The best husbands yeah... I was a darn good husband...I can see now how and why anything I did was never good enough.   It's a real mind f#%k that in her denial she came up with all kinds of ridiculous reasons why  I was a bad husband... ie.. you didnt take the trash out at 4am.  (no I took it out at 6am).

While its easy to think "why me, why did this happen to me..I thank God everyday for getting me away from my sick ex.    I can live out my days on this earth in authenticity and not abused.

 

you and me both, Hiker, all I ever wanted too.  Except it was 37 years with the wrong person for me.

I was 19 when I met my ex.  What's odd looking back is that I felt like you do and didn't have any success in being asked out by the boys I was interested in and yet with hindsight and corroboration from others who knew me I was actually a stunner, all the boys wanted me but nobody was prepared to ask.

Okay, so was the best feeling of your life a lie - I say no.  That was your feeling, an intimation of what it can be like.  She is the one lying.  Not you.

Yes, it is a vulnerable position to be in - newly alone and there are plenty of people around who literally look for such opportunities and you can end up in all sorts of trouble before you know it.

I've accepted that my ex was and is a selfish jerk who never loved me back for one nanosecond and has left me with a visceral fear of rejection because he was gay and subterraneously communicated in feeling that he didn't want to have sex with me every bloody day of that life sentence I did.  Much better out than in.  Face it up, give it back.  If I have to entertain the possibility of having a loving relationship at my age, you sure do.  You can have a family Hiker, deep breaths now, take it easy, you will know you are on the way up when you make your first joke and it's funny.

Thanks Lily.

I'm afraid I'll be wary of women for a long time now. It's going to take so much time for me to open up to someone a woman with bad intentions probably won't put in the time.

I want to have hope for a good relationship in the future. I can be logical to a fault, and this is where it hurts me. Logic and experience are telling me to cut my losses and forget about it. It's a strange thing to try and think about dating someone new after 7 years. I can't imagine what's it's like after 37.  Sometimes I feel like jumping back into the dating pool would be the best thing, like it's time to start over, take the bull by the horns and hope for the best. That feeling is usually short lived and followed quickly by fear. I guess what's needed is bravery, which in my experience is just pretending you're not scared until you really aren't scared anymore.

Demons-halo, I'm not giving up. I refuse to. I've been through plenty, and tough times will come again. That's life. I'm usually pretty positive and self aware about what I need to do. What's different now is it's never been this hard or taken this long for me to get back up when I'm down. I've never had this many obstacles, or one this intense, to get through at once. What I don't have is that confidant. There are parts of this that I don't know how to talk about with anyone.