Complicated Relationship between Three People Falls Apart

Hello again, dear bear,

It's The Listener again. It's been a long time since I wrote you last. Jan of 2013, I believe. I had a bit of a mix up with my now ex-mate, her married partner and their cub.

As it went, that relationship just ate itself from the inside out and there really wasn't much her partner or I could do. He and I are actually better friends now than we are with her. Sad to say we actually tried to keep everything together more then she did.... In the end, she is now with a new male and left the rest of us kinda wondering what the hell happened.

But now I have a new problem. How to let go?

After the big break up, I moved back to where I started and have been putting my life back together. My ex-mate and I tried to restart our friendship. And it seemed to be going well! Then about two months later, she suddenly just stopped talking to me or anyone we knew.

I'm left feeling lost and hurt. Wondering what the hell I did wrong when I know all the drama was pretty much on her end.

So I guess I just need help moving on and letting go?

I'm still upset about not getting at least a warning she suddenly wanted to end even our friendship.... We talked pretty much every day for over four years. I just don't know what to do with this sudden whole in my daily life. When I say we talked every day, I mean we talked like all day ... before work, breaks at work, and then late in to the night after work.

I'm trying to put myself and my life back together....but it's hard when such a big part is missing.

Thank you for you time,
The Listener

* * * 

Dear Listener,

As we go through life, we will meet a number of very special people who will later leave us. Sometimes through death, sometimes they just fade away after moving to another part of the world, and sometimes there will be a fight and a division that way. Whether, in the last case, the fault lies with you or the other person really becomes irrelevant after a few years when the relationship is irrevocably split.

A lot of people, such as yourself, talk about “getting over it,” meaning, really, “How do I stop being sad about the end of a relationship?” Two possible answers: if you are a person without a heart, you will easily dismiss the experience and go about your merry way without a heavy heart, but if you have a heart, you will always feel the pain to some extent, though it may fade some with time. Since you are still disturbed by what happened, the good news is you aren’t a heartless furry. 

In this bear’s opinion, there is a reason that in life we experience sadness and pain, and that is to learn from what has happened and, hopefully, correct it. But it is also so that we can treasure the bright moments in our life all the more. If everything in life were sunshine and roses, we wouldn’t understand and appreciate the good things in life.

My advice to you is to, first off, not try to get over your friend. You should remember the four years you had together and cherish the parts of it that were happy. Secondly, you need to try and learn from this. Rereading your past letter from 2013 (http://www.askpapabear.com/letters/this-love-triangle-is-further-complicated-by-a-cub), the basic situation as I understand it was that you were a third party to a couple who had a child together. You talked about how you didn’t really want a cub in your life, so it was pretty clear to me this was not going to work out. “What the hell happened” was that she, the cub’s mom, couldn’t handle the polyamorous relationship as well as you and he thought she could (I’m assuming the cub is with her?)

The lesson here for you to learn is not to step in it, which you have in a big way. That she actually tolerated your moving in with the father of her child is really quite surprising and amazing. I’m not sure what was going on in her head, but evidently she was trying her darndest to maintain some sort of cohesion with the father of her child, even if that meant tolerating another woman in the mix. Astounding, really, in my opinion. Her reconnecting to her ex likely has to do with her concern for her child, while her silence toward you is likely caused by her finally reaching her limit and no longer wishing to endure “the other woman.” She apparently put up a good front for a long time, even trying to be friends with you, but now she’s done.

Yes, this is speculation on my part, since I have not spoken to her, but it seems a logical conclusion, given the circumstances.

As I said, then, take this time in your life and reflect on the good and the bad of it. Learn from it. Do not “get over it” or forget about it, because there are valuable lessons to be learned here, especially concerning walking through a minefield when you are the foreign soldier in a strange land.

Good luck,

Papabear