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You need a new ride (bike and otherwise)
What’s the betting that OP will do nothing, end up letting the new boyfriend join her and the group of friends on holiday, and have to watch them being all loved-up for a fortnight?<br />
I’ll happily take that bet because it won’t be happening!
I think honesty is the best approach, I will call her tonight, then drown my sorrows with a nice bottle of red…
thanks for all the opinions folks👍
You had your chance, and it's gone. You've been living in no-mans land, scrabbling around on your knees eating cockroaches.
Get up and leave France.
Love! Send!
as Pilgrim would say 😉
I will call her tonight
I honestly don't think you need to do that – you are friends, she's just got a new partner. It strikes me as a bit odd to be calling her to say 'Despite us being friends, I won't be your friend anymore as you have a boyfriend'. Just let things naturally fall away, accept she never wanted more, and get on with living your life.
But on the other hand I don’t know if I can face being honest with her about ending the friendship
Why does the friendship have to end?
As Joni Mitchell eloquently puts it:
"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone."
OP did you split up with her, or her with you?
I've just had someone (metaphorically) slam the phone down on me and go silent after i mentioned that i was seeing someone.
She's had three different opportunities to actually date me in addition to me asking her twice, she said no, let stay friends.
So we stayed friends (and i had no feelings/intentions beyond that).
Apparently she did.
Will see if there is any further contact, or if she just drops off the first page of my contacts!
Pretty sure the new guy will make it very clear, very quickly, that he’s not happy with her being close friends with her ex!
All you guys making comments like this, are you still teenagers? Unless it was a particularly toxic or unpleasant breakup, there's no real reason to not still be friends with an ex. I mean, i really hope you were friends and had plenty in common before you started bumping uglies? I still have a good number of exes who i have friendships with, some it's a few messages every now and again, others it's a steady dialogue, you know, like you would with a mate.
OP did you split up with her, or her with you?<br />
her with me. <br /><br />
that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”<br />
in fairness I did know what I had when I had it, hence I wanted her back! But it’s a great tune all the same…
her with me.
Ok, in that case this friendship is likely to be toxic, because you've not been honest with yourself, and by extension, her.
I'd bite the bullet, not make a big deal over things, but tell her that it's made you realise that you still have feelings for her, and that's not healthy for either of you, so you're going to give her space with her new relationship and you hope that she'll respect the same boundaries for you.
I wouldn't recommend drowning your sorrows with a bottle of red afterwards, both for the obvious reasons, and because it's likely to impair your judgement if she carries on communication.
In order for something new to come into our lives, we need to make space for it.
That space can feel scary, especially at first.
I wonder how many potential partners have been put off because they've seen you hanging around with this woman?
I'm a big believer in "If it ain't a hell yeah from both, especially at the beginning, then move on to the next."
for the obvious reasons
Drinking too much wine primes the bladder ready for weeing in the new boyfriends shoes?
There is no need to call her and say you still have feelings for her etc. She knows you still hold a candle for her. She’s known ever since she broke up with you.
It’s not a friendship you have with her, it’s you hanging about hoping she’ll changed her mind. That’s a toxic relationship. Now whether this has been for her benefit keeping you as insurance policy OR for your mutual benefit- well that depends on how charitable your being.
Op, time to get on with your life and by the sounds of it, it would better if your ex wasn’t part of it.
Don’t drown your spirits with a bottle of red. Go for a ride to get some endorphins and then fire up Tinder.
What you describe is almost exactly what happened to me nearly 15 years ago. We got together in our early 20's, got a house, had loads of plans but then through various issues, including family deaths and the following grief on both sides, we split up. We rebuilt the friendship and I stayed very close to her family, some of which I considered close friends (which obviously made a clean break difficult) and this drifted on for years, until one day she met someone else.
Emotionally it felt like splitting up again but I had to accept that she had not really done anything wrong (except borrowing money that she never paid back). Pretty much from that point I cut off contact, which she did not resist, and it was the best thing I ever did. Over the years we'd been 'friends' I'd dated but never with much enthusiasm but once properly single I soon got back in to the game, met my wife and now we're very happily married with two children and a great life together! Do it, you'll look back and be glad you did.
