How can I deal with lingering feelings of blame and attachment following the end of a long-term relationship?

Your actions in the relationship were based on the tools you had available to you at the time. Now, partly due to your new therapist and all the work you're doing there, partly due to the breakup and what you've learned in the interim (and will continue to learn) and partly due to the relationship itself, you have access to more and better tools. You will be able to use these in your next relationship.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. There's this sort of modern conception that breaking up with someone is a quasi-legalistic process where you shake hands and nod firmly and neatly separate your joined lives and remain friends and things just go on their way. But it's a messy process. The point of cutting off contact is to give yourself some time and space to heal, not to allow you to get your shit together and get back together, and if you cling to that hope...well, ironically, you are probably never going to get to the point where that would happen, because that kind of obsession with him is what (you're telling us) contributed to you two breaking up. Can you be friends in the future? Believe it or not, there will come a time where all that ache is gone and it's more a fond memory, and then, yeah, probably. But you need time and space to make that happen. There's a time when a scar is a cool story you tell to impress someone, but there are times when it's an ugly, scabbed over wound that needs to heal and picking at it just makes it worse. As for the hate, man, I have some ex stories that'd curl your hair and make you laugh, but even then, there's very little hate (assuming you don't go all Fatal Attraction), more...the actions they took might've been terrible/stupid/whatever, but I can see how they happened and where they came from based on who they were at the time, and we can both laugh at how young/stupid/whatever we were then. But it's time and distance that lets those wounds heal enough where they're no longer sore spots, they're battle scars from a life well-lived and, more, those failed relationships is what allowed me to have my currently successful one. Nobody teaches you this stuff. You have to learn by experience. Not to go all Caring Dad From A Sitcom, but what matters isn't that you failed, it's what you learned in the process. You have some things to take away for your next relationship and some things you can work on.

