how do you know it's over?
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| Thu, 06-30-2005 - 7:17pm |
A question for those ending a M when the relationship wasn't abusive or volatile...
I am married 5 years, was married at 21. I have spent most of my M regretting the decision to marry so young. I feel like I stunted my own self-development and exploration. I have never lived on my own before or had to manage as an adult on my own (met H at 18). Lots of issues...
But my H is caring, and loving and painfully aware of my conflict. He just wants me to stay forever...I'm his "dreamgirl."
I spend far too much time fantasizing about being alone and single...and I wonder if my M is doomed because of this deep conflict. On the outside, we're the perfect couple: successful, get along, no major fights...but on the inside, and behind closed doors, I don't feel a passion or even a particular hunger for making this a lifelong relationship.
But because it's all I've ever known as an adult relationship, I am paralyzed - by guilt, by obligations, by "shoulds"...
how did you know it was time to move on?

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In the famous words of Dr. Phil dont quote me "You know it is over if you can walk away without being angry...." Meaning the relationship is over or your feelings for that person are over.
I hate my STBX and I can't walk away without being angry but I know we will NEVER get back together and I don't want him back either. Maybe just my inner feelings won't let go - we were together 16 yrs. I am now 34.
good luck.
Ok. Fantacize about this:
You are alone in your own apartment. You have a long night ahead of you and no one to spend it with. Believe me it will happen -- even if only once in a while. You decide to go out for a drink. Once you get there you see your x-husband. He is with his new wife. They are laughing and joking and obviously in love. He looks over and sees you -- and looks right through you.
You realize you are not a part of his life anymore. Not his dream girl. Someone else is. You have your own life now. You haven't found your true love, but you have dated a lot of jerks and wantabe's. Are you still happy with your decision? Can you handle the fact he doesn't love/want/need you anymore? Do you want to claw the other lady's eyes out? Do you hate her?
If you can think of this scenario and not feel pain, or even if you can think of this and know in your heart dating other men would still make you happy . . . even when your husband is not in your life anymore . . . even if you never find a good man again. . . then by all means get a divorce.
Of course, I married young as well, but to a jerk. Then I had a few years of freedom and you know what? It wasn't what I had fanticized it would be. If I had a dime for every jerk I dated who was nice/handsome/kind at first I would be rich.
You can do anything you want to do and still be married except for having other men.
You want to know what it is like to pay all the bills and live by yourself? Move your husband into another bedroom and pay all the bills for a few months. Put his salary away in savings. If you can't afford to pay all the bills by yourself because you don't make enough money, then you have to look in the paper to find out how big a place you could afford and then only live in that much of your house. Let him live in the rest of it. Rent a room in your house.
I know it sounds glamourous. I can live alone. Be independent. Do anything I want to do.
It is a great fantasy. But reality is: You have to work at least 40 hours a week. You are alone a lot. You have no one else to depend on but yourself. You may think you don't want him, but do you want someone else to have him?
Good luck in your decision, but I can tell you this, being alone and responsible for yourself with no help isn't fun and games and glamour all the time.
Get counseling. Try what I said above. Send your husband out on a date with another woman and SMILE about it. Or figure out ways to be independent and young with him.
I wish to God I had what you have.
Good luck in your decision. I hope you don't regret it in the end. You are taking your husband for granted -- an older, wiser woman who has been on her own and would love to have love and security will take him off your hands quickly if you divorce him. Just remember that.
nolson_golden
Proud Parent of 3: Tiara, Tawnya and Tannessa
Grandmother of 2: Richard and Matthew
Ya,
From reading on some of the other boards, it appears you have already moved on. Let your H go so he may find a woman who truly loves and appreciates him........
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It is a great fantasy. But reality is: You have to work at least 40 hours a week. You are alone a lot. You have no one else to depend on but yourself. You may think you don't want him, but do you want someone else to have him?
Good luck in your decision, but I can tell you this, being alone and responsible for yourself with no help isn't fun and games and glamour all the time.
Get counseling. Try what I said above. Send your husband out on a date with another woman and SMILE about it. Or figure out ways to be independent and young with him.
I wish to God I had what you have.
Good luck in your decision. I hope you don't regret it in the end. You are taking your husband for granted -- an older, wiser woman who has been on her own and would love to have love and security will take him off your hands quickly if you divorce him. Just remember that.>>
Okay, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with this advice.
