Hi Tad, You asked me about my sitch regarding contact with Ex W. When she left (26th Jan 04) we had a bit of contact, but regarding only stuff on the surface.
They don’t like to be pursued, well it got to her that we could perhaps reconcile. Feck me!! Late June 04 a letter came to me from her lawyer saying, If you do not divorce Liz by way of her adultery, and we don’t hear from you in the next 6 weeks then she will start proceedings against you, siting unreasonable behaviour on your part!
Well Feck her I thought! She was on holiday in Corfu with (OM) Nic when I received the letter. When she got back, us as a family minus eldest D (because she had an important exam at college) confronted her outside the hotel where she worked. No joy.
I didn’t respond to her lawyer, but by the end of the year another letter came on the 31st Dec 04 (happy new Fecking year!) from yet another lawyer, this time she had started to proceed on grounds of my unreasonable behaviour. Well after the decree nisi was declared Feb 05 She dropped this Lawyer, then my lawyer kept chasing Liz and it took to the 20th Nov 06 to finally be divorced and on my terms. ( I prayed to God, And I said “my life Lord” or this deal £££££, which is it to be it’s up to You ) I got a brilliant deal, which her lawyer told her not to take! Thanks be to GOD!!!
The following is the only contact between us since early July 04:
Early Nov 05, she arranged to meet me, I got ambushed I knew my then pastors would be there because Liz arranged it thru them, But Nic was there I said “Liz you come outside on your own” she did, all it was about was her having more access to youngest D, I said only if Nic’s not around her, which more or less worked out.
Late June early July 06 she walked down our garden path to speak to me, I met her on the door step, It was only later that I found out why she came, She wanted youngest D to sometimes stay with her and Nic and his son and I was not to stop it. Jan 07 one of my D’s was on the phone to Liz, when Liz said “happy birthday” to me!
Late July 2012, Me and youngest D dropped Nic’s lawn mower off (at their house) which me and youngest repaired etc, youngest D said “dad did most of the work on it” I had my van engine still running D took the mower out thru the back doors. I’m looking in the rear view mirror and hoping for a quick get away when Liz said “Thank you” to me.
So I am really well and truly detached from her.
Love Delboy
P.S It’s still shocking for me to see her, as she now is, it’s fecking unbelievable! That’s what it is.
Look, the guy I was in a relationship with for just 6 months, which ended just over a month ago, HE is bothered that I'm not seeing anyone. He immediately started seeing someone and he's "in love" apparently, and he's acting like a different person with this girl than he's ever acted in his life. I'm actually finding it kind of comical. And he is asking every other week if I'm seeing anyone yet, or if I'm still on match.com. When I said that I was "done" with online dating because it has been one bad experience after another and I'm happier alone, he acted SADDENED by that. He started saying "oh come on, you can't let it get you down, you have to get back out there! There is someone for you, I know it!!"
This guy didn't betray me. But he feels guilty because he's with someone and I'm not, and the fact is that for all his talk about independence, he's really not independent of needing a relationship. This only makes me feel MORE powerful or "together" because I'm seeing I don't need a relationship to have happy moments in life.
Your ex I'm sure has some level of guilt. If you're with someone she can tell herself that she did the right thing because you've found someone new.
I agree so much with everything 25 years is saying. I think these people DO care about us. In fact I believe my XH loves me. He "loves me but is not in love with me." And I totally get that now, because that's exactly how I feel about him. Therefore it really almost doesn't bother me anymore that he is with someone else. This is where your XW is coming from. It is entirely possible to care deeply about someone but not "choose" to be with them romantically. Just because someone pledged to love us romantically for life doesn't mean that it has to happen that way.
Simplify it this way: These people for whatever reasons woke up one day and felt differently about the way they connected with us. Maybe it was a one day thing; maybe it was a slow-growing realization. They didn't feel in love anymore. Emotionally they weren't feeling a connection.