You're probably not going to like my answers, but they're honest.... Usually, in this department, the things you need to hear most are the things you least want to hear. Having had a great deal of experience with these things myself, I can tell you that while it can be difficult to stomach some of the things you need to do, it really and truly IS in your best interest!! So no matter how difficult, make yourself take the healthier path. That being said, here are my (likely painful) words of advice: 1. Don't play the blame game. Blaming one person for a breakup is like blaming your mom for giving you brown eyes; there are multiple parties involved in the outcome, not just one (and not even just the two that are directly involved, either), and there are many other unseen factors in play as well. Besides, even if it was "your fault," you certainly didn't do anything wrong intentionally, so just like whatever genes your parents passed you, your relationship with your boyfriend and its eventual decline were largely the lottery of circumstances when you two, unique individuals came together as one. It happens. It's good that you recognize what may have been your flaws and you're already working on those things with a professional. You can't expect any more of yourself than that. Keep working on yourself, for the future, but don't punish yourself for what's happened in the past. Also, I can't help but notice that you're very defensive of your ex and the feelings he may have had while you were, as you perceived it, making things so difficult for him (this may stand out to me because I had a glaringly obvious tendency to do this myself at the demise of some of my past relationships... but what I've learned is...)- put some of that energy on your side! Is it possible that you're selectively remembering and reporting things from your relationship that paint him in a better light, to make yourself feel more guilty, or to blame? Might it be healthy for you to also devise a mental list of accurate memories displaying the less-than-perfect side of him? I'm not saying you should turn around and start blaming him, either (DON'T PLAY THE BLAME GAME, PERIOD), I'm just saying that by blaming yourself like this you definitely run the risk of accidentally putting your ex on an undeserved pedestal, creating a false recollection of him as some kind of perfect being, and therefore making it even harder for you to move on. So steer clear of falling in this particular rut; you'll find a lot of us down there with ya, but that doesn't make it a good place to be! ;) 2. You said this was your first real boyfriend. Now you perceive him as, possibly, the love of your life. This is almost never the case, I promise you!!! I remember thinking I was endlessly in love with my first boyfriend when we broke up. We had been together for five years. I cried until I found myself staring at pools of tears that utterly baffled me because I couldn't believe it was even physically possible for my body to keep producing that much liquid! That was over ten years ago, and I still know him (we had the same circle of friends, so even though we have gone years without contact here and there over the last decade, we have always bumped into one another or in some other way ended up reconnecting for brief conversations at different points)... let me tell ya something: despite how "hopelessly in love" with him I once thought I was, I can't even imagine being with him today! I now find him creepy and annoying, lol. Seriously. Can't. Even. Picture. Ever. Being. With. Him. Again!!!!!!!! So, really, just give it some time. You have many more relationship experiences to have before you should really even consider settling down with someone forever. You really need to have those experiences so you can fully realize what it is that you're really looking for in your life partner. 3. Don't keep lines of communication open with your ex! I promise you, you can always find him again if you ever decide you want or need to speak to him again, for any reason. As I already said, I have gone literally years and years without speaking to my exes and still managed to either bump into them or deliberately locate them (or be located by them) down the line when some situation necessitated contact. You need to work on you right now, and you need to meet new people; you do not need to fixate on what he's doing or when you will talk to him again. You need to just erase these thoughts from your mind and trudge forward. I know what you mean in everything you say about justifying keeping the lines of communication open, and for those reasons I am certain that this is the last thing you want to hear, but imo you really should try to swallow it. It's for the best. These thoughts you're having are all just tying you down to the hope that you and your ex will get back together again; you might get back together again, BUT you need to move on and let whatever is going to happen, happen. Without trying to "stack the deck in your favor" by keeping communication lines open with him. Really move on. Then see what happens. Only then can you know if it is truly "meant to be," and stand a decent chance of saving yourself the heartache that comes from inevitably falling in exactly the same hole your relationship fell in before, because you never really took the time to individually separate completely from each other, develop your own independent identities, deal with your separate issues, and become whole again before trying to become whole-plus-one again. Whole plus one, not Hole plus one. ;) 4. The only thing that comes from dwelling on how he "remembers" the relationship is pain. Nothing good can come from this. You will torture yourself for no reason and eventually add it to the justification list for contacting him, and inevitably this will lead to at least one tragic dunk-dial that will go down in your personal epic fail history. Don't go there! ;) And here's the reality of the situation: either he loved you (and it sounds like he really did, things just happen- it's okay), in which case he will have both fond memories and not-so-fond memories, but if the latter are more prevalent it's only because he's in pain and he's forcing those thoughts on himself to get through this- don't begrudge him those thoughts; in fact, you may find yourself doing the same- or he didn't love you, and if that's the case he realistically won't have many thoughts about the relationship in general, negative or otherwise. Given the fact that he already expressed a desire to want to discuss the relationship with you, I would definitely say that is not the case, so don't worry- he is most likely (seriously) doing the same thing you are- and what have you been doing? Well if you look at your post you can clearly see that you were going to some considerable lengths to defend him in your memories. I guarantee you he's doing the same... so even though you feel plagued by the "mistakes" you made during the relationship, just consider what was in your own human nature to do, and realize that if any of those thoughts do, in fact, pass through his mind, he is most likely immediately mentally defending you, and in doing so, quite possibly blaming himself (just like you are!). It's one of the less popular "circles of life," I suppose... You will get through this, and you will come out the other side a stronger person for it, I guarantee it. I know it sucks, but the old cliches are cliches for a reason.. "If you love something, let it go.." etc. etc. etc.: you've gotta suck it up and take some of these somewhat unpleasant roads, for your own health and happiness in the long run. You've already come quite a long way, so give yourself a huge pat on the back for that and just keep going. You will find yourself seeing the things that currently plague you in a much different light, sooner than you think. Take it a day at a time, or even by the hour or minute if you have to- you will get there. It's going to be okay- y o u are going to be okay!!

