Hey @patricia12
I hope this is the last update I will have to make. I again thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the support you have given me on this journey.
It is not over but I hope the hardest part is. I can’t thank you enough for all the effort. I would buy you a cup of coffee if I could!
So far things are good and I hope they stay this way. It seems I got what I wanted which is the connection that we shared and my best friend.
At the moment this seems to be making me very happy. I’m also coming to terms with her seeing other people and the idea of her moving on with someone else, seeing that I would also like to do that. I will never exclude a new relationship with her, but this would mean a lot of couples therapy and resolving our different needs. I also don’t think either of us is open to reconciling at this point anyway (I still want to date other women in all fairness, just to see what else is out there).
I am going to write about how the communication the past week has been because I think it seems like a nice closing to this very long story that I have involved you in, which I can’t stop thanking you for.
After seeing her on “Date night”, and going through our anniversary on the 31st, I reached out to her on Sunday, the 1st of November. I sent an upbeat “Hey!” and told her I’ll ship her books next week using DPD because I liked their tracking. She said “Ok thanks! ?” . I then just bit the bullet and asked how her date went. She replied saying it was nice and instantly asked me if I was seeing anyone. The conversation that followed after that was the most organic and natural way we talked to each other since the breakup. We talked about how it’s kinda weird that we’re both seeing other people. We talked about friends we know who never talked anymore after they broke up and how we did not want to up like “those people”.
She was on lunch break but I said we could continue talking later. She said ok and then 2 or 3 hours later she said “I’m home now btw”. This conversation ended up leading into a video call because of how we were kind of misinterpreting each other’s texts.
I have to tell you, Patricia, that video call was amazing. We talked like nothing ever happened between us. We talked for a whole hour about our relationship, the ups, and downs, what we’re doing now, we laughed a lot. We discussed the people we’re seeing now and how it’s different but also nice (for both of us). We almost misspoke and called each other by our nicknames (sweety and baby). I put some ground rules on our friendship, saying I do not want to put in all the work in our conversations because of how draining that was during our relationship and caused a lot of frustration with me. She 100% agreed to this.
We felt there was still so much air to clear and we could go on for hours. But we both decided to do this again soon and hung up. We both admitted how nice it felt to just talk to each other again like normal human beings.
I sent a follow-up text after we hung up saying I’ll friend her again on Facebook (This was an hour or two later). This led to a 4 hour (!) text conversation until she went to bed. She also has been initiating text conversations EVERY DAY the past week. I haven’t heard from her today but she is still working. I have not reached out to her. I am still letting her do the initiating.
It will be impossible for me to write out everything we talked about this week, but I can assure you, they were very positive. Key phrases she used:
Me: we had a lot to catch up on it seems
Her: Ye we havent connected in a while
Her:I put it in asterisks cause my therapist says connecting is not equal to just talking
Her: Connecting is like really getting on eachothers wavelength
And when I asked how she fell in love with me (we were talking how we first met and our first dates and all that, it wasn’t a random question!):
Her: I really dont know
Her: I had a lot of doubts early on as well
Her: I think at that point in time i liked that we were so different
Her: I also think its very hard to say for sure
Her: I just fell in love
Her: And i was so in love and it was so much
Her: I dont think i ever believed it was possible to be so in love as i was with u
We also talked about the drawings I’ve been posting on Instagram and she said:
I miss when youd draw me
Or
I sort of avoided anything that reminded me of u for a while
There were also very crucial moments about what went wrong:
Me: It feels like we haven’t talked like this in ages, or ever?
Her: I can make a pretty clear distinction of when it stopped
Her: When it started going south with your mom and your sister
Her: We diverted our attention to your sister
Her: We basically became parents
…
Her: Cause it was like being a co-parent
Her: With a super toxic person
Or how I would love to hear her speak Dutch if we ever meet again (she’s still practicing the Dutch she learned here over the years). She responded with:
Her: Ive spoken to guests in dutch and it always lead to a great tip?
Me: I know you hate it when I force you to speak it but if we ever meet again I’d like to hear it
Her: I hope we do meet again
She also said that she doesn’t see herself falling in love in the near future (or ever again the way she was in love with me).
We also discussed the people we are seeing. She says she is just casually hanging out with the guy from her Instagram and neither of them are looking for anything serious. I said the same about me and the girl I am seeing. We discussed the idea if we ever get into a serious relationship with other people, that we would continue talking to each other and that our future partners need to be ok with this. We both agree that what we have is a great connection. We were also both on the verge of actually having kids with each other at some point (we never told each other this, but we both wanted it kind of).
I could go on and on. I keep re-reading our messages to see how I can improve my communication. I am learning a lot. I keep finding moments where I think I could’ve been more considerate, I also told her that I am trying to be more considerate in my communication in general. She was very enthusiastic about that! I’m also reading books about communication and I have been trying to apply this as much as possible. Every time she mentions the things that went wrong in our relationship, I respond by saying how I understand and make sure she knows I am hearing what she is saying (repeating it back to her “sounds like you went through a lot” kind of things). I try to also drop once in a while how I am trying to improve all these things.
So I guess that is it. I left out A LOT of crucial details so feel free to ask if you want. I am currently just going to let things play out how they are now. I am done with forcing things. I am getting my emotions under control. Our communication is 100% transparent and open at the moment and that is all I wanted. We are still very loving towards each other and I think we can learn a lot from each other by talking about our experience before and after the break-up.
I have gotten my best friend back and that is all I was hoping for. If she ever falls in love with someone, I want to be there for her to see her happy. She said that whoever I fall in love with, she’ll want to be friends with that person. I am honestly so happy with the agreement that we made. And who knows, if the love we had for each other comes back, then so be it. Otherwise, I am also perfectly happy.
I have been writing all this down for the past week thinking about how I should post this. And every time I think about sending it to you, new things keep happening. All feel very important. 2 days ago I asked her what she thought was specifically toxic about my mother (I said I would like to discuss it with my therapist) and she gave a nicely detailed answer. She then asked me what I thought was toxic about herself. I asked her the same about me, and there was a moment of apologizing to each other for how we treated each other (me being insecure and over dramatic and losing my temper, she not sharing her emotions with me and just shutting me out). She keeps saying how she keeps on eye on Belgian news to practice her dutch.
She hasn’t reached out in a few days until yesterday where she asked if we could do another phone call (I asked about this earlier if its easier for her to call because she’s very busy.) She said: “a lot has happened since we last talked itll just be easier to explain in non-text form”
She arranged a phone call for the next day (tonight). So now I guess we’re doing that.
I’m trying to forget about reconciling and just trying to make amends for all the things that went wrong, I’m also trying to make her understand how I felt and explain why I did the things that I did, but I think I need to cut that out. It seems like she had a really traumatic experience here and I need to be supportive about that.
Again thank you and I am SO SORRY for this massive wall of text but I have no idea what to do with these thoughts. I’m just going to post it as is because it feels the most complete this way.
I will probably plan a trip to Latvia to visit her when all this COVID is over, but for now, thank you and stay safe.