Divorce after Twenty years together Community Group
I want to start something for those of us that were married for a long long time. I think that we face a little different issues than those who were dating for a few years or even married for shorter period of time. Being married for so long we have older children some have grandkids dealing with teenagers and their reaction to the divorice empty nesters dating after 40...
I need some desparate advice. Next month it will be two years that my ex and I separated after 22 yrs of marriage. He is in Florida with his first love and I am in NY. We are divorced now. At times I feel as if I have come a long way since that trauma of my marriage failing. I was away for a weekend church retreat and when I returned he was gone with a cold letter stating he was ill and contagious and needed to leave. Well to make a long story short all was untrue. I caught him with his ex girlfriend in Florida and flew out there to confront him. He was cold to me. He acted as if he never knew me and up till today I never got the apology I at least deserved after being his wife for 22 yrs. A minister he was and when I asked if i may pray for him he simply looked at my face and said "No thanks" and when i said "May i hug my husband for the last time" he also said "No thank you i dont want to go any further than that". As i stood outside his trailer home in the bundocks i asked myself "Who is this man standing in front of me?" It was a scary and hurtful feeling as I walked away for good and saw him for the last time. There is no contact and the hate I feel today for the trauma he has caused me still remains. Now he has contacted our two sons who are 20 and 21 yrs of age. One of them lives with me and I just found out yesterday he contacted him and I was devastated. I wish I had it in my power to separate him from his sons forever cause that would be a punishment for him and I want him to feel pain like he caused me but it is out of my hands. I knew this day was coming and it did. I spoke to my son last nite and told him I didnt expect him to hate his father for what he has done but to forgive him like I know one day I have to do also. Why does it anger me to know he has contacted his sons? Why do wish him the pain he has caused me. When will i let this go? will i ever fully heal and be able to move on with my life? I am beside myself to know he still hurts me from far away and he doesnt even know how much. I have another relationship with a wonderful man and I know this is not fair to him. He has gone through a similar ordeal with his ex wife who looked up and old boyfriend too. What is it with these spouses returning to ex and past flames?
I like waking up to my cosy cat and a window view of trees and flowers instead of that cold hard face. Like you, everyone else got the warm funny bloke while I lived with the real person he hid inside. I don't like him at all.
I'm so mixed up emotionally that I'm not sure that what I feel anymore is love - I'm just not sure what I feel. I know I feel differently every day and it's the damned roller coaster that's so confusing. I pray for balance in my life, as I think that is what I am missing.
So, do I miss the love we had? Or do I miss the sense of stability and yearn for the comfort I felt in my old lifestyle? I think it is the later for me. Not to say that there isn't a part of me that still loves him - whether it's the idea of who I thought he was, or the man i wanted him to be, or the man I fell in love with - that I'm not sure of.
Dt's post about how we 'choose' to love really resonates with me on this topic. If we can choose to love, shouldn't we be able to choose NOT to love?! Somehow, I don't think it works in reverse!
The marriage wasn't always good - it was often tumultuous actually, because we bickered quite a bit - but when it WAS good it could be great. Those fleeting and too infrequent 'great' times are what I long for. What I miss. The wonderful vacations. The sitting in the lawn chairs with a glass of wine and just being. The comfort of knowing that I would always make the salad and he would always bbq the meat!
I've learned here that when I think I 'miss' him, or feel a yearning for the old life, I should think about all the bad things about him. Someone (karmary?) said to write his bad traits or things he did to hurt us down in a book and look at it every time we feel 'misty' about the past. I have not done the writing 'thing', but I've tried the behaviour of trying to remember the bad things when I'm sad. But it doesn't work for me. I still try it every time Ifeel sad - I get mad at myself and say "he hurt me - how can I cry" or "he ignored me when I needed him" or things of this nature. Don't feel any better. Maybe I need that notepad as suggested!
As an aside, I don't even OWN a bbq at my new place. I threw his old beloved bbq out when I moved. I gave it to him on his assets 'list' but he didn't want it. It gave me pleasure to wheel it to the curb...and guess what? Someone came by overnight and took it - it didn't even make the garbage heap!
My father once give to me thinking food as my marriage ended. He explained " Love is an action. What you got was abuse. Don't confuse garbage as love. There is no admiration to abuse nor is it to be regarded as love"! The old man was very wise.
I'd rather accept that its my ability to love comes from MY inner projections....it stems from loving the self which healthy people do.
Iammine, it was me who wrote about keeping a list of the things he did that hurt, things that contributed to the breakdown of our relationship. It's all too easy to blame only ourselves for the breakdown of our marriage.
Someone advised me to keep the list and call it "The Truth". I was told to look at the list whenever I was feeling terribly sad and was blaming myself. I was having seriously bad down times and each time, I would give myself a really hard time. While I'm not advocating painting your ex as totally irredeemable, it does help to remind yourself of the facts eg he had an affair, he lied about "x", etc etc. It helps me to keep my thoughts real.
Take heart, RB, Iammine and everyone. Feeling confused, uncertain which way's up, doubting yourself, getting angry, and all the things that you guys have described are all totally normal. Go with these feelings and let them have their time. Feel every feeling as deeply as you can. Cry. Bash rugs. Dig gardens. Wash walls. Hammer nails. Let yourselves feel. Eventually, it will settle and you might feel a bit washed out and numb for a while. Then you begin again with a whole new perspective. Every time you do this, you become more accepting and closer to letting go and moving on with your new happier life.