It's been over 10 years.

[orex1]

Nobody on earth (who knows me) knows anything about what I'm going to write here; hence, the reason I am posting this anonymously on this website. I've run out of options and am frantically scambling for anything. How pathetic I sound.

 

I'm nearing 50 years old and 10 years ago my wife of 8 months left me while I was in a psychiartic facility. I had suffered a nervous breakdown as I felt her slipping away from me and had attempted suicide. Her only explanation was that "there just was some things she couldn't handle" and she walked out.

 

I've since remarried (for the last 5 years). But, I am so incredibly unhappy that everyday is a tremendous chore just to cope. Truth of the matter is I am still in love with my ex-wife, in spite of the fact I love my current wife. I have never told anyone, certainly not my current wife. This emotion is eating me up from the inside out. I have chronic headaches and my stomach is an absolute wreck. Doctors find nothing and attribute it to simply nerves, to which I agree.

 

I still dream about her. I still see her face in other woman, I still remember vividly how she smiled, her voice, how she walked, how she smelled. I have fantasized thousands of times of her returning into my life. In some scenarios I scream my anger, frustration, and sense of betrayal at her, in most I just forgive her and tell her she's so much better off without me. My mind is poisoned by these memories and thoughts!. I still break down and sob uncontrolably about her. I can't move on, I can't relax, I can't open up to my wife now and our relationship, while not a wreck, is dysfunctional on a good day. I have no confidence in myself, suffer from tremendous self-loathing and hate myself for not having the guts to finish myself off. Everything emotionally in me feels dead.

 

My wife now is a wonderful person and deserves so much better than me. It would kill her to know any of this which only adds to my frustration and despair. I have no right to hurt her, even if she doesn't know she's being hurt. She definitly deserves someone who can love her with their entire heart. She's kind and loyal and very understanding of my mental ups and downs, unlike my ex. Therein lies the dilemma. Why can't I get rid of these decade old chains to the past and recognize what I have now?! These are the thoughts that drive people mad I believe!

 

I've gone to several therapists, tried uncountable types of anti-depressants, read several "self-help" books, drown myself in alcohol, clouded my brain with drugs and even made attempts at religion, with no relief. I'm at a loss of how to go on and have simply resolved myself to live in my own personal misery and hell till I finally get to die.

 

I'm not exactly sure what writing about this will do for me. Nothing has worked before and I haven't hope this will.

[KronicMan]

keep your head up, i cant really relate cuz i never lived with my lover, but im going to try my best. i think you should tell you current wife exactly how you feel about your ex, while your telling her, your going to cry and let out all those held in emotions. dont cloud it with drugs and liquor, you have to let it out. its going to hurt you and your wife, but you dont want to wait too late where you end up wanting to physically hurt yourself.

 

you have to figure out your worth, maybe you have to walk alone right now. im sorry that you are hurting so bad. once you tell her how you feel then you can walk the next step, which i dont know what it is. just keep talking about it. thats all i can say for now. good luck

[rose2summer]

Could it maybe be that you former wife just breeds familiarity within you?

 

Maybe you just tend to focus more fondly on the past before you had your nervous breakdown and it has less to do with your ex-wife.

 

I think the counseling is a great idea but I also think it's important to make a list of what your ex-wife possesses that you miss. Can you list that here?

 

Hugs, Rose

[Relationship Coach]

orex1,

Welcome to ENA and I'm very glad your troubles and pain has brought you here. I understand your sense of betrayal from your first wife and how she still haunts your heart today. It's hard to let go of something that you never really had.

 

I think in light of everything which you have told us the best thing to do is to come clean with your present wife. You say she is more understanding, well then trust her. She has probably sensed something is wrong for sometime now and this may help her to understand you better and draw the two of you even closer together. I hardly think she is going to think less of you or judge you. Give her a chance to restore your faith in love and show you the difference between what your first wife did and what she will do. Maybe this will put things in to perspective and you can release your ex wife from your mind and heart.

 

RC

[Dako]

Like the past, lost love can only get more idealized over time.

