Never-comitting Ex-lover married
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| Tue, 09-21-2004 - 4:56am |
I don't know whether this is the right board, but it's to do with an ended affair, it's a weird situation and I have a problem with it, so here it goes:
About a year ago (I'm married for a year now) I had a torrent, passionate affair with a man/soulmate who made it clear from the start that he was the non-marrying type (although we frequently talked about what kind of rings we'd have, in case etc.). It was his life's hard-and-fastest principle for over 40 years (we were both about 42 when we met). At the time, he had had a steady partner for 6 years, but didn't know how dissatisfied he was with his life in general until he met me. I loved hard, fought hard, and lost hard: He would not even make me "official", although stating he loved me so very much (which I felt to be the truth). It was a grand drama, and after 1 1/2 years it came to a head: I found a good man who wanted me for life, but I still could not let go of my affair - he was such an important person to me, in every respect. One month before my marriage, my affair left his long-term-partner and me in a span of 2 days, saying he needed to get on his feet again. I tried to maintain some kind of contact, but he'd written me completely out of his books - which I could never understand, because we'd been best friends as well as best lovers...
It's been a bit over a year since, and I have made some progress in not feeling such a dire, desperate need for his words and his touch. It was so hard, but I was on the right road.
Now, 2 days ago, I got to know that he got MARRIED this August. He had made it official on the website of the firm he works for - complete with picture of the happy couple and all - in a space of the website where he usually has a commentary (3 times a year) to do with the firm. News of his marriage did not fit in there - especially as he states there that the wedding was very private... I can't see why he did that. I would not want to think he guesses that I still look at his column from time to time; I know I'm of no importance to him whatsoever any more. His wife is not his former partner, it's a woman I don't know. Good-looking, they make a nice, very fitting pair.
It quite floored me. I was sitting there with trembling knees and a life-threatening heartbeat-rate, not wanting to know at all: Turns out, it wasn't the commitment he shied, but he didn't want ME. This man, who told me once, if he ever entertained thoughts about marriage, I'd be the first woman he'd come to with those thoughts - this man, who never gave us a chance because of his principles - this man wrecks 2 perfectly good women in his own mind-clensing-process, then goes off, barely a year later, to MARRY. The atrocity! I'm furious with myself for feeling this way... I have a happy marriage (although I could never talk to my husband the way I talked to my affair), I have a very good life - and still I get so upset, mad + sad about this "betrayal" (that is none) that I lie awake at night, thinking: "What has she what I haven't got? How come this man who didn't want a full relationship with me, when we fit so perfectly in every respect (he felt this, too), when we were as close as 2 people can ever get - how come he can love another so much more as to marry her?
I don't want to feel this way, I want to see it for what it is: Just an insult, an offense to my (misguided, in this respect) pride. I think what hurts most is to know now that he can't have been truthful when he told me he loved me so much. All those words + deeds, all this drama + pain, all this love + passion - for nothing? Dust in the wind? All my feelings (the strongest I ever had in my life) ridiculed? I feel such a dumb nut, so silly, so ashamed I, then, threw my life and my being for all it was worth at his feet and now he as much says to me (wink, wink): "Tricked you there, now, didn't I? Don't take it too hard girl, turned out there was someone better than you. Just forget about all we had. Wasn't so much, anyway..." I feel terrible. The banality of it all - and no one is the least interested in what I now feel - and rightly so: It should not concern me at all...
Have any of you had similar experiences? How did you get to grips with your feelings? What can I do to start some christian/reasonable thinking, telling myself, "It's nice that he's happy now (having loved him so much, I should be happy he's happy)" and NOT "I wish he'd have sufferd for the loss of me for the rest of his life and then gone as an old, lonely alcoholic tottering to an early grave ;-)These last thoughts are so detrimental to my soul's well-being...
Any suggestions? I'd be SO thankful,
Marion.

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You need to stop obsessing about this man and start obseeing about the one you married, he has given you his life and his love and has the right to expect the same from you.
If you can't deal with the reality of your PAST relationship maybe Indiviual councilling can help you get some prespective.
You need to put this behind you before it damages your relationship with the man that REALLY LOVES.
Best wishs
Free
I can only imagine the sting you must feel about this, that deep soul crushing torment about hearing one thing and seeing different actions. What a slap in the face! (more like a punch to the gut?)
Try posting at 'From Abandonment to Healing'. (I have one rambling post there) After attempting NC w/ the xMM, I've done some soul searching and am slowly (ever so slowwwwly) coming to the conclusion that issues from my past have deeply affected how I seek out current relationships. (Duh, no kidding) I have been trying to figure out WHICH relationships affected me the deepest and HOW.
I've had similar situations in the past and I've found there to be varying degrees of difficulty in trying to move on. If I think about it long and hard, I can conjure up a lot of the pain associated with those times. So, I have to choose deliberatly to keep my mind off them.
Recently, I've tried to pray more. Not just for getting what I want, or THINK that I want, but for God to grant me the serenity, acceptance and wisdom package. It's an uphill climb, of course, but I've noticed it does help me. I just have to stay at it b/c sometimes I find myself wallowing in self-pity just for the sake of wallowing.