Many of them likely hid this for a long time and went through the motions. Pretending they were happy. Why? Because how do you tell your spouse, the person you pledged to be with for life, this horrible news? So they faked it on some level. They hoped things would change for them. Things didn't change.
They got in deeper and deeper, living a double life, a life where on the surface they pretended to love us. In fact they may have even OVERDONE it a bit, saying things like "hey let's get remarried and redo our vows" (my XH did this a week before leaving me and I think I remember yours doing the same, Tad). They laid on the charm and the love and insisted, even when we asked if things were wrong, that things were GREAT. Then there came a point where for many of them, they met someone else. Someone who loved them for the persona they were OUTSIDE our lives. The person they projected they wanted to be but could not around us because we'd have said "what's wrong with you, why don't you love me anymore?" This new person made them feel GREAT about themselves. There was no guilt over the way their feelings changed, over how they were living a double life. They were this single entity with the OW/OM. And that OW/OM probably worshipped the ground they walked on.
Eventually they made a choice. Go off with the OW/OM because that was "easier" than trying to repair things with us, because they felt "in love" with that person, that was a sure thing, where repairing things with us when they were already distracted by someone else was just an impossible task for them.
And this is when the bomb hit us. Out of nowhere.
So it seemed to us at the time like we had to keep asking why. Or how. How could they be one person one day and another the next? How could they just keep on treating us this way after they left, toying with our emotions?
Well the answers are all there, in all the behavior that is the same among all our exes. They fell out of love with us (and for MLCers this is often more about their own inadequacies unfulfilled than relationship problems, but they buried or hid relationship problems as well), they panicked, they hid their true feelings, they became ashamed of their feelings, they found someone else to confide in who very presence would not trigger that shame in them, they realized this new person could ONLY make them feel good about themselves and never bad, and they chose the path of least resistance:
They chose to cultivate that "in love" feeling with someone else rather than face us and themselves.
And in the end, they aren't in love with us at this time.
That's all there is to it. Remove your shattered ego from it and it's almost clinical. A series of steps taken by someone weak who could have or should have said from the getgo that they were feeling differently, but likely hid it for awhile. I honestly believe my XH thought he was doing me a favor hiding the way he felt. He said "I didn't want to hurt you. I hoped my feelings would change back to what they used to be on their own."
My XH acknowledges now that he should have spoken up, shouldn't have misled me with false proclamations of love or promises to renew vows. But he can't take it back. What's done is done.
My XH isn't in love with me anymore, and he's in love with someone else. And you know what? I can't change that. I accept it. So my energy is 100% into MY life, MY relationships with family and friends.
Tad I beg you please try to look at this from a more detached, clinical perspective. On some level it's the most personal thing you'll ever face, likely, but on another, it's a script, and it's NOT personal. It just is. It's what happens when someone is human and can't keep a promise made, tries to hide it, then ruins things completely.
This person, your ex-wife, needs to follow her path. She needs to get married if that's her choice. She needs to see where it takes her, and you have to let her go and follow your path. It may be that some day your paths converge again. I don't think her being married is the end of "hope." Some of these people marry or even have kids and years later realize the full extent of what they did and try to reconcile.
But you can't be a good role model to your kids if you sit there ignoring your own life waiting for this to happen. You have to live as if she is GONE. It's the only way for you to really survive and thrive.
