Starting a New Life
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| Wed, 06-28-2006 - 1:04pm |
I'm very new to all of this, so please pardon me if I'm a bit jumbled in relating what I'm trying to find out. Here's my story:
I have been involved in an 11 year relationship with an alcoholic, verbally abusive, very controlling and extremely unhappy woman. It didn't start out that way. In fact when we first got together, it was pretty good. I realized that this wasn't going to be my soul-mate, however after over 10 to 15 years of looking for a soul-mate and not finding one, I had given up on "true love" and decided to just settle with someone who was comfortable to be with. Years after we got together, she began to drink more and more, lost her job due to a layoff and refused to go back to work. She went through early menopause (she was 11 years older than myself) and lost her entire sex drive. Because she didn't believe in any effective medical professionals and didn't want to take any natural supplements to fix the sex problem, she effectively became celibate and decided that she just wanted to drink and watch TV. I tried for the last three years to discuss the multiple problems that were happening in our relationship, suggested counselling, pleaded, cajoled, bargained, discussed and generally tried everything I could think of to get her attention to see that there were major problems to deal with and that I didn't want to lose what we had. I was constantly put off, told she didn't want to talk about it, and basically she expected me to accept that and to be celibate like she was.
I couldn't do it. I never cheated on her, I was miserable living with her drinking and abuse and after three years of trying to fix it, I gave up. About a month ago, I announced to her that I was leaving and why. She was furious, tearful and flew into rages. She at one point agreed to go to a marriage counselor and then the next day, dismissed her offer as "well that was the alcohol talking" and if I wanted to go to a marriage counselor, she told me I could go by myself.
About a week later, while I was in the process of arranging for an apartment and to move out, she kicked in the bedroom door (we hadn't been sleeping in the same bed for three years) and she was drunk, furious and screaming. The next day I left the house and graciously accepted the hospitality of a generous friend who offered her furnished but vacant house as refuge until my apartment became available. She was in the process of getting ready to rent out her house to a friend later that month and I only needed her place for a couple of weeks, so things worked out perfectly.
To make a long story short, I moved all of my belongs to storage and now am finally in my new apartment and am enjoying a life without my ex. Now to the problem - I have met a new woman who is everything I have ever searched for in a soul mate. I never went looking for a soul mate, I simply went looking for a few female friends to casually date and get my life back together. I had accepted that at 44 years of age, I was not going to meet that "love of my life" and that the dream of that was a youthful pipe-dream, nothing more. In the process of casually dating, I met a woman who was incredible. She met every criteria I had ever had in mind for a soul-mate. She was loving, tender, intelligent, had a good job, sexy, sassy and fun to be with. She was raised with strong moral ethics, had worked hard to achieve her goals in life, has a positive outlook on people and a good self image. She is also fresh out of a divorce and she was quite taken with me too. We both have spent considerable time on the phone together (nine hours in one call alone!) and we have spent a couple of weekends together that were utterly spectacular.
I recognize that my behavior in my previous relationship was very co-dependant. I realize that I need time to heal from the abuse. But I am SOOOO happy with this new relationship and it is everything I had ever hoped for, yet my friends and hers are both cautioning us severely that this is too fast, too much and to back out of going any further together.
How do I resolve this?!?!? I have never experienced with any relationship of my life the closeness, tenderness and openness that I have had with this woman. She is every dream I have ever had all rolled into one, fantastic woman. She also feels incredibly attracted to me. I don't want to lose this but I also don't want to screw it up! What am I to do?!?!

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Yes, it is a LDR but we live about two hours apart, driving time. We've talked about both our situations and are putting in place plans to keep things from getting too serious for at least a year, possibly more. I know I will be going into counselling and she has discussed doing that as well. We may even attend some counselling sessions together to cover all of the bases.
And yes, it is absolutely WONDERFUL to be out of such an abusive, controlling and life-draining relationship. Experiencing the freedom to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it is exhilarating. Especially when I can do those things with no constant sniping from my ex about how stupid such-and-such is and what an idiot I am for enjoying whatever it is that I enjoy. The sun is brighter, the sky is bluer and I feel like I am breathing for the first time in 11 years!
Thank you for your response and advice. I appreciate your point of view and definitely will keep it firmly in mind as my life's events proceed. Everyone here has been wonderful with their generous advice and I really appreciate it.
Yes, I definitely feel like I'm getting a chance at a new life. Trying2baPhoenix is my way to see myself as rising from the flames and ashes of the old and taking flight into my new life.
