Complicated break up
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Complicated break up
| Fri, 05-06-2005 - 3:21pm |
I'm living in limbo as far as my husband is concerned. To try and cut a very long story short, i left my husband whilst severely depressed, thought i had lost my love for him because of panic attacks around the home. Married very happily for 32 years, husband dismayed and not really understanding. We remained married but living apart. We still slept together, went out together, shared most things together but he was lonely and he went off with a much younger woman. He told me, i was devastated and realised i wanted him back, he came back, i felt pushed out by constant badgering from o/w which he didn't realise i saw. I became very unstable and pushed him more away until he eventually asked for a divorce last August. I agreed because i could no longer fight her but within weeks was so severely depressed as to end up in the mental hospital with a nervous breakdown. Losing him completely has shown me how much i love my husband but he doesn't understand the depression, the ocd, anxiety and panic attacks. He just keeps on saying "you knew what you were doing" He's been seeing the 16 yrs younger o/w behind my back for 4 months and out in the open for 8. However, he hasn't pushed for the divorce, even says he isnt in a rush as he'll never marry again. He insists we still go out together with the grandchildren on a saturday afternoon and his o/w gives him a lot of grief for it. He loved me absolutely and i know how rejected he felt and now it is my turn. I am addressing my depression, my ocd and my anxiety which all stems from childhood sexual abuse, fear of rejection is what has driven most of my behaviour over the last couple of years and i pray to god, my husband can forget all the hurt i caused him and come and talk to me one day. He has said to our daughter that he hopes things sort themselves out by next christmas and that he would like to take me out for a drink but he makes no effort to do so and as far as i'm aware is still with the o/w. He asked our daughter how he was meant to just dump her as she would feel used. I hope whoevers reading this, youve followed this complicated tale of mixed messages and hurt feelings and can anyone answer me, can we just turn off our love for someone when they've hurt us, as i can't turn mine off and i'm being hurt!! Any advice or opinions would be very welcome indeed. Thank you very much for taking the time to read my story......... Poppy

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Then and only then, could you really start to talk to your husband and find out if and what you have to salvage. And first he would have to get rid of o/w! But you have to have your life straight, deal with hurting him, forgive yourself so you can ask him to forgive you and vice versa. You didn't do this all by yourself, but you can get back on track without him. I will pray for you, I know you are trying to dig out and the dirt keeps caving in on you, but keep at it. I hope when you feel better about yourself and get yourself together, that He will step up and be the man you remember.
And sidenote: when you start living for you, I'm thinking you might *reconsider* if you still want him. There is alot of hurt to get through, and he's not helping anything by keeping his side women. But cross that bridge when you get there. Hugs, hugs, hugs
Grace
Grace thank you so much for your response to my complicated break up. I'm not at all sure how i posted this far down!!!!!! it was a mistake and i even had a job to find my way back to my message so i was quite surprised to see a reply.
Yes you are quite right. I have a lot of healing and soul searching to do. I have been on a lengthy road to self discoverment in the last 9 months and at first i admit to wanting to get myself better so that i could get my husband back to me. Now however, i can see that i have to get myself better for ME first and foremost with no alterior motive, just getting myself better so that i can enjoy my own life no matter where it takes me. I have realised how much i love my husband and it may be too late and there may be too much hurt between us to find our way back. Grace, i only know that our love was strong, we were best mates, lovers and soul mates. My husband would never have gone off with anyone else without my making him think i didnt want him any more. My confusion and pain from the past kept me trapped and i took it all out on the one i loved the most in the world. I have tried to explain it all and he is now trying to get the past 2 years out of his head. He is still with the o/w but as he tells our daughter it isnt 100% and it also hasn't seemed to have progressed or moved on much in the past 9 months.
It's our daughters birthday tomorrow and he asked me what we were doing for her and we have shared the cost of her birthday present and card and are going out tomorrow with her and the grandchildren to celebrate. It is a weird break up and i can't help but pray for everything to work itself out but meanwhile i push on with all my counselling, i read books on self help and i am trying to find peace within myself and have already not only forgiven myself but also the man who abused me as a child as the sad, pathetic, troubled excuse for a human being that he was.
We've still neither of us instigated a divorce so all is not lost. I pray to god to help me through the toughest time of my life coming to terms with what i've done and all the hurt i've caused and to help me to deal with whatever life has in store for me. I'm slowly building up my life. I'm looking for a part time job and i am moving home as too many sad memories abound here. Thank you for your prayers and for your kindness and time in replying to my post. Take care from Poppy.
I'm so glad I found you too! lol. It does sound like you are making great strides to heal your heart and your life. And your husband does sound like an honorable man. As you are healing, it would help if he just dropped that situation entirely, but he isn't. I think you are going at this the right way, and one day at a time. Keep praying for strength and guidance, and he will come thru for you.
And I truly hope forgiveness from him will come. Don't beat yourself up anymore about what was done. You are in a better place and continuing to heal, so he will have to come the rest of the way. Would he not consider couples counceling now with you? Oh, my heart goes out to you!
