They broke up, but can't move on.

Alright, I spoke before of my best friend and his girlfriend who I had a major crush on for a while (and we became very good friends). They broke up in April. They've been in enough relationships to know when something's real; they only broke up because she's terrified of becoming bipolar like her mom and sister, who are really in a sad state. She has no symptoms of the disorder and is simply paranoid that she'll start showing symptoms.
She broke up with him because her parents were getting divorced and she'd have to help move her mother out of the family home, find her cat a place to live, and sell the house she grew up in. This made her depressed, and she didn't feel like she should expose my friend to her depression so soon in the relationship. She said she had never taken a break before, and he said he never saw the point. So they broke it off. It's been over 5 months, and I've seen him bounce back from so-called "serious" relationships after two. Actually, that's the longest it ever took him before now. He's in the same state that he was in when they broke up. So's she, and she's pretty damn resilient herself. To put that in perspective, they met each other in August 2010 and had been dating since late September of the same year. They've both had year long relationships before this, and shook those off pretty quickly.
He's been working in San Diego for the past month, and has had every opportunity to hook up with someone else. Thing is, every time he sees a woman, he thinks of her. The closest he got, he was drunk one night and he, along with a friend, flirted with some girls at a bar and got both of them to come back to their hotel room. He couldn't do it. He sent the hot California girl away.
She feels awkward talking to other guys she's interested in, because she feels like she's not being faithful to him.
She sent him a message on facebook before he got back for the weekend. I read it on his iPhone, and it essentially said that she smelled the morning fall air, and it smelled like him. Every day she's smelled the air since fall broke, she's thought of him. She says she'll probably think of him every fall because of this.
Even before I read the message, I knew he had to talk to her about the situation. I know how they both feel. After reading the message, I know he has no reason not to talk to her about it. Unfortunately, his opportunity to say something this weekend was shot; one of her friend's grandparents died. He's got to wait until the next time he's back here to say anything, which will be anywhere from 3 weeks into the future to 6 weeks.
Neither of them are the kind to rely on another person for happiness, they're both very independent. They just want to be together. I just don't want to see her 20 years down the road, possibly with 3 cats (she said she was content with being a cat lady...), missing the only man she's ever really loved because she thought she'd turn out like her mother.

 

They broke up? Now is your chance!

 

Everyone and their mother is bipolar these days.

 

Ha ha, we'll see. Even if I break up with my girlfriend (which is likely, seeing as how things are going), my friend's ex doesn't see me as more than a friend, and honestly I don't feel more than that towards her either.

I know, right?

 

:roll:

 

I'm imagining someone physically doing that emote. Just as it's shown here, constantly, and with a slight smirk. I think they're having a stroke. Wayne, be honest, are you prone to blood clots?

 

They are just scared. You'll need to show them why they don't need to be. But I guess your argument will depend on what YOU want too, ey?

 

Tell them to both stop being lame and work things out. Then you can use the fact that you reconciled the couple to constantly ask them for favours and they'll have no choice but to say yes because they'd now be obligated to you. Sounds like a win-win.

 

Maybe she'd like you if you weren't the sort of person who whines about their life on the internet.

 

Of course they're scared. Personally, I want it to work out. The only problem she had was that she couldn't share her love of literature with him. He's dyslexic and finds most reading material frustrating.

Nah. I can't ask for more; he's an amazing baker and brings me cookies whenever I see him, and if I come to her place to smoke hookah she'll cook something both simple and delicious at the same time. I want to know how she makes her eggs taste better than mine (because mine are amazing), but I refuse to ask.

Wayne, you've been around long enough to see that, yes, most of my topics are directly related to certain events in my life. However, whenever someone else posts something, they somehow have an opinion on their topic and how they see the information they've presented. While the majority of my threads are directly from personal experience, everyone here will, in a way, post about something that has affected them. Even you. So, whatever. You can point out how I experience things and talk about them. I'm confident that my eggs are better than yours, and since this is the internet, I'm right because, like I said before, I'm God.