I do appreciate the advice of keeping things from getting too serious with my new friend. I will still enjoy her company and we will talk on the phone but that doesn't mean I will be sacrificing my opportunities to go into counselling. She has also discussed doing the same. We do have plans in place to keep us somewhat at a distance from each other for at least a year, possibly more, so we are both focusing on getting ourselves back in proper working order before planning a new life together.
I understand what you said about a "rebound relationship" and that is something I do want to avoid. Right now we both have talked about the honeymoon phase that we have been experiencing with each other and that it is perfectly normal to be swept up by the joys and fun of discovering another person who is not abusive to you. We've both experienced quite a bit of anger, disappointment and misery over these last few years and it is such a breath of fresh air to be able to have a friend there that you can enjoy peace, caring and tenderness.
Nothing will come easy without work. We may both find that we are not the right people for each other and go our separate ways. We may also find that we are exactly what each other has been so long searching for all of our lives. It is all too nebulous now to decide anything so right now we'll enjoy what we have and take it one day at a time. Combined with mutual counselling, I think we at least stand a chance of keeping what is between us healthy and happy.
Thank you again for your advice and I will keep it in mind.
OK been there....my X was abusive and borderline (although not alcoholic). One of the MAJOR mistakes I made was getting in too deep, too fast after separation. If is not suprising...someone said it was like a drug ----- exactly a very powerful and addictive drug. I honestly don't know if I had had a good friend who tried to reason with me if I was capable at that time of really listening and deciding not do it...but now I see that would have been a better course.
So.....I will assume that you are gonna pursue this and then I have just three points of advice....
(1) Beyond spending time together, do not overly intermesh your lives and especially the lives of any children on either side that may be a part of this situation (keep them largely out of this relationship for now....don't hide, just don't force everyone together). Avoid major financial commitments to her or jointly with her. Avoid living together (lest you wake up one day and be common law and have responsibilities like alimony you did not even know about). If one of you moves closer, get an apartment nearby the other, but do not live together.
(2) Have fun and enjoy all the positives, but also continue to focus on healing yourself. If this person becomes a crutch or a co-dependent in dealing with your separation emotions, it will be a major problem down the road. This is healing you have to do yourself, she can not give you this no matter how perfect she is.
(3) Develop some individual interests that result in you spending time with others as well....poker night with the boys, join a cycling group, pursue a passion that may have lain dormant while in the middle of this very bad relationship --- do something that is uniquely you (and does not include her for now).
In the end realize that a high % of these rebound relationship fail and be smart about the big stuff until some serious time has passed and some serious healing has happened.
I know exactly how you are feeling now.....it is an incredible high....enjoy, you deserve it....P.
Alcoholism is a major escalation to the abusive factor and adds the additional complications that any discussions, disagreements or boundaries get completely blown out of proportion or completely forgotten in the haze of hang overs. Fortunately I am not much of a drinker at all, so I was able to be quite a bit more rational through the whole situation. But I also come from a family who had an alcoholic father and a mother that was a very powerful enabler and unfortunately I learned all of my mother's bad habits in dealing with an alcoholic. It will take quite awhile to unlearn that behavior.
Yes, getting involved too fast and too deep is like a powerful drug. Both of us have discussed this to very great length and that's why we both see the need for individual counselling for both of us. We continue to question each other and discuss / evaluate our behaviors together, trying to keep everything in the open and point out any potential problem behaviors that we need to police. We also both recognize that we've suffered many of the same bad patterns of behavior and it helps to have someone who understands because they've done the same thing too. But simply counselling each other would not be a proper method to deal with our situations and that's why outside counselling that we do separately will be crucial.
Fortunately for both of us, neither has children so there will be no involvement of anyone in our interactions except ourselves. And we are also trying to set things up so that we have some distance for both of us to grow and spend time with other people than each other. We live two hours driving distance apart and so that gives us a comfortable separation to have enough private time to do our own activities and yet still not be on the opposite ends of the country. We've talked that if someday things work out for both of us, we would consider living together but that's at least a year or more down the road and we don't spend much time worry about that right now.
And thank you for your good wishes for our enjoyment. That is one thing that I can say with absolute joy, we both have been through some very bad times and being with each other has been such a breath of fresh air. We have found a peace that has been missing from our lives for a very long time. We're simply taking one day at a time and smiling a lot more these days.
Thank you again for your advice and response.
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