My most difficult relationship pt.4
The aftermath and things I learned
Part 3:
Phew, it felt like I was reading through chat logs for an eternity. I’m glad that’s finally over. I’m not going to worry too much about the chronological ordering of things at this point.
What happened in the following months
I was sad. Young Jin and I had a piano/keyboard in the apartment, so I started learning “To Let a Good Thing Die” and “Places We Won’t Walk” by Bruno Major. Wow how romantic. Okay first of all, it definitely was not a good thing, but I didn’t feel that way when we broke up. In fact, it took a few therapy sessions for me to realize that it was a terrible thing. I didn’t really talk to anyone about what had happened during the relationship because I was still trying to respect what she said about not telling people about our issues. I guess I was trying to also preserve her image?
I tried dating again too soon. I went on a few dates with people I met on Hinge. I started a relationship with an old friend that didn’t last very long. Throughout all that, I still wasn’t honest about what I wanted from them, not that it was sinister or anything. I was just so concerned about saying what I thought they wanted to hear that I couldn’t really be honest. That’s the anxious trait that was probably exacerbated by the relationship with T, and I didn’t take the time to unlearn that before trying to date again.
I felt like a failure. Every break up felt like I had failed. When I was blamed for every fight, every little thing, I felt like a ginormous fuck up. I tried to avoid that feeling again, but I didn’t realize that giving up who I was would leave me in relationship where I felt like I couldn’t be myself. I remember blaming myself so much that one time my friend called me a good person and I said please don’t call me that.
I felt so much guilt. I had learned so much about empathy and communication that I started thinking back to other previous relationships and picking out things that I did that were examples of very poor communication. I had trouble expressing my frustration in a healthy way, and that would lead me to lash out. I had a hard time apologizing, and even when I tried to I would do a kind of non-apology. I had to be right in arguments, and I would fight about little details. I felt so bad that my previous partners had to deal with that, and I wanted to apologize to them. I mean I still do want to, but at this point it feels so far away and it might be weird to bring it up. I remember texting my first serious partner about it, and she said you can apologize next time we see each other, but we haven’t really talked since.
One of the best things that came in the following months was that I deepened some relationships with friends. Another friend had also just gone through a pretty bad relationship, so we became even better buddies talking through all the emotions we were feeling and all the new communication skills we had learned from trying to better communicate with our aggro partners. I think he tried to give things another shot, unfortunately. It didn’t work out again, and he’s grown a lot. Sometimes I’ll tell him that maybe everything I went through was worth it in order to have learned so much. To which he’ll respond with something like, “it’s great that you learned a lot, but I wish you didn’t have to go through all of that to do so.”
My learning resources
I continued reading books and listening to podcasts on trauma, emotions, and communication. Here’s a list of content I remember consumer during the relationship and after:
Therapist Uncensored Podcast - for attachment theory
Where Should We Begin? Podcast by Esther Perel - anonymized couples therapy sessions. Maybe if I could see what other couples go through, I could be prepared for what T might be mad at me for
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker - I think this was recommended in one of the podcasts
From this I learned about fight, flight, freeze, or fawn as stress responses.
The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk - also recommended on a podcast
Learned about how the body stores trauma, sometimes as certain compounds in blood? I don’t remember much. A good reminder that sometimes you just need a good scream to process some pent up emotions.
Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski - looked into this when I was thinking about differences in our sex drive
Learned about accelerators and decelerators for factors into libido
Why Won't You Apologize? by Harriet Lerner - cause T said I sucked at comforting her
Learned about what made a good apology and what made a non-apology
Feeling Great by David Burns - recommended from Cognitive Behavioral Therapist
Feeling Good Together by David Burns - recommended from Cognitive Behavioral Therapist when I told her that most of my anxiety was from my fights with T
Restarting Therapy
Shoutout to Dr. Ryan A. Cheperka. I began therapy again around February of 2022. I forgot to mention that you can “graduate” from cognitive behavioral therapy if your therapist feels that you’ve acquired the skills to handle the situations on your own. I stopped seeing the cognitive behavioral therapist around August 2021. I was curious about what more traditional gestalt therapy would be like, so I went through Modern Health again to find a new therapist. I worked with Dr. Ryan until I left for New York in September of 2023.
I think at the time of restarting therapy, I was starting to feel like my relationship with T wasn’t very healthy and that’s what I wanted to start talking about. I can’t remember how many of the conversations went. I remember crying in a few sessions over the year and a half that I met with Dr. Ryan. Sometimes me crying would take up most our hour together. Since I would sometimes take the meetings in a phone booth in the office, I’d have to run out for a second to grab some tissues from a nearby desk. The thing that sucked about therapy is it’s expensive, otherwise I’d meet multiple times a week. There’s so much to talk about. I struggled to find a balance between talking about serious things that happened farther in the past and things that happened since the last meeting. Dr. Ryan would help me see connections in it all.
The thing I liked about meeting with Dr. Ryan is that she would make me pause and sit with my emotions when I was describing what seemed to be an emotional event. When I first started meeting with her, I would talk about what happened to me and try to explain why I felt what I felt during the event. That’s called intellectualizing your emotions and it helps me distance myself from my emotions so I don’t actually have to feel them. I think that was a skill taught to me by cognitive behavioral therapy. Dr. Ryan would frequently ask me what I felt at the very moment as I was talking about whatever. She also helped teach me about the purpose of emotions, which can also be learned by watching Inside Out. I learned that I had a lot of pent up sadness and that sadness is a way for me to process grief. I should sit in my own sadness, but it’s also okay for me to take a break from it if it feels too intense.
At the start, it was hard to talk about myself so much. I’ve never had this kind of relationship with another person, one where they’re supposed to be there and listen to you and it wasn’t reciprocal. I mean I’d still ask her how she was doing when we met, but she’d reply with a short answer and then I would just go into what I was thinking about. If I wasn’t thinking about much during the day, I would talk about what I was thinking about during the two weeks since we last met. I felt like there was always something for me to talk about. I would just talk and talk and talk. Every once in a while, she would ask me what I was feeling.
I thought I was pretty vulnerable during our sessions. I mean it’s probably the easiest place to be vulnerable. This person doesn’t know anyone you’re talking about, and you have a confidentiality agreement except when you’re going to harm yourself or someone else. I think that I wasn’t completely vulnerable with her, like there are things I wouldn’t talk about because I was so ashamed of it. But I was vulnerable enough to get a lot of value out of therapy. I think it’s kinda wild to me that some people don’t think they have anything to talk about in therapy. Looking at you, Mom. It helped me realize that so much happens every day. Maybe it’s just my brain being addicted to pain and thinking too much about things.
I haven’t found a therapist since moving to New York because I felt like I wouldn’t get the most benefit from it since my life isn’t in crisis. I asked Dr. Ryan about group therapy since I felt like it’d be good for me to continue working on empathy, and there’s a lot of value in hearing about what other people are going through. Writing has been pretty therapeutic, but of course I can’t be as vulnerable.
Things get better, but the experience is always with me
This relationship with T really affected the way I view romance and relationships. I’ll probably write about this more in later posts, but this should wrap up the bulk of what happened with her/because of her. Thanks for reading. This experience was probably the greatest source of development in emotional intelligence for me.