breaking up with someone you love

[ladyjane83]

so my story is posted in other forums, long story short...I founf out by bf of 1.5 years has had a girlfriend for 2.5 years and neither of us knew. He ended it with me when it all came out and surprisingly she took him back. He promised her he wouldn't talk to me again...but we stayed in touch with the contact getting more and more resukting in 2 hour phone calls and even a meet up for a drink where he told me he still has feelings for me. She then found ouit about this too and again he has cut all contact with me and she is "thinking" about what to do. My friends say that of course she won't take him back this time, but I say of course she will because despite what hehas done she loves him and it must be really hard to break up with spomeone you love just because you 'should'. This got me thinking.... Has anyone actually done that and been able to stick to it? Has anyone ever broken up with someone after a betryal even though they love the person and want to be with them?

[Cadence44]

My question is why do you want to be with someone who can lie to two women and lead a double life? Do you really think that you're winning something great if she dumps him and he comes back to you? He's not magically going to change into a decent human being because of your love.

[ladyjane83]

I didn't say anywhere in my post that I would take him back of he came. This post is a general question that my situation has made me think about. Just wanted peoples experiences

[Mesemene]

Yes - though it wasn't a cheating betrayal.

 

My ex-ex took me very much for granted - last minute cancellations, let-downs, and hot/cold running for several years.

 

I still adored him - but I finally realized I just couldn't keep on going through the emotional ups and downs. He was my first "great love" so to speak - I'd have walked through fire for him - but I hit a point, after many many disappointments and nights crying alone, that I knew he was literally making me crazy. My emotions were all over the place. I'd scream and hang up on him after yet another ditching - and it just wasn't me! I was drinking more, angered more easily, cried more easily.

 

And one night, when he said "hey, I'm going over to Brian's," when I was dressed and ready to go out - instead of just crying, I said "I thought we had plans." His response? "They weren't really plans, it was just a thought." I got angry at that point - because, to me, if you say to someone "hey, let's go downtown to the festival in the park on Saturday, around noon?" That's plans. That's not "I'll call you and maybe we can do something."

 

So I very calmly, enough that I shocked myself, said "You know, we're not going to have this problem anymore." His answer? "Ok, we can go tomorrow!" "No, I don't think you understand. I'm done. I'm over. I'm finished with this crap. Goodbye."

 

Sure, the next day I bawled. I was tempted to call back and say I didn't mean it. But I DID mean it. I was at the end of a very long rope. And I couldn't decide whether to be tempted, flattered, or completely insulted when this man, who had no time available that he wasn't cancelling to go out with friends, started showing up everywhere I went with my friends!!! Not accompanied, either, just showing up and kind of inviting himself into the group!

 

I think that was the turning point, ironically. While part of me was SOOOOO tempted to throw myself back at him... a bigger part was incredibly hurt that I wasn't worth his time when we were together - but I was worth chasing as soon as he didn't have me.

 

Anyway, enough of my rambling I still adored him when I called it quits, definitely. And I'll probably always have a small part of my heart that loves him, to an extent, even over 20 years later. Love just wasn't enough for me to basically carry a relationship on my own, without anything but convenience to him when he was available. All the good as gold treatment in the world can't make up for being constantly second to everything that comes along.

[ParisPaulette]

Yes, I have - twice. Once was years ago with the man that I still think was my soulmate (whatever that means). I loved him and I still do, but he had a drinking and prescription drug abuse problem and would not handle it. It was the ultimate deal breaker and in the end I was simply done with it all and walked away. I left one message that said to call me when he'd been sober for six months or more and felt better about life with chemical crutches. That was 15 years ago and he's never called and I haven't either.

 

This last relationship was somewhat similar to what Mesemene describes above. We were on again, off again for six years. I really did love the guy with all my heart, but I was always being put to the back whenever he thought something or someone out there was better - getting stood up on dates, finding out he'd joined dating sites or hit on other women etc. Inevitably he'd get cold and hostile to me then go MIA and I wouldn't hear from him for months until he was back in my area and made contact with me to beg forgiveness. And I did forgive him for a long, long time accepting all of his excuses and making plenty of my own for his behavior.

