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Part of my problem (and maybe even a self-reflection thing in my relationships) is that I have always done that anyway. It's not like I ever kept a relationship from keeping me from doing things I enjoyed. So it's not really a situation of "Now that she's gone, I can finally do xxxxxxx that I was never able to do before!" I guess I was a little selfish in my own way then, as I liked my hobbies and seeing my friends and things that did not involve her. I DID enjoy time with her as well, and never would say no to her wanting to do things together, but I think over time, some girls can grow to resent someone who doesn't automatically make them priority #1 over themselves. I was always my first priority (much like I have to be now, too). But that may not always foster a healthy relationship, especially when your partner is not as independent or as easily occupied as you are.
Long way of saying that I'm not sure what new things I will do that I wasn't already doing before, so my life will stay mostly the same, except with the chunk of heart taken by her, which will hopefully fill back in time.
This is a two-fold problem:
At first she's mad if you don't make her priority 1.
Given a bit of time, she begins to see you as weak if you make her priority 1.
Unless you have children or a dependent there is NEVER a reason to make someone else Priority 1 in your life. You can share your life with them, you can share in their life -- but making them Priority 1 is a silly notion which can't win.
As for the rest, it's not a matter of "Now that she's gone I'm free to...", it's simply a question of keeping your mind and time occupied during the healing phase.
At first she's mad if you don't make her priority 1.
Given a bit of time, she begins to see you as weak if you make her priority 1.
Unless you have children or a dependent there is NEVER a reason to make someone else Priority 1 in your life. You can share your life with them, you can share in their life -- but making them Priority 1 is a silly notion which can't win.
As for the rest, it's not a matter of "Now that she's gone I'm free to...", it's simply a question of keeping your mind and time occupied during the healing phase.
Yeah, I agree. I think it comes down to finding the person who understands that. For me I think I lot of it is in finding someone who has hobbies, interests, can occupy themselves at times as well as enjoy time with me. In my past relationships, I have found myself with these girls who just plain do NOT have a hobby. Sure, they are willing to try something new here and there, but the interest usually fades fast. With this girl for a while it was tennis and golf. We went to the tennis courts once to play, she never wanted to go back. Went to the driving range and golf lessons, which she never got the hang of, and she lost interest (though one thing I did see was that she was bragging on social networking site that she was hitting golf balls with OM before I stopped contact, stuff like that was reasons I had to stop that). But the bottom line is, much like relationships I guess it was hard to hold her interest in anything much except drinking. She stated she would never be able to read a book because she can't concentrate.
All that said I think it's time I find someone who has their own sense of self as well as the ability to lead their own life without me being a part of it. I should be an enhancement to their life, not everything in their life. I have always felt that way about girls I have been with, that while they are a very important part of my life, they are not EVERYTHING in my life. But it has been very one-sided.
So in this situation it might have been a lose-lose for me. Like you said, if I make her my everything, I am weak and a doormat. If I am more selfish and put me first, I am not doing enough for her and meeting her needs and she's going to cheat on me for a new guy who will become enamored and put her before all else, all day, every day.
If I can take any comfort, it's in that, at least with most relationships anyway (can't say all, this guy could be superman or something), that initial, spend-all-my-time-with-you, all the phone calls, texts, spending every or most nights together, exciting dates each and every weekend, eventually slows down, and you are simply left with each other as you are. I guess that's when the true test of any relationship starts, and quite often, when these affairs start to show their cracks or fail.
Whew! Just got through all 31 pages. Fascinating thread.
I've been debating all this time whether I should comment or not. I have been in your ex's shoes before. That was me. Please, no applause.
I can tell you that everything Sasquatch says is dead-on. She has been wanting to make sure that:
a. You are still pining for her
and
b. She can twist things so that to her friends/family/anyone invited to the wedding, she can be portrayed as the victim somehow
Thanks to all the great advise here (in addition to your own instincts), it sounds like you avoided both of those pitfalls.
Now is the time for you to beware! I think you are probably more attractive to her now than ever. You are a man, aloof, a challenge. The thing about the sundress was spot-on. Who the heck moves in a sundress?
A person who has no life of their own needs you to entertain them, to "complete" them.
A person who is whole and sound can be WITH you rather than relying on you to help her BE.
FINDING that is the hard part.
It's really my fault for staying with her for long, assuming she would just either change or adjust to this type of lifestyle. But that personality type is probably the worst kind to be susceptible to affairs, after all, if life is getting fairly routine, I am able to easily entertain myself, and have a lot of hobbies and interests, including those outside of her, and she has none of that...Of course the allure of a new life with a new person who will lavish that attention and give much more energy to entertaining her will be attractive.
You are right, that is a big challenge in finding the right person. Not just someone who is attractive, or sweet, or loving, but someone who can build a relationship WITH you instead of AROUND you.