So, how am I not to blame? Assigning blame will not help anything. Everyone has flaws and opportunities to improve themselves - including your ex. It sounds like you've identified a few of your own and are currently actively working on improving them. This is a good thing. Abstract concepts like "blame" for something that has happened in the past do nothing to positively move forward, in my opinion. Forgive yourself for being human. Still, I'm telling myself that we should keep the lines of communication open and send the casual 'how was your weekend?" text, so that at some point in the future we can be friends. Don't do this. The first long-term relationship for me ended with him leaving me, too, but there was nothing worse than a random email from him weeks or months later trying to "reconnect". It would always be out of the blue when I was doing great and not thinking about him, and then I'd be forced to think about him again. I can't seem to find a way to let go of the idea that he's going to come to hate me. That's his choice to make and his problem if he chooses it. You can't change your past. When you are further removed from this recent pain, you will hopefully be more able to recognize how it could have been better on both sides and, if you do ever enter a circumstance with him where you could apologize, you can do that. And that's all you can do. My advice is that you should not come to hate yourself. There are good things about you. Everyone makes mistakes. It is what you learn from those mistakes that make you a better person.

I think you're probably on the path. Definitely bring this stuff up with your therapist. I'm wrestling right now with the challenge my therapy group has for next week: I have to pick an item I'm attached to emotionally and leave it at the group meeting place for the rest of the group sessions. It feels like absolute torture just thinking about it - I seriously almost started crying when I read about the assignment (I don't even have to bring the item in for a week.) The potential anguish was so overwhelming it immediately turned into real, live anguish. I couldn't even really define what was so terrifying about this little tiny bit of "letting go." It was completely horrifying to contemplate. I think you're facing a similar kind of blockage here, in all honesty. For instance, you can always cut off contact for a while (like six months to a year) while retaining the option of resuming some kind of connection afterwards. Few decisions are as final as we think they are. Few changes are as disastrous as we're afraid they'll be. They talk about "cognitive distortions" a lot in therapy - feeling like you can't possibly do the no-contact thing is a bit of all-or-nothing thinking. Feeling like you totally wrecked everything is generalization and catastrophizing. Burns' "Feeling Good" is pretty much the best place to read about that sort of stuff. Something I think you also need to consider: have you properly grieved the relationship itself? One of the reasons I have a hard time giving up stupid crap I don't really need (e.g., socks that I hate wearing because they're scratchy, but don't want to throw away) is that the idea of going through the grief stuff is so disturbing and scary that I basically am procrastinating it. For me, it's grieving things surrounding ideas like "I am a person who never wastes anything" and "I always make good and reasonable buying decisions" and "I should find a use for any materials in my possession" and "I need to keep everything because it'll be my fault if I need it later and don't have it." Your issues here might be more like "I had a safe and stable situation" and "I'm a real grown-up and you can tell because I'm in a committed relationship and we live together" and so on. To answer your actual questions: 1. You are both to blame for "things not working out." Simple mismatch (it was never going to work out) may be a huge factor; it's hard to tell. The best thing to do is remind yourself that no matter what happened, you can't change it now. Focus on making better choices and developing better habits, rather than assigning blame or feeling guilty. 2. No-contact is recommended for really good reasons. You have given kind-of-connected self-torture for close to 3 months. I don't think it's a good idea to keep trying that. 3. I recommend asking yourself: - What is the worst thing that can happen, if he does hate you? How horribly awful does it feel when you convince yourself it is 100% certain that he will ALWAYS hate you? - If it's not under your control, is there an upside to feeling bad over how he feels about you? - To what extent is your concern about his attitude a reflection of your desire to perpetuate a fantasy (or multiple fantasies) about your relationship? - Are there any things in your life that you can better use that worrying/anxiety energy on? Definitely bring up this kind of thing in to your therapist.

