How do I get over someone I have to see all the time?

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PussNBoots

New member
So I've recently broken up with my first girlfriend, who was in a poly relationship with both me and my roommate (full story is at http://www.polyamory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25186). This morning, I woke up and was getting ready to leave for work, and she was there having breakfast. My roommate had already left for work at that point. Since she and him are still together, I still end up seeing her several times a week. Normally if she's there at the same time I am in the morning we would have a kiss goodbye before leaving for work, but not this time! Every time I see her I'm reminded of little things like that which can no longer be since we're no longer together any more. :(

This is turning out to be quite difficult! Anyone have any advice on what I should do? How do I get over the breakup when I still have to see her frequently?
 
Gut reaction: it's your residence too. You should have some say in how much time she spends there, especially drawing a line about her being there when the roommate is NOT. Roommate should be able to go to her place instead and have her not come over at all for a while (a month?), in order to give you some space to work through your emotions.

It's not too much to ask for them to have a little consideration of you, though from the other thread it doesn't sound like that's a strong suit for either of them.
 
I think that's another dimension that makes this so hard. I don't want to send her away. This would be much easier if I did, but I don't. I still miss her.

Some friends have suggested I start dating somebody else, and they may be right. That might be what it will take before I can finally move on.
 
Well of course you don't WANT to, but sometimes as an adult you have to do what's good for yourself and others even if you don't want to.

Be careful about your friends' idea. There's a reason "rebound" relationships have such a negative stereotype, and it's really not fair to a fellow human being with emotions and needs of their own to use them just to get over another person.
 
I agree. You just broke up? They are still together?

Can they limit her being over to the weekends only? And be at her place the rest of the time? For like a month to let you process?

Something.

And if need be, consider moving out. You don't have to have your home be uncomfortable.

GG
 
PussNBoots said:
I don't want to send her away. This would be much easier if I did, but I don't.
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I've done this myself, and built up a tower of rationalisations about how he wasn't in great shape financially and I was just giving him time to find a new place rather than him having to sponge off his friends or family for a couple of months. It was all so much easier once a friend verbally slapped me up the back of the head and made me realise what I was doing.

Is it possible that you subconsciously hope that if she's still hanging around every day she'll realise what a huge mistake she's made and she should never have left you and she'll come running back to you and she'll beg for forgiveness and you'll get back together and you'll both be blissfully happy and she'll fall in love with you and you'll get a puppy or maybe a kitten or a rabbit or something and you'll live happily ever after and you'll have wonderful babies who all grow up to cure cancer and world poverty and you'll grow old together and...

Stop. Use mental punctuation. Look at what's actually in front of you rather than what could be there if only...
I still miss her.
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And you will continue to do so at least until you get past denial/bargaining and work through the rest of the grieving process. That will be a lot easier to do if you're not having your nose rubbed in it every day.
 
For a different way of looking at things:

Being around her all the time may turn out to be exactly what you need to teach yourself that things really are over between the two of you. You'll see her all the time and she will demonstrate every day that she no longer has feelings for you.

Which will be incredibly painful.

But, in my personal experience, the opposite situation is even worse. I maintained feelings for an ex who was in another state and whom I had not seen in months/over a year.

I had assumed he still had feelings for me since those were the circumstances under which we parted (which had not even been a break-up). We still were friends who spoke on the phone and planned to see each other again. I was completely floored and devastated when he dropped contact with me, got serious with someone without telling me, etc.

Finally he confessed that he felt he'd grown apart from me a long time ago (and had never liked me much to begin with).

There's a lot more to the story, but the relevance here is that if I had been able to see him regularly in platonic situations for that year, I would have been able to assess that his feelings for me had changed. (Of course, he should have just told me, but whatever).

Because he was far out of sight (and I didn't know that his communications with me hadn't been honest), I didn't think anything had changed. If I'd interacted with him in person, that might have cured me of my feelings for me.

So, as excruciating as it is to interact ALL THE TIME with someone you miss ALL THE TIME, it might be helpful in the long run.

Not being around someone can also cause you to avoid processing your feelings about him/her, so maybe seeing her all the time will force that processing to a head.
 
Emm said:
Is it possible that you subconsciously hope that if she's still hanging around every day she'll realise what a huge mistake she's made and she should never have left you and she'll come running back to you and she'll beg for forgiveness and you'll get back together and you'll both be blissfully happy and she'll fall in love with you and you'll get a puppy or maybe a kitten or a rabbit or something and you'll live happily ever after and you'll have wonderful babies who all grow up to cure cancer and world poverty and you'll grow old together and...
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No, it was never ever our plan to stay together forever. She was going to marry my roommate eventually and find another woman to pass me off to after she had taught me the skills. She was going to train me to be a ladies' man. ;) If anything, my fantasies go more in the direction of "Maybe we could just have one more little one-night stand." But I'm starting to see that's not going to happen. The more I see her the more it sinks in that it really is over. If I want to get laid I've gotta find somebody else. And I feel much more free to be honest about the things I disagree with her on now. For example, I'm a hardcore skeptic and she believes in the supernatural. Now, I feel like I could actually have a good intellectual debate with her, now that there's some distance between us. And I see other things about her that are not perfect. I'm beginning to see her flaws. I'm beginning to see ways in which we are not so compatible, things that I previously brushed under the rug because I was so desperate to just be in a relationship. (I made it to age 32 without ever having had a girlfriend, and I was feeling pretty desperate).
 
MeeraReed said:
Being around her all the time may turn out to be exactly what you need to teach yourself that things really are over between the two of you.
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I'm beginning to think the same thing. And in a way she's already prepared me for it. She never was all that affectionate with me. She took kind of a nonchalant attitude with me. If I wanted her affection, I had to initiate, which most of the time I didn't.
 
I'm glad it's kind of falling into place on its own :) Keep us updated.
 
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