I'm sorry this is so long but I guess I thought I had a lot to say that I hope helps you see things from a more detached view.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
Antonia that was wonderful!!!! and I feel like it was "spot on". My xh said to me, "he tried" AND I didn't want to believe it at the time, but I really think he did. I think he tried very hard to convience himself he was still in love with me. I saw real tears when he moved out. He had no reason to cry, or so I thought, but he was hurting. He felt so guilty, he wanted his family to work, but it was no longer there for him. He needed excitement, something new (MLC). He knew he was hurting me, but he HAD to move on with HER, he LOVED the attention he was getting. He felt younger, more alive. She GOT him, his NEW self. He could be this other person with her, the NEW person he had become. BUT, he still loved me and didnt want to hurt me, he worried I would not be able to go on and TO THIS DAY, he STILL thinks I am the same person that stood there crying adn begging him not to leave. I am sure he thinks I would LOVE to have HIM back. What he dont know is I would love to have my FAMILY back, I miss my family....him not so much, esp the person he became and is now. He told his best friend that after he and ow (which was #2 ow), got married (which she was already pregnant), he wanted to have children.....twin girls. Said he wanted a challange. He also made the statement that "things were so different", with this new lady. Of course they were, he needed a new high, a new life and she was young and in free.
ANYWAY Tad, Antonia is spot on. I think most of our spouses have felt this way. It may be a MLC but regardless they are not "In love with US anymore". They are looking for a high, a new relationship to make then feel new again.
In my case, my xh had to remarry, was prb pressured, but he did, and he has a new son. This may last and it may not. Your xw may get married and it may last and it may not. It just depends. If the person they marry and can their high going and the IN LOVE feeling for them going, then they may stay married. OR It may wear off and they may wake up. Hope is never lost! It isnt over until GOD says its over.
BUT like everyone says, he have to go on. You cant sit and wait, well you can, but what kind of life is that for you OR your children. You also cant jump when she offers a nice little jester.....is she coming out of this, blah blah blah. Tad if she wants you back, you will know it. She will make an effort and it wont just be jesters in my opinon.
To add to what Antonia was saying about her ex bf being different with new gf....well. Its like this, if a person is into you, you will know it, they will jump leaps and bounds, go out of their way to show you. There wont be any excuses. This is why some act differently with others. We think, well nobody will have them the way he/she acted with me, no one would put up with that....the fact is, they DONT act that way with someone THEY truly fall in love with. They ARE different because their feeling are stronger/different. I am not good with words, hope you got the point.
I know my xh is totally acting different with new wife, even down to how he dresses and his hobbies.
Anyway Tad, you will be ok, you are just at your own pace. Some fight longer than others, some have a hard time giving up and letting go. I am in that club!
Renee has a bunch of great points in her post above...and I also wanted to add to mine, since I was talking with another poster about this post off the boards, that them falling out of love with us temporarily, which often leads to their affairs, well, this is not an acceptable reason for them doing what they do. It is a reason, but it's not "acceptable" or morally right. I think what binds the MCLers together is that they are so addicted to the idea that marriage has to be this constant "high" of "in love" feelings that they assume a marriage should be over if they feel differently at some point. They conflate the way they feel about themselves in mid-life, at that 20 or more year mark of marriage, about how they are aging and "time is running out", with this sense of needing to shake things up or restart from square one. Look how many of them "regress" in the way they live...suddenly they don't want homes, they want apartments. Suddenly they blow money and live dangerously and shun all sense of being "responsible adults". They often take up with people drastically different than their age, people with totally different lives, as if they want to explore some whole new life, version 2.0. (When my XH downgraded from a home owned and land to a pricey 2 bedroom apartment in a small development that looks like every other apartment in the state, he took pics of it and said "Life 2.0 is GREAT!!!")
What I'm getting at is that MLCers don't have the capacity as adults to weather the ups and downs of marriage. ALL marriages go through spots where one or both don't feel as "in love" as they used to. I'm sure if any of us were asked we'd have said at one point or another things were just "ok" in our marriages, not great, but not bad either. But we are all the types who stick by the partner in those cases. The MLCers just do not. They bail.
So I just wanted to add that. Fundamentally the MLCer is a different personality type than we are, and we can't change this about them, so it's best to just let them drift while we take care of ourselves and our own families.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
The Sitch: Married 26 years EA w/ OM 9/10 Bomb 10/10 (5 weeks after 25th anniversary) Sep 12/10 She wants D 1/11 W files 5/11 D final 10/11 XW marries OM 6/13
L-- This guy didn't betray me. But he feels guilty because he's with someone and I'm not, and the fact is that for all his talk about independence, he's really not independent of needing a relationship. This only makes me feel MORE powerful or "together" because I'm seeing I don't need a relationship to have happy moments in life.