 

People can have different interests, if she wants to share her love of literature she can join a book club or something. Me and my partner, despite our other problems, have some mostly similar interests apart from just a few that are different. For example I do chemistry at uni and she does classics, I'm interested in classics so I'm happy to talk about that with her but she doesn't like chemistry so instead I talk to people on my course about it who obviously have an interest. She also takes a lot of courses in her free time so she can learn new languages which I couldn't care less about. Point being, not every interest has to be shared with your partner.

If it helps my name is like a variation on Mojo Jojo from the Powerpuff Girls. I used that reference because it makes me sound manly.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobobo-bo_Bo-bobo
I watched the show a little, and your name reminds me of that more than Mojo Jojo (despite me having watched the Powerpuff Girls too). Bobobo is nigh-invulnerable, and knows the unbeatable martial art of the Fist of the Nose Hair. His nose hair is seriously about 5 feet long.

 

Well that's certainly a lot more cool than my reference, I might start telling people that's what my name is a variation of. Or rather that his name is a variation of mine seeing as I'm awesome, nigh-invulnerable and also have my own unbeatable martial art. I call it Jojobobo-Taekwondo.

 

My thoughts (may be slightly chaotic):

· There is no reward without risk.
· One shouldn't live a live of regrets.
· Love is worth the small sacrifices.

There are lots of cliches and forms of advice available to motivate an individual who is willing, but sometimes one's own selfishness will make such advice powerless. In the case of depression over a lose that can be overturned, advise them to use their depression as a form of selfish movitation in order to perform the sacrifice necessary to overcome the depression. Afterall, who wants to live a life in despair?

Of course, it has been my experience that no one will say the words that I would say even when I give another my understanding of a situation. So remember, if you do try one of the cliches: be honest, selfless or being willing to be embarassed by one of your own personal experiences in order to motivate another.

Option 2) Tell them something to the effect:
· Do nothing, it's your life.
· You didn't really love her anyways.
· It won't have worked out anyhow.

One might force a decision by telling them they don't have one, or it might backfire and drive them into a deeper depression. Like the first cliche says, "There is no reward without risk." So if you really want to movitate them, risk the friendship in order to gain the reward of getting them together or at least make one or the other move on.

------

It is my understanding that some relationships can transcend spacetime and exist as a thread tying two hearts as one. (I know, sounds more like poetry than reality.) When that happens, it is as if the relationship exists even when they say it doesn't because they both believe that it does. (Faith is a powerful thing.) Getting one or the other to move on will aid the other to do so ... assuming my understanding of Love, Truth and Faith is correct. Although personnally, I think they be destined for each other, but destiny is what you make of it.

 

I don't think it'll work out. The day after I talked to my friend, he had mind-diarrheah and texted all of what was going through his head to his ex. They agreed to meet, and before he had a chance to coherently tell her how he felt, she just said "It won't work out, our lives don't fit."
She ended the conversation before it even started. There's no way to convince her that she might be making a snap judgement about her entire life at 19 years old. She told me before they broke up that if it didn't work out with him, she'd never be with anyone else. At that point, she was concerned because of his literal interpretation of most literature he got around to reading, his "I like the rhythm" taste in music, and how he was jealous that her other guy friends (me included) got to spend more time with her than he did (the reason behind that is he lived about 1.5 hours away at the time, and worked for a pharmaceutical company during the week, only having free time on the weekends). She started doubting the relationship based on this, and how she said she fell in love with people's families and didn't know if she actually cared for him, or if it was just the closeness of his family that drew her to him (in contrast with her hectic family life). The family thing was the only legitimate concern she had, but she really does love my friend too, and not just the closeness he has with his family. She ended up thinking about it too much, and as a result she perpetrated a self-fulfilling prophecy. "If I can't be with him, I don't want anyone else. Well, our relationship isn't perfect, and I'm depressed. I'd take a break, but...I'll break up with him instead. I'll be alone now because I know I don't deserve romantic love."
The only person she might actually listen to is my girlfriend, who this girl idolizes. I wouldn't hold my breath, though. I think I'm done giving romantic advice to people.

