Just Hold On You Can Make Without Him!

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-11-2004
Just Hold On You Can Make Without Him!
6
Wed, 03-02-2005 - 5:49pm

Hello Ladies,
I have posted on many boards on ivillage searching for advice. It has all been helpful. Well today I am here to hopefully help one of you in your time of need and confusion. I was with my ex for over five years, we planned to start a family and when I was 4 mths pregnant i found out he was cheating on me with 3 different women. I felt so many different things, insecure, low self-esteem, you name it, I felt it. I forgave him after he swore he would never do it again.

About a year or so after trying to "rebuild" I found out he was still seeing one of the women. I kicked him out took him to court for child support and said I was through with him forever. Ha! He moved in with her and her 3 kids. I was devastated. I felt left all alone to raise a son by myself.

We began to finally be on speaking terms after numerous fights, arguments over everything that happened. Before i even realized we started spending time together me him and our son. We then became intimate and I knew I was betraying my own self worth but I "thought", "convinced myself" that I NEEDED HIM. I was so so wrong. It will be a year in a about 2 wks and I now see how I contributed to all the heartache I have been going through the last year. And I am now finally strong enough to move on with my life confident that I DONT NEED NOR WANT HIM IN MY LIFE ANYMORE. What saved me was a book called In the Meantime: Finding Yourself and the Love you Want by Iyanla Vanzant. She has been an unbelievable blessing to me. Her book has taught me so much about myself that I just cant even imagine all the things I didnt realize I was doing to help him make me miserable.

I beg you any of you going through a divorce, break up where you are still holding on to hope and are no where near getting what you want, buy this book, if you are always there for him showing him that he can depend on you and when its time for him to be there for you and your left hurt because you cant count on him buy this book. If in your mind you know you are being used but your heart still hopes he will change and love you as you love him run as fast as you can and buy this book. It will change your life. I have done so many wrong, kick my self in the butt things in the name of "love" that I was becoming unrecognizable to myself because I believed him when he said "we just needed time", "he was just so confused right now", "he didnt know what he wanted", "let's take things one day at a time". One excuse after another of why he couldnt commit to me but yet he has a new 20yr old and the woman he cheated on me with and moved in with is now pregnant with his twins and he left her and moved in with his grandmother. But in all of this he is still willling to sleep with me and wants to come running to me when he is in trouble. He is scumb and it took me a year to see it. He was just using me and I allowed him to do it.

So now i'm beginning to heal finally and realize that I deserve better, I have told him no to call me anymore!

Just buy this book, lord I cant repeat it enough, the amount of strength it will give you. It feels good to finally be in control again.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-11-2005
Wed, 03-02-2005 - 9:25pm

Wow! Sounds like a great book. I am reading a book right now that you may be interested in. It is called the Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz. It is about loving yourself, and once you love yourself you do not look to someone to complete you. Anyways, I love the way the book is written it has a lot of metaphors.

Good Luck to you. You have shown a lot of strength. Keep it up.

Amber

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Thu, 03-03-2005 - 10:31am

Hallelujah!!!


I LOVE THAT BOOK--It's my favorite!


In the Meantime : Finding Yourself and the Love You Want by Iyanla Vanzant


And I'm so glad that you are feeling so empowered... ya know, I think that many times if we don't give ourselves "one more try", we always wonder.


Karen ~ wildlucky4me ~

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-27-2005
Thu, 03-03-2005 - 8:01pm

Wow! That sounds like me. I don't want him to leave, but now I'm at the point where I don't know if he could not leave. That scares me and hurts anew all over again. He's still in our house and shamefully, I dropped everything tonight when he called from work to see if I'd eat dinner with him. I am still holding on even though he talks about how he's single now and goes out every weekend as if he was 18 and carefree again. I know somewhere in me that he is using me, but it hurts so much that I try to push it out of the way.

I just looked on Amazon and saw there's a companion book, "Living Through the Meantime : Learning to Break the Patterns of the Past and Begin the Healing Process". Have you heard of that one?

I hope, no I know, that one day I'll be in a good place like you...I just need to believe it long enough for it to come true!

Ruth

Avatar for eatatmoms
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 03-03-2005 - 8:09pm

I just bought a copy off of Ebay for $3.00! Thanks! I know I should have gotten it from the library, but if it's THAT good, I'll want my own.

Melanie

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-11-2004
Fri, 03-04-2005 - 12:57pm

Hi Ruth,
It took me a very long time of back and forth behavior to get to this point. It was a year of ups and downs from the joy of having hope with him when he would come around and "act like" we were rebuilding a family again, he would be attentive, nice, then like the flip of a switch he would change and I'd have to hear the heartbreak of him telling me that he cant and wont take me out not even to a movie especially on the weekends because he must spend the weekends with this "new 20 yr old girl" Even though he's been telling me he doesnt want a "relationship" right now and is so confused and just let's me and him take it one day at a time. But a relationship is exactly what he has with her.

I feel sorry for her in a way because little does she know whenever i let him he would sleep with me spend the night off and on. So he is still a cheater and liar. She will found out with time the same way I did. Dont you know when i kicked him out he moved in with one of the women he cheated on me with. He has since then got her pregnant with twins and has left her and lives with his grandmother now. Unbelievable isnt. She and him wrecked my happy home and now someone has done it to her. What goes around surely comes around. He will get his rightful payback im sure.

He used me for his benefit and expected me to make no demands of his time. I deserve better, we deserve better.

Theres nothing worse than wanting to be with someone you so deeply love and they know how deeply you feel and they take advantage of your feelings and use you. He's always said I was more important than "the other women" I know now and I think I always knew but couldnt bear to admit it that he was using just to get what he wanted.

He only came around on his terms, it was rarely when I wanted him to come. There was alot of disappointments, his saying he would come over and not show and give some crap excuse as to why, it was all because he had to split his time between women. I can do bad by myself I dont need him to contribute. I come to accept if his love for me was geniuine he could never treat me the way he has. Because with all he's done to me even now I could never treat him as he has treated me.

Now instead of thinking of all the hurt and pain and feeling that he never loved me I think of all I have learned. Im sure in his own way he loves or cared for me, we made a beautiful little boy and that is a gift that we created so that will always be special.

But I have now learned the "LOVE" offered me isnt the love that honors me. So I will be ready the next time around, i wont be naive, foolish, trying to find love in places and situations it obviously doesnt exist. So I will now be able to know without a doubt what REAL LOVE IS because I've experienced what LOVE ISN'T.

Good luck and God bless to you all. Please buy the book In the Meantime by Iyanla Vanzant it's so worth it.

Hugs and Kisses to you all.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-27-2005
Fri, 03-04-2005 - 5:46pm
Thank you for your words and sharing. He wanted to change everything in his life in a month and it's been over a month and all I see is confusion all around. I almost just want it to be over one way or another. I will look for the book. I work full time, and in school, so I think I need it longer than a library loan! ;-) Maybe I'll check ebay too! Or bookcrossing...