Hello Maria,

I'm so happy to have found your site.  I hope you can help me to regain the will to live and go on.  Life does not seem worth living anymore.  I do see a therapist and have been on antidepressant medication for issues related to other tragic events in my life. To state my current problem as simply as possible: Now that things are really final, I haven't been able to move on.

I did much better after the initial break up in 2008.  But we resumed verbal contact after couple months and I saw him when I went to get things from his house. He actually told me he couldn't believe I didn't call him on his birthday! So I knew he felt some sense of loss. I thought we could be civil and later on when I could move past the hurt and humiliation, we could still be "friends".

Now, despite my reminding myself of how horrible my boyfriend was to me throughout our entire relationship and his egregious behavior during the last 2 years, my reflection of the coldness of the last time he looked at me on fall 2009, when I was trying to move my things out before he got back from a trip, I want to feel his presence MORE.

Since fall 2009, my boyfriend is even COLDER, MORE CRUEL BEYOND BELIEF. I CANNOT SEE THE MAN I KNEW FOR OVER 20 YEARS. HE IS GONE AND REPLACED BY A MONSTER.  I have never uttered those words about anyone.  NO CONTACT SINCE THAT HORRIBLE NIGHT (fall 2009)  by me.  My boyfriend sent a letter 5 weeks ago asking me to let him know when I will come by to remove the rest of my things.

WHY DO I MISS HIM SO TERRIBLY? Why do I still want to think he cares and thinks of me, misses me?  I know he does not. He feels nothing. Still haven't gone back for the final removal of my few things left behind. I cannot bear the thought of seeing him. I CANNOT ALLOW MYSELF TO BE EXPOSED TO ANY ADDITIONAL PAIN.

Vanity is also a small part of it.  I look so bad since I have been unable to sleep more than 2-3 hours a night, if at all, for the last year and recently gained 40 lbs.  He looks quite well and living better than ever.  I must go get some legal papers stored at his house for an unrelated matter this week and do NOT want to initiate any contact. I may try to avoid and see if I can postpone a hearing.

When I left last year, we did speak about once a week and I did go over to the house to get things or do laundry a few times throughout the last year.  After a while, it wasn't the complete cut off, with the exception of the getting through the holidays (I left on fall 2008, New Year's, Valentine's, & my boyfriend's birthday).  We have a dog together and I feel really bad about taking him and depriving him of his yard, but my ex boyfriend doesn't take good care of him and the dog has really always been mine.

By way of background, I'm in 50's involved in this recently ended relationship, prior to the unexpected death of my young husband, during a separation with him. I married when I was 25 to the most wonderful man. We had some problems, particularly his inability to separate from his work and I couldn't really fault him for it because it was extremely important to the lives of so many people. But to this day, all his love and affection, healed so many wounds from my emotionally cold, demanding family, mostly my Mom.

In most ways it was a wonderful marriage, with the exception of my husband's sexual problems.  We sought therapy from the beginning and it was determined my husband had difficulty allowing himself to feel pleasure when he had so many people depending on him.  My husband treated me with great respect, tremendous love, warmth, generosity, and was truly my best friend. I, being a good girl, just repressed my sexual needs for the last 5 years of my marriage.

I used my time to continue post graduate education. Our therapist suggested a separation was the only way my husband would take our problem seriously.  I was awaiting my final exam results, received notification on my birthday that I failed the first time, and began an affair with a my mentor. I worked during the week and stayed in a different City and saw my husband when I went home every weekend.  After I received my post graduate degree, I told my husband I was thinking of a divorce.  By then I thought I was in "love" with both men, but only had a sexual relationship with my lover. I never thought of my lover as a marriage material, as he lacked what I considered good character, depth, professional drive, and our interests and life styles were very different.  It was just a casual affair - NEVER did I expect to be with my lover exclusively for 21 years!

My husband remained uninterested in a physical relationship with me and I could not have slept with both.  What was I to do? Then fate cruelly took my decision away, as my husband was suddenly stricken with a rare disease and died in less than a year.  I was in my mid 30's. My lover was now full time, staying with me, although he had his own home. In the beginning my lover seemed supportive and helpful, as a struggled with a financial mess I had no knowledge of left by my husband.  Litigation lasted about 5 years, I couldn't find employment, lost my home, but was successful in regaining enough money to live comfortably, as long as I continued to work. Though I was content in what I thought was an exclusive relationship since it's inception, I thought I might meet someone, remarry and have a child by age 40.  But I could never allow myself to look beyond my "lover" and was happy enough.  I couldn't bear the thought of hurting him and was grateful for standing by me in difficult times, or so I thought!

