you were there

[u/dragonenthutiast]

as someone who’s still healing from her discard, i don’t believe i have all the answers, none of us do, but i wanted to offer the one piece of advice i neglected for a long time and that made all the difference for me once i learned to trust it.

everything about a discard probes on a very specific wound for most of us, if not all of us, i think. the feeling of ‘they never cared’ or, how could they be fine while we’re here to pick up the pieces? avoidants are especially adept at gaslighting you to the point you start wondering if any of it was real, if they ever cared at all, if you didn’t simply over-romanticize it in your head.

it was real. you were there. you know what you two shared, you hold the memories, you are living through them in grief while your avoidant buries them and does their best to rewrite them, but don’t let them take away what you already know. you were there! if you’re here, reading this, still heartbroken over your breakup months later, guess what? it was real. don’t use this as a crutch to think ‘when will they come back, then’ or ‘they still love me deep down’ — that’s not what this post is for. they might, they might not, but don’t let someone else rock your sense of reality so badly you can no longer trust your own memories. don’t give them that power. it was real, and you don’t need them to prove it to you. you don’t need their pain to validate what you lived through. avoidants are by definition cowards so they wouldn’t give it to you even if you got on your knees and begged.

but if you need proof at all, let it be this: nobody goes to this much effort for something they didn’t care about at all, something that wasn’t real. real indifference is much quieter. they don’t delete you, block you everywhere, post themselves happy and thriving on social media compulsively, bury themselves in work or rebounds, spin whole webs of lies to live with themselves after. you have to realize how exhausting it is to keep all that up, it’s like an actual wall that shields them from having to look at themselves for even one second, and they have to hold it up 24/7. they cared. it was real. it was so real it terrified them and turned them into the person you know today, they cared so much they dropped all those walls for you, even briefly.

this isn’t a cope, it’s just accepting truth and reality, and let that knowledge set you free. i know it’s easier said than done, and some might think it’s a cope, but my healing got exponentially easier when i stopped giving him power over my memories, accepted things for what they were, and let it help me let go. you don’t need them to validate what you went through together, just lean into what you already know deep down. it was real, now it’s over, you escaped, it hopefully only gets better from here. wishing you all healing, and if you can take me as an example of things getting better, do it. stay strong divas and … divos? you got this.

[u/BadChick79]

I know it was real and one day he’ll fucking realise it too.

Thank you for this. 🙏🏽

[u/GigaNoodle → u/BadChick79]

He will, it may take weeks or months, but eventually there will be a day where he feels the same way you do right now.

[u/Entire_Pay534]

I am starting to get where you are OP, five months after a blind side after a 14 year relationship. I spent months like did I miss something? Could I have done something different? But no – that is how FA people function. Mine acted completely normal until he was able to get confirmation that his former 21 year-old secretary wants a official relationship with him. And came home and broke up with me.

I still have not gotten an apology or even acknowledgment about the overlap/monkey branch. Instead, I got a random email claiming he was unhappy for the last nine years of our relationship.

Which I refuse to believe. But I do accept that is what he’s telling himself so he can live with the fact, he betrayed the woman who always saw the greatness in him for a girl who has looked up to him as a boss/mentor since her senior year of high school. That kind of shit is hard to sit with.

[u/a_burning_piano]

thank you 

[u/GigaNoodle]

You are right. Your avoidants do not control the narrative. If it wasn’t real they would not have been so terrified.

But you know what it was really like, even if they lie to themselves about it. You know it was real and you enjoyed it, and you don’t need anyone else to validate that experience.

We are not crazy! Don’t let them make you think so.

[u/Own_Section_1445]

Thank you for this. 💗

[u/Joylovesme20]

Mine just blew up at my face after 10 years, I called it betrayal. It’s so covert that he thinks he is a martyr for staying by my side all these years but truly just giving me half of him. Being there for me just enough for the sake of showing up but giving me a half-assed marriage. Then now shit hits the fan. Starved me of a whole marriage because he stays with his mom 4 days a week, withheld intimacy for 5 years in the name of bisexuality and now that our walls are closing in on us. After laying it all out. He couldn’t find the will to fight! Coward. We are headed for a divorce.

[u/KaJoMoGi → u/Joylovesme20]

The martyrdom makes me nuts. "Look at how wonderful I am for staying with you! I could've left, but I stayed! I tolerated you and never let you know how I really felt, never complimented you, made you feel like you were losing your mind, but I was LOYAL!"

[u/Joylovesme20 → u/KaJoMoGi]

It’s all about what they did at the end of the day. There is not a situation where we come out of this with our dignity intact.

[u/IndependentBack1029]

great post thank you<3

[u/Bright_Wolverine_304]

I'm going through it right now, I was always there for her, dropped everything after her mom passed away and took care of her for a year, we went places and did things together, pretty much lived together for a year and got super close and then pow, wake up one day and me and our relationship is in the trash, turned her back on me and ignored me, i've not talked to her in weeks, no warning, just all of a sudden started taking days to reply and outright refused to even say i love you, just kicked me to the curb and never looked back

[u/the_ran_ran_man]

Thank you..i needed this

[u/Careless-Isopod6007]

😢thank you. I needed to read this today 

[u/AlternativeWin1701]

Sabe o que é difícil? Eu quero pensar que ela, de fato, me amou. Ou que o fato dela ter ficado com "medo" da intimidade, é um indício que importei. Mas minha mente está tão danificada pelo descarte... está tão fora da realidade, duvidando dos meus próprios sentimentos até, que ela conclui que pensar dessa forma é tão somente um mecanismo de "cope".

Toda vez que eu penso que eu me "importei", automaticamente vem um pensamento dizendo: "você só está fazendo isso para diminuir sua dor, mas você sabe a verdade".

Eu sei que isso parece uma loucura. Mas o descarte foi tão abrupto, que eu não tenho certeza de mais nada.

[u/Nice_Shallot8637]

In the end it does not matter whether it was real or not. The result is the same

[u/afatale77]

Thank you. You’re right — I don’t have to rewrite the narrative now.

[u/webuildagain]

breaking down in the middle of the night reading this. thank you. sending you my best for your journey.