Gf left me for enemy. How do i regain my emotional state/confidence?

[Baroque]

Hello all, this is my first time posting on the forums. I've been a regular lurker and reader on GC for quite some time now. However I'm hoping some of the more experienced and older guys on the forums can point me in the right direction.

I'm relatively young and just turned 20 this year so i am pretty inexperienced when it comes to women and relationships. I have been the "nice guy" or the "guy who was bad with girls" for pretty much most of my life till i turned 17 and started to adopt the "bad boy" image. It wasn't a conscious decision though, i just decided one day that i was sick of caring about what people thought of me and started dressing in a much edgier way and focusing on music as my goal in life. I believe that is what started to get me my first "success" with girls. I managed to land the cutest girl in school as my first girlfriend. We lost our virginity to each other.

Being inexperienced in relationships i was always impulsive and acted on my emotions resulting in many fights and tears in our relationship. She is a great girl but her main flaw would be her insecurity and many times she would entertain guys who were clearly trying to get in her pants and i would predictably get jealous and fly off the handle which resulted in more fights. After a year she decided to break up with me. Back then i have never heard of girls chase and did exactly what all the unsuccessful guys would do and tried to reason,beg,plead,cry and other cringe worthy things. I felt like the relationship crumbling was my fault and resolved to change and grow up as a person to "show her i've changed". I don't know whether she felt sorry for me or otherwise but she suggested we become friends with benefits instead.

Then began another tumultuous year of drama where we had good sex but every few months or so she'd talk about a new guy or would tell me that she wanted to date some other guy and we had to stop our fwb relationship and i would repeat the process of getting angry/sad/jealous and plead with her not to leave me. During this time my confidence and happiness started to plummet and the only time i could feel normal was when she was being sweet to me and having sex with me again. She'd run off with a guy for a few weeks or months and eventually return to me crying because those guys treated her badly.

During this period, there was a guy i met who was a older than me by a few years and had a much more calm demeanor to him. I tried to talk to him because i felt he would make a good mentor and went out of my way to do things for me. He'd sometimes give me some nuggets of wisdom but was mostly condescending towards me and viewed me as a source of entertainment sort of like "the jester" in one of Chase's articles. I was desperate and told him my relationship troubles and woes in the hopes that he could be of assistance. (just a side note my ex at this point knew abt him but was apparently disgusted by him).

As fate would have it, she finished our fwb relationship with me by declaring to me that she decided to date him after they hit it off by chance and that she did not want to hide it from me. I was devastated and shocked. I remember thinking how could she have sex with me and then a week later betray me like this? I guess that is the first time i was unplugged from the matrix. I became a broken person after the incident and never spoke with him again. She tried calling me a few times and cried on the phone saying that she felt really bad for using me. I just asked her not to call me ever again. I told her that i wanted revenge but because she had technically not cheated on me or done me wrong, i was trying to control my anger. She says that she hopes we can be friends one day and that she hopes we can have sex again one day before she gets married.


After a year or reflection and therapy and pulling myself out of deep depression, I am now starting to feel relatively normal again. I still have thoughts of revenge or thoughts of guilt about myself ruining the relationship but i've managed to muster the mental strength to push these thoughts out. From now i decided to move forward with my life and Girls Chase has been immensely helpful, not just in learning how girls think but in how i can improve myself as a person. However my problem now is that whenever i meet girls, I don't get the same feeling anymore as with my ex. I have also lost the confidence i had back when i was 17 and girls who knew me back then and now commented on how i kinda felt different from who i was. I have developed approach anxiety and have constant thoughts of insecurity when bringing girls on dates. I have slept with other girls since my ex but it always feels mechanical and lifeless.

I am sure to the older and more experienced guys out there this is a probably just the tip of the iceberg of relationship and women woes in their life so hopefully somebody can give me some advice. How do i become "unbroken" again and regain that self confidence i had? How do i completely get rid of the thoughts of insecurity/anger/depression? Is it just time or are there other factors involved? And why does my ex still contact me (although she does so vicariously through a mutual friend) after a year of us not speaking? (she wished me a happy birthday saying that she hoped i was fine) Is it just to ease her conscience or does it mean anything more? I know this is a pretty long post but I've been dealing with this problem for a long while now and any input is greatly appreciated.

 

[Franco]

Baroque,

The first thing I would do here is cut all contact with your ex. At this point in time, there's nothing really positive she can do for you when you're in a state where you're trying to recover from that broken relationship. She'll be a distraction at best, and a ball and chain on you at worst. She's seen you at your worst, and I doubt she'll ever see you at this point as a man she wants to keep around in her life for another exclusive, long-term relationship.

With that being said, I think you really just need to focus on not only your goals (whether that be music, your career, or whatever), but you also need to focus on sleeping with lots of women. The only way you regain your confidence is by meeting other attractive women and sleeping with them. Along the way, you'll inevitably meet some amazing girls who will have qualities that you thought you would never find again, and you'll eventually be interested in maintaining longer term relationships with them. But it certainly does take time -- how much time it takes is directly proportional to the amount of effort that you put in, though.

If you're meeting and sleeping with lots of new women every month, then you'll likely find a really amazing girl within a year or so that will make you forget why you spent so much time thinking about your ex when there are girls just as amazing (and probably more amazing) waiting to get plucked out of their boring lives by an amazing guy.

In order to get rid of the angry thoughts, you really have to understand the situation and why things happened the way they did. Your girlfriend slept with other men because she lost the attraction she felt for you -- and that was your fault. You showed signs of neediness, emotional instability, and all kinds of other things that women find very unattractive, so naturally, if another guy comes along who is just as cool albeit not nearly as emotional and more stable with his emotions, then she's going to fall for him. And that's what happened to you.

Once you understand this, you'll learn that being able to control your emotions becomes a big part of what keeps women attracted to you; you're the guy that she desires sexually but also the guy she can count on to be the "rock" when she's feeling emotional. You need to care for her and understand her but also be the guy who is dominant and in control of his own emotions. Once you start running your relationships this way, you'll have more of a problem with girls getting too attached to you while you're trying to prevent that from happening (and probably causing her to become more attached in the process).

So anyway, just continue to constantly approach, meet, and sleep with new women to regain your confidence. Understand that, because you slept with a girl and she agrees to a relationship, she is never your property. In order to keep a girl, you must continually show her that you are a man who can sexually satisfy her and be in control of his emotions when she isn't in control of her own. There are lots of amazing articles on this website to help you get there, so I would advise reading as many as you can (especially about relationships) so you can understand women better and come to terms with why your relationship with your ex failed and why your future relationships CAN succeed.

- Franco

 

[Baroque]

Hi Franco! Thanks for your response! Sorry for my late reply as i don't check the forums often.

You gave a very detailed response to my question and i guess certain points do hit home. I'm currently at a phase of what i would call "self discovery" as to why i acted needy and unstable etc. Yes i agree that was my fault.

I'll follow your advice and continue to hook up while working towards my goals. I guess that is the only thing to be done at this stage.

Thanks again for your advice!

 

[FastRomeo]

A lot of guys like to be dominant (very dominant) with a girl. In the back of his head he thinks everything is going good and I'm getting everything I want from her. He doesn't need to check up on her, why? Because he is so dominant and then all of the sudden she says I'm seeing someone else and the guys reality and ego comes crashing down. It hurts but you have to no let it get to you.
Depending on the girl she might want to keep the relationship going with you even if she found someone or if she even introduces him to you. Or she surprises you and introduces you the guy she is going to marry, while she is still with you.