My history with the ex lover is that I found out his first infidelity about 8 weeks into our extremely intense relationship. He said he had a 2 week  business trip.  He came back and we went on our first romantic get away weekend and could not perform sexually. Then my lover confessed he wasn't on a business trip, but joined his old girlfriend on her business trip and paid for him.

His ex girlfriend had left our firm just before I was hired to replace her.  Ex girlfriend was much older, extremely overweight, and he had broken up their 6 year relationship 3 years before.  No one understood why they were together in the first place. Ex girlfriend wanted to marry and gave him an ultimatum. He left her for an attractive, young divorced Court Reporter.  When I met my lover, he told me he was breaking up with his ex girlfriend because she wanted to get married after 2 years together and start a family.

My lover begged me not to go back to my husband even if I ended relationship with him because I was so sexually deprived and was blossoming wonderfully.  I rationalized that since I was still with my husband and not truly single yet, I couldn't blame him entirely for the indiscretion.  But I made it clear that without complete honesty and fidelity, I would end it if it happened again.

The years passed quickly. My lover broke up with me a year after my husband died for another woman.  He said I didn't show him enough appreciation, I didn't attend his weekly baseball games, and the sex wasn't as hot as in the beginning. He did this to me during my birthday dinner and dropped me off on the street in front of my apartment - cold & cruel. I was devastated. But he came crawling back 2 weeks later, crying, and I took him back. I worked hard to show my appreciation, showered him with gifts, trips, etc.

Up until Fall, 2008, I learned my lover (now boyfriend) had brief flings with 2 other women, confronted him, he admitted he was wrong, blamed it on me for not showing him enough attention and our sex life was getting less frequent, etc.  The irony was I started to have sexual problems with my boyfriend and spoke to him many times, but nothing got better.  My boyfriend wanted me to only have oral sex with him, roll over and hand me a vibrator and that was it! I told him I thought it strange he rarely seemed interested in going inside me and only wanted to be serviced.  I became less interested in my boyfriend, but we stayed together.  This behavior started around 1997 to the point we had hardly any sex but for a few times a year.  My boyfriend seemed to have to suffer from delayed ejaculation and it took hours of vigorous oral sex on my part to get him to orgasm.  It was extremely unsatisfying for me.  I traded "emotional security" for happiness.

My boyfriend began to change radically about 6 years ago when he started to spend all his time with a group of much younger, single, wealthier guys in a car club he joined.  His language changed, always very vulgar, very disrespectful to me, and I was taking care of my Mom, so we barely went to a movie once a week.  But his attitude and demeanor was so detached, no matter how hard I tried to regain emotional closeness, he was short tempered for no reason, full of rage for no reason, and refused to discuss anything.  I completely lost my ability to get through to him.  But we were still "together"!

When my Mom reached the last two weeks of her life, my boyfriend stopped calling, though we were living together.  I wouldn't leave her side because I feared I wouldn't be with her when she died.  My boyfriend never showed up to see how I was, and readied himself for his annual sport series week he attend every year.  I hoped he would at least "offer" to stay to be with me, although he knew I would I never have let him pass up his yearly league trip.  The fact my boyfriend never called to see if I was OK or if my Mom died was VERY strange.  When she did die, my boyfriend called 3 days after.  I told him what a selfish, uncaring, cruel bastard he was (I shocked him with my language) and I was on my way out of state to bury my Mom.  When I returned I would be removing my things from his house and I would never see him again and meant every word.

As my taxi left his driveway to take me to the airport, his taxi pulled in behind as he had just returned from the his trip. I refused to let him hug me and continued to the funeral, alone.  Several hours later, his mother suffered an accident and was put on life support for 3 weeks.  So when I got back from the funeral, he apologized for how he was treating me, so I took him back.

But my boyfriend never acted the same again. Always cold to me, locked himself in his computer room when he was home, lots of running to get cigarettes or ATM machine, unexplainable disappearances, etc.  He had begun to put passwords on the computer about 5 years earlier and gave me a reasonable excuse, and I'm very low tech. I was going through some bad health problems and for the first time, I stayed with my boyfriend because he had a yard for our dog and my new apartment did not.  So I lived with him full time for the first time in summer 2008.  My boyfriend was angry that I wasn't working, but I was not relying on him ever financially.  All these years he was annoyed because I wouldn't live together and always had my own place.  Now I really needed a place and considered moving my things into storage and stay with him, despite his extremely unpleasant demeanor. Still something felt wrong and I kept asking him what was bothering him and his only response was it bothered him that I wasn't (in his opinion) doing anything during the day.

My boyfriend had a business convention in Hawaii and asked me to go but I couldn't find anyone to take care of our dog.  He wanted me to leave "my baby" outside in the yard for a week and he would be fed by his sister once a day.  This was unacceptable and he knew I would I would never go for it.  My boyfriend left for his trip, wouldn't let me drive him to the airport as I always did, so a taxi picked him up.