I wish you all the best; hope to hear from you again
grace
Thank you so much for your sympathy and thoughts which I can relate to so well... I have had 3 "big loves" in my life, and the 2 former took me about 10-12 years each to finally understand (as well as I could) and lay aside: this last one being the hardest, because it was the most intense. Other rel.ships in between suffered a lot, of course.
I do try to deliberately "keep my mind off it", as you do, but it's very hard; thoughts about it hit me when I'm comletely unprepared, or in my dreams at night. Also, since I married + moved, I couldn't find a job, and I don't have kids - I spend far too much time at home, and it's bad for my self-esteem, also.
I love my husband (in a very different way as I loved my affair) and he knows all about the situation and developments, he is (and always has been) very sympathetic to my plight. The whole thing happened before we were married. I would never have secrets with him, and this problem of mine could not endanger our marriage. The post before yours hurt me a bit, and so I was glad to read you, who understands the pain. I acknowledge this affair/this man WAS an obsession (apart from also being one of the greatest revelations in my life) - but aren't all big loves in a way?
I've been praying on + off for exactly the things you pray for, and also for forgiving him AND myself... I found it helped most in the dire need and raw hurt just after the break-up - but now I feel not even God can be interested in this banal, self-centered feeling of mine. Maybe losing quite a few friends and contacts when I moved in with my husband, a long way from my former place of living, and feeling isolated here still after 1 year, has worsened the situation. I try to keep myself occupied (courses, fitness etc.) but I still miss a "related" soul to talk to. It seems I just can't find a person like that any more, that used to be much easier when I was younger. It doesn't help that my affair was the 1 person I felt closest to in all my life... See, for 40 years I had a dream of closeness, intimacy and nearness of souls, and just when I had about given up looking and even hoping for it, this man made it come true.
And now I'm left with the reality that he may have just used me to fix his own life-crisis and that he was not truthful to me. It's like an ocean suddenly dried up - and no one cares the least ( a bit like the Aral-Sea disaster ;-).
Plus I feel that I'm letting down the few friends left to me, because I can't follow their advice to just let go and see it for what it was: "Just one of those things, one of those crazy flings..." It shames me so that for me, it was such a big, big thing, while for him... One of the worst things was that when he went, he said he regretted that he "had let it come as far as this", while before, he professed that I was the best friend he ever had...
AND it doesn't help that autumn is just setting in here in Germany - the weather reflects my state of mind: Wet, cold, stormy ;-) I feel I need to get away (when I've just had 2 lovely weeks in Crete) - when I fully well know, I can only solve this problem inside myself. Flight will not help.
Thanks again for your support. Hope all gets better for you and me, and peace will be attainable, somehow, somewhere...
M.
Hugs, Woman!
I just wanted to wish you well in your struggle. My story is very different, but one part of your post really strucj a chord with me.
"It shames me so that for me, it was such a big, big thing, while for him... "
That makes a lot of sense. To me, it took so much pain, rationalization, and thought (of
I have older brothers and amongst guys they have a saying that, "I like her well enough, I'm just not THAT into her..." Hard to hear but often needs to be heard in order to be able to pick ourselves up and begin to move on.
As far as being best friends with this exOM, how many of your best friends enable and even encourage you to lie, deceive and betray people who love you? What kind of best friend were you that you enabled and encouraged him to do so?
What exOM's new wife looks like, sounds like, does for a job or her favourite toe nail polish colour is absolutely no reflection on YOU whatsoever. It's simply a matter of he found someone that he was "into" enough to make her his life partner and to display proudly on his arm (and apparently his website). He's not married her to spite you, he's married her because he has quite rightly moved on with his life - much as you should have done.
It really does seem that you have little to fill your hours with and consequently are filling it with inappropriate remember-when's.
Remove those blinding love-goggles and look forward rather than back. Every moment you spend running over the why's, the why-not's, the what-if's and if-only's is a moment wasted.
It sounds like you have a good and decent, loving husband. Spend a moment and think about the 100 little things he did TODAY to show you he loves you - be it making your morning coffee just how you like it, to allowing you a lovely lie-in, to putting a roof over your heads & food on your table, to folding his own socks & putting them away in the sock drawer without the need for fanfare to announce that he's done so. Tell him you noticed and that you appreciate it. Give him a hug, he deserves it.
Don't waste your life staring at a closed, locked door - seize the handle on the one that's open to you. It's open for a reason, it's down to you to discover what that reason is.
Wishing you strength & peace,
Posie
I read your post here tonight and wanted to respond to it before going to bed.When i read it,it really hit my heart hard.You see,i am basically in the same "boat".I am married and had an affair that ended just over a year ago..a year ago in August.He was Divorced with two children and swore he would not re-marry,was scared to love again,had all these"emotional walls" built up.BUT,he also let me know how much he loved me and wanted me.He always wanted me to "hang in there and not give up on him"..so i did...for 2 years.I left my Husband for this man.We were the best of friends,talked about everything and anything every day,almost every hour of the day.I never thought i could feel the way i did for him or love like that.It was heaven and hell at the same time.
