I am new here, but I have read some really thoughtful, caring advice, so I am going to give this a try, because I am feeling so lost.
I was stupid to get involved in a triangle. He has been in a live-in relationship for about 10 years, and they own property together. According to both, she lived upstairs, and he lived downstairs, and their relationship was pretty dead.
Then we met. We became friends. Over time, we fell in love. And finally, 18 months ago, we became lovers. We began talking about a longterm future together, as in til death do us part. He kept saying he was going to finish the house he has with his estranged girlfriend and get it sold. He had built the house, but never quite finished it, so there was a lot of finishing work to do on it. He was picking away at that work for a long time, in his spare time, but there was an awful lot of work left to do on it.
The trouble was, of course, his unfinished business with his semi-estranged girlfriend, with whom he owns a house. She told mutual friends that they lived on separate floors and that they were breaking up. Neither one trusted the other one to stay in their house while one moved out, so they continued to share the house in a state of near warfare. BUT, apparently, she was still quite capable of feeling extreme jealousy. She found out about me. I really thought she knew, but apparently she had not really realized the extent of our relationship.
To further complicate matters, before she found out, I had been feeling my own jealousy. It is really hard to watch "your" man leave to go home to his girlfriend, even if they are semi-estranged and living semi-separately, in an upstairs-downstairs sort of relationship. So, I had been putting pressure on him to do what needed to be done, finish the house, sell it, and move on. This meant that our time on the cell phone increased quite dramatically, which is how she finally realized the extent of our relationship.
She became irate and threatened him, that she would take everything and leave him with nothing. He is in his 50's, and he was alarmed that she would take his life savings, basically. There is no legal recourse in our state for unmarried couples, because courts cannot intervene, as our legislature forbids it. We have no "common law" marriage, so it is strictly self-help when unmarried couples break up.
He told me that he could not lose everything. He told me that we are through, it is OVER, as he cannot be a "kept man" and rely on me. And so we have no future. I asked if he was going to try to make up with her and stay with her in order to avoid losing everything. He said no, that he needed time to get out of his house. And then he needs time to be by himself. He said I should not call him (she figured out the nature of our relationship by examining his detailed billing on his cell phone). He said he was sorry, that he had gotten in too deep too soon without dealing with his former relationship. He said he MIGHT call me if he ever got to the point that he could. I asked if he hated me, and he said no. I asked if he had stopped loving me. He did not answer. As a side note here, he is quite open with me about his feelings, and I think he still loves me. Otherwise, I really think he would have said that he no longer loves me. But telling me he loved me right then would not have served his purposes, so he was silent.
That was three weeks ago. I've had almost no contact since then, except for one day when I called when she was at work, and I was careful to call the land line and block caller ID so that she couldn't find out about the call. Still, he asked why I had called, as he is in enough trouble as it is, and he had asked me not to call. I was crying. I asked him if I could have a second chance with him (I had begun to totally blame myself and feel as though I had driven him off by pressuring him to make up his mind and finish unfinished business). He said that he could not do this any other way.
I hear from mutual friends that he has completed the house, working on it non-stop, full-time. And, they had an open house this past weekend. I hear that there has been some interest on the part of potential buyers. So I am feeling somewhat hopeful.
But, I also fear this hope. My heart feels shattered. I am afraid to allow myself to hope that he will call once the property is divided, because I am not sure I could cope with it if my hope proved false. His break-up words were final sounding, but then tempered with this sort of maybe.
Part of me says that he did it this way to keep me from calling. He wants me to stay away so that he can get things to simmer down and he can get his property out of the relationship. If I had much hope, I think he fears I would call (and I probably would). But part of me remembers the words of finality more than the words of possibility, and I grieve deeply.
Yes, I was probably very stupid to lose my heart to a man who was not free. But it happened. I fought against loving him for at least 6 months before I gave up the battle and gave in to the inevitability of love.
We are middle aged. They say the first love is the deepest. But I would have to say that for me, the third really serious relationship of my life is truly the great love of my life. He was not only lover, but best friend and soul-mate. I cannot adequately describe the bond between us. I feel a great loss, and a deep grief. The final-sounding words cut me to the core, and I have cried every day since. I feel much as I have when close family members have died, my grief is so deep. I have no appetite. I have lost 5 pounds (I was not heavy to begin with and now I'm getting bony). I have trouble sleeping, and trouble concentrating. I have no energy, and I feel sapped. No break up has ever had such a profound effect on me as this one, or grieved me so deeply.
I both want to hope that our break up was not final, and I fear to hope. I fear that I could not stand to find out that my hope was false, that I could not bear to hope and suffer another loss. To paraphrase Steven King, hope is that undeniable weed of the human heart - you just can't pull it out, as it grows right back.
My question is, should I allow myself to harbor hope? Or is it the denial phase of grief? If it is likely denial, how do I move on?
Devastated
but wanting, yet fearing, hope
