how to stop my resentment!
about 3 months ago i (20f) left a very toxic 1 and a half year old relationship with my ex girlfriend(20f), it took me 8 months and many tries to leave but i’m proud to have done it. as much as being out of this relationship has done wonders for me, i can’t seem to let go of the resentment i have for this person. I feel very wronged by them and resentful of how they treated me still, which is something i really want to let go of but i’m really struggling to see it any other way. it’s not been made easier by the fact it was an incredibly traumatic breakup involving her screaming at my family after turning up to my house in the middle of the night and me having to call an ambulance for her as she had given me reason to worry for her safety. she has made many many attempts to contact me after the breakup and i’ve literally had to block her on everything you can possibly think of. she even hacked into my online shopping account and was messaging sellers of joke/rude r shirts (something that scared me and i’ve had to change all my passwords) ,has emailed me rick roll links and has been sending me songs on spotify so i’ve even had to block her there!
it’s hard to try forget her when she’s trying to cling onto every part of my life she can, she’s been attempting to weasel into my friend groups and has been non stop messaging some of my closest friends to the point they’ve even had to block her too! something she never did in the relationship (in fact a point if contention in our relationship was that she never tried to get on with any of my friends and actively ignored them which makes this even more out of character!) a week or two ago i saw her walk right past my flat with one of her friends, a place that is no where near where she lives and that she has no business being near, this scared me and felt like a massive violation.
during the actual relationship a massive issue was the constant ignoring of my boundaries, in lots of ways but particularly about space, i am autistic and need time to decompress by myself and do my hobbies and have solitary quiet time most days for at LEAST an hour or two in order to function day to day (pretty normal right?!). my ex wouldn’t be able to understand my need for occasional space and always took it as a personal attack no matter how many times i explained that it wasn’t personal and just how i function. she would ignore these boundaries anyway and turn up to my flat uninvited and without warning at all hours (another thing i can’t deal with that she knew about) during my quiet time disrupting my routines and would get very angry when i wasn’t happy/enthusiastic to see her and didn’t see needing time to decompress as a good enough reason not to be with her all the time. eventually i stopped having this time to myself and let my boundary be overtaken, and we started spending 24/7 together which was her absolute ideal but was something that made me lose touch with myself completely and get incredibly burnt out.
(during the last month or so of our relationship i tried to put those boundaries back up firmly and they where bulldozed over yet again, which helped me understand i needed to leave her and that it was becoming slightly emotionally abusive with help from my amazing best friend and from my therapist)
what she’s doing now after the breakup feels like a continuation of this same thing i had to deal with the whole relationship of having her ignore my boundaries and i’m SO fed up that i’m not free of having to deal with the same issue.
it’s feeling like a violation and lack of respect and ignoring clear boundaries. i’ve had to message one of her close friends several times to ask her to ask my ex to stop doing these things, so she must know that she’s doing something wrong.
it feels like the same cycle and i just want to be free of her!
i feel like listing all this that she’s done before and since the breakup is me trying to justify my resentment, and prove that she’s in the wrong, which i feel exhausted by but i keep on find myself doing!
during our relationship i fell into a depression due to the burnout i think that i’ve still not managed to get myself out of, and a part of me blames her for that too, which i know probably isn’t fair. (i have been going to therapy and started antidepressants so i am trying hard to get myself out of this funk instead of just stewing in it)
a part of me wonders if this anger that i’m feeling towards her is healthy as most of my life and most of the relationship i’ve people pleased and i let things slide that i absolutely shouldn’t have done (her telling me that she wished i didn’t exist and me staying for months after that) and that this anger is a justified response to what i’ve been through and is ultimately much more beneficial than feeling sorry for myself instead, i can’t work out if it’s good that i’m feeling this pissed off-ness or if it’s going to just hurt me and turn me bitter.
on top of this i’ve been having dreams that we are still together, which break my heart as i did really love her and even though i do not want to be back together with her whatsoever i feel like my subconscious hasn’t moved on. perhaps from the amount of times she’s won me back i feel like she’s inevitable in my life and i’ll always have to put up with her and i have no choice and come back.
which makes me upset because i absolutely genuinely don’t want anything to do with her anymore and i really do want to focus on feeling better and wish that i’d never have to see her again (unfortunately unlikely as we are in the same university).
how do i stop harbouring this victim mentality and stop feeling so wronged and continually pissed off? will it come with time as it’s only been 3 months since the breakup? or is that long enough i should be over this all by now!
or do i need to reframe how i’m thinking about all of this. i just want to be left alone by her but her constant attempts to get back into my life/annoy me jolt my nervous system so much that i feel like it’s setting me back