You seem to have a good woman right now.

 

Hiding your true feeling has to add to your pain and isolation.

Your wife has certainly been suffering too.

 

Coming clean with your wife could hurt her, but put yourself in her shoes.

Would you want to really know your spouse, or live an illusion?

She might be able to help you get over this attachment to your past so you can live in the present with a good woman.

[Honey Pumpkin]

Hi there,

 

I'm not an expert, but it seems that you may be experiencing such extreme reactions to your first wife because you've not resolved your feelings for her. It's also safer to live mentally in the past than to face the challenges of the future (I've definitely done that).

 

Personally, I wouldn't tell your current wife all this - unless there was a way to express it, which would be to couch it in terms of obsession that isn't love. You've seen psychiatrists - I wasn't sure if you've shared this with them or not? Because this being locked in the past is about something, and I think it needs professional help to let you work through it.

 

Finally - just a random thought - did you ever get a chance to have a 'last' conversation with your ex-wife, so you could achieve closure? It sounds as though the timing was critical, she left you when you were at your most vulnerable, and so somehow has assumed an omnipotent, all important position in your mental landscape. you need to reduce the power that she has, and see her as a flawed, ordinary human being who was right for you once, but who has moved on also.

 

Good luck - keep talking!

[whoops]

it isnt fair to be horrible to someone who loves you and not tell them i had that done to me and now am in the depths of despair - tell your current wife but you have idealised the last relationship so dont try to go back if you past loved you enough they would have stuck with you through the stuff youwent through - write a list of neg about the past one and you will find the key - take care but dont make others miserable

[robowarrior]

In your dreams you are forgiving her because in the back of your head you know that she has done the right thing.

 

Face it , your not mentally stable enough to be in a relationship. Just because you are re-married doesn't mean you are ready. Your not in the right place with your mind, you are all high up while you need to go back to the roots of the problem and solve them. You see a problem remains to be a problem till the end of time until you solve them.

 

There are things, events that led you to be lost and having all these problems. You know you every problem is like weight on your shoulder, the more problems you solve the more weight you loss. But the important thing is to know 'how' to remove this weight from your shoulder. Just jumping into a religion might be right for someone else, but not for you. The reason for this is because you don't have your emotions sorted out, its emotionally chaos inside of your head while it should be calm as a pond inside a cave(your head if you like).

 

Look, don't blame yourself because everyone has struggles in their lives to overcome , what you need to do is look at your direction in life. Emotionally you are just going in circles, what you need to do is to realise that you need to be emotionally stable to be in a relationship. Your previous wife did the right thing by leaving it up to professionals to give you the help you deserved. Yes she left you, not because she wanted to hurt you, but because she wanted what was best for you, which shows that yes she really does love you, and would still be with you if 'and this is something you have to aknowledge' if you didn't have a problem. Be honest, your previous wife could NEVER have solved the problems inside your head ,that professional people have to study for years while admitting themselves to the best University's getting God knows how many diploma's before they are allowed to commit themselves into helping people with mental problems. So please please please don't blame your previous wife, same counts for your current wife she can't help it that you have all these unresolved issues , and if you are honest with yourself you weren't ready for your current wife either, you being so distressed with your previous plans and having to go thru all these clinics and addictions and god knows what.

 

You need to make a list of your problems, and you need to work on them. We can guide and help you, however winning the war inside your head is up to you.

[Juliana]

Can I ask you a question? I'm just going to throw this out there: Do you ever feel like you're two different people? Do you feel like you're not really yourself?

 

You have to stop self-medicating. It doesn't solve anything, and the longer this lasts, the greater the damage it does. So you have to let those emotions in, right now. I'm not saying blow the dam, really; if you need medication to function, take it, but don't take it everytime you want to forget. You're going to have to take time specifically to let that pain in. It's okay to be angry at her. It's okay to forgive her. You're going to have all kinds of feelings, and none of them are wrong. None of these emotions are permanent. Let them come; let them go.