The absolute worst reasons IMHO to stay in a marriage is for monetary security or just so you won't have to be alone from time to time. You should stay with someone because you can't imagine living without them or being a part of their life. Anything else is selling you, and him, short.
Your H deserves someone who's with him because they're in love with him, not because its just too much work to leave and go out on her own. If that's your situation, then of course you should stay...but otherwise, you need to think long and hard about what YOU want.
Yeah, living on your own does suck in a lot of ways. And the time alone can be crushing. But you will hate yourself if you look back and see that you wasted good years of your life just doing what was expected of you...i.e. staying comfortable.
Only you know what you truly want. But don't be afraid to go after it if it entails moving on. I know this is easier said than done...but in the end, its your life.
Being independent isn't glamourous, but neither is staying put if you're unfulfilled. Nothing worth having is easy.
well my marriages were abusive... but here is a thought. someone once suggested this to me when i wanted to get divorced and it really helped me to put things in perspective.
sometimes, "something" is bothering us in life and we don't know what "it" is. so, we focus on something else and we think that "if only i would get divorced/go back to school/move/buy a house/change my job/ etc" then everything will be ok.
but - ----- remember that whereever you go - there you are. which means that you can't run away from yourself. it sounds to me like you feel that you have stunted your life BECAUSE of your marriage. but the truth is that *we* are responsible for *our* lives. (and i really know where you are coming from because i had much of the same feelings).
so - here is a suggestion. find a therapist and sit down and explore your life, your "self". its possiblt that you should get divorced, and its possible that you can find a way to experience a better life and marriage if you deal with these issues. I think that you should not consider a divorce until you do this.
good luck
Hmm. I think you misunderstood what I meant.
Of course being alone isn't always glamourous. I don't think anyone's life is always glamourous. Married life certainly isn't.
The point I was trying to make is the poster may well only be thinking of how glamourous single life is. She may also not be thinking that her husband will have to move on as well.
The poster sounds young and confused and probably shouldn't have gotten married when she did.
I only wanted her to realize that her husband won't be entombed in a glass box somewhere waiting for her to get over her fantasy of single life and realize she does love him. He will move on as well. Find someone who loves him and is mature enough to realize what she has.
If she married at 18 she doesn't know what single life really is like. it probably isn't all like what she fantasizes. Single life can be hard and lonely
. She owes it to herself and to her husband to figure out if she really does love him. One way to do that is to think about him after he has moved on.
I agree with you. If she doesn't love her husband and isn't capable of waking up and realizing what she has, of going to counseling and trying to build a life with him, then the best thing for her husband is for her to leave.
Is it the best thing for her? I don't know. I only wanted her to stop and think about the fact she won't be his perfect girl anymore.
"I spend far too much time fantasizing about being alone and single...and I wonder if my M is doomed because of this deep conflict. On the outside, we're the perfect couple: successful, get along, no major fights...but on the inside, and behind closed doors, I don't feel a passion or even a particular hunger for making this a lifelong relationship."
"I'm his "dreamgirl."
She obviously takes him for granted. She is young. The young always believe in the back of their mind that they can have it all.
She can't. She has to realize that leaving him means losing him. He will no longer be in her life. She needs to think about that and realize for at least a while she will be no one's dreamgirl. And that he WILL find someone else to be his. If she can think of that and still be happy with her decision she doesn't love him . . . and she needs to move on. If not she needs counseling . . . and fast.
nolson_golden
Proud Parent of 3: Tiara, Tawnya and Tannessa
Grandmother of 2: Richard and Matthew
hey Nolson-
thank you for your candidness. I just want to reply and dispell a myth you may have about me - only for the sake of continuing this conversation effectively. While I am young, and fairly inexperienced, I do understand the reality of ending this M. To be clear, I am not there yet. I am not ready to walk away. But all I can do is look at the situation from the perspective I have.
I thought about what you wrote in response to my "I'm his dreamgirl" comment. You say I am taking him for granted. Perhaps. But I am trying to take a look at my thought process. I realize that I internalize the value of myself and my H as either all "good" or all "bad". Because I am the one doubting and questioning, in my mind, I am all bad. I am the shaky link in the chain. Because my H is - from my perspective - absolutely rock solid about me, he is all good. Again, this may seem infantile, but it's the way I think. The more I think about that logic, the sillier it seems. I think in some ways, my H says things like that to me because he is insecure about losing me - SIMPLY because he knows I am somewhat of a flight risk, if only emotionally. I don't pretend to be some great thing. In fact, I feel pretty lousy about myself most of the time.
