Engagement over - feeling lost

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-16-2006
Engagement over - feeling lost
2
Mon, 02-26-2007 - 12:07pm

I tried once but I don't think it posted so I'll do it again.

My fiance and I were in a long distance relationship for 15 months. He's from the UK I'm in the US. Over New Year's we got engaged. We never fought, we were very much in love. It was my first real love and his first real adult love. We were always kind and respectful towards one another and we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.
We had a bit of a fight about 2 weeks ago and in that time he decided to tell his ex-girlfriend/mother of his son that we were getting married. She replied with 'don't marry her, I love you. We can get back together and you can wake up every morning with your son'. He's always been so brokenhearted about not being in his son's life everyday. She's dragged him around every which way she can, telling him when he calls that he's asleep when he's clearly awake playing in the background. He's got no legal rights to his son according to UK law and his lawyer told him that if he can avoid it don't get the courts involved or it will be worse. the most his could possibly get visitation wise is 2 hours a week if the mother cooperates.
He was very torn for about a week as I impatiently tried to give him space. I was devistated and my heart was shattered. I cried every minute of everyday mostly because I'm a doer and I like to talk things out and he likes to keep it to himself.
Last Monday he sent me a text message saying that he couldn't do it anymore and he doesn't know if its the right decision, probably not, but he has to give it a try with his son. I asked him if it was all a lie if he ever really loved me. He said he did love me and he still loves me.
Tuesday I sent him a text saying he had to call me because you don't break up with someone over text messaging (I keep thinking of Sex and the City when Berger broke up with Carrie on a post-it). He called me Tuesday night and started being really mean to me. After about 3 minutes he had a complete meltdown and said that he was trying to be mean to me so that I'd hate him and move on. We cried to each other for about an hour and half and he said that he will love me forever and nothing that had was ever a lie. He hates doing this but he has to try for his son. I understand that and i told him that. He said he is not getting back together with her (he has to be, I don't think there is any option to that) and said that if he ever gets married it will only be to me.
I felt better when we talked. I don't ever not want to talk to him. I can't bare that. I'm the only person in his life that he actually talks to. Because of being so far away I'll never know how he is, I'll never bump into him or anyone he knows that will tell me if he's happy or sick or hurt. I can't go through life not knowing.
Its been a week now and I'm so unhappy. I hate my job, I've hated it for 3 years now and I've tried unsuccessfully for 2 years to get a new one. Not only was he the person I loved most I was being taken away from all my previous unhappiness. Now I'm back to square one. Only this time I know what life is about, I've known love from a really good person. I was never sappy mushy love person, I never wanted to get married or any of that but I wanted it with him. Now I'm so unhappy because of the breakup, the non-marriage, my terrible job, and being stuck in the same dreary town I've grown up in, and the thing that makes it worse is all of my friends have deserted me. For the first week they were really great. I know they don't know what to say, no one does. The thing is there is no magic phrase that is going to make it all better. So they don't need to say anything just listen. But after a week of seeing me so upset and feeling helpless they've decided that its better to just leave me alone all together...not after saying really mean things to me of course. When I brought it up once, my best friend said to me "ugh, go ahead" in a really disgruntled fashion. Another keeps telling me I'll find someone new, this isn't that bad. I don't want anyone new. This isn't just a random boyfriend that broke my heart. It was the person I was supposed to marry and spend the rest of my life with. And he didn't break my heart. It might be easier if I could hate him a little, feel anything for him but pure love. This isn't the way this is supposed to happen. You're supposed to marry the person you truely love and are engaged to, you aren't supposed to break up when you both really love each other.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-05-2007
Mon, 02-26-2007 - 5:42pm

Hi sun and welcome to the board.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-16-2006
Tue, 02-27-2007 - 9:40am
Thanks. I'm sorry too. I know that eventually he will realize what he's done. I think he kind of knows it now. He keeps saying "I don't know if I made the right decision". I think he feels that he made the mistake by cheating on his ex and having to live without his son and he feels that by doing that he abandoned his child and now he's trying to right past wrongs. It won't happen. You can't change the past and even if he could take back what he did it doesn't change the fact that he doesn't love her and he does love me and now he has to lose out on that. We haven't talked since Thursday. i know how hard it is for him and having to listen to me choke back tears is probably killing him too. I don't know how to deal with this knowing there is no love lost between us. I hate mornings. Last night I had this dream about us getting married and I was on the steps in my house and he was holding my hand and pulling me up them. And I said that I thought he didn't want to be engaged to me and he said "is that what this is all about?" Then I was dancing with him at our wedding but I wasn't looking at him and this older couple was leaving and the wife said to me "look at your husband's eyes" and when I turned he wasn't there anymore. Mornings suck. Having to wake up to face the day again knowing that I won't hear anything from him, when that was the happiest part of my day. I'm a rational person so I'm trying to figure this out and keep it what it is but there are so many things that I want to say to him, I know it won't change anything and I know that. I'm still so sad and feel so alone and everything is so different now.