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Today, 23 November 2009

Yesterday, 22 November 2009

› SACP attacks Malema

› Meteor 'flash' in Gauteng

› Malema attack 'racist'

› Govt settles with Pikoli

› Will cops play brokers?

Question
I broke up with my boyfriend three-and-a-half months ago. It was a very straining and difficult relationship.

I am partly responsible for the break-up, but whenever I tried to bring up any issues I wanted to discuss, I was told that I was being childish and jealous.

Since then, I have literally been harrassing him, to the extent that he threatened to use an interdict to prevent me from calling him again.

The problem is that I can't get over him. I am still in love with him, and every time I tried to ask for a meeting where we could talk, he made sure that he would pitch with "a friend".

I have given up everything for him, and all I've been to him was a source of mockery. I can't imagine how much he must have laughed at my ridiculous behaviour!

So much hurt and damage have already been caused that I wonder if we will ever be able to have a relationship one day.

What must I do to be able to get back with him, and to have him face me like a grown up, so that we could talk things out?

Answer
> Sometimes, the ability of human hope to survive in the face of every adversity is truly astonishing, and this seems to be an example....

What on earth is keeping this hope alive, keeping you reaching out to him despite every form of rejection? Where does this incredible faith in "talking things out" come from?

I can hear nothing at all in the above story that would support the faintest hope that you'll ever get back together with this man.

Are other people as amazed as me, that you still have not lost hope?

If I'm hearing you correctly, you seem to be saying that one thing which keeps hope alive is sheer desperation. Somehow, you feel that everything you are has become wrapped up in him, which means that without him there is nothing left.

This, in turn, seems to imply that you cannot give up pursuing him - that there is nothing he could say or do that would make you admit that it's over, because then there might be nothing left.

Is that right?

Or, if the two of you could have the kind of discussion you call "adult" and in the course of that he explained why he no longer has feelings for you, are you saying that is what you need to hear before you'll give up hope?

It also seems as though "feeling ridiculous" has left you feeling that you have nothing to lose, that no behaviour (however socially unacceptable or risky) could make things worse.

And since this man has a very poor track record of "talking things out" so far, avoiding communication especially about feelings, it does not seem likely that he will make himself available for such an uncomfortable conversation at this late stage.

Does it? He's rather using silence, distance and his "bodyguard" to speak for him, but the message is pretty clear nonetheless, and isn't likely to change if he could find a way of using words instead.

So much for the way the situation comes across. What if you're wrong?

What if there is some part of you - some personal dignity, strength, character, plan or goal, ability, experience, or relationship - that HAS survived this disaster?

What if it turns out that there is some place you could start again? What's been given up, can be recaptured again, or replaced with something different, in time. We are (sometimes) like starfish; the limb that is lopped off, can grow again, surprisingly often, and while we wait for that to happen, we have other legs we can use to get around (just).

He wasn't responsible for the choice you made to give up so much of yourself, was he?

You were. And you're the one who is responsible now, to make a choice that is consistent with your better judgment. If you could bring the strength of purpose that you are currently pouring into trying to revive the relationship, into a determination to carry on instead, who knows what might happen?

Even if you feel like a fool when you get dumped, that doesn't MAKE you a fool. It doesn't make you ridiculous or an object of pity - you've merely joined a club which has millions of members, many of whom have written to this column to share their pain, I might add.

It's a sad fact of life that while it takes two people to make a relationship, it can take only one to break it up; you might say this present episode is a comma, but if he says it's a full stop - really meaning it - then that's a trump card....

I'm not going to tell you it's time to move on, because you already know that. Maybe what you need most at the moment is someone to stand with you, to help you find a way forward, reasons to go on - and to find that within yourself, and within many relationships, not just in one.

If it's got to the point of threatening legal action, maybe the time to seek some professional counselling has come.

What do you think?