But let me show you a glimpse of the pattern we have established. I met him when I was 18. At 18, a 23 year old guy showing some interest feels pretty incredible. After a few months of dating, I uttered the 3 words "i love you" because in my naive 18 year old mind, that's what you say in the heat of the moment. The next day I sort of hit a wall. Perhaps I realized the gravity of my words. And I told him I was scared by what I had said and that I want to tread lightly and maybe not rush this too much. And the only words he said to me were, "If you walk out of my door - don't ever come back." Do you have any idea what that means to an insecure 18 year old who is trying to feel around in the dark about how to be an adult? And you know what I did? I sat right back down and let him lead me around. We got engaged a year later. We were moving across the country for a job for him (incidently, after the first day of work, he came home and said "gee, I think we've made a mistake by moving here"....this is after I spent all of my svings on him for the move) so we pack up a few months later (after my insistance that we stick it out at least for a little while) and come home. We have a wedding and he starts gad school. I work and go to school fulltime so he won't have to work. The he gets a job across the state and we move again. And sure enough, after just a short while, he's not so sure this was the right move.
I probably sound resentful. That is an issue I have expressed to him, and believe I have forgiven him for. He also has come to realize that he sometimes doesn't think about decisions before deciding...but the other thing to take away from this is my behavior. Where in any of that did I question him? Where did I say "hold on! what about me?" Where was my IDENTITY in this relationship? My H met me as a girl and in a sense has raised me to be an adult...and all along, I have just followed and done what he thinks is best.
And now I find myself at age 26 - frustrated, smothered and bored. And I have expressed these things to him...and he listens. But this is a deep pattern in our "roles" within our relationship.
I do not want glamour. I want me. I want to know who "me" is. But we have woven this web of imbalance and dependency....it's very unhealthy. Because as much as he has been a "boss" in some respects, I know I've got his heart in my hands - because deep down, he also knows the pattern is unhealthy. And he knows there is a part of me that was never able to come out as a young woman. There is nothing and no one who can give that to me now. I will never have the early years of my early 20's to go back to. He knows this. And because there is no way to "repair" the longing I have, he will say anything he thinks I want to hear to make sure I know he loves me...i.e. "dreamgirl."
So it's really not as simple as me being selfish and dreamy and fantasizing about meeting people at the bar. I have spent plenty of time imagining him with someone else. And it's painful - of course it is...because I don't have the hate that so many marriages do.
I just simply don't know if I want to be married. And for that I feel absolutely terrible. Because I know I said I do...
From this post it seems to me you have already figured you need to be on your own. There is nothing wrong with that. You cannot live your whole life based on a promise you made at 18 to a person you thought of as an authority figure.
My advice to you now is to go. It isn't fair to you or him. He needs to find someone who will be happy with "following him around" and you need to find out what it means to be an adult on your own.
It will be hard but it is worth it. You can go from an insecure person who resents the situation she finds herself in because of a promise she made way too young . . . to a person who is standing on her own two feet and experiencing life before settling down.
I have been there and done that and it was hard, but it was worth it.
You cannot live your life based on his needs. Think of yourself and get out. You deserve to be happy. Go onto your next relationship . . . should you chose to have one . . .as an equal partner.
I assume there are no kids right? Thank God you can walk away free and do it. I know I didn't regret leaving my husband.
Hang in there. I am sorry you have to go through this. But don't stay for anyone else. If you can't stay for yourself you have no business staying at all.
nolson_golden
Proud Parent of 3: Tiara, Tawnya and Tannessa
Grandmother of 2: Richard and Matthew
Your problem brings up an interesting point. Is it ok to leave a marriage simply because you are not happy ? To break your vows and throw in the towel for such a nebulous reason ?
This is a particularly important question for me because I am about to re-marry. The vows don't read "...To love, honor and cherish until I don't feel like anymore..."
Just my 2 cents says that your reasons are not really that concrete and that you should really try marriage counseling to better understand why you are not happy.
I am in the once-bitten-twice-shy camp having been divorced by a cheating wife. Who denied it until the end. The only way I found out for sure was when the x-wife came to my door about 9 months later. They filed on the same day with the same attorney. I am having some trust issues in my new relationship, trying to sort those feelings out.
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