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Can't move on and Leg go

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Viewing 12 posts - 16 through 27 (of 27 total)
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  • #314099
    Luke
    Participant

    Thank you both,

    It is really hard and not having the one person who can make it feel better makes it worse. In the beginning it felt like a cheesy 90’s music video of everyone moving in blurs around me just sitting on a bench. I know what you mean by it feeling wrong. I don’t feel like I have made any movement at all in the last 5 months. Just writhing and feeling the same thing. Whilst she is off having a new life with new people. If it’s so easy to just end it and move on then whats the point. Everything and everyone says to just accept it and move on. So something bad happens, accept it and move on, then the next bad thing happens, accept it and move on, and on and on.

     

    #314125
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Luke:

    “everyone says to just accept it and  move on. So something bad happens, accept it and move on, then the next bad thing happens, accept it and move on, and on and on”-

    – I suggest that you learn all you can learn from this relationship and break up, and then move on. When you learn from what happens, it is less likely to happen again because you can make better, more informed choices and life is less random, less a matter of luck.

    When you learn from your experience,  you can plan and cause good things to happen to you. There is a term to it- being proactive.

    anita

    #314499
    Luke
    Participant

    I’m trying to view it that way but its hard. My Ex always used to chastise me for worrying about the future or assuming that something would go wrong. Then when It did, I at least felt a bit prepared for it. I guess I couldn’t have prepared for her coming out and then leaving me.

    Just not sure what accepting that looks like yet. Just have to say ‘better luck next time’ I guess ?

    I keep thinking that I want stepping stones or markers out of this thing. I told myself and others that i needed to meet up with her to have a sort of letting go ritual. So that I could almost get permission from her to let go. (This was when we met for a drink and chat 3 months ago, she told me she had already had a fling and slept with a random woman and was doing all these new life things). When we would have celebrated our anniversary I took some old photos and what i had been writing down the last few months and a letter I wrote her to the park and burnt them up. Now I’m looking for the next stepping stone out. But I think I’m just kidding myself with all of that. She clearly doesn’t need anything, she just moved on without looking back it seems.

    #314521
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Luke:

    You wrote that during the marriage you were in the habit of “assuming that something would go wrong. Then when it did, at least felt a bit prepared for it.”, but ten, “I couldn’t have prepared for her coming out and then leaving me”-

    – what are all the things that you assume would go wrong during your marriage, and did they all go wrong in real life?

    I am asking for the purpose of perhaps learning from your experience, a suggestion I made in my last post to you. Answer if you want, it is okay if you don’t.

    (I will be back to the computer in about 13 hours from now).

    anita

     

    #314571
    Grenada
    Participant

    Letting go rituals are so powerful. I did one with a balloon. Letting go some deep pains & losses.

    Not to point out the codependency . But I think that’s definitely a good entrance point for you to start dissecting & finding support groups & therapy around.

    Also learning about attachment styles & attachment trauma. Yours sounds anxious to me. Idk but another thing you might want to consider looking into .

    Its going to take a minute to grieve this loss. And that’s normal, it would take a minute.

    but though it may not seem obvious right now, working on those things I mentioned above would actually help soothe some of the pain. Knowledge tends to do that..

    #314667
    Luke
    Participant

    Yeah, I have been talking about the attachment trauma and styles with my therapist. I think there is a Psychotherapist who talks about conscious uncoupling and about there being island and wave attachment types. I know my Ex and I were very opposite in many ways. She preferred to have a care free attitude about some stuff and often got herself into little situations that I was around to fall back on. The over the top instances being her drinking too much so she could have fun but having me to take care of her.

    I have unfortunately inherited a lot of worry and stress from my parents that I have always felt debilitated me. That frustrated her a lot that i could just relax and enjoy myself. Thats the main thing that I feel I want to take away from all of this. We all everyone in my family have had this idea of what life Is supposed to be. Even Ella when she was being more of herself still wanted the house and job and marriage to appease her family. Now having fully abandoned that to be her true lesbian self. I know I’m not going to aim for that white picket life any more. My parents are now also divorcing which means they will probably have to sell the large house they got last year. So even after 35+ years of working towards that Its now not going to be how they thought.

    I think learning how to live with zero expectation or at least not wanting those things will help mitigate when life starts throwing the lemons my way.

    #314707
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Luke:

    So what you “want to take away from all of this” is to no longer expect or “aim for that white picket life any more”. And to worry less and experience less stress-

    – excellent aim, to worry less, to experience less stress.

    When you no longer expect that white-picket-life, you no longer compare your life to that dream and the gap between reality and dream is not there to distress you anymore.

    Worry really does not make life better because it doesn’t lead us to make better choices; all it does is drain us and exhaust us.

    anita

    #315457
    Luke
    Participant

    Just wish I could extend that to the other ‘worries’.

    That my parent’s divorce is going to get messy and I’m going to get dragged in. Then that i’m going to have to go through my own divorce as well. (I never even though growing up anyone would want to marry me and now I’m getting divorced at 31). I’m worried that my ex has already moved on now that she doesn’t have me and our relationship keeping her trapped in a falsehood. That I’m not going to find anyone who I relate to as much as her. We won’t have the history and it just wont be enough, that I won’t be enough for someone.