Chestrockwell has a good point, make sure and borrow some money off her first....
Emotionally it felt like splitting up again but I had to accept that she had not really done anything wrong<br />
yeah it does feel like that tbh. No idea why as it was always on the cards. I don’t bare her any ill will at all, she hasn’t done anything wrong
And like you I’ve met a few girls over the past couple of years but my heart was really never in it. So I will try to see this as an opportunity to start a fresh new chapter!
What you describe is almost exactly what happened to me nearly 15 years ago.
I think that all of us have been tempted to be orbiters at some point in the past, I know I have.
These days I realise that there's no point in pushing against closed doors.
I don’t bare her any ill will at all, she hasn’t done anything wrong
I have no problem with people remaining friends for whatever reason after a break-up, but I do think that her going on holiday with you is a bit rich on her part.
In my experience, it's perfectly possible to remain friends with an ex, but you first need a clean break in the order of months if not years to first acknowledge and moreover accept that you're no longer partners. You've seemingly not done this, you've been treading water for two years deluding yourself that everything's normal and waiting for her to see you for the studmuffin you are. Aside from anything else that's not fair on you, what other opportunities might you have missed?
As for 'what to do?' I'm with Johndoh here. Why do anything at all? Whatever is going on in your head, she dumped you two years ago. You ringing up in the evening for a "talk" is not going to end positively for either party. You're acting like you need to break up with her when the reality is that there's nothing to break off and an actual friend going "I can't see you any more" is weird and could be interpreted by her to be a little bit creepy. (Giving her the benefit of the doubt that she's oblivious rather than a narcissist who knows full well how you feel and just enjoys the attention.)
I'm blessed to have a number of people in my life who I consider to be very close friends (I know right, I was shocked too). We can go days, weeks, years without seeing each other and when we do get together it's like we've never been apart. I went to a Uni mini-reunion a little back, maybe a dozen guys some of whom hadn't seen each other for a quarter of a century. It was strange and awkward... for about ten minutes, until we got over the notion that we're all variously greyer, balder or wider than we were in the 1990s. That's what friends are, at no point have any of us felt the the need to have a "conversation." If for some reason I didn't want to see one of them for a while I just... wouldn't see them for a while. This is perfectly normal behaviour between adult friends.
I do think that her going on holiday with you is a bit rich on her part.
I assume she is paying for her holiday.
but I do think that her going on holiday with you is a bit rich on her part.
tbf we pretty much did everything together, so much so that a good few of our mutual friends assumed we were still dating. I’d be the one acting as the surrogate boyfriend when it came to pretty much everything, from house hunting, to diy, to driving half way across the country to pick up her new car.
None of which I regret doing, but on reflection it was probably less about wanting ‘me’ to help her, and more about her needing a stand in boyfriend during a not particularly great time in her life (without any of the benefits!)
Drinking too much wine primes the bladder ready for weeing in the new boyfriends shoes?
I've seen this movie before. It's a bad idea because he'll think "I'll just have one, dutch courage" before ringing her, then finally make the call at 2am halfway through a third bottle. 😁
I assume she is paying for her holiday
yep..
I struggle with the idea of staying close friends with an ex. Just seems odd to me.
That's perfectly normal Cougar - for guys. I would like to say "women" in general but the sample size is low so, more specifically, my wife, has different ideas and if she hasn't spoken to someone for sometime they become "less" friends. She says "used to be friends" like friendship has some kind of half life.
I guess it rings true to an extent but there's definite truth in your suggestion that it's
Relationships are tricky at the end as it's always more over for one than the other. It's very rare for no-one to get hurt in the break up. I'd say the OP finds himself in not a bad position as he's at least aware of the situation and has had the pleasure of her company for some time post split and has come to terms with it.
Agree on not bothering with the phone call, it'll do no-one any favours. Just give her some space, her end will sort itself out as she spends more time with the other guy and he won't want any competition.
Because he’s never wanted her as a friend, he was simply waiting and hoping it blossomed into more again. She’s not actually his friend.
