Getting over a break-up

Post Reply New Topic

Hi, all. Haven't been posting here for a while because I have been way too busy with the law school thing. I don't know if any of you is that aware of my personal situation, but I had been away from my long-term girlfriend (we first met in 2002) for about a year and a half while she was working in Europe and I was stuck back here. The plan had been that we would meet up in New York over New Year's (I hadn't seen her since July, the last time she was back in the States). Lo and behold, the day after we finished with finals here (which were actually somewhat difficult), she called me on the phone and basically broke up with me because I didn't give her enough "emotional support."

OF COURSE I didn't give her any "emotional support," because I didn't want every conversation to degenerate into a pissing match about whose day was worse, so I'd rather not talk about anything that happened at all. Don't get me wrong...I don't necessarily find the academic aspects of this all that hard most of the time (I have an undergraduate degree that's basically in legal history from a program that was designed to drive people out by heaping abuse on them to the point where 33 out of 87 people who started quit...I don't think much of anything that's taught here is all that hard to learn and much of it is quite interesting, especially when we get the chance to use cases to trace how various legal doctrines developed over time). It's the SCHOOL part of it I'm not good at. The cliques, the being told where and when you have to be, the inhumane hours, the awful excuses of facilities, and the fact that you're always carrying boatloads of work home at the end of the day to interfere with your home life. She knows I've always hated school for those reasons, and it was her bright idea for me to go to law school in the first place, but she still insisted on "emotional support," whatever that's supposed to mean, despite this fact. Meanwhile, I found it hard to feel any sympathy towards someone who: a. gets to live in Europe whilst I'm stuck in Minnesota, which I can't stand (for various reasons); b. is actually working and making money in a field she's trained for; and c. can leave things behind at the end of the day whereas what I have to look forward to after being stuck in the basement of the law school for nine hours every day is going home and spending the next four and a half hours (at least) studying. (There's a lot of reading and the professors might randomly decide to terrorize you that day...that's the only academic problem).

So maybe it wasn't "meant to be," but I'm really stuck here. I live alone and I discovered when I made the great mistake of asking a woman from class out on a date that there are no single women in the class. Given that I don't really have the opportunity to socialize with anyone outside of the law school or my immediate family, I can't really meet any other women, and I imagine that the only reason they'd want to be around the likes of me, what with my weird obsessions with game shows and radio dramas and science fiction short stories (and I've been roundly mocked by certain NTs I know for the last one...on the other hand, I got the guy who sits next to me in legal writing to start reading Ted Chiang and Walter Tevis because he told me he was starved for any interesting reading material), is because they think that my being in law school will make them rich some day. But that's the furthest thing from my mind, and the lack of other socialization is really a problem because it forecloses how I've dealt with painful break-ups in the past, which was immediately rebounding with the first girl available (S., J., and R., you really helped pull me out of the muck those times). I've not really dealt with this...I spent the first week lying in bed getting drunk, then the next weekend (when I should have been in New York) in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a random male classmate and his girlfriend getting drunk and playing Scrabble. It helps to have friends like that, but is not quite a substitute for what I really NEED.

This has gone on too long and was too digressive. Your thoughts? Suggestions? Advice of some kind? I'd sure appreciate it. I've got to go back into the fray at my job on Monday (oh yeah, I work on top of going to law school) and want to square away something to do before then.

Do you have any time or energy to join a club of some kind? Perhaps a science fiction reading/writing group?

It sounds like you were/are very resentful towards her. Nothing kills a relationship faster and more completely than resentment. Long distance relationships rarely work out.

@LostAlien: Maybe. I don't know if there's a science fiction club on campus or not. If there is, they'll inevitably meet on the main campus, on the other side of the river, which will tack a bunch more "waiting around for the bus" onto the end of my day, but if you think it's worth it I might give it a shot. I do have some good (and original) ideas for short stories I've been marinating for years.

@MidlifeAspie: You're absolutely right about the long-distance thing, and I should have known better. I've had a relationship crash and burn in the past (with someone who is as shy and socially awkward as I am) when she was a five hour DRIVE away because she couldn't keep her hands off the next best thing that'd come along. I was fooling myself to think that I could keep this up with someone who's fairly hyper-NT (lots of friends, likes going out dancing at clubs, etc...got to the point when were in Japan that she'd have to send me out of town for the weekend every time she wanted to go out clubbing with her friends because she knew I couldn't stand loud noises or large groups of people and also knew I'd be angry if I had to spend the whole weekend alone in the apartment because she'd inevitably come back something like sixteen hours late...at least this way I got to pursue my obsessive touristic interests without listening to her complain) and is an ocean away. But the resentment in this relationship is a two-way street, and I really won't go into details. As I said, I suppose it wasn't meant to be but hindsight is always 20/20 and that knowledge doesn't really help me now.

If you feel that you can do it without too much stress on yourself it may be a good thing for you. Keeping busy can be good after a bad break-up because it means you aren't able to think about the break-up as much as you otherwise might.

I hope you feel better soon.