Whew! Just got through all 31 pages. Fascinating thread.
I've been debating all this time whether I should comment or not. I have been in your ex's shoes before. That was me. Please, no applause.
I can tell you that everything Sasquatch says is dead-on. She has been wanting to make sure that:
a. You are still pining for her
and
b. She can twist things so that to her friends/family/anyone invited to the wedding, she can be portrayed as the victim somehow
Thanks to all the great advise here (in addition to your own instincts), it sounds like you avoided both of those pitfalls.
Now is the time for you to beware! I think you are probably more attractive to her now than ever. You are a man, aloof, a challenge. The thing about the sundress was spot-on. Who the heck moves in a sundress?
Welcome to the thread. Of course it's all relative probably to what I am seeing but I at least tried to state only facts here when I posted, meaning I wasn't trying to do anything to make her look bad, or me look good, I was just stating facts.
I'm not too worried about her coming back. If things with the OM were blowing up or blew up then MAYBE but even then I think she has way too much pride to ever crawl back. And right now, as long as things are good with the new guy, and she is getting the attention, money, affection, sex, whatever else she needs, she will be fine for a while. A new person or group of people that she can enjoy her drinking with, without any sort of looking down on her for drinking too much, is a plus, too. I think she realized the party was over here and that I was tiring of it.
I am interesting in your POV from an ex though who has been through this, obviously if you are here you have taken some great steps to learn about what happened to you and what you can do for a better future. You may already even be there. But I am very curious to hear your take on this given that it is a rare perspective, but I am so happy that you had the courage to post something.
I don't expect any contact, or perhaps very little, at least in the immediate future. I have even considered totally dropping contact with any mutual friends and letting them stay with her. At this point they are aware of what happened, perhaps not the FULL story but enough to know that I was lied to and that there was cheating involved. That's important to me that they at least know that she was deceptive. Whether or not the relationship itself was working for her, that's important to me that I can't be painted as "the bad guy". Had she simply broken it off, left, and then down the road started up with a new guy, that's a much more positive looking scenario for her. Right now, I can't see how anyone would accept this new relationship she has knowing what they know about me and us, but I guess everyone has different ideas on what does and does not make them consider the company they keep.
Again thank you for posting, I'd love to hear more from you if you had any other thoughts on this whole thing.
Welcome to the thread. Of course it's all relative probably to what I am seeing but I at least tried to state only facts here when I posted, meaning I wasn't trying to do anything to make her look bad, or me look good, I was just stating facts.
I'm not too worried about her coming back. If things with the OM were blowing up or blew up then MAYBE but even then I think she has way too much pride to ever crawl back.
She won't consider this to be "crawling back" to you. She will consider it to be seducing you all over again.
And right now, as long as things are good with the new guy, and she is getting the attention, money, affection, sex, whatever else she needs, she will be fine for a while. A new person or group of people that she can enjoy her drinking with, without any sort of looking down on her for drinking too much, is a plus, too. I think she realized the party was over here and that I was tiring of it.
I am interesting in your POV from an ex though who has been through this, obviously if you are here you have taken some great steps to learn about what happened to you and what you can do for a better future. You may already even be there. But I am very curious to hear your take on this given that it is a rare perspective, but I am so happy that you had the courage to post something.
Well, I don't at all regret what I did (still married to the OM for 15 yrs), but I do regret how I did it.
Our marriage has been tainted. There is nothing that can wipe that away. People changed how they felt about me when it happened and new friends will think of me differently when I confide to them what happened.
For years, my husband behaved like he was suspicious of me. I understood this attitude and I made sure he always knew where I was and who I was with, like a child. I felt I deserved this treatment under the circumstances.
Also, imagine me explaining to my teenager the circumstances of when his dad and I got together. Everybody loves to tell the story of "how I met your father" - not me. I dread people asking me.
I don't expect any contact, or perhaps very little, at least in the immediate future. I have even considered totally dropping contact with any mutual friends and letting them stay with her. At this point they are aware of what happened, perhaps not the FULL story but enough to know that I was lied to and that there was cheating involved. That's important to me that they at least know that she was deceptive. Whether or not the relationship itself was working for her, that's important to me that I can't be painted as "the bad guy". Had she simply broken it off, left, and then down the road started up with a new guy, that's a much more positive looking scenario for her. Right now, I can't see how anyone would accept this new relationship she has knowing what they know about me and us, but I guess everyone has different ideas on what does and does not make them consider the company they keep.
Some people go out of their way to be "accepting". I was surrounding by these people for a while. Lucky for me, my husband's parents were immediating accepting of me. But it took his friends a lot longer to trust me. I had to prove myself to them.
Again thank you for posting, I'd love to hear more from you if you had any other thoughts on this whole thing.