 

Secondly, counselling is great, but ultimately, you really have to do the work yourself anyway. I find writing helpful; at best, it forces me to see where I've started to loop around back into a particular moment I'm stuck on. At worst, it exhausts me so that I just don't think about him all the time. I have made progress since I started writing, and it's only been a year since I started. Prior to that, I was in a state of mourning for about 17 years. You can actually have a whole life, while you are half-alive. It's horrible, and I don't recommend it. But we don't always get to choose what we're going to feel, or for how long.

 

I think you should make a list of everything you like about your new wife. If you can even think of one thing, that's great. That is the relationship you're actually in, and you need to see why you chose it, and why it's working, because that's where you are. You say it's dysfunctional; I can believe that. But it's still there. And you should give yourself credit; you're still investing in life, still battling through. Trying to create a new marriage, a home, and find happiness inspite of the fact this terrible grief.

 

The other thing I want you to do is think of a time before you knew your first wife. Think of a time when you were under great pressure, or stress, or in pain, and she wasn't there, and you handled it without her. I found it helpful to remember that there was a "me" before there was an "us," because to be honest the grief swallowed me up far more than the relationship ever did.

 

You may have wanted that first marriage to bring alot of things into your life that marriage can't give. When she left, it must have seemed that your whole world was ending. I'm so sorry this happened to you. But this is about you, not your ex, not your current wife. You probably never finished grieving your first marriage before you entered into the second one. Hard as it may be, you are going to have to drag yourself through that grief step by step. I'm sure it will be horrific and devastating. But it is the only way. Your love for your first wife probably cannot end, and shouldn't end. But it has to mature. Sometimes holding onto pain feels like the only way we can hold onto the person, but it isn't true. When your grief resolves, you will still loved what you loved about your first wife. But you won't be in pain anymore.

[orex1]

I certainly appreciate everyone taking the time to response and provide advice, opinions, insights. My responses:

 

My current wife is funny, charming, and wonderfully naive (what I mean is she believes in good and tells me not to worry because it will always be alright - even when all I feel is doom). She is a great friend (our relationship actually began purely as friends), not a great listener or deep thinker (not a positive on the surface, but it is in relation to the fact that I am an supreme over analyzer and I'm not suggesting lack of depth in her thoughts as stupidity, she just views life quite simply - I could use some of that). Her religious faith astounds me as she firmly believes in her convictions while I am an ardent atheist. I would welcome that sort of blissfulness if my mind would allow it. Most importantly, she is steady (not necessarily mentally - we both suffer from severe bouts of depression) but steady in the sense of loyalty. She has often told me she can, and will, deal with anything I can dish out, except infidelity (which, although based upon my horrible track record in that regard, I have honored and work very hard to keep in line on that issue). I have no doubts that in spite of my continuous attempts to drive her away, she will never leave. Her loyality is, by far, her most enduring characteristic. Finally, we don't take each other's mental defects too seriously. What I mean is we both accept the dysfunctionality of our relationship and our lives.

 

I am always puzzled by people who advise that until you are completely free of dysfunctionalities you should avoid relationships. Are there really people (couples) out there who are 100% functional? Am I (we) the only ones? At times all this (life, my memories, my wife) wears on me (I'm sure us) and I hope for less strain, but my head never rests and I constanly feel as if I'm beating it against an imaginary wall and that the best I (we) can hope for is functional dysfunctionality (if that makes sense).

 

Little of my issues have to do with her, unfortunately her and our relationship are the unwitting recipients of trauma I went through in my history. It's a transfer of feelings from someone in my past to the now. My current utter frustration and despair centers on those old memories.

 

Someone else wrote about closure with my ex. No, there was no closure. She just left and I never heard from her again (except through attorneys). I suppose that would explain my fantasies of seeing her again. . . an attempt at closure. It will never happen though. I've no idea where she is and I am certain she would never contact me. We were from different worlds. I would guess she looks at her marriage to me as a complete mistake, as having married someone beneath them. I would argue against the fact that she cared about me and that's why she left. She was consistent in always taking care of herself first and had little sense of devotion or loyalty. More frustration! Why pine away from someone like that???!!!!