 

It's clearly not meant to be: they'd have a powerful telepathic connection that apparently works a bit like a tin can telephone outside of spacetime, like Xyle and whatever braindead bitch he's dating, if it was.

 

Really? My crazy new-age spiritualist mum quotes words like this (also as I found out a few weeks ago "warpspeed") and it's not a good look on anyone.

Hey if I was you I wouldn't bother giving romantic advice to anyone, people rarely appreciate the advice you give them and then that'll just make you feel under appreciated for giving the advice in the first place. Ultimately 19 is too young to expect a person to make sound decisions about their life, and I guess judging by peoples' responses in my thread so is 21! People without a whole lot of life experience sometimes make judgements on their feelings, and although I hope my case will be the exception, that's not always the best way to make serious decisions.

I think his jealousy issues would be a serious problem. Ultimately people can paint their issues as being something else, as in "it's because you live 1 and 1/2 hours away", peoples' issues don't just disappear over night and regardless of if she lived near him the thought that she could still be cheating on him whilst he was busy at work would have probably crossed his mind at some point. Obviously I'm making assumptions about your friend, and of course people can work through these things if they're both understanding enough, but it's still worth considering that that may have ruined their relationship prematurely anyway.

Also if she's telling him sniffing the air reminds me of you and at the same turn telling him our lives don't fit, that's just confusing. If you're convinced now that their relationship isn't going to work out you should tell her to send more coherent messages, at least that'll allow the guy to sort his head out a bit more straight.

 

Well, I'm not sure it was direct jealousy for every guy friend she hung out with. I know in my case it was "Damn! I wish I lived closer so I could visit her as much as he does!"
She hangs out with one guy who openly pines for her, as in, "I'm not dating anyone now, and if you break up with him, I'M TOTALLY HERE!" While I had a crush on her for a while, I actually talked to her about how confused I was regarding the whole thing and resolved the issue (because I was dating my current girlfriend at the time and didn't think it was appropriate to have a "crush" on someone else to the extent I had one), now only seeing her as a friend. However, the guy I mentioned before is head over heels for her. They went out for a week, then she said it was too awkward to work (she said to me "It felt like I was kissing my brother-no spark"). He held onto it though, and while he doesn't make "steal-her-from-him" moves, he says he doesn't want to date anyone else, says "If you're not married in 10 years, look me up!" and takes her out to dinner. He pays. She feels bad for getting dinner with him, but on the other hand she's like "Free food!" That jealousy I can understand, especially since she was supposed to go backpacking in California with this other guy over the spring.
She gets along with guys better; she finds girls catty and cruel, and while she does have female friends, her guy friends outnumber them by about 3 to 1.
Now, I mentioned how I felt about her here, as it was going on, and many people will call me on it. However, I was motivated to maintain my friendship and just wanted them both to be happy, so even if they broke up (and she wanted to date someone else), I wouldn't have stepped in. It just got really bad for me because I felt like I was dividing my affections between two people, and I figured the only way to get over it was to talk to the other woman. I'm not very experienced in love, and apparently there are different types. Didn't really cross my mind until I spoke to her. See, I never actually loved any of my girlfriends romantically until I met my latest one, so all I really knew was the kind of love you share with friends and family (while still not being able to distinguish THOSE types). I love my friend's ex as a friend, and because we have so much in common, I felt like more was there. I'm paying much more attention to how I actually feel about people now, and while I may not always understand my feelings, I know how I feel about my girlfriend is miles ahead of how I feel about my friend's ex. Plus, while it never occurred to me before, I didn't eventually want to have sex with her, much like I don't eventually want to have sex with any of my male friends. Or men in general. I just confused that butterfly feeling for attraction in her case, when really I just have a hard time talking to most women regardless of what my intentions are.

 

So that means we'll never be together?

 

I'm sorry you had to find out this way, Zanza.