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- Corsicam
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Re: “When 23 Years Becomes ‘Maybe’”
Rob wrote:
Lots of your people here.
I went through all the stages and while it felt at the time to losing to NPE.. I gained a life.
They are free to choose and act like they want...and you are free to do the same. Doesn't mean you have to cheat like she is doing or be unkind. But you can start taking care of yourself.. because she is not.I understand the words intellectually. I understand that her choices are hers and mine are mine, and that eventually I need to build something new for myself.But I have to be truthful about where I am today — I'm not there yet.Right now it still feels much more like loss than gain. After 23 years, I don't know how to turn off “us” and suddenly think only about “me.” Maybe that is something you learn little by little rather than decide one morning.So when people like you who have actually been through this tell me there is another side, I listen. I may not be able to feel it yet, but I hope someday I can come back here and tell somebody else the same thing.Thank you.
Wishing you stoic fierce courage and self love.
- Corsicam
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Re: “When 23 Years Becomes ‘Maybe’”
I am sorry you are grieving so much Corsicam. That is a lot to process so suddenly. As with any loss, the pain of it all will get better over time, though it is something you will learn to carry with you too. It's partly hard because of all the love you had for her. Now it doesn't have anywhere to go. You can try loving yourself for now, and over time you will find new connections in your life to channel your love. I didn't have kids with my soon to be X either (and he got the cat) and it feels extremely lonely at times, but I do better when I am with family and friends. Surround yourself with them until you are ready to work on that new identity of being single again. After all that time it's hard to feel like yourself when you lost your other half as they say. I think I am finally getting to start a bit on the new identity thing but it has taken me a year since this initial part of a long drawn out discovery process. Everybody's situation seems so unique on this site, so I imagine timelines on recovery and healing vary, but every month that goes by I think you will see yourself grow healthier and stronger. You have a great attitude about things, and although I know it will be hard at times to maintain, it will help you enormously get through this.
Thank you. Something you said really hit me: “all the love you had for her, now it doesn't have anywhere to go.”I think that describes part of what I am feeling better than I have been able to explain myself. The love didn't disappear just because the relationship did. After 23 years it is still there, and suddenly it has nowhere to go.I also appreciate you saying it took you a year before you even started finding that new identity. I keep hearing “take care of yourself,” “find yourself,” “build your new life,” and I understand what people mean. I really do. I hope someday I can say the same things to somebody else.But right now I can't feel that yet. Right now I am still trying to understand how I went from “we” to “me.”I am trying to reconnect with old friends and get out instead of isolating myself. Some days I feel strong and think, okay, I can do this. Other days the grief comes out of nowhere and knocks me down again.So hearing that it took time for you, and that a year later you are only now beginning to find that new identity, actually helps me. It makes me feel like I don't have to have this figured out today.Thank you for sharing your experience with me.
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Thread Starter- Corsicam
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Re: “When 23 Years Becomes ‘Maybe’”
Hi, my sympathies. It's a lot to deal with isn't it. Two things stood out to me in your very well written post full of understanding - your conclusion, that it is back to looking after yourself now. Exactly right, exactly the thing that faces us. I remember how daunted I felt. I moved my bed into my studio and curled up on it.
and the other bit is where you say you are losing your best friend - does that really pan out? certainly for me It turned out my 'best friend' wasn't really a friend at all.
I found it an intense rollercoaster of emotion for a while - spending time curled up on my bed, listening to my feelings and allowing my memory to absorb the new information was time well spent. Also lots of walking, I remember walking on the beach in a rainstorm once. Like Rob says, you get your life back, you will do well.
Thank you Lily. The “best friend” part is something I am struggling with a lot.I don't think I can say the person who was beside me for 23 years was never really my friend. There is too much history, too many good years and too many times we were there for each other for me to erase all of that because of what is happening now.But I also can't call the person I see today my best friend.My best friend would never intentionally hurt me this badly. That is something my therapist and I have gone around and around about, and my position on it has changed.Maybe someday, like you said, my memory will absorb all this new information and I will see those 23 years differently. I don't know yet.And I understand the curled-up-on-the-bed part more than I wish I did. Some days I am functioning, working, going to the gym, doing what I need to do... and then suddenly I am crying like someone opened a valve I didn't know was there.I keep hearing from you and others, “you will get your life back.” Right now I understand the words more than I can feel them. But hearing it from people who have actually walked through this makes me hope someday I will understand exactly what you mean.Thank you for taking the time to share this with me.
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Thread Starter- Corsicam
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Re: “When 23 Years Becomes ‘Maybe’”
That is a lot friend. I was where you were. 23 years together, 19 married. That was over 4 years ago. Today I am happily divorced, my relationships with my kids are the best they have been and I have been dating/now engaged to someone I knew back in HS (I am 46 years old). Life is funny. I can remember clearly when I was where you were; my first post here was total panic.
