MissCanuck

This stands out to me. What is going on here? Do you two have time to spend together, just the two of you? And I don't mean just hanging out at home, but participating in activities you enjoy together. How long has the communication been fading? My ex was a chef / restaurant-owner, so I do get that opposite schedules for people in hospitality can be very challenging for a couple. A lot of late nights, a lot of alcohol around, a lot of partying in general. It's a difficult mix.

They can usually offer more targeted coping strategies, once they get to know you. They can tailor ideas and mechanisms specifically for you, in a way that a stranger (this forum) or untrained and unobjective observers (your friends and family) cannot. It might be worth a try, if you find that this is interfering in your day-to-day life to this degree. Also keep in mind that you are pretty fresh into No Contact are only now really genuinely learning to live without her. You are learning not to hope to hear from her, not to communicate with her at all. That will take time. The clock for that started when you blocked her everywhere, so it's very recent. I am sorry you're struggling so much. It's really hard when you just can't seem to focus on anything else and continue to feel so down. But keep talking, and keep the faith that this process will eventually move you forward.

And where do you suppose this lack of self-confidence stems from?

Where's your self-esteem, OP? You seem terrified of making any slight misstep. Have you been dumped out of the blue before or something?

It's probably a fear of rejection kicking in.

It sounds like you don't have a lot else going on in your life, OP. Can you call up some friends or family and make plans for this weekend? You don't need to be sitting around and doing nothing. Start filling up your life with your own actitvities and you will have better balance overall, and naturally not be so anxious when your crush is unavailable.

It's tough. I've been where you are, after the break-up of a long-term, live-in relaitonship. I remained the house we shared while he went to stay with friends, and later the woman who I discovered he'd been secretly seeing the last couple months of our relationship. His things were all still in our place, except for some clothes he'd taken with him. He came back occasionally when I wasn't there to pick up more things, but I finally got sick of looking at all his stuff, every day. So I bagged it all up rather indiscriminately and tossed it in the basement. Told him where he could find it. Both our names were on the lease so I couldn't exactly kick him out altogether but not looking at all his belongings all the time was refreshing. Once you're through that part, you will make a big step in your healing. It's not easy but it won't be hanging over your head anymore.

You are keeping yourself stuck every time you respond. It's has nothing to do with maturity. Maturity would be recognizing that this person wiped her feet on you and deserves no place in your life. Maturity would be recognizing that she brings you pain, and continued contact of any kind is not working for you. It's flawed thinking to tell oursleves it's "mature" to respond to an ex. It is not. You're not quite ready to let her go, so you keep answering. This is normal when we are heartbroken. But at some point, we have to be our own best friends instead of our own worst enemies, and realize we are prolonging our own misery by not shutting down contact of all types: social media, random chit chat, whatever. You are not in a place where any of that is working. It doesn't matter if you're not talking about the relaitonship. The very fact that you're talking to her is preventing you from really moving on. Maybe someday, when you have both moved on a long time from now, you could be friendly. Now is not that time.

You need to see if you are still interested after you meet her too, OP. Strike up a friendly conversation when you meet her. Don't go telling her you like her. That's too much. See how you get along in person and try to assess whether there might be more there to work with.

Do you really need to repeat what she likely already knows? I am sure she understands that if she is cheated on you, you would dump her. That's generally a given in most relatiosnhips. Why is this coming up now, after 5 years together? Have you had a recent argument about this or something?

First, put some space between you and this roomate. It's not helping you, and the information she feeds you doesn't change the outcome. Second, understand that it is normal to be dumbfounded when someone turns out to be different than what you hoped. It doesn't mean none of it was real. It means that things changed along the way, to the point where the relationship could not continue. You will need quite a while before you can really process all of this. At least a few more months. Be patient with yourself in the meantime. Trust the healing process. One day, you will be okay.

This is a normal desire, but you would likely not get any straight answers from her anyway. People like her thus will not give you closure. That will come from you, slowly over time, as you accept that this relationship was not what it appeared to be towards the end. I never got any answers from the ex I mentioned a few posts back either - the majority of what I learned was through my own little bits of digging after we had split. But by that point? I was essentially just checking to see if my own suspicions about him had been correct. They were. I stopped caring whether or not he wanted to be honest. I knew he wouldn't be and I lost interest in even finding out. Eventually, you will reach a point where you just want to move on and the "closure" you seek will arise from that.

You won't be ready to date anyone else for good, long while yet. And that's okay. You are going to need plenty of time to process, and heal. 3 weeks out is still the beginning, so be patient with yourself. It hurts. It hurts a lot. You will okay days, and you will have bad days. The key is to trust the process of recovery and trust that time will help you emotionally untangle from all of it. I feel for you, OP. I was betrayed in a long-term relationship, many years ago now. It's disorienting and leaves you with so many questions. But the strength you will realize you have, in moving past it all? There are few greater feelings. Once you're past the worst of it, you will be amazed at how resilient you are and how far you have come.

Because she thinks you are an attractive man, but not a dating candidate for her. They are not one and the same, OP. All you can do is respect that she is not interested in pursuing this, and leave it be.

What I meant is that people prioritize what they want to prioritize. If she's not doing so on her own accord, it's because she just doesn't want to. For whatever reason, her interest level isn't the same as yours.

When you need to essentially tell someone to be more interested in you, you're generally barking up the wrong tree.

Well, societal expectations were also quite different then. Marrying quickly was not necessarily a result of being sure the other was right. I don't doubt there were many true love stories, but the idea of dating several different people before settling down was not really the norm, and being unwed past a certain age carried stigma. Another thing we need to remember is that in past generations, when people married and were unhappy, social pressures often meant that they did not seek divorce. For as many decades-long happy marriages that resulted from these generations, there are likely just as many that were not. Adultery, abuse, neglect...all the same issues were present in those days as well. It was just much harder to leave and go your separate ways. And it was generally not discussed if there were serious problems. Maybe times were simpler on some levels, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were happier. I think many of us tend to romanticize the past when we're unhappy with the present, in some ways. We can be grateful for the options we do have now, which were unavailable to those who may have desperately needed them 60 or 70 years ago.

OP, maybe I missed it somewhere in the thread, but have you had the opportunity to visit her at her home in Ukraine?

I'm really sorry to hear that. That must have been very painful for you to discover. My honest guess is that she had been in communication with someone else for a while there, and went to test things out with him (maybe her married boss?) It didn't work out the way she expected, she thought about coming back crying to you, but is now trying to whoop it up as a "single" woman. Just my hunch. Her behaviour has been terrible, whatever the story is. She is making it clear that your marriage is over.

So you confirmed that she's seeing someone else?

Yeah, exactly. Her expectations suggest she wants out of Ukraine and wants you to support her, OP. She wouldn't be looking for a foreign man otherwise, and prepared to uproot her son from his home and move him across the world. Either way, this is just not a good plan. You need to tell her sooner rather than later that you do not wish to proceed.

It's not surpising if her ultimate goal isn't to enjoy a healthy marriage but rather to find a way out of Ukraine (which I guess is her home country, based on your comment about her son's school exam) She is looking for ways to convince you to go along with her plan. Of course she's sure she wants to get married, because that is the means to an end for her. It's her ticket to a better life.

That's my point, basically. She isn't a trustworthy source.

And who told you this?

Working on anything first requires knowing the truth. Even if it's a very painful truth, you can't work on an unknown. Is there a mental health issue? A substance abuse problem you're not aware of? Another man? You need to ask yourself the hard questions and do your research about what is really going on with her. You might not be able to extract the full story from her, but you're very clearly working with only a fraction of the complete picture.