Several hours later I went to the computer to do my daily job search and for the first time ever my boyfriend left it open on his email. There I discovered he was meeting a woman in Hawaii and had been having an affair with her for 6 months, although she lived in the islands.  He flew her in for weekends when he was out of town at sport tournaments!  I was so upset that when my boyfriend called that evening to tell me he arrived, I found out where he would be staying and his schedule for the convention.  I decided to purchase a ticket to Hawaii just to have him walk by me in the lobby and then get on a plane and go back and leave.  Decided it was a waste of $1400 and "played" him the next morning when he called.  I asked him how far he was from the airport, when he would be done with the evening banquet and said,  "Surprise, I found someone to take care of the dog and would be arriving that evening."  Dead silence on his end.  We talked all night.  He said he was unhappy.

Before my boyfriend returned a few days later, I also found on his computer daily "dates" with prostitutes who advertised online and performed all acts WITHOUT PROTECTION!  He had 4 regulars he saw daily.  When confronted, he said he stopped already because it got expensive!  We went away for his annual sports series together to try one last time.  I felt it was the most humiliating sex we ever had.  He was unable to perform, said I turned him off (despite my looking the best in 5 years).  I tried to please him and I could tell he was not there with me, but thinking about someone else.

We stayed together about 8 weeks, never had sex again, especially when my boyfriend refused to get tested for STDs.  I did and found out he gave me quite a few, but luckily not HIV.  When I showed my boyfriend what he gave me, he promised he would never do it again.  Less than 4 hours later he decided to have one last hooker fling, which I found out about later that night.  We fought, I cried, passed out, and left a few days later, never to return as his girlfriend again.

NOW I AM FROZEN WITH DESPAIR, ENGAGING IN SELF DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR BY NOT TAKING CARE OF MYSELF, AND PURPOSELY MAKING MYSELF AS UNATTRACTIVE AS POSSIBLE SO NO ONE LOOKS AT ME AND CANNOT EVEN SEEM TO MAKE FEMALE FRIENDS TO JUST TALK WITH.

HOW DO I HEAL?

Thanks for reading.

- Destroyed for life

 Dear Friend,

I am so sorry to hear about the pain you have been going through. I understand the extent of your suffering after experiencing coldness, abandonment and betrayal in so many forms for so long in your relationship. First of all let me say this: It was the RIGHT THING to do to go apart with your boyfriend. You wrote you are missing your boyfriend strongly. Dear Friend, it is important that you are aware what it is exactly that you are missing. It is NOT the man himself, not the cruel, cold and dishonest person your boyfriend turned out to be. You miss him because he was a part of your life for so long and now when he is gone, you feel withdrawal symptoms.You do not miss your boyfriend's true cruel personality, his lies and bad behavior towards you. You miss the dream image of him. Dear Friend, even if you got back together with your boyfriend you could never get what you are now missing, because that dream man simply does not exist. 

A relationship can be thought of as a contract between two people. There are certain rules one must obey while being in a relationship. Both parties must agree on these rules, otherwise the relationship does not work out in a long run.

Some couples feel comfortable living in so-called open relationship, allowing themselves to have several romantic partners simultaneously. That kind of a relationship can work only if BOTH parties agree on the rules and feel comfortable with them. That kind of a relationship is very rare. Most people want to be in an exclusive relationship with only one partner and extramarital affair is considered to be a major betrayal. These things are of course clear without saying, however I wanted to mention them before moving on to my next point.

When someone who is very close to us betrays our trust, it causes enormous emotional stress and is one of the most painful experiences a human being can face during a lifetime. Time may heal the wounds and we may even forgive the person who betrayed us, but the memory of the betrayal will never be forgotten. You wrote that you returned back together with this man many times even after he had treated you badly, abandoned you and betrayed your trust. If we continue to stay with the person who has betrayed our trust and if the betrayal occurs again, the pain is often even worse than during the first time. If we repeatedly experience betrayal in our relationship, we will lose the basic feeling of security and our self-esteem starts slowly to go down. You have been subjected to emotional betrayal and abandonment many times in your relationship. This is one reason why you feel now so depressed and lost. 

The same thing happens to a child who grows up without stable, loving relationship with the parents. If a child feels abandoned and betrayed by the parents, it is causing extreme stress and creating feelings of insecurity, preventing healthy self-esteem from developing. As an adult, this kind of a person is very uncertain of himself or herself, constantly seeking for the acceptance from people around him or her. The person with a low self-esteem is defining his or her "value" as a human being through people around him or her. This is leading to unavoidable dissatisfaction since it is impossible to please everyone. Due to this, a person with low self-esteem is often unable to experience long-term full happiness in life. To understand the dynamics of this cycle better, I recommend you to read this article regarding positive and negative mental feedback loops. 