Your ex I'm sure has some level of guilt. If you're with someone she can tell herself that she did the right thing because you've found someone new.
I agree so much with everything 25 years is saying. I think these people DO care about us. In fact I believe my XH loves me. He "loves me but is not in love with me." And I totally get that now, because that's exactly how I feel about him. Therefore it really almost doesn't bother me anymore that he is with someone else. This is where your XW is coming from. It is entirely possible to care deeply about someone but not "choose" to be with them romantically. Just because someone pledged to love us romantically for life doesn't mean that it has to happen that way.
Simplify it this way: These people for whatever reasons woke up one day and felt differently about the way they connected with us. Maybe it was a one day thing; maybe it was a slow-growing realization. They didn't feel in love anymore. Emotionally they weren't feeling a connection.
Many of them likely hid this for a long time and went through the motions. Pretending they were happy. Why? Because how do you tell your spouse, the person you pledged to be with for life, this horrible news? So they faked it on some level. They hoped things would change for them. Things didn't change.
They got in deeper and deeper, living a double life, a life where on the surface they pretended to love us. In fact they may have even OVERDONE it a bit, saying things like "hey let's get remarried and redo our vows" (my XH did this a week before leaving me and I think I remember yours doing the same, Tad). They laid on the charm and the love and insisted, even when we asked if things were wrong, that things were GREAT. Then there came a point where for many of them, they met someone else. Someone who loved them for the persona they were OUTSIDE our lives. The person they projected they wanted to be but could not around us because we'd have said "what's wrong with you, why don't you love me anymore?" This new person made them feel GREAT about themselves. There was no guilt over the way their feelings changed, over how they were living a double life. They were this single entity with the OW/OM. And that OW/OM probably worshipped the ground they walked on.
Eventually they made a choice. Go off with the OW/OM because that was "easier" than trying to repair things with us, because they felt "in love" with that person, that was a sure thing, where repairing things with us when they were already distracted by someone else was just an impossible task for them.
And this is when the bomb hit us. Out of nowhere. So it seemed to us at the time like we had to keep asking why. Or how. How could they be one person one day and another the next? How could they just keep on treating us this way after they left, toying with our emotions?
Well the answers are all there, in all the behavior that is the same among all our exes. They fell out of love with us (and for MLCers this is often more about their own inadequacies unfulfilled than relationship problems, but they buried or hid relationship problems as well), they panicked, they hid their true feelings, they became ashamed of their feelings, they found someone else to confide in who very presence would not trigger that shame in them, they realized this new person could ONLY make them feel good about themselves and never bad, and they chose the path of least resistance:
They chose to cultivate that "in love" feeling with someone else rather than face us and themselves. And in the end, they aren't in love with us at this time.
That's all there is to it. Remove your shattered ego from it and it's almost clinical. A series of steps taken by someone weak who could have or should have said from the getgo that they were feeling differently, but likely hid it for awhile. I honestly believe my XH thought he was doing me a favor hiding the way he felt. He said "I didn't want to hurt you. I hoped my feelings would change back to what they used to be on their own."
My XH acknowledges now that he should have spoken up, shouldn't have misled me with false proclamations of love or promises to renew vows. But he can't take it back. What's done is done. My XH isn't in love with me anymore, and he's in love with someone else. And you know what? I can't change that. I accept it. So my energy is 100% into MY life, MY relationships with family and friends.
Tad I beg you please try to look at this from a more detached, clinical perspective. On some level it's the most personal thing you'll ever face, likely, but on another, it's a script, and it's NOT personal. It just is. It's what happens when someone is human and can't keep a promise made, tries to hide it, then ruins things completely. This person, your ex-wife, needs to follow her path. She needs to get married if that's her choice. She needs to see where it takes her, and you have to let her go and follow your path. It may be that some day your paths converge again.