 

Finally, I fail to see how telling my current wife about my feelings towards my ex would do anything but hurt her more. I am confident she wouldn't understand and only feel it means I'd rather be with my ex. The thing is I don't want to be with my ex. I want to be free of my feelings for her. I suppose it would be most accurate to say I'm not in love with my ex, but really just in love with what I thought my ex was . . .and turns out she wasn't.

 

With all this, why can't I rid my head of her . . .why can't I stop "seeing" her everywhere and remembering everything about the time we were together? I can't bear the dreams of her anymore, I can bear the sense of shame and betrayal anymore!

 

As far as feeling as if I'm 2 different people . . .yes, most definitely. I've never felt I belonged here (on the planet, at this time, whatever), as if I'm somehow living a life not intended for me. I've never felt wanted or respected, just usually ignored.

 

I need to stop now and find something else to think about. Thanks to all again. I'll keep reading what you write and writing back.

[Juliana]

I don't know if I can be much of a guide, seeing as I'm more of a co-sufferer. However, our situations although similar are not identical. I'm coming out of a period of amnesia, so I haven't had years of sitting with the memories. I've had months.

 

I am concerned about what you're saying about having nightmares, because that's symptomatic of great stress. And I think that your wife will understand, if you can explain it in terms of not wanting to see your ex, but needing to work through the emotions from that time. But you are a better judge of how well she can handle that, if at all. Since you are not physically cheating on her, or attempting to contact your ex, you have every right to work through your feelings about that past relationship, no matter how turbulent they are. They are your feelings. I do talk to my husband about this, and he does have some problems with it, but was very happy that I haven't chosen to renew contact with my ex.

 

The reality is, you are in a stable relationship, and your psyche is doing some housecleaning. That's how it was explained to me; I started to recover my memories when everything in my life was secure and stable. It's in our natures to take advantage of stable periods by recovering from past trauma and pain so that we become fundamentally stronger and more whole. So, this is actually normal (yay.... ;p )

 

The reason people tell you to avoid relationships when you're dysfunctional is that you will attract someone who is also dysfunctional. People become like the people they marry; they are shaped by the relationship, and they may even take on some of their spouses characteristics. There are no purely healthy marriages that I know of. All marriages seem to cycle through periods of stress and growth to calm and tranquility. How they handle the stress is indicative of the health of the people in the marriage.

 

As I said, I don't think this is about your ex, or your wife, at all. I think this is completely about you. You talk about how she must think she made a mistake, and married down. I'm interested in what those statements tell me about how you viewed yourself, how you viewed her role in your life, and what later happened.

 

Is there a sense of a "lost self?" I wonder if she might have been, at one time, your "introjected other," the image you carred inside yourself to reassure yourself that you were worthwhile? Most people get that in childhood; the mother becomes the introjected other, and the child takes that sense of worthiness into the world. When she walked away so abruptly, could she have destroyed that budding self-worth in you? So now you are attempting to resurrect the introjected other, the one who teaches us to love ourselves, and you are failing, over and over, and you now doubt that she ever did, and even if she did, you are too angry to accept it anymore?

 

The problem with making your lover your "introjected other" is that that is a parent/child relationship dynamic; you need an adult/adult dynamic. But as long as you do not have an introjected other, an image you carry within you of someone who loves you for yourself, you will continually seek that; in other people, in the past. And you will never find it, because no one can satisfy that need. That was something for a parent to do. Not all parents can. You mention issues with monogamy in the past; is it possible that you were continually seeking affirmation of your worth from other people, and now, attempting to stay monogamous, you've been driven back into the past to look for something there to keep you going?

 

The stable relationship has, however, taken you a long way towards healing. You need to keep going on this way. It is forcing you to a crisis point, however, and how you meet that cresting wave is going to determine what hapens next. In the short term, do everything in your power to reinforce your self-esteem. In the long term, you're going to have to heal this wound to your sense of self by understanding that she never had the power you gave her in the first place.