I hope you have a wonderful time, celebrating your daughter's birthday tommorow! Keep your chin up, and keep praying, He's got great things in store for you :)
Lilgrace thank you so much for finding me again!!!! My heart continues to break. We had such a lovely afternoon yesterday with our two grandsons. Although conversation does get a little limited due to the situation, we are always together when it comes to the boys and when we got back to our daughters, she opened her presents which were joint from the both of us and lit the candle on her birthday cake, which i had baked for her the night before. It was all lovely and i could have been crying at any minute but i held it back. I house swopped later on in the evening with my daughter and son in law so that they could get a decent night's sleep (three little ones under 5) and sleep is not that plentiful!! At around the time my daughter had been born 26 years ago i just couldn't keep the tears back. While i was babysitting, he was with the other woman. I guess his mind didn't go back along those 26 years. Lilgrace, i know how much i hurt him and i know it was all my doing. I started all of this, it was me, i was my own worst enemy. I've learnt so much about myself and now that i'm coming out the other side i feel such compassion for that little girl who grew into an adult trying to pretend nothing was wrong with her until she was terrified at what was happening to her and felt she had to run away. I felt i had no other way out of the way i was feeling and was too terrified to tell my husband everything about how i felt as i knew he would reject me, much easier to reject myself. I was always poorly and was in hospital with pneumonia within 1 month of my leaving and depressed all of the time but trying to hide it. We kept our separation 'together' still sharing all expenses and family things and family members didn't know what to make of it all and the truth was neither did we. Me least of all. I had left thinking i wouldn't feel trapped any more but i still wasn't happy. Now i see i had been running away from the ocd and how it made me feel and not my husband which was why i couldn't break contact with him.
He's been the one to break contact now by going off with this other woman. He still wants us to be friends for the grandchildren's sakes but it tears me apart to be with him on saturday afternoons knowing that he is going off to her after we part. He is not an unkind man and has in fact gone out of his way not to hurt me over all of this. He is very loyal and bound by duty. He's not strayed and wouldn't have strayed if i hadn't told him maybe he should find another woman. This woman didn't feel good enough for him. I do pray, i pray to god for his forgiveness of what i've done to our relationship and to help me to deal with the consequences. I love my husband and want him to be happy and if i have to spend the rest of my life alone, then i will never regret our long and happy marriage and in time the wonderful memories won't hurt me anywhere near like they do now. I've learnt to forgive myself and can only keep praying that god might be able to get into my husband's heart and help him to forgive me too.
Thank you Lilgrace for taking the time to reply and for your wonderful support. I'm not without sin in all of this and i pray to god for his forgiveness. My husband i don't blame, he's done no wrong, i pushed him away until he went. He's told our daughter he wants to phone me and take me out for a drink but that was 2 months ago and still he hasnt done it. He will have loyalty to this other woman now because he is with her at the moment and it will make it difficult for him to talk to me because any talk with me would be with the idea of mending or getting back together i presume and how can he have this kind of talk when he's still with her. Meanwhile i can't see any reason for him to ditch her as she seems to be making it very easy for him to be with her, She must be accepting his non movement of their situation and happily fitting her life in around his. He's told our daughter it's 'easy' and hasn't changed.
I concentrate on my impending move to another flat, trying to get employment and keeping all my counselling appointments and reading lots and lots of really helpful books on self esteem, assertiveness etc.etc. Have a great Sunday whatever you do and wherever you are Lilgrace. Bye and thank you from Poppy
Hi Poppy - welcome :)
I'm letting you know that I'm moving this thread to a different folder - I didn't want to confuse you :).
Wow, Poppy what a time you have had. I find strength in your story, and I wish you the best. Below I are some quotes I would like you to keep around. Print them out, and hang them up. Surround yourself with things and people that make you feel good about yourself. You are doing the right thing, and always remember that you cannot expect anyone else to love you if you don't love yourself first, and nobody ever said it was going to be easy. I have posted these sayings under a different message board as well, about breaking up. Hope you find some strength in the things that have helped me.
Take care of yourself, you're doing great.
Kristi
After a while, you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul. And you learn that loving doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't mean security; and you begin to learn kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises, and you begin to accept your defeats with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child; and you learn to build all of your roads on today because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much, so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers, and you learn that you really can endure...you really are strong, and you really do have worth.
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.
Thank you so much dorabelle8 for your message, you don't know how much it means to me for someone to take the trouble to read my story and pass on their comments. I can honestly say that there are times when i ask myself, ' how do i cope with all of this' and 'how did this ever happen to us'. We were so much a couple, so loving and so so much in love with each other. My heart use to fill with wonder when he came home from work. I still can't believe what is happening and there are times when i think 'please god put an end to all my heartache for i can't stand any more'
You are quite right, i had to learn to love myself first and they were my husband's very words when he left me back last August. Most of the time i am calm and serene and it's a wonderful feeling to have at long last realised that i am a good person. By trying to protect everyone else from what i was really going through, only served to harm myself more until i felt completely worthless. The lessons i've learnt from all of this will hopefully serve me forever and make me a much better person.
I pray constantly for my husband to have compassion for me and to be able to put the past hurt behind him and i also pray that i have not lost him to this o/w. I'm so so sad that our wonderful happy marriage, hasnt even been given the chance to go to marriage counselling to be addressed or had any kind of readdressing whatsoever. How could something so good go so so wrong???
Thank you again dora, it means such a lot to me to know that there are such kind people out there...Poppy
Ok so now my heart is breaking a little more. Time goes on - so much time, time without my husband in my life. It's like i live in a dream a nightmare that i want to wake up from but can't. He and i continue to see each other on a Saturday afternoon and discuss everything to do with the children and the grandchildren. Sometimes he texts over something or another but he is still with the o/w.
Yesterday i saw an 'Ann Summers' receipt on the floor and couldn't help looking and it was dated last Tuesday so he's obviously still with her and buying her lingerie of the 'sexy' kind. My heart took a dive and i could hardly even pretend to act normal. I went very quiet and my heart broke a little more.
The agony just goes on and on.................
I'm sorry things haven't gotten any better.... Maybe it's time since he has made no effort to work on the two of you, that you should file for divorce. Take some time away from him. Otherwise you will never be able to move on. I'm so sorry, I really thought he would leave the ow. Now you can end things and know you gave it your all. Maybe it's what you are suppose to do, because there is something else in store for you?? Best wishes, and a heartfelt hug,
Grace
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