old photos new pain *trigger*

Hi,
Firstly, want to apologise for not coming on here in ages. Have been having a few stable weeks and havent really felt like i've had much to say or to input in anyone elses threads... I've recently been seriously struggling with a series of events and i dont know what best to do to make it easier for myself.
Basically, i've been with my boyfriend for 5 months now. He makes out that he's nuts about me, and that i'm the first person he's ever felt this way about. He said the that the way he feels about me makes him question whether he's ever been in love before...every now and then i have been able to believe that i truly am something special to him.
However, he recently re-activated an old fbook account which he'd frozen since about 2009. Because it had been frozen for so long, the most recent posts on his wall and the most recent photos he's uploaded are of him and his ex girlfriend being ridiculously loved up.
He has a funny thing about having photos taken of him, and for that reason there is only one photo of us two together.. but there's literally about a hundred of him and his ex together, which he's taken and uploaded and put captions on. So already I'm paranoid that the real reason he doesnt want to take photos of us together is that he's in some way ashamed of me...
Whats worst is that the captions he's put on the photos are things like "oh my god look how beautiful she is" "i can't believe she's mine" "so cute" "best couple ever" etc etc. You get the picture. Thing is, he's never been that openly gooey with me. ever. he says he feels awkward when other people see us being coupley and he cant really do it.
It makes it so so so so much harder that she is ridiculously beautiful. Like, by anyones standard. Unfairly pretty. I've developed just enough self confidence to admit that I no longer think that i'm ugly. But i'm not a scratch on her.
When I first got with my boyfriend I was joking around saying that I felt that he'd definitely stepped down in terms of standards by getting with me after her... but despite me joking, I did feel some truth in it.
He would always reply by saying how crazy I was, and how he thinks i'm more beautiful. But i just dont believe him. And I didnt believe him when he said he's never felt this way about anyone before, because just witnessing what his relationship was like with her shows that he truly truly was nuts about her at some point...
this whole thing is doing my head in and i just dont know what to do about it... I feel awful, and lied to, and insignificant, and unimportant and not special enough. I feel like I could never compete with her, and I feel that he has been dishonest and like I cant trust anything he says. I want to believe all the nice things he says about me, but the minute i get close to it I find some piece of evidence that shows me that he's just saying these things to make me feel better.
Or to convince himself that he's in a relationship that he wants, when really I think he probably still wants her...
he told her he wanted to marry her. He now claims he just said that because thats what she said too, and at the time he was just in a habit with her, and they'd be going out for so long it seemed like the next logical step. but i have my own theory.
I think he did want her, and she finished with him and moved on quickly,. And i think he found me in order to replace that person in his life.
except i dont feel like I can ever match up to it...
argh. somebody please tell me what to do to stop this from hurting so much, I dont want to shout at him or cause an argument but thats what this pain is driving me towards. I'm feeling like I want to cut myself again and i'm filled with so much self loathing that i'm not what she was to him, that i'll never me that good...
i just want to feel OK.

Hey oc! Good to see you on here... it's been a hot minute <3


First off, I can understand that he reactivated his old FB, it would already have his friends "friended" and all that, but do you think it would be out of sorts to ask him if he wouldn't mind removing their pictures from his FB? I think that's a normal and natural request.

I would be in FLAMES if I saw that kind of stuff all over my dude's page, even knowing that it was old. I would have not wanted to see that page until he had removed all the stuff he didn't think I really needed to be exposed to, but then again, that's me, and not you.

I think you have every reason to be upset. I would be too.

<3

AMP

Wow, do I emphathize. Facebook has changed so much about dating, rubbing our faces in things we don't want to and shouldn't see like that. Mark Zuckerberg has a special place in hell for the infinite messed up situations like this he's created by singlehandedly changing modern dating.

I think it's completely reasonable to ask your boyfriend to take those pics down, and hopefully he'll get it and you won't have to elaborate in depth on how hurtful it is.

I just had to ask my ex to block me b/c I didn't have the willpower to keep him blocked and seeing pics of him with his new gf drove me out of my mind.