 

The last time he contacted me and offered the olive branch though I really, really fought to just maintain a friendship with him since I knew by that time that getting romantically involved was guaranteed heartache. I'd actually gotten to the point where I was over him and really only thought of him in the capacity of friend and was even encouraging him to date and join dating websites and find someone else. I was dating other people and thought that we'd grown past all of our earlier troubles. Until the day he showed up on my doorstep and played the "I can't live without you, it's killing me card." All the old feelings come rushing back in a whirlwind romance, we were back together as a couple. I expressed how worried I was that he'd do the same withdrawal and disappearing act that he'd done all the other times and he repeatedly reassured me that he wouldn't. That he'd learned his lesson and wasn't going to lose his best friend ever again. Then one day during a great date he hit me out of the blue with "I'm moving away soon to go to college" and stopped calling me after that. That POed me no end and I told him so. I got more assurances that he was really just busy, this was so he could get a good job and provide a better future, no there wasn't anyone else, blah-blah-blah. He even told me that I could log into his email and look since he'd given me the password once before, telling me he had nothing to hide. Normally I'd never call his bluff on that (something he counted on) but this time I was royally angry so I did. Surprise, surprise he was setting up meetings with a woman he'd met through his work and was on several dating sites stating that he was actively looking for a long-term relationship. All during the time he was sleeping with me and telling me the idea of being with anyone else revolted him! I blew up. He then played the "We're just friends with benefits and that's all we ever were" card even reminding me that I had actively encouraged him to find other women! I then realized just how much pleasure he got from reeling me in then rejecting me. That was it. I never took his calls again except to call him once after two months had gone by and I could calmly tell him we were no longer friends and never would be. He still had the nerve to try and argue about why we should be friends so I hung up on him.

 

This relationship was actually much harder to leave than the first one I mentioned since I had invested so much time into it and really did think we'd be together in the end. But when I realized that the man I loved actually got off on hurting me THAT was a complete turn-off and this time I didn't grieve or feel sad or used or think that it was my fault. I was furious and I let that anger and rage fuel me in cutting him out of my life then going after goals and dreams and activities that I had let him talk me out of over the years. In the end I got my sanity and life and self-confidence back and truthfully now that I'm through all of the drama I'm not sure why I ever let him take so much from me. So no, it doesn't matter what he does or says since he's broken beyond repair but I'm not. THANK GOD!

[ParisPaulette]

And hopefully both you and the guy's other girl will realize what an a**hole this guy really is and you'll both cut him out of your lives for good. I swear there is something seriously wrong with people like this and they count on other people's decency and feelings of love to continue their own bad behavior and emotional problems. This isn't normal behavior no matter how they justify it!

[lavenderdove]

Yes... I had an extremely long relationship with a man who ended up betraying me... we started as friends, moved to being lovers, and then had to be apart when his job moved him cross country... We had an LDR and I even moved to be closer to him so i could see him more often in a town he travelled to on business all the time, though still about 1000 miles from his own town where he worked when not travelling.

 

I eventually discovered that he had actually MARRIED another woman in the town he moved to while seeing me in my town and carrying on as if nothing had changed between us and as if he was still single... this other woman was quite rich and he had a million $$$ lifestyle with her, in a fabuilous house on the ocean, cars, motorcycles, all the rich person toys one could imagine, while still seeing me and acting like he was just gone on business a lot and never mentioning her or his marriage (which i stumbled upon by accident).

 

He tried to deny he was married to her for awhile, and did so even when i confronted him with evidence of his marriage in land records of property they had bought together, where he was named as a 'married man' on the deed and she had changed her name to his. But he still denied it and tried to act like they'd 'almost' gotten married but didn't, anything to try to deny what he knew i would never tolerate. But the story kept mutating, and under questioning it just distintigrated to the ridiculous as he desparately tried ot find a way to get me to stay in his life in spite of the marriage.

 

When i realized he would never acknowledge it because he didn't want to give me up and he knew I would never be with a married man, he desperately tried to keep me in his life, but i refused. It was the hardest thing i'd ever done to break it off with him because he had been such a large part of my life for so many years and i deeply loved him, but i recognized that he didn't deserve to have my love because he was willing to live a double life to get his needs met. I'm sure what happened is that he started sleeping with her casually and knocked her up, then gave in and married her because it was easier to do so than pay child support AND she had so much money he would be living a life of luxury and had gotten used to it when he was with her.