Many of the things you mentioned your boyfriend did to you are serious rule-breakers in a relationship. Your boyfriend let you down in so many ways. Each time he did that, he destroyed a small part of your self-esteem. You wanted to try your best to make the relationship work and so you forgave your boyfriend his rude behavior several times.

Dear Friend, I am sure that if your boyfriend did any of these things you mention in your letter at the very early state of your relationship, you would not have accepted it. Had you been together only for couple months when he abandoned you when your mother was dying, I believe you would have left him without thinking twice. But because these things took place only after you already had gotten used to your boyfriend being a solid part of your life, it was much more difficult for you to leave.

So you stayed, but your boyfriend's dishonestly and coldness towards you continued. You loved your boyfriend and you wanted him to love you back. Subconsciousness is a strange thing. Often one is not aware of the effect a constant mental discarding has on the integrity of one's mind. We often do not recognize the signs of depression until the condition is already advanced. Dear Friend, it sounds like something like this happened to you. You never meant to let negative things go this far in your relationship. You are not to blame of the things that have happened. You have accepted more than your share from your ex boyfriend, now it is time for you to start to heal yourself.

You have taken the first step by leaving your boyfriend. That is the hardest part, you can feel very proud of yourself for being strong enough to do it! You have also been through the difficult first couple months after the separation and you were strong enough to maintain No Contact. Dear Friend, many people are not able to do what you have done, many people would have simply given in to temptation and went back. You did not do it. You are much stronger than you think. Allow yourself to feel proud of this huge accomplishment! From now on things start to get better for you. 

You are now going through one of the weak moments during the recovery process. Those moments occur time to time and during those moments one is tempted to go back to one's abusive partner. I am glad to hear you have not been thinking of getting back together with your ex boyfriend even thought you say you miss him strongly. You have the strength in you that many in your position would wish to have!

I know you are hurting now. Try to think of your pain as something that is only temporary, a consequence of the separation from this person who has been in your life for so long, even though the separation was undoubtedly a good thing. You say you have been feeling very depressed since the separation. It always takes time to recover when the relationship ends. You are within perfectly normal range. Little by little allow yourself to start to look forward instead of looking back. I know it is hard at first, but take small steps, it gets easier as time goes by.

You are already on the winning side after surviving these first critical months. It helps you when you realize that what you are going through is perfectly natural consequence after experiencing long-term mental neglect and betrayal in one's relationship. There is nothing wrong with you. Your sad feelings show you are a warmhearted, mentally healthy human being. If you felt nothing, no pain or sadness, after going through such painful things in your life, there would be something wrong with you. 

Allow yourself to let go of this man who has caused you so much pain. It is clear he does not deserve your love. Let the memory of him slowly sink into the past. You are now free! Your new, much happier life is about to begin. No longer betrayal, lies and constant insecurity. YOU are now in control of your life. You are already on the winning side, stay strong for a little while longer! Trust me when I say this: You will survive this. Little by little your feelings of depression will start decrease as the negative memories start to sink into the past and one day you wake up feeling happy again! That day may be closer than you now think. 

Dear Friend, thank you for sending your story. By doing so you are helping many others who are facing similar problems in their relationship. It will help you to recover when you know that something very good has come out of your suffering: At this very moment someone out these may be reading your story, recognizing similar elements in his or her relationship, and is getting the strength to break free. Your story is very important part of this website. Thank you so much for sending it and for participating in helping others who are suffering. 

Please write to me any time you feel like it. You are not alone. There are countless of people in this world who are at this very moment going through what you are going through. Some of those people are reading these very pages on this website right now, at this same moment when you are reading my reply to you. We do not know each other, but we are all connected through World Wide Web. Let this thought give you strength. So many minds seeking answers to same questions at this very moment, people sitting in different countries in their homes and offices with their computers, staring at the screen right now, some of them visiting these pages, reading these same lines right now. We are not alone. This thought helps us all to recover. 

To read more about the mechanisms that control the way the mind is working, see the article Controlling Your Emotions. To read more about how to get over cheating and narcissism, please visit page Recovery After Cheating and Narcissism. 

Warm hug,

Maria

If you wish to submit your own story and get feedback and support for your situation or if you wish to contact me for any other reason, click This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it    

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Comments (1)

• |2010-03-15 13:13:38 Roxanne  - Response to Maria's Reply to Roxanne
  
  Dear Maria:
  Thank you so much for reading my story and posting it to help others.
  I am extremely grateful for your thoughtful reply. It gives me strength
  to try to stop hurting myself and start life anew.
  
  I would appreciate any comments from your readers. Most of all,
  bless you for sharing your experience, knowledge, and great compassion.
  
  Gratefully,
  
  Roxanne
  • 0
  • 0

  Reply

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