As i said,it ended last august..very badly i might add.He didnt even have the heart to face me.He did it online while we were having a fight on instant message.The weekend before that we had spent together and it was wonderful.That was the last time i saw his face.That was august and for almost 2 months i tried everything i could to get him to face me,to talk and say "goodbye" face to face.Stupid i know but my heart needed that closure like we need air to live.He never gave it to me...just kept telling me to move on that it was over.The day he told me online that he was getting married is the day a part of me died forever.I had always told him i wanted to go to the mountains for the weekend with him..we discussed it several times.We had planned to do it.That day he told me he was taking her to the mountains to get married and honeymoon.It was like he was rubbing it in my face..me who was hurting beyond anything he could imagine.Stabbing my heart a million times could not have hurt more.What hurt even more was the girl he married is my age..he's 15 years older..she's never been married and has no kids..he always told me my 2 kids would be welcome.He also always told me he'd rather be with someone who has kids because they "understand the demands of kids".
I guess what i'm trying to say is i know how you are feeling....God do i know.I wish every night for his marriage to fail.for her to leave his sorry butt when she realizes she wants kids of her own(he had a vesectomy 5 yrs ago)...i just still to this day cannot wish him any happiness.I hate myself for that,but i dont.He wished me the best of everything over and over but i cant do the same.It's been one year and i'm still hurting terribly.I wish you well and if you ever want to chat...let me know..God bless!!
There was a man that I had a brief fling with once, when I was young - and had been very good friends with him for years before that. He was hopelessly in love with me all through high school, would leave roses on my pillow, write me love letters, but could never have me because I always had a steady boyfriend. This poor guy pined away for years. Even my dad would shake his head when he would leave the house, saying, "That poor S.O. B. He's so in love with you and he'll never be able to have you." Many years later, when the timing was right, we had a brief affair. Very brief. I guess the wanting was better than the getting. But, I digress.
He had told me that he would never, ever, EVER under any circumstances EVER bring children into this world, and that he would never, ever EVER marry.
We moved to separate states, didn't see each other for a couple of years, and then when I was getting married, I called him to invite him to the wedding. Turned out that HE, the naysayer, had already gotten married. Knowing him as well as I did, I was floored. I reminded him of what he had always said, about kids and marriage. He said, "Oh I'm definitely not having kids. Never." I then said, What about marriage? What happened? You said you'd never do that either. What changed? Why this woman?" And he said, "Well, she needed me." Very matter of factly. And that was it.
He needed to be needed. Nobody else NEEDED him, but as a caretaker, he NEEDED to be NEEDED. When he had love and passion and affection, he couldn't deal with it, especially from someone who was self-assured and didn't need him, only enjoyed having him around. But give him a poor, pathetic soul who needs to be taken care of, and WHAMMO. He's in.
So the moral of this story is: Don't take it so hard, and try not to take it so personally as if you weren't good enough. Perhaps you weren't pathetic enough! You may have thought that he was the perfect person for you, but just because you weren't the perfect person for him doesn't mean that you are any less of a woman. It's very likely that you are one amazing, self-contained, wonderful, smart, funny human being that's got it all together. And while many men are attracted to that kind of woman, it's very intimidating to other men, who ultimately need someone to depend on them for EVERYTHING in their lives. And ultimately, maybe that's what he needed.
Also, he may have also undergone some serious therapy after getting out of the relationship with you and the other partner. Possibly he came to a new understanding of himself - reinvented himself - through that, and became someone who was ready to marry. But you moved on, right? And besides, he may have experienced some guilt associated with his relationship with you, and wasn't able to go back to it.
There's lots of reasons he may have ended up marrying - another woman - that is absolutely not a reflection on you at all. Chin up, baby!
Lovely thoughts there, although I'm certain you meant them for Womaninthewoods :)
Wishing you strength & peace,
Posie
Still don't totally have the hang of this place!
Maybe I'd better go fold some laundry now...now THAT I can do with my eyes closed.
thank you so much for your response, which I can just echo, every single sentence you wrote. It's so true: it takes us so long, and it's such a hard way to analyse, realise what it was all about - and then to let go of the true love we DID feel... I remember how hard I had fought, in the beginning of the affair, for my principle of never ever butting in in an existing relationship (however bad it looked), how I struggled to find a way out - only to lose all to his charms.
I remember so well how my work sufferd, too, during the time I was involved: I made grave mistakes, I could hardly get up in the morning for lack of sleep etc.
And yes: Knowing all this, sitting beside him, just talking, would be so good. I used to feel I could only breathe when I looked into his face.
My affair used me for a bit more than a F*-buddy - but that was maybe because I told him I wasn't available for a "friendship-with-C*-connection" (that's what I call it).
Moving on definitely seems so much easier for most men. And I wish I understood how they made it work, how they get to the place of forgetting and belittleing so easily that they are capable of a light start into a new life. We carry those milestones (SO true) of our lives forever while men often just open their hands and let that bit of rubble they're carrying fall to the side of the road...
Maybe WE are the ones who are wrongly-poled in making it so hard for ourselves...
It's so sad and, at the same time, so soothing to hear from others who have been through similar trials. This board helps you help me - and I'm grateful.
Love,
M.
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