 

That was an outrageously selfish and dishonorable thing for anyone to do to another person, tell such a HUGE whopper to someone you supposedly loved and had been with for many many years, and such a huge betrayal that he SHOULDN'T get to have me in his life after what he did. He begged and pleaded to 'stay friends', basically begging for anything he could get to keep me in his life, but i refused that too... he was just so confident he could keep us apart and he'd get to have me, his long time love and best friend, and her, with all her money and that incredible lifestyle. I am a very independent person and he was counting on the fact that i wouldn't ever demand he be at my side all the time, but what he didn't reckon on was that i knew him well enough to recognize something had changed, though it took me a long time to get the evidence that he was indeed with this woman rather than just working on projects in this other town or travelling on business as he claimed he was when he was not with me.

 

So yes, you can walk away... To this day he still tries to contact me now and again, and he is quite forlorn when i just respond asking him how his wife is and refuse to pretend he's not married or that things will ever go back to the way it was in terms of our emotional or physical intimacy. I haven't seen him in a couple years now, and don't intend to. I never contact him, and when he does contact me, I exchange short pleasantries but remind him he is married and he made a choice to marry someone else, so he chose her and doesn't get to have me in his life because of that choice.

 

There are some people who just are too selfish and want to invent their own reality and have you go along with it, no matter how bizarre or wrong what they do is... i will always love him because we had such a long and important relationship and he was incredibly important to me and when we were together it was great, but he also betrayed me and what we had together in a way that means he forfeits his right to have me in his life. That is the only 'punishment' worthy of the crime he committed as far as I am concerned, that he murdered our love by his choices to sell out for money and a rich lifestyle, and he was a fool if he thought i'd not figure it out or be his mistress (unawares or aware) or that that kind of betrayal 'wasn't relevant' to your own love as he tried to cast it. That is what made me strong, the sure knowledge that what he did to me emotionally was akin to murdering our love, and i would not be a fool who let such a person continue on in my life. My love was genuine, and i know he loved me too, but he loved himself and money more obviously, and his betrayal was heinous, and one doesn't turn over your life to such a person who so royally betrayed you and doesn't deserve that love.

 

I am sad sometimes as all losses make one sad, but i also KNOW i did the right thing, because the life he was offering to me was not one I wanted, and it was clear that i could never trust a person who lived such a double life, and never ignore it or forget it. You have learned this guy NEEDS and WANTS multiple women, and he is willing to sell you down the river to get that. He may have love feelings for you, but there is so much more that makes for a good long term relationship, and you MUST have trust and respect the person and their choices. This guy of yours just flits back and forth, and make no mistake that he chose HER over you, TWICE, and you're just the consolation prize. Even if this current woman dumps him, next time some other woman attracts him, off he'll go and you'll be in the same spot again. You need to love yourself enough to recognize that this guy isn't about love, he is more about selfishness and is willing to betray multiple people to get what he wants. You can never trust someone like that.

[lavenderdove]

btw, it took me a while after i found out to actually do the final break... i didn't see him or sleep with him once i found out, but we had many messy phone calls and emails back and forth while he tried to keep me in his life. It was such a huge shock that i was stunned for about a month or so, then took another month or so to work up the courage to tell him i wasn't going to stay in contact with him anymore because he made his choice, made his bed, and now he had to lie in it, and without ME around either. He forfeited that right the day he married her and omitted to tell me and carried on like nothing had happened.

 

So you will be stunned for a bit, but you need to recognize that the other woman isn't the issue, the issue is this guy is a liar, a cheater, and a betrayer, of both you AND this other woman, and nothing good will ever come of that. You can't unknow what you know and pretend his didn't do this HUGE betrayal of both you and other woman, and he's not going to mutate into your perfect loving dream man when he is capable of stooping so low to satisfy himself. Remember, you're a decent and honorable person, and he isn't! He's not worthy of the good love you want to lavish on him... find someone who is worthy of it and leave this guy behind and don't look back. Don't cast your pearls before swine as they say!