[wk75]

I can sympathize.

 

I dreamed of an old girlfriend for years. Remembering the time we had - and how it had ended prematurely. She had gone on to become a lawyer, that's all I knew. I thought I had passed over 'the one' and compared all girls unfairly to this ex. Then, 8 years after we broke up, we ran into each other. It was amazing. She had been thinking of me too. She was single!! We made plans to get together, and spending time with her that night I realized she was 5% of what I had made her out to be in my mind. We never went out again after that night and I was free from the chains of my idealistic memory of her.

[orex1]

Juliana,

I think of all the replies I've received, yours has hit home the most. I'm not sure I understand fully the psychology behind the "introjected self", but much of what you wrote concerning that made sense. My ex was athletic and strong, self-assured and stoic. All characteristics I show . .. but really am not.

 

Yes, I certainly do have a sense of "lost self", as if I was born at the wrong time, to the wrong place, to the wrong parents, etc. Throughout my life I have never escaped the feeling I was leading a life that wasn't mine. My loves, my career, my entire life feels alien to me . . . as if I'm playing a character in a play, but it's not me. Freud substantiated I suppose, the relationship with my mother never approached anywhere near functional. She was an extremely depressed person, continually medicated, who spent portions of my childhood years in mental facilites. I grew into adulthood despising her and although I've begun to understand (and perhaps even to forgive her), she died 12 years ago. We weren't speaking then . . . more closure issues!

 

My father was loving, but completely out of touch. A military man who is forever saying "No, I can actually say I've never felt depressed." The day my mother died, he told me he came home to his empty house and "allowed" himself just 45 minutes to grieve . . and that was it. During one of my mother's darkest periods, about the time I was 7, he went off to Vietnam. I couldn't turn to her for strength, so began to suppress, to force myself to not think of my own fears and insecurities and certanly not to depend upon her. I don't think I ever cared much for her after that. 4 years later, my father's best friend began molesting me. When that was discovered, the pedophile was simply discharged from the service, no legal action was taken as my father decided it was "best to just leave it alone." My parents never sought counseling for me and although I've had several sessions as an adult, there is just so much "scar tissue" to overcome.

 

Superficially, it would appear I'm always in control, never wavering or faltering, but inside I'm a wreck. My current wife sees it occasionally, but it makes her nervous and I try to avoid dragging her through this mess as much as possible.

 

My job is abusive and my boss is, at best, benevolently neglectful. A good analogy would be the beaten wife who's abusive husband constantly reminds her that is spite of being beaten at least she has a husband. I have actually had a opportuntities, but was not selected. All in all, adding to my low self-opinion. Now, I've little faith in myself and lack any amount of self-confidence and so am no longer looking as I can't bear another rejection.

 

Where do I go from here?

[Juliana]

I was just thinking this morning as I made my coffee, how important it is to have other people to help us gain insight into the choices we are faced with, and provide us with their experience. I can construct a reasonable explanation, and from that, a possible course of action you can take. But you know, people very complex. I hope that something I say might be useful for you. Sorry if this runs a little long.

 

I am encouraged by the fact that you are functioning at a very high level; objectively speaking, that isn't possible once internal pressures mount beyond a certain point. I do think you may be reaching for strength, for confirmation of who you are as a person, within yourself, and are frustrated because you are being driven down a more circuituous route than most people. Most people, fortunately, have adequate parenting. Most people are not molested. Most people are not forced to suppress their own emotions to the extent that they no longer can feel or recognize them. All those people can get up and go get a coffee now, because that's not where you & I grew up.

 

The concept of the introjected other is basic in psychiatry, I believe. When I had my children, all the books were telling me I had to "mirror back" to my baby what my baby was doing or saying, that I had to show my baby that I recognized his/her existence and that I loved him/her. Apparently, what this does is provide for the child a sense of their own existence and worth. You didn't get this. Emotionally unavailable parents cannot do this.

