Confused, Alone, Rejected, Exhausted....and Unsure

Motley Crue

I don't know why I write this as my first post ever in this forum, but I think even more than Personal or Relationship Issues, that I've enjoyed the advice given to people who've had similar experiences to my own recent one and I'd love for some honest advice to my predicament.

Six months ago I came home one night to find my ex-fiancee asking me to leave our house. It was a Tuesday and we'd been broken up since the previous Friday. We'd been together a few years and after a few weeks of tension and arguments a decision was made - by her - to end our relationship. We'd been living together for a number of years (we originally met when I was in University and before she started, once I'd finished University I'd moved to live with her in Scotland and then moved again to accommodate her job in Newcastle) and the breakup was - as far as I was concerned, a pretty major shock to my system. I'd struggled to find work since I moved but had been in a variety of jobs and had tried as much as I could to be equally financially and support the household. It felt like one night her attitude had changed and from that point on nothing I could say or do could take back the hurt she felt.

The day after I'd left the house I took a flight back to Dublin, looking to collect my thoughts, but was persuaded to stay in the UK by my job and offered a more secure contract as a member of staff. I returned after a week in Ireland and started looking for accommodation, quickly finding somewhere (somehow raising the money needed) and moving in within a month or so of the break up.

By December my fiancee was in a new relationship, dating a guy she'd met on a dating website, who lived locally and whom she told me had made her incredibly happy. At first I thought it was a good idea to keep contact with her and sporadically keep in touch (mainly to make sure any mail was given to me). But as the weeks went on from the break up (in Sep) she'd begun dismantling our lives. The cat was taken away - and I'm not sure where he ended up - the house was redecorated and wallpapered and a lot of the bedding and sheets and materials used when I lived there were thrown out or given to me, she decided instead to buy new items. She openly went on a number of dates in the aftermath of our relationship, while rebounds eluded me completely, she slept with a barrage of men and posted explicit photographs of herself on dating websites - which were noticed by colleagues in my job who were afraid to tell me what they'd seen.

It wasn't long before her new boyfriend was living in the house with her and sleeping in our bed (the one we'd purchased together). Maybe I was being a little harsh on her but I felt that by jumping into a new relationship so soon she was almost insulting the fact we'd been together for such a significant period, engaged to be married and she was admitting to me that she'd been detached from me for a long time - maybe even longer then we've currently broken up - before finally telling me the truth.

And so, with Valentine's Day approaching and her birthday (Jan 28th) just past, I sit here tonight - having still not been with a woman sexually and only been on a handful of bad dates since, not holding the moral ground, but rather distraught and broken and still desperately in love, unable to stop thinking about her when I close my eyes and unable too (despite the horrible things she's done) forget about the love and security she brought that I missed.

Although I do good work in my job I feel that I am in the wrong country, the wrong time and the wrong place. I feel alone and vulnerable and I feel miserable. I try and break this and get involved in other projects but the fact is that I want - so badly - to find a new focus, a new reason, a new life. If I left tomorrow and went to another country I would leave everything, my life and my memories, although that could hold some positives it would also mean that I would have literally nothing to show for almost the past decade - that everything I had done and everything I'd seen had been for nothing. And as much as I hate her I don't want to allow her to control my life so much that I am literally accepting there was no other point to my existence in this time and place then her.

Taltos

OP - I am really sorry but I have no choice but to move your thread to the Relationship Issue forum.
"The Separation and Divorce forum is a place to come and get some civil, mature, constructive and non-judgemental emotional and practical advice and support on the issues and challenges encountered encountered while going through a separation and/or a divorce, perhaps from those going through similar."

I am not doing this to take away from your relationship or belittle it in any fashion, but unless you need practical advice around separation / divorce this forum is not the right place.

Thanks and hopefully you will get some good advice here instead
Taltos

December2012

Hi,

You sound very heartbroken.

It must be so tough to have your world ripped out from under you, and also while she has gone on living her life and having fun, you're stuck in this limbo.

Have you spoken to anybody in real life about how you are feeling?

jantheman91

That is completely gut wrenching stuff!

I would advise going to see a counsellor or someone along those lines but i'd rather not advocate something i found useless. The hardest part is going to be breaking out of that limbo you're stuck in.

I sympathise with you when you say no matter how much you hate her a part of you still longs for her. It's understandable in these circumstances. I think time will be your best friend here. It may not seem like it now but time will heal all wounds.

Life is pretty damn unfair at the best of times and the lessons we learn seem to be learnt in the harshest possible ways. I admire you in the sense that after all the things you've been through you're still hanging in there looking for a way out. Take pride in that and cut yourself some slack! You're showing more resilience than most. I promise it will get better. I don't know how long it'll take which isn't ideal, but knowing that this feeling of emptiness will not be around forever should be a positive.

I hope one day you come to understand, accept and overcome this horrid experience.

All the best!

beks101

Hey Motley Crue,

I hear ya.

I'm so sorry for your pain. I'm so sorry for the further hurt of her seemingly callous ability to move on, just like that, while you're still trying to contemplate life without her.

I'm so sorry for the confusion you're experiencing of not knowing what your life is about, should you stay or should you go, what are you doing with your life, what's your focus...etc etc and for all the landmarks, Christmas, birthdays, Valentine's Day...that are bringing up all the same old emotions again.

There's not really much anyone can say that will take away your pain in any big way. It's just something you have to go through, and learn to deal with in the best way for you personally, until it begins to subside.

What I will say though - is that it will begin to subside.

Not today, not tomorrow, not next week, maybe not even next month. But as you ride out these feelings and gradually come to terms with this harsh new reality you're facing, you'll begin, over time, to think of her every five minutes as opposed to every five seconds...every hour as opposed to every five minutes...a few times a day as opposed to relentlessly...and so on and so forth.

I HATE to throw this cliche out there because it sounds so meaningless, but it's just so true - time is a better healer than you can imagine right now. Time is what you need for these feelings and the loneliness and the confusion and the pain to fade - and you'll begin to gain a more objective perspective on your ex and your relationship than what you currently have. You'll begin to see the flaws and the issues and the problems and the reasons why it never would have worked, and even if you stayed together, you would have made each other more miserable in the long-run than this short-term gut-wrenching heartache that you are going through.

Even though you probably feel right now like you were willing to deal with the problems and get through the issues with her - she wasn't. She walked. She wasn't committed to you in the same way that you were committed to her, which means that ultimately you were incompatible as a couple. You deserve someone who's willing to see it through with you.

Do you have anyone who you can talk to about all of this? It's very scary and isolating to be in a foreign country without your family and friends when you're going through something like this. Youneed them more than ever right now, so I think it's wrong to think that moving country would be some kind of defeat.

Leaving does not mean you are running away, or admitting that she was your only reason for doing anything for the past decade, or that you are giving up your life and memories in order to escape her. Your experience of life and of work there stands for itself - that's what you have to show for the past decade. That won't suddenly disintegrate just because you've decided to move on.

No matter what you do, I think it's important that you have a support network of people around you who know what you're going through and are there to talk about it when that's what you need. Even if it's just a Skype chat on a Sunday or a series of emails or instant chats with a friend. Don't shut yourself off and keep things in your head - it will prolong the healing from this.

I wish you the very best of luck and all the compassion in the world. It sucks like few other pains you can experience in life. It's like a bereavement of sorts - losing the key person from your life, the person your world revolved around for so long - except they're still there, you can see them and hear about them every day. They've just walked away from you and the life that you held so dear together. And this person full of love and care for you that they always were - has just vanished without a trace.

Hang in there. It does get better. I swear to God it does.

Beks.