I doubt that the rest of his life will really be on a single channel without some sort of growth/evolution, even if there are no radical changes... actually, I doubt that there never will be radical changes- people who are closed and set on what they want tend to reach a breaking point before changing course... probably being open to change ultimately results in less disruption from it...

I sympathize a lot with wanting to grow and explore but at the same time feeling like you've found this great person and don't know if you'll find someone like that again; also with making a choice and feeling stuck with it even as you still haven't internally committed to your choice (feeling the same way right now, though about a much more trivial decision; and currently avoiding another decision to try to avoid going back-and-forth and looking stupid and creating a lot of turmoil)- I would only say that you really have nothing to fear in your life and you are responsible only to yourself and there will always be love and connections in the world for you even if you walk away from both this boyfriend and from your old friends. Also, try to value your current life as an experience- try to experience it deeply, passionately, see it for what it is rather than for what it isn't- whether you choose to leave it or stay with it, at least you will have lived, learned, experienced something.

It sounds like your choices thus far have been made from competing fears... in my experience anyway that doesn't tend to be the best way to make choices. I would suggest that you commit to yourself to making choices during your best most hopeful clear-headed loving fearless moments and try to avoid making choices, changes, commitments when you are acting out of fears and due to outside pursuasion. Also, don't worry so much about what people will think of your choices or of changing your mind- of course you impact those around you, but ultimately if you are living an unhappy life that will be a much more negative impact on those you love than anything else you could do. In the future just try to admit to uncertainty and don't publicize/act on a choice until you are feeling sure about it (sure in some way, maybe sometimes it's sure in a jumping-out-of-the-plane sort of way where you don't know what you're getting into and are incredibly scared, but you're sure that you want the experience enough to jump anyway)... is there any particular dream/goal that you aren't accomplishing while you're living where you are that maybe you could find a way to work towards even without leaving your bf entirely?

[Steve Pavlina]

What do you love about him?

[introspective1]

whats more important to you--living in your home state around your friends and family ? Or living in another town you hate and trying to make this relationship work? do you think you can stand this guy for the rest of your lives?

[JimOfferman]

The others have said some really sensible things already, but I just have to ask you about this part:

Originally Posted by blueberry

Our relationship was incredibly isolating since I had moved to be with him

Why was it isolating to be with him? Did he lock you up in the house, so you couldn't go out? (Hope not) Were there no other people in the town he lives in? No internet? No phone? Nothing?

Or was it because you chose to give all your attention to him and this relationship, neglecting yourself in the process?

Whether you stay with this guy or move on to meet another love, you have to realize that you shouldn't be in a relationship that makes you unhappy, just for your partner's benefit. Even if you do love him.

[Amatrine]

This is my experience. When I was your age, I went though the same thing with a guy. we were off and on, I moved away to another to state to find myself and start over. Two years later I move back, and just agev him a call.
We ended up back together. It was nice for a while, but I soon realized why I left in the first place. We were on different paths. While I was with him in the beginning, we were in the same place, but I moved passed that and he was happy to stay where he was. My experience tells me that it does not work to go back. You left for a reason. You may still love him. In fact I have been married for 11 years, but I am still freinds with my old love . I will always love him, just not in Love with him. Old saying but true. Go with your intuition.
Are you cunfusing loving someone with being in love? Is this a person who you feel that when you are with him you will grow together in this journey we call life ? I get the feeling from your posts, that that is not the case, and that when you are together a while, it surpresses you . In the future this will casue regret, and blame. My suggestion is to continue to find your seld, and grow, and see where it takes you. At sometime you will find a person who is on a similar journey, and the joys of growing and learning together, are the real deal

Ama