It is interesting to hear from someone who did it and succeeded, but I am glad you are willing to share. It sounds like you would have much rather left your boyfriend/husband in a more traditional way before you ended up dating and marrying your current husband/OM.
It's also interesting to hear how you are not trying to hide what you did from family and friends, which I think is at least facing yourself and your decisions and showing a great level of maturity. 15 years has obviously given you a lot of clarity on the situation too. I would think that in a relationship that did last, that started with deception/affair type situations, the person who strayed might want to somehow change that story, not to just others but to themselves as well. To say something like, "I was in a relationship that wasn't going well, so I broke it off, then started dating OM". Or to somehow rationalize it in a way that was not a negative slant. It's interesting to see that you don't do that with anyone that you tell the story to.
It's also interesting that it did not only affect/destroy what you had with your curreny boyfriend/husband but that it tainted the NEW relationship as well, and THAT started out with a lack of trust. So your new husband, even though you left your previous to be with HIM, did not trust you because of the nature of how he was able to meet you. Which makes sense. I would think that, over time, the OM she is with might wander, when she is texting someone, when she is out with her friends and not him, when she is on her laptop late at night, is she straying on ME now? You would have to think that would happen, and would be the reason so many relationships that start out this way fail.
I've always wondered how people feel about circumstances like that -- although I suspect the majority of them go out of their way to either play the victim OR flat-out lie, both to others and to themselves. Very few people are capable of the pointing finger of introspection.
I know that when I was going through my version of DMKK's situation the ex would go out of her way to avoid confrontation involving meaningful exchange BUT would go out of her way to pick fights IF she could put me on the defensive in any fashion.
In retrospect I realized she wanted me to be the one who had "forced" her to make some kind of move despite that anything which went wrong during this period was both purely human and fortuitous timing. She was looking for a way out and had no intent of working things out, no matter how far backward I bent to appease her. In fact, by acquiescing and trying to accomodate her I was actually making things worse; I saw myself as being cooperative, she saw me as being weak.
As I told DMKK way back at the beginning of this thread, there IS a distinction between being cooperative and being a doormat -- but it's a lot harder to see from the inside.
Since that time I've really paid a LOT of attention to the things women say and do. Some would call it over-analyzing but honestly, I've made something of a study of it. It's come to fascinate me because at times it seems almost inhuman. Both genders are prone to self-deception but my observations tell me women take it from amateur status well into the Master's Leagues.
In retrospect I realized she wanted me to be the one who had "forced" her to make some kind of move despite that anything which went wrong during this period was both purely human and fortuitous timing. She was looking for a way out and had no intent of working things out, no matter how far backward I bent to appease her.
US - It's interesting hearing about your situation early on with the whole forcing her out and "how far backward you bent", because it reminds me where I was around this time LAST month.
This thread started after the cheating had already been established, but a few weeks before that (I didn't know yet but the cheating had already started, at least to some level, maybe further than I even knew), my ex had started to demonize me. Little things would set her off with statements like "Do I ever do ANYTHING right!??!?!" when I made a remark about a mess of her clothes she left all over the bedroom or something (not that this was anything new, she always made a mess but never got THAT irritated when I asked that she straighten up). In those conversations, she began to express things like "We never do things together anymore, we have lost touch with each other over the past 6 months, etc...". I listened, I understood, I agreed. And I took action.
For the next 2-3 weeks I "bent far backward" as you said -- I didn't bother her about anything that bugged me. I didn't say anything about her regular drinking. We did a ton of weekend activities together for the next 2 weekends (though she did during this time period continue to STILL escalate the affair with the OM regardless, tons of texts, phone calls, etc).
So, despite her telling me (in her words) what the problem was, and me taking action to correct, DESPITE all that, the affair escalated to the point where she couldn't wait for me to screw up anymore. Her announcing she wanted to cancel the wedding was precipitated by NOTHING. Not a fight, nothing. We had just come off a weekend we spent doing TONS of stuff together. Like you said...
Quote:
In fact, by acquiescing and trying to accomodate her I was actually making things worse; I saw myself as being cooperative, she saw me as being weak.
So this sounds like EXACTLY what happened with me. It's ironic, in that when she finally spoke up about her issues, and I was working with her on them together, she drifted even FURTHER away.
At this point, following your reasoning, she was already gone. She was out of the relationship. She just needed to find the exit ramp. I wasn't giving her an easy out since I was being NICE. Hence during the "breakup week", before I was clued into the OM, she cried a lot, expressed regret, remorse, said things like "You didn't do anything wrong", suggested counseling, etc. And I was receptive to all this (not knowing of an OM), but this further made me even more of a doormat.
I can see why your posts have been so helpful now because it sounds to me like your situation and mine were so very similar, and the proper approach was to stop being a doormat and to stand up to it all.
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