There is no timeline. Everyone is different. Ultimately, the choice you are faced with isn't what to do next, or what happened in the past, its the choice to live presently. Anxiety comes from future worry. Depression from past looping. Presence eliminates both. The future never comes, all we have is now. The moment I learned this, my life changed radically. I'm far from perfect, but I stay present and doing so enabled me to live a life far more full than ever imaged.
Wishing you success.
Thank you, friend. The 23 years immediately got my attention. Hearing from somebody who was standing where I am now four years ago, and reading where your life is today, really does give me hope.I understand what you mean about living presently, although I have to admit I'm not very good at it right now. 😄 My head seems to have one foot trying to understand the last 23 years and the other trying to figure out what the hell happens tomorrow.Maybe learning to stay in today is part of what I need to work on.One thing I'm learning from all these responses is that there really isn't a timeline. Right now four years sounds like another lifetime to me. But I'm sure four years ago you couldn't have imagined writing the message you just wrote to me either.Life is funny, like you said.Thank you. Stories like yours are exactly why I posted mine. I need to hear from people who remember what this place feels like, but can also tell me there is life on the other side.
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Thread Starter- lily
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Re: “When 23 Years Becomes ‘Maybe’”
I was 'ex's best friend. I believed he was my best friend - then I learned the term gay in denial from this forum. That was the start of a period of conversation which I now look back on as the time where he was trying to see if he could get me back into place as his comfy closet.
For me of course, I was having a serious conversation, trying to understand. so there is this moment - we are in the garden, and this vision comes bubbling out of my subconscious - it was literal in that he was standing in the shade of a large stand of palms but basically it was just a vision I saw - 90% of him is standing in the shadows completely hidden from me and he is using 10% of his emotional energy like he is a puppeteer dangling an image of himself in front of me, the bit that talks to me is not him conversing, it is and had been all along just an image he is constructing to manipulate me with - an adult version of the child who wheedles their parent for a sweet - he is acting like he is ever so nice and totally my best friend but it's just an act, in order to get what he wants from me and actually now that I am looking at the 90% of how he is feeling rather than the 10% in front of my eyes I can tell he is not happy with me at all.
I spent decades with that tosser. Loving, trusting, caring for him without question. Part of the reason he was so successful at playing me for so long was the Eastern religious stuff I had picked up as a teenager - the Baba Ram Das book Be Here Now was on all the coffee tables back in the 70's and that was just the start of it. So I paid attention to the rise and fall of my breath rather than my thoughts feelings and memory a lot. I would even stop myself thinking to follow my breath. Eventually I was lucky enough to meet up with people who could tell me things like that there is a mini release of endorphins in your throat on every breath and to encourage me - you can think as much as you want.
- freedmyself
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Re: “When 23 Years Becomes ‘Maybe’”
Hi Corsicam,
I spent a couple of decades with my GXH before he announced that our marriage was doomed because of me; he listed out my faults, and it was a very long list. Then as a PS, added that also he's gay and wants to sleep with men.
At first, I spent a LOT of time trying to figure out his end of the story. When did he upgrade his wardrobe? When did he start going to happy hour? Was he really by himself on that work trip? And the inquiry was endless, because I don't know the answers to any of these things and he will never, ever be honest with me. I had to let go of my detective work on him, and focus on me and my feelings and experience.
It took me almost a year to realize that Gay didn't just suddenly bubble up right before he told me. Prior to coming out to me, he had spent at least a couple of years building out his new life, right under my nose. I was the unwitting launch pad from which he would rocket into his new gay life.
Now I realize that I was married to someone who didn't actually exist - he was pretending, subconsciously or consciously, for the duration of our relationship. I don't know who this guy actually was, or who he is now. I probably will never know. I can make polite conversation with him when there's a family event (our kids are grown), but I don't trust him. And I can never be friends with someone I don't trust, someone who has betrayed me so thoroughly and so cruelly.
My road to Better was rocky and long. In the beginning, I made self care like a job - eating healthy food (even though I often didn't have an appetite), getting to the gym, going outside, making sure I saw friends a couple of times a week. Therapy was / is still a very important part of my own healing.
I knew even just a few weeks after he moved out that I am SO much better off without him. Until he was gone, I had no idea how difficult he was to live with, and how badly I'd been lied to, gaslit, and manipulated.
Even though the hardest part is over, I'm still working on rebuilding a life as a single person. I don't think there will be a point where I am completely healed, yet I'm healed enough to be grateful for where I am and what I have. Part of me is excited and relieved to be free, and do what I want. The other part is wondering what I want.
One thing I'd like to add is that as I told people my story, I was truly amazed at how often that person knew another straight spouse. There are way more of us that I ever would have guessed.
Last edited by freedmyself (Yesterday 12:37 am)