Very much this.
Although 40+ years on I still hold a torch for ‘Katie’ from my school days. Took me months to pluck up the courage to ask her out and she knocked me back. She was lovely – what could have been!
A few years ago I matched on Tinder with someone that I hung out with when I was younger, but never got together with because our windows of availability had never really overlapped.
I'd held a candle for her for years.
She was a nice woman, but when I met up with her I realised that there was a reason that we'd not got together.
It’s very rare for no-one to get hurt in the break up.
IME, people just tend to behave badly until a crisis is triggered. My last couple, in retrospect I obviously wasn't making them happy, and so they were acting out. I suspect in both cases we were both happy to go our separate ways.
I've behaved pretty lousily in my younger days too, so I can't judge.
but when I met up with her I realised that there was a reason that we’d not got together.
{Insert gif from The Crying Game here}
yeah it does feel like that tbh. No idea why as it was always on the cards. I don’t bare her any ill will at all, she hasn’t done anything wrong
And like you I’ve met a few girls over the past couple of years but my heart was really never in it. So I will try to see this as an opportunity to start a fresh new chapter!
Honestly mate, after the initial shock it will feel like a relief. In my case, certainly after a while I never really expected to get back together and knew even if we did it would be a disaster but for some reason I kept the friendship going. I never had a conversation with her about not contacting each other as I didn't need to. I stopped ringing and she stopped calling. Don't over think it.
@ad678 very good.
I suppose the real question is, are you wanting to tell her you can't be friends because you don't want to keep her in your life if she moves on, or because you want to get back with her and are hoping she actually feels the same and will come running?
Because they are different conversations. If your real hope here is to say i cant do this in the hope she says "lets get back together", then IMO the best way is to be direct and ask her how she feels??. What have you got to lose? It's probably not going to go how you want but don't regret not trying if it's what you want.
I've had ex's that I think were great and on reflection wish I'd kept in touch with after a few years had passed (didn't feel like that at the time), so maybe just a bit of space is what you both need without ' breaking up'.
Or you could just ask, communicate like an adult, saving the risk of crossed wires, games, anguish and time. Or just leg it. But don't expect her to come running after you and make your life harder.
I suppose the real question is, are you wanting to tell her you can’t be friends because you don’t want to keep her in your life if she moves on, or because you want to get back with her and are hoping she actually feels the same and will come running?
fair point, it’s a bit of both really. I already know the answer to the second one really, however I should have grown a pair and asked her months ago, rather than putting off the inevitable
I guess I’d rather know for sure and then make the break, than always be asking myself ‘what if’.
Yeah I'm with Kramer, an ultimatum isn't fair. But telling her you don't think you've ever really gotten over her so you need space is ok IMO. If she's a friend she'll understand and respect you for it. If she's a friend, she maybe upset, but will not want to hurt you and give you space.
Maybe one day you can be friends again.
Yeah I’m with Kramer, an ultimatum isn’t fair. But telling her you don’t think you’ve ever really gotten over her so you need space is ok IMO.
But that is what he's going to do isnt it? He never said he was giving her an ultimatum.
So Blackflag did you kill her?
He never said he was giving her an ultimatum.
Maybe not an ultimatum, but this:
I guess I’d rather know for sure and then make the break, than always be asking myself ‘what if’.
made it sound like he was ging to ask her if she was still into him rather than just saying he can't handle the friendship at the moment/anymore. I dunno, maybe he does need to ask the question. regret what you've done, not what you haven't I suppose....
Anyway, good luck tpbiker.
Maybe he should ask her for assistance in creating dating profiles and then advice on dates etc. If she is enthusiastic about helping with that then the flame is truly extinguished but there might be a positive outcome in the form of a new partner (or some casual fun along the way).
I guess I’d rather know for sure and then make the break, than always be asking myself ‘what if’.
Mate. You knew for sure two years ago when she sacked you off. There is no "what if" here, you've had two years to if and haven't iffed, she's found someone else, your window for iffing has closed.
Other women are available. Some will even shag you occasionally.
A friendship is likely salvageable here but only if you let go and step back for a while.