But you can't be a good role model to your kids if you sit there ignoring your own life waiting for this to happen. You have to live as if she is GONE. It's the only way for you to really survive and thrive.
I'm sorry this is so long but I guess I thought I had a lot to say that I hope helps you see things from a more detached view.
ALL great stuff all there for you to process and take in Tad...OR KEEP RESISTING b/c it makes you suffer more.
TAD- if your wife had died 2 years ago, what would you be doing now with your life?
Would you keep asking "WHY?" Or would your sons keep hoping mom comes back to life...would you really curl up in the fetal position?
Wouldn't you eventually Try to GAL and show your boys something optimistic about what a man can create in life when he gets dealt an unfair hand?
whatever GAL things that you'd be doing if you finally accepted that she's gone
is what you ought to be doing now.
M: 57 H: 60 M: 35 yrs S30,D28,D19 H off to Alaska 2006 Recon 7/07- 8/08 *2016* X = "ALASKA 2.0" GROUND HOG DAY I File D 10/16 OW DIV 2/26/2018 X marries OW 5/2016
5 years later and I am replying. I have been reading and reading more but still see what seems like the same bitter people. Thank you Jack for asking what's my story. My story is like everyone else, things didn't go like the fairy tale I was promised as a little girl. Life is hard sometimes and blame isn't with just one person. The other half of a marriage that isn't posting here isn't always the bad guy. We only get one perspective in these postings that paint the other person as bad but life just isn't that way. Both were probably bad, good, loving people that didn't make it through a terrible time. I wish people here wouldn't jump to conclusions about a person who isn't posting here. Thanks for being here to help people.
You are a bit late in posting to Jack. Sadly, Jack passed away in the fall of 2016.
It's true, there are two sides to every coin. Some can be bitter about the cards that life has handed them, but I see a large number of people all across the forums that are taking that same exact hand of cards and doing something productive w/their lives. Yes, it's true, it takes a while for them to come to realize that none of us were promised a fairy tale w/a happy ending.
The written word can be interpreted many ways. Sometimes, the writer is just venting their frustration, other times, yes, they are lashing out and can come across bitter, and then again, they are just expressing their thoughts and seeking some support/advice and even 2 x 4's along the way. Very few remain bitter and angry. The words bitter and angry take a lot of energy to maintain and can create health issues and create problems in any type of relationship. We do hope that if we come across people that continue to express those two issues, that we can help them find their way and come to realize that they can only control themselves and how they react to their own unique situations. There are some that get annoyed and frustrated w/us when we point out the "bitter" and "anger" issues, that their either remain stubborn and ignore our comments or their leave. They are the ones that we can't reach, i.e., even after years of posting here. For those individuals, I feel sorry for them and keep them in my prayers that some day, they will come to realize that the bitterness and anger are keeping them stuck in one place.
Divorce Busting isn't just about saving a marriage...it's about saving yourself, learning how to react to behavior and/or comments made to you. It's about finding your inner self that you've put aside in a relationship and yes, it's a tool that you can use in your every day life and not just in the marriage.
So, per Jack's question...what is your story? As he suggested a long time ago...how about starting a thread of your own and just maybe you might be surprised by the support, advice and guidance that you receive? For you to return years later, then there is something you are still searching for...what is it? Maybe we can help.
You replied on a post Tad wrote in 2012.. i hope you keep reading.. he progressed at his own pace and regained strenght, knowledge, honour and his independance. He is a success story eventho the main goal was not reached. Maybe her departure was in fact a blessing?? Or maybe not.. but i can tell you that he was and is amazing and an inspiration for some struggleing. Offering Hope of better days..
There is 2 sides... there is also 2 minds, 2 views etc.. rediscovering ourselves as individuals is a challenge and also a gift. ( in my case )
