I am the very last one that has any business trying to give you advice on this subject....but I will just say to you that I hope whatever it is that you choose to do is the least painful. No one deserves to heart hurt.

{{{{{{{{{Hugs}}}}}}}}}}

Once bitten, twice shy.

I would stay away from him .. but that is only my reaction to your post's history.

I know that to some degree for my own sake I should ignore it, WV..

But the thing is.. I know how much he is hurting. And I think that if I don't acknowledge the message and tell him that the past is in the past, he's forgiven and it's time to move on and stop dwelling on what happened, that is will just cause him more pain. I mean.. if sooo long down the road he is up at 3am unable to sleep because of how bad he feels about how things ended, imagine when he doesn't get a reply.. he'll think he deserves to be hurting this bad and he'll think he is not forgiven and that HE really did soemthing wrong, that it wasn't just him being unwell...

I dunno.. I just don't want him to keep hurting over this. The real person inside him is such an amazing and beautiful person he deserves so much better than to live in perpetual pain and guilt over soemthing like this, which he had never meant to happen.

i know u loved and cared about him but u shouldnt be getting back with him in view u can fix him. i told my boyf right from the start that i was weird, i overdosed within 2 weeks of knowing him and well yeh im weird in other ways but he still loves me so it can be done but i always get the feeling he thought us falling in love would magically mend me and he feels constant guilt that he isnt enough to "fix" me and make me truly happy through and through.i think it puts alot of pressure on a realationship if someone is mentally ill, especially at the beginings of a realtionship. its different i think to a situation whereby a couple have been married 10 years and someone in the couple develops mental illness. i cant explain what im saying well. i dont even really know what im saying, but my point is- u need to be prepared to get hurt and have a hard time possibly if u do decided to get back with him. what me and my boyf friend have is speacial, we are there for each other no matter how hard it is or however many dangerous stupid things i do to myself but i think thats different to someone seeing things that arnt there like acusing u of cheating ect.

well, i guess u only know how it truly was before and whether its a good idea to get envolved again. i wish you luck.

one thing though befoer i leave u my awful waffle ...... if he is awake thinking of "shit" maybe something still not all that right with him.

good luck and keep us updated.x

Only you know what you should do. There may be two courses of regret here:

- You contact him and things go wrong. You regret contacting him.

- You don't contact him and always wonder how things could have been. You regret not daring to take one last chance.

Which do you thing the greater regret would be? Regretting something you DID do, or something you DIDN'T.

I always find the latter to be personally the greatest regret.

Maybe he will learn from his regrets with regard his treatment of you. Maybe he will be doomed to repeat them.

Million - I am not thinking about getting back together with him.

I am simply trying to decide whether or not I should message him back telling him that it's okay, that I don't hate him, that I know he is a good person, and that I know he never meant to hurt me. So that he can get on with his life.

Actually, 'not daring' wasn't what I meant. I meant 'not having the confidence to'.

You make some good points, Steve.

I think I should wait until I have talked to one of my good friends that has been there throughout the whole ordeal, from when we were still together, through the rough patches, and throughout the break up and the time since then.. and get her opinion, since she actually knows him and the situation.

Sounds like a plan.

I give respect to your sensitivity towards others. There is nothing wrong with telling him whatever you feel .. forgiveness, 'let it pass', etc.

We can be responsible for the unhappiness of another if we mistreat them. We can be responsible for their happiness by the good things we to for and to them .. BUT, there is another dimension of happiness .. the one the person himself is responsible for .. and I get a SMALL sense, you feel responsible for THAT with this person.

Just a reaction I get from your post. You seem to want to assure his happiness .. and I am not sure one person can do that with another.

ignore it in my opinon nothing good is going to come out of it

Wow! My heart says "be very careful". Sounds from your side that he needed to do a lot of hard inner work. Sorry is as sorry does. And to find out, you have to risk another go-round. If you are sure you can take the risk,then you have your answer. All the best, whatever you decide. (hug)

i wonder why he is reaching outto you now after all this time?

you said, "I should" help him stop hurting at least for just a little.

it's really not your responsiblility. he has to get the help. as women, we're trained to try to fixthings. rrr, my kids just all came in. pm me if you want

It sounds as although he has good intentions, that he is quite emotionally unstable. He sounds to be either depressed or bi-polar, but regardless, he is not stable, and you cannot help him. The chances of him changing are slim. He's hurt you time and time again, and you are simply setting yourself up for disaster by giving him another chance. Remember how wonderful you are and remember that in your heart you know what you need to do. I wish you all the best xoxoxoxo L

So.. here is a tentative reply I have written up that I may or may not send to him.

I figure I should wait a few days, re read it, possibly tweak it and then send it if I do end up replying in the end. I still haven't decided whether I should or not. Any comments / advice are welcome.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I've thought long and hard about whether it is a good idea or a bad idea to reply. I've concluded that I'll never come to a conclusion because that all rests on what your intentions were in sending it... but it seems from what you said that you genuinely regret having hurt me and that the apology is sincere. I've thought about it and realized that this is the first time you have contacted me with any form of an apology that was not attached to some form of passive-aggressive accusation or attempt to extract some sort of confession from me. I hope I am safe in assuming that means you have come to, or at least have begun seriously contemplating, the conclusion that the things that you accused me of were not true.

I can only speculate as to what your intentions were with sending that. I'm going to hope and assume that your intent was simply to let me know that you are sorry. Assuming that is the case here is what you need to know:

- It's okay. I forgave you a long time ago.
- I know that the person that caused me all that grief was not the real you, so I don't hold anything that happened against you as a person. (Remember.. I know a thing or two about what it is like to be in a "bad place" psychologically....)
- I've realized that there were a lot of things I could have done better, and that there were a number of signs that things were not as perfect as I pretended they were that I should have taken notice of and tried to work out with you but didn't. I've realized that I am to blame, at least in part, for pushing you away because I was being very selfish and instead of taking care to deal with the signs that you weren't happy, I only cared about the fact that I was happy which led me to downplay the significance of the things that were bothering you, treating them like they were silly things shouldn't even bother you instead of working on them, which even if it didn't cause things to go to the extreme they did, certainly didn't aid in keeping things from getting so bad. For those things, I'm genuinely sorry. I really wish I had dealt with things better than I had.
- I've come a long way in terms of getting past the whole thing and moving on with my life. I hope you have too. There is a reason the past is in the past, and sometimes it's best to leave it there where it belongs.
- I genuinely care about you, and I think I probably always will. However, it seems to me that it is not conducive to either your or my well-being that we stay in any form of prolonged contact with each other. At least not for as long as there is still any confusion about what happened between us. I'm afraid that, if the past is any indication, there will probably always be confusion about that.

So there you have it. Hopefully that provides a little closure for you and we can both continue to get on with our lives. Please don't continue to dwell on what happened between us - if you never meant to hurt me you should be content accepting the fact that you never meant to hurt me. If you are holding that against yourself you need to stop. There is no reason why, after a year and a half, you should still be lying awake at 3 in the morning feeling guilty about all this. You're a good person and you know it, and that should be enough for you to let sleeping dogs lie..

All the best,

Sara.