Group Therapy: “Can I eat my words (even though they are 11 years old)?”?
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Christine* writes
I was going out with my high school boyfriend, Ryan* for about 3 years, when he cheated on me on his trip to the Gold Coast for Schoolies. While I tried to forgive him, a few months later I ended our relationship as I was unable to get past the whole breach of trust issue.
Up until that point, we had a great relationship. In fact, looking back it was a wonderful “first love” relationship – we had loads of fun together and I still consider him to be my first love.
About 9 months later, I saw Ryan at a local night club. It was the first time I had seen him since we had broken up and, after a number of hours of drinking, I gave him what for…everything I had been afraid to tell him regarding his cheating came spewing forth. I was like a girl possessed. I was absolutely horrible to this guy to the point that I had his friends telling me to stop. This guy (actually, man), who I once loved, was in tears. In a nightclub. In front of his mates.
I have not seen him since.
Fastforward 11 years. I am married to the love of my live. We have two amazing children. Life, while not perfect, is pretty darn good…but that night in the club is eating away at me and has been for about 12 months now. I do not know why I am only recently starting to have feelings of guilt…perhaps it is now that I am a mother I would hate for someone to treat my children the way I did Ryan. I am not an agressive person AT ALL and I actually cannot stand conflict of any kind, however, the guilt I feel about how I treated Ryan is eating away at me.
While I cannot remember all the specific details of everything I said that night, I can still see the way he looked at me, with so much hurt in his eyes, it makes me feel sick to my stomach that I could possibly make another human being feel that way.
Through the grapevine, I know that Ryan is now divorced with a young child of his own.
So I guess my question is: Do I try to track him down to apologise for my behavior that night all those years ago, or do I simply accept the fact that for that one night, I was an absolute bitch and just let sleeping dogs lie?
Image by Hamed Saber
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Have you considered writing a letter that you don’t intend to post/send? In it express all of your regrets, feelings, things you wish you had/hadn’t said, your wishes for Ryan and his future etc. Get it all out and then either rip it up, put it away for a while and then decide after some space if you still think you need him to read it, or if it was something you just needed to get out on paper.
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If you contact him now, you may really mess with his head. You have no idea what is going on for him in his present life. He may think you want to start up a relationship with him again. He cheated on you. You had a melt-down. You were horrible to him and you feel you made a mistake in the things you said. Okay that’s life. Get over it. If you can’t move on you should see someone to help you deal with what you are feeling. If you had apologised to him not long after the event, it would have been a reasonable thing to do. If you were to bump into him and spontaneously apologise that’s also fine, but to seek him out after all these years to apologise ….? Sounds like you have a lot of unresolved stuff that you need help with, but you should get the help for yourself and leave him alone.
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I don’t really see why you’d apologise, apart from making yourself feel better (and this is a valid reason – no matter what someone has done wrong to me, I hate making another person feel bad …) …
It’s a shame you can’t remember exactly what you said because I think that’s what it comes down to … if you really cut below the belt and humiliated him, you might apolgise for not finding a healthier way to express your anger ..
It’s far more likely though, that you really just told him (in 10 ways) how he’d made you feel by cheating and his tears were more based on his own guilt, his abominable behaviour, and the realisation that he’d hurt you so badly …
You’re probably feeling calmer about it now because time has passed by and life is good for you … but to be blunt, he was your first love and he cheated on you and broke your heart … he kinds deserves to feel bad about it! –
i.e., rest assured that if you REALLY got to him, there’s a good chance he never cheated on anyone ever again …
(Though, ah, it might be worth looking into the reasons for his divorce!? – oh, okay okay, I’m kidding, sorry …)
x TDMJ
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I’m sorry he cheated on you, he reaped what he sowed so to speak. I feel for you – experiencing guilt for your behaviour but I would work through it another way.
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It’s worth mentioning too that you apologising would be ffor YOU not for the guy. As most people have said, he probably wouldn’t think anything of it at all. He may even think you’re a bit loopy for still feeling bad hehe. But it will help YOU get past it, and that’s not a bad thing. At least it would show you learned a valuable lesson right?
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The worst thing that will happen if you track him down and apologise? Nothing. You will ease your guilt and maybe your karma.
The worst thing that will happen if you don’t? Probably the guilt won’t go away. It won’t hurt to track him down. When I was 18 I hooked up with my (then) best friend’s boyfriend, which turned into a 2.5 year relationship. I lost my best friend over it (but had found out beforehand that she had kissed my then boyfriend at the time, hence I had no issues doing it to her). Then, funnily enough, after I had my first child (5 years later) I began to feel guilty about treating someone that way, so I wrote her a letter (she still lived at the same address) aplogising for having done it. We mended things and the guilt went away.
If anything, it might make him feel a little better that at least you have been feeling bad about it.
Or do nothing. Whatever hehe
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Let sleeping dogs lie. You were young and drunk and im sure he got over it after a week or so.
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Gosh Christine.. I have been there! An ex boyfriend of mine that i had been best friends with for 6 years and which then grew into a relationship for 3 years. He was my high school sweetheart and we were inseparable. When we broke up i treated him REALLY badly.
I have been in a wonderful relationship for the past 5 years and am recently married- but I kept having dreams about my ex and him hating me or me feeling bad about the way i treated him. I think it was my sub conscious telling me something…
So…. i emailed him- 5 years after breaking up and apologised for being such a nasty person and treating him badly and told him that he was always going to mean something to me. It was the biggest weight lifted off my shoulders… And now i dont have dreams about him anymore… ahhhhhhh…
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Did he reply? How did he react? Sorry for the questions – I’m a detail girl!
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yep he replied.. said thanks and that he was really hurt at the time, learnt alot from our relationship and break up and had finally gotten over it. We aren’t the best of friends now or anything but we send each other birthday messages every year and both have a mutual respect for each other and what we had years ago. I still care deeply about him, but he just wasnt the one for me!
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