    Worried i’m losing it everyday when the reality just keeps hitting. I get distracted by work for a bit or when I first wake up in the morning. I’m convinced a huge part of me just doesn’t want to get over this, feels too big.

    #315581
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Luke:

    I will summarize what you shared so far: you are 31, been in a relationship with your now estranged wife since you were about 23 and married since you were 26. Six  months ago your parents’ marital issues worsened, and a month later, your wife ended the relationship with you, stating that she is a lesbian and that is the reason. She moved out of the home you shared the morning after breaking up with you.

    When the two  of you met, eight years ago, she was “very confident with people and was quite promiscuous and had some drinking issues” and you felt inadequate, not confident and not enough. After the separation, she is focusing on her photography business and “dating people and sleeping with women”, while you “can’t even imagine dating or sleeping with someone new”. You feel inadequate, not confident and not enough (“I don’t feel normal or enough”), that “a lot of me was just our relationship” and now, a lot of you is no longer there.

    You have managed to continue your employment since, but “have been a wreck ever since”, taking antidepressants and being in therapy. You feel that you are losing “the most crucial parts” of your life, you feel abandoned, “pretty trashed”, and confused: “did I even know her?”, you wrote.

    In your marriage, “She always had plenty to say about (your) flaws… chastising me for being negative about a situation ahead of time, or my not being confident enough to sing or dance like she would… for worrying about the future or assuming that something would go wrong”.

    She, on the other hand, had “a care free attitude.. drinking too much so she could have fun but having me to take care of her”. Yet, this relationship “was as close to perfect as I had known so far”, way better than the marriages of your parents and hers, having been “fighting and screaming matches”.

    My thoughts: your wife coming out as a lesbian is only a part of her. The more significant part of her is that “care free attitude” you mentioned. This attitude is most likely to continue no matter her sexual practice and life circumstances (excluding extreme circumstances, I imagine).

    Her attitude does not support a monogamous relationship with man or woman. It does not support a stable through-thin-and-thick relationship with either man or woman. If a relationship becomes uncomfortable and she has a better option- she is gone. Just like she was gone the morning after breaking up with you (she was able to move out the day after because she had the option prepared in advance).

    You asked no  one in particular: “did I ever know her?”- I am guessing not, you didn’t really know her. In your desperation for a stable, safe relationship (one you did not experience at  home, with your parents), you imagined her to be someone different than who she really was. It is like a man lost in the desert imagining he sees water, then approaching the water.. finds out it was never there, it was an illusion.

    All that worry and stress you grew  up with, at your parents’ home, stress and worry which continued when you were married (the marriage was not that safe for you after all- you kept worrying), never prepared you for anything. Instead,  it clouded your vision and you were not able to see who was this woman you married.

    She may come back to you if her life circumstances get difficult, if she needs again someone to “take care of her”. But better Luke takes care of himself. She was never your Answer, the Solution, that part that was missing in your life, as you put it.

    The part that was and is missing is not her, it is you- it is within you and you can find it and experience the peace of mind you needed for so long.

    anita

    #316361
    Luke
    Participant

    All correct (unfortunately) . Thank you for your time and insights Anita.

    I’m trying to see it in terms of sunken investment. I put all my chips on one number and unfortunately the house won. I don’t think I’ll ever be in a good position to see her again. It will just cause me pain, I’m sure she has probably moved on and isn’t losing sleep over me anyway. Just the way that she is, she moves away from painful things and goes immediately to the new. I’m also trying to see it that people have a lot of damage in their childhoods that can cause damage to other people. I have the same damage from childhood but chose to not let it affect other people, If at the price of me reserving myself and not opening up fully. I don’t think I’ll be making the mistake of putting all my chips on one number again. I overreached too much through the whole thing and we both wanted the security for different reasons.

    I have a book called the mindful self-compassion workbook that I’ll work though and try to make sense of getting back to an equilibrium again. Hopefully though going through that and others I can make sense of everything. As you said she will be the same way either way. Just at the moment feels like she has all the benefit and i’m still scrambling in the dirt. I guess for the moment.

    #316369
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Luke:

    I will read and reply to your recent post when I am back to the computer, in about 15 hours from now.

    anita

    #316551
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Luke:

    “Just at the moment feels like she has all the benefits and I’m still scrambling in the dirt. I guess for the moment”- if you told me that she had a good childhood, where she felt safe and fast forward, she is an adult woman with a care-free attitude, I might have believed that she is an emotionally healthy woman who doesn’t worry and has this happy-go-lucky kind of life.

    I don’t think it is possible, at least not without long term healing, for a person growing up in a very troubled home, to be happy-go-lucky as an adult, to move easily and successfully “away from painful things and goes immediately to the new”- I tend to think that a person finds the same-old-same-old in “the new”.

    I wish you good work with your “mindful self-compassion workbook”, and do  post here anytime you want to  post.

    anita

Viewing 12 posts - 16 through 27 (of 27 total)

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