So, in this context, I feel like I had a boyfriend who tried everything he could to be with me, to love me, and to be intimate with me, and I rejected him... now he is hurt and angry and has given up, which is why he left me. When I read your post, I was with you all the way, then suddenly, it turned into this theory. It was like "[fact about yourself], [observation about the relationship], [your own feelings]... So that adds up to mean [story about him: what he was thinking and why he did what he did]." There is a big jump between the facts and the story. I imagine this is hard to believe, wracked with guilt as you are right now. But you're probably just wrong. The guilt is about you and what you think. That is probably not why he left. I say this as someone who used to create theories and stories but started to ask people about them. Most turned out to be entirely inaccurate, though they led to good conversations. It's totally natural to create and believe theories. I saw this most clearly when a friend of mine attempted suicide. A lot of us who had known him gathered together while he was still in the hospital, and almost everyone had a theory about it. It was fascinating. It was often a theory about how they failed him. (At the time I felt like, no, I was the one who failed him.) Ultimately, it became clear that these theories were about ourselves and how we were handling our feelings of almost losing someone we loved, not an accurate explanation for his actions. The brain works like that, and when you're going through it, I noticed, it's very hard to talk yourself out of it. You're in a lot of pain right now, and the brain seeks an explanation. "How did this happen? How can I make sure it never happens again??" (I believe that this is in part because it would be so much more terrifying to think "sometimes super-painful things will happen to me for reasons entirely outside of my control.") You probably just have to go through this self-blame and regret. It's not necessarily a bad thing; pain can be a real spur to learning. But it's ultimately about you and what you're thinking about yourself, and what lessons you want yourself to learn. So it's important, because you are the final judge of yourself, and these things that you're focused on right now are important -- to you. But don't mistake all your stories as being the truth about him. And ask yourself: is judging myself now the right thing to do? Or is now the time to be compassionate? You're in a lot of pain now, and it might not all be your fault.

Two months is nothing, in the context of a relationship of 3.5 years. The bad news is: it takes a while to heal. There are very few people who'd be a-ok 2 months after a breakup like this. The good news is: time heals everything. Without you even having to do anything, time will heal you. The memories and regret will become less and less important; your life will fill up with other thoughts, feelings, experiences; even your worries will focus elsewhere. Sit back and let time do its healing thing.

He just broke up with you. You are allowed to put up a boundary that says I don't want chit-chat. You say "I think I wanted to take some control over a situation where I was feeling helpless." and you have absolutely every right to protect yourself that way! Yes you need to communicate in order to wrap up the business and paperwork of your relationship, but no you do not need to chit-chat while you're still figuring out how to nurse your wounds. Taking care of myself sometimes feels like a perpetuation of my selfishness when I was with him. As I start to feel better about myself, I also feel like I owe it to him to be generous and take care of him. "Taking care of yourself" means getting the help and developing the awareness and coping skills that help you develop healthy relationships with yourself and others. It's not about feeling better now, it's about long-term health. And he's said he doesn't want you to take care of him. You need to respect his boundaries, otherwise what you think you're doing (taking care of him) is actually not helpful to him at all.

He's made it pretty clear that he wants to chat and share and be friendly and eventually be friends. Then tough for him. You get to decide how much contact is comfortable for you and if that amount is none, you are totally allowed that. (I see you've already done the splitting up the stuff and getting your own places step.) If you don't want to rehash the relationship with him, you don't have to. Like most kinds of relationship, if one person doesn't want it, then that person has a right to not have it. Despite how you feel, you don't owe him anything. Move forward from here and grow into the person you want to be. The strong healthy man you are at your core. Let him shine! Give yourself space to heal. Find yourself a therapist that is a good fit, and make a plan for your goals up front and schedule times to check in on your progress/change goals as necessary. Your goals might be: less anxiety about health; stronger attachments that don't include constant fear of rejection; resilience in the face of adversity; exercise and other physical health achievements. Breaking up is hard. Being dumped/left super sucks. Maybe try DBT with your new therapist? It has a lot in common with CBT but has a component of accepting where and who you are now, while also working on getting to where you want to be. Also involves skills and worksheets and there are groups for it as well. (My group was focused on trauma recovery.) You have come remarkably far in just a short time since the breakup. You can do this!