Did you miss "them" or the relationship?

[snoopygal]

This is what it is for me. I was really in love with my ex and I had discovered I was more in love with her than I was my wife who divorced me before I met her. She was gorgeous, fun, and the times we were together always felt natural. However, she wasn't who I thought she was, she was a cut-throat cheater who wanted to be loyal. I've come to realize it was the concept of her and the deception of the amazing times together that I miss. I miss "her" because I can't find the concepts of what I loved about her in a real relationship. I miss who I thought she was, but I am glad to be away from who she really is.

 

If she started counseling and came back? Not sure, but I would probably explore it because what we had felt like it was meant to be. However, it would be an extremely long time until I could trust her again, and dating someone you have to look over your shoulder at when your back is turned is exhausting. I'm not sure I could forget the hurt I went through and having to restore trust is kind of a sucky romantic love story for a relationship. If I did, I would answer the "what if" on my terms.

I totally understand answering the what if on your terms, and feeling like you couldn't trust the person for a while, and you're again right, that would be exhausting. In my case, there were no huge problems ie: cheating, lying, abuse. I was happy. I was myself for a couple of years. Then, it happened. My friends started having babies at a crazy rate,(and being busy with their own lives), I got promoted (bringing some stress with it), I decided to finish my degree, my siblings had both moved, I put a dog I absolutely adored down, I began being a landlord, I started worrying about finances...it all seemed to crash down on me, and since a lot of my own life I had been accostumed to outside of him had seemingly disappeared in front of my eyes, I don't know what happened. I began to not want to feel vulnerable. It consumed me to put a badas$ mask on in front of everyone. I didn't feel the ability to break down or show any emotion but anger. I still felt them, but didn't express them. I wanted to ask for help many times, but didn't know how. Eventually, 3 years later, he was exhausted (who wouldn't be?) , and broke up with me. I knew this issue was there, but I didn't realize how strong it was, or how it effected others in my life. I guess I felt like I could ignore it, and my life would go on, I was working hard in school and my work, so eventually it would go away. I think that was my mentality. I want to be the person that he knew in the first 2 years. I can't wait until I get to that point. I started going to counseling last week, because it's apparently a problem for me, more than I thought. i don't know if it will make a difference for him, but hopefully it cleats some things up for me

[snoopygal]

This is what it is for me. I was really in love with my ex and I had discovered I was more in love with her than I was my wife who divorced me before I met her. She was gorgeous, fun, and the times we were together always felt natural. However, she wasn't who I thought she was, she was a cut-throat cheater who wanted to be loyal. I've come to realize it was the concept of her and the deception of the amazing times together that I miss. I miss "her" because I can't find the concepts of what I loved about her in a real relationship. I miss who I thought she was, but I am glad to be away from who she really is.

 

 

I did the same, and I'm sure there are dozens of active members of this forum who have done likewise at least once.

 

I think for some of us, we get involved with people and project them as being someone who will fill all of our wants and needs in a partner. When we start to realize that this projection and reality don't align very well, there's a bit of denial that happens. If we've built these people to be someone we WANT them to be, but they aren't necessarily, there's a period of time where we have to almost come down from our delusions before we can break it off. It's almost like the process of coming to acceptance over a breakup. It's not overnight, and you can't necessarily rush the process.

I think he did the same, but probably wasn't good at communicating what he felt(started after I cut myself off from being vulnerable) but is there a way for a person to communicate outside of words that they know what they've caused? And that they're legitimately,honestly working on fixing these issues because they don't have anything to do with you, and they were probably in some sort of denial within themselves that caused this. Not that he was perfect, but he definitely put effort in. He tried when I was off in my own world pretending that my issues didn't involve him. That they weren't a big deal.

[tonybones]

i was just thinking that, i'm really hurting from a 14 year relationship that went bad. I don't miss her (we work together) as much as i miss the thought of someone caring about me, i miss having a pretty girlfriend, it's wrong i think. i think i was attracted to her physically and never fell in love with her. AFTER 14 YEARS! I think I loved her but wasn't in love, i never did the flowers behind the back thing, I am a lazy companion who got what he deserved. If she was "the one", wouldn't I have married her years ago? I just know that she's thru with my crap.

[captcha45]

I don't miss the relationship. It's nice to have time for myself again.

 

I miss talking about work with him. We were constantly motivating eachother and exchanging advice.