Torch carrying. It’s a very descriptive phrase for a very sad state of affairs. Loving someone who no longer loves you or just having a crush on someone who hardly knows you exist.
I spent a few hours with a friend who is at the stage of a break-up where she has finally had to accept that she needs to take positive steps to counteract the confusing signals she is getting, as well as her own desperate need for a man who is so completely bad for her.
It had been five days and however many hours – that’s how badly she was feeling it.
He broke up with her because he said she had got fat. Which, whilst unkind, would be understandable. However, any excess weight was caused by the cancer drugs she was taking. Medicines which had, so far, given her almost five years of remission. She had just six months to go before she could stop taking them.
And, having dealt such a huge blow to both her recovery, as well as her psyche, he then proceeded to be ‘just good friends’ in a way that seemed to include still having sex.
If only he could have had the courage of his convictions and completely broken away for a few months to give her the space to heal the enormous amount of damage he had caused with his ill-chosen, selfish words.
But he just kept coming back and rubbing salt into the wound, keeping it gaping open.
The Catalyst and I remained close friends after our breakup but, in may ways, it would have been better if he had been kind but firm. I viewed his attentions as a sign that he was still interested.
When I flirted, he flirted back. It would have been far easier on me in the long run if he had just removed himself from my life. And yet, in some ways, that isn’t fair. He had been kind but firm in that original conversation. Wanted: friendship; Unrequired: lust.
Maybe he just thought he didnt have to keep repeating it, or maybe things were still quite difficult in his marriage and he liked having the attention. It just made it harder to disentangle myself from him and find someone else.
My friend knows that she must, on no account, contact him. Remove herself from his social sphere and make herself busy on any free days that might coincide with his.
It is the only way to avoid mixed signals from men with whom you have been sexually and emotionally entangled… until the tissues have at least been allowed to form a scar.
Originally posted 2010-07-03 14:00:58. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
I will share that it also happens the other way around. She didn’t have the courage to simply sit and talk, however painful it was. That breakup was the catalyst for a downward spiral about 12 years ago. A harsh one. I remember vividly standing at a street corner, talking on a pay phone to a therapist with a knife in my hand… I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, and it was not HER that was the real reason for it to happen. Lots more baggage at the time than her…But it did happen. I survived and actually credit that period with saving my own life.
Your friend will eventually see that she is much better off…as long as she can gain the right perspective that the breakup was about HIM and what HE wanted…not about anything in HER. And please share with your friend that if an old stray dog like me can survive and move on to better things, it can happen for all of us.
Ron, Thank you so much for sharing this x
I will tell her what you have said and I agree totally – it’s his problem and his issues and nothing to do with her. She just chose a wrong’un on whom to lavish her affections.
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