Icky stuff.

hi guys,
thanks for the replies. I mentioned what you'd said, that maybe they should be deleted and he said that he'd been thinking that too - that it made him feel wierd also...
so the photos are gone so thats easier - it stops me from constantly face stalking them. GAH.
but to be honest it's still haunting me. I've been feeling so unattractive in comparison to her, and i honestly dont understand how he can be satisfied with me after being with someone who looks like that... i'm quite a lot chubbier than her, and i've always had issues with my weight. Nothing he says can make me feel secure or believe that he finds me attractive. I literally dont know what to do to help myself stop feeling awful about this. Its like i've become obsessed with his ex and how much better she is than me...its actually alarming me.
i facebook stalk her every day, and i read her blog (no one knows this) and i stalk her on twitter, even though i dont have my own twitter account. Its getting creepy. I just stare at photos of her and make myself feel bad because she's prettier, and see that she does so much with her life - she's just started her own business where she makes her own cosmetics, she makes handbags and clothes and jewellery. And the worst thing for me is that she has an amazing family - she is so close to all of them, and has an amazingly supportive father. i dont even know my dad, and me and my mum do nothing but argue. this really bothers me, because i guess i'm so jealous of it. Plus my boyfriend is still really close to her family (her dad in particular) - they were together for quite a long time, and her and her family are very much in his life. I'm not prepared to ask him not to see them anymore because i know what they do for him, and how much they mean to him.
What can i do to end this obsession? I need to find a way of making it work without me feeling like this...
X
ps - its not just her i'm obsessed with. i've read my boyfriends emails and found some from last year from some girl he was dirty texting and emailing for a few weeks, and then they had a one night stand as a result. I was obsessed with her for a while although i couldnt track her down on facebook so the obsession ended pretty swiftly.

Again, I'm with ya. I had a HUGE relapse last night, unblocked my ex and his girlfriend and spent the night stalking them on FB, even "liking" old pics of him and me to let him know I'd been there. It's like a drug addiction.

I start DBT therapy on Saturday and it's not soon enough.

Would love ANY suggestions people have for you (and me) on stopping such obsessive behavior....

oh no! i really hope my little rant didnt cause you to relapse :-/ i'm sorrryy.
what is it you obsess about? with me its all about comparing myself to another person and finding myself not good enough. Are you a nostalgia junkie?
X

oh no no no it didn't, no worries. it's my own stuff.

I'd been obsessing to a freaky degree for the past 2 months, to the point my old therapist said if I didn't cut it out I'd have to detox in a hospital like drug detox. Then, I'd been good the past 2 weeks when I was starting to date someone else, feeling like I could move on, but the new one dissed me on Sunday and I went back to obsessing about the ex.

I think at the beginning I was obsessing about trying to figure out what the hell happened-- the breakup was unexpected and knocked the wind out of me and he gave me the silent treatment for a week, leaving me to look for clues wherever I could.

Then once the clues led me to conclude that he had moved on to someone else (before ending things with me), I started obsessing about her too, again trying to put all the pieces together, figure out what exactly their relationship was.

Every now and then I just try to get a rise out of him, just to know I'm on his radar at all. I don't expect a positive reaction, but any reaction at all means he's at least thinking about me. So I unblocked him and his girlfriend and then left a couple of "likes" on his pictures as breadcrumbs that would at least make my picture pop up.

I don't think it's nostalgia so much because I've accepted for the most part that it's over. But I'm wallowing in the unfairness of how he told me he didn't want a relationship, how he made me keep our romance a secret, and how he's having this very visible obvious romantic r'ship with the new one all over Facebook, and it's... ok, fine, I'm comparing myself *nod*

argh god that must be so difficult... you being left in that position where you're constantly questioning yourself. Of course you're going to be obsessing over this new relationship...
I just cant seem to stop. its gotten to the point where I've become more obsessed with her than I have with her relationship with my ex. I've concluded in my head that we'd be really good friends and that we should meet up. I find myself trying to be like her...but then I do that anyway (it comes with part of the territory of feeling you dont have your own personality).
I'm just so sick and tired of feeling rubbish...I want to be free from this low self esteem but i dont even know when my therapy is due to start...it could be months.
I guess I'm just really craving the ability to know myself, and to know my own relationship...sometimes it feels like I dont even really exist, and nor does my relationship, and so when it comes to comparing myself to anyone I lose everytime, because i'm not really even there.... ranting a bit now. X

omalley_cat wrote:argh god that must be so difficult... you being left in that position where you're constantly questioning yourself. Of course you're going to be obsessing over this new relationship...
I just cant seem to stop. its gotten to the point where I've become more obsessed with her than I have with her relationship with my ex. I've concluded in my head that we'd be really good friends and that we should meet up. I find myself trying to be like her...but then I do that anyway (it comes with part of the territory of feeling you dont have your own personality).
I'm just so sick and tired of feeling rubbish...I want to be free from this low self esteem but i dont even know when my therapy is due to start...it could be months.
I guess I'm just really craving the ability to know myself, and to know my own relationship...sometimes it feels like I dont even really exist, and nor does my relationship, and so when it comes to comparing myself to anyone I lose everytime, because i'm not really even there.... ranting a bit now. X

I've done that too in the past.

I keep hoping someone will chime in with a magic "obsession cure" for us.... .