 

We learn to love ourselves when other people love us, and if they fail to love us, we are orphaned from ourselves. I think you feel shame and despair when you think of your ex because you hoped she would see you for who you were, and love you. What a terrifying vulnerability; how devastating when she walked away. Logically, you recognize that she was immature to have done what she did; logically, know it doesn’t even matter anymore. Emotionally, she abandoned you when you needed her most, and you are still trying to finish that process of accepting yourself as a person who can be loved. The sense of loss is absolutely devastating. The worse it gets, the more it is necessary to push those feelings down, deny them, split them off from the conscious mind. You go on, but rather mechanically. You are, to some degree, dissociated. Like your father, a part of you is proud of your ability to function without needing emotional relief. You soldier on.

 

It's not enough anymore.

 

The good news is, you’re capable of loving someone. You loved your ex, and when you finish grieving for her, you will be able to love again. Your mind is ready for you to move into healing, but this is how it's coming out, all mixed up in your wish to have been loved by her, by your parents. You are weeping, not only for your lost ex, but for yourself. You are mourning not just the life you could have had with her, but the life you might have had if you hadn't been emotionally wounded in your childhood. You rage, because you were cheated. You forgive, because you long to love and be loved. And because there is so much pain, you may find it overwhelming. But it’s okay. You have already survived. You have moved on. You are in a better relationship now. You are older. Things are different. You have more resources to deal with this now than you did then.

 

Dissociation splits feelings from thoughts. Emotions from events. It is the hallmark of abusive childhoods. This is why you don’t want your ex back (logically) but you weep and wish she’d come back (emotionally). You have to get your feelings and thoughts back in sync; you have to cure the dissociation. No small thing, that.

 

I am not going to tell you to discover your inner child. I am deeply suspicious of pop psychology that advocates splitting off different parts of the self; healthier people might be able to do that without damaging themselves, but I can't. I am going to tell you to start caring for yourself, right now.

 

I say this to myself all the time, to remind myself of how I have to live: "The trauma survivors primary need is for safety." You have to get into a safe, secure environment. That's a bottom line; there's no way around it. You will not recover emotionally if you are being abused, anywhere, because even if you're used to it, it creates a crisis environment that doesn't allow you to relax. So if you are actively being abused at work (rather than just feeling passed over), seek another job. Get your resume out on Workopolis, talk to other people you've worked with in the past to find out what's going on at their companies. Write a couple of "what's up?" emails; you don't have to directly mention you're trying to find another job. Do not quit your job; "the trauma survivors primary need is for safety"....you need to be able to house and feed yourself to feel safe.

 

The dissociation that saved you as a child is a huge problem now, because until you're in touch with your day-to-day feelings and not cocooned up in your past trying to draw love from that lost relationship, you won't be able to identify your own feelings or begin to self-reference. You have to learn to accept the feelings you are having as you have them. So you have to learn to accept your pain, and accept that it can pass, and that you can feel happiness or anger and other emotions, and that they are acceptable, and not “bad” – feelings are not bad, only actions.

 

You have to stop drinking. I know you can do this, because I think you probably have insane amounts of discipline. If I told you to get to a gym and work out for 30 minutes three times a week, I know you could do it (I am telling you to get to a gym, by the way) .

 

Another way of getting past the barriers to feeling is by using music, painting, or writing. The point is to break away from the realm of pure thought to where the emotions live; working out does that, on a physical level, but creativity is needed to draw out & express the actual emotions.

 

You don't believe that you have those qualities you admired in her, but all the words you use to describe her: Self-assured, stoic, confident, athletic, come accross in the things you've written about yourself. You are already the things you want to be, you just can't feel it because you're dissociated, and you can't allow it, because you never felt loved or valued. We love in others what we value most in ourselves; it's a little narcissistic, but there it is. We love in others what we want to own in ourselves. That's why break-ups are so painful, and why for us, they were devastating. But don't worry; you don't need her. You need you.

 

By the way, where is your father now? Because all the words you used: Self-assured, stoic, confident, athletic, are words to describe a good soldier.