How to let go of past relationships

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Hi:
I was wondering what it takes to let go of a friend that rejected you years ago. How long did it take you to finally come to terms and what your patterns were like.

In my case, I was rejected three and a half years ago by another woman who was quite a bit older than I was because we were not compatible. While I don't want to go into what happened, I will tell you what's going on now.

So far there are days where:
1. Sometimes I feel angry at the hurtful things that she said and did and want to get back at her.
2. Others I feel sad and cry a lot because I miss her and love but feel she doesn't feel that way back
3. Finally, there are days when I am busy study, traveling for work and doing things I enjoy that I seem to think that she doesn't exist or don't remember the pain.

Coping:
1.Writing fake letters or creating fake voicemails (Learned it makes me angrier or more sad)
2. Doing guided meditation and mindfulness
3. Tense muscle exercise.
4. Talking to a counselor (I have spoken to two and the first said I am going through the 5 stages of grieving. Second one says to keep using mindfulness that focuses on now)

Without going into gruesome details, what are your or have you done in the past to work through your situation

1) meditate on the situation
2) write a letter to the person saying what you feel
3) visualize the person there sitting with you
4) read the letter aloud as if you are reading it to the person
5) rip the letter to shreds & toss the shreds in the trash
6) repeat steps 1-5 as needed

I close my eyes & picture the person in my mind. Visualization is strengthened if you can employ your senses. So I might imagine specifically what they look, smell, & sound like. I concentrate on this picture in my mind for at least a minute or two.

of the precious lil "friends" that had the nerve to dump me in the past, the wrong way to look at it, is to just blindly believe their version of everything.

instead of trying to scorekeep - like how many wrong things they did and how wrong they were, versus how many wrong things you did and how wrong they were.

the way i look at it, is Cost Benefit Analysis. they were not worth the energy it took to interact with them.

bottom line

besides, what if the relationship were to have worked out fine, then what? then maybe we would've been holding hands, skipping into the sunset.

even the best case scenario is not that great

so just get on with your life

I dont know if you are on the spectrum or not. But many that are have an extremely good rote memory... Over time most NT's lose the ability to recall detail, however many on the spectrum can remember in great vivid detail incidents that happened to them decades prior. Add to this the heightened emotions of those on the spectrum and trying to make sense of something that to NT's would naturally be able to do... It can be overwhelming and devastating. In essence a form of PTSD... Reliving the negative scenarios over and over in ones mind as if they just happened. I think Firstly it is realising this within oneself, realising that many of us process things differently from NT's and realising ''one does not simply get over things'' when on the spectrum. Realising that not everything is ones own fault and that many people on and off the spectrum also have issues, issues they often dont want to express which for an aspie can be a bloody pain as many of us need to understand what is happening...

The idea is not to get ''over it'' but find a way to accept these things are a part of lifes story line, an experience. The way is to find a coping mechanism that works for you.. Am in the same boat and have had some really bad relationships that i know arent my fault in how they turned out but the issues the individual is facing often turning to gaslighting to stop anyone questioning their own actions only making things much worse for the individual at the receiving end. No matter what you explain, no matter how you explain it, people will not understand nor they will often want to listen.. It is just part of humanity im afraid. Not everyone has the best intentions... It is cruel but can also be magical.. Concentrate on what makes you happy.. It is hard to remove oneself from the abyss of overthinking when it comes to negative experiences but if one does not they are setting themselves up for sever ill health.. I have no magic potion or wand that has an immediate answer as it is an individual thing but to realise you are not on your own, you are not the only one going through a similar experience can be a little bit less of a burden on ones own psyche....

People will always come and go in our lives and make lasting impressions, good and bad. Dont let them win by letting it consume you.. Easier said than done, i know! I hope you find clarity in your soul soon and turn that darkness into light again. I feel your pain!

I was rejected by both my ex girlfriends & I was pretty hung-up on it. I fell into a psychotic depression after the 1st breakup. I cried alot, complained alot on forums as a way of analyzing & sorting things out as well as wanting advice. I started seeing a psych after I slashed my arm 9x in a fit of rage when I found out she got so drunk she had to get her stomach pumped. I was put on afew meds & that helped some too. I also started working a while after & that helped some. I was a workaholic when I was allowed to work extra partly because staying busy helped me not dwell on things so much. I eventually got into my 2nd relationship & that helped distract me but I screwed that relationship up too & she broke up with me. I was dwelling on things a lot but I started an OCD medication cuz I realized that my OCD was part of the reason I screwed things up & I thought it was part of the reason I was having a hard time getting over things. That helped some & shortly after that I got in my current relationship. That's helping a lot but I still have times where I think about my two exes & feel bad about stuff.

I had a friendship with a girl in high school, she was my first real friend, she graduated first, she promised to keep in touch when she went away to college, back then I didn’t know I had Asperger. I wrote her a letter, she never write me back, I was so mad, I scratched her face with a pen in my yearbook, I got over it in time, time heals all wounds. I had many online friends that broke our friendship. When I was living in my first apartment building, I made friends with a woman who lived there, in the beginning I was Sooo Lonely, I was pushy too, we talked everyday, many months later, talking everyday gotten bad, I ran out of things to talk about, I ended up talking about her dogs or her son. That year, my mom & my aunt were in the hospital, it was a VERY HARD time for me, my friend wanted to talk to me, I didn’t want to talk, I was so worried & scared, I emailed my friend saying I need time for myself, but she refused to believe me & she made things so worse, she become the needy one & she was very pushy, she was selfish too, I broke up with her, I could not handle her anymore.

keep reminding yourself of reasons why you do not want the relationship anymore:

for example, someone kept commenting on my breasts

someone tape recorded me without my knowledge/consent. (that is illegal).....

For me, it helps to accept that the other person, for their own personal reasons, don't want me, and that there's nothing I can do about that. It stops me from analyzing in great detail what went wrong.

Btw, it's a good idea to get at least an idea of what went wrong so as to be able to avoid that situation in the future - but torturing yourself over it for years is too much.

I Have found it useful to change the way I think about the other person, if I liked them or loved them at any rate. I just reminded myself of any little thing about them that irritated me, anything at all. While ignoring anything I liked.

If something ended, does that mean it failed?



Relationships from the past ended. Precious lil "friend" had the nerve to dump me. There is no absolute objective correct unbiased method of assigning fault. And if there were, it wouldn't matter, because you wouldn't get it anyways.......

But, maybe the relationship was not a complete failure because, at the time, there were some benefits



The other thing - what was the best case scenario

That both parties would go holding hands skipping off into the sunset




Cost benefit analysis

So what, I can't physically prove that they were 100 percent wrong.

So what?

Maybe........ They were not Worth that much energy, right or wrong

*She made me made me mad*