I do not think you are out of line, WS. And Antonia, that is a fair question of Pei, IMHO.
WS, I do have a friends with benefits thing going, and it suits me well. Surprisingly. In this relationship, I can say ILUBINILWY and feel very positively about it. I believe he can say the same of me. At this time, it is all I am capable of.
Antonia, I believe everyone has a separate, personal timeline. In PEI's case, she feels perhaps 15 years was not the effective time-span to feel the way some of us do. I do not believe I would have felt any different at 15 years than I do at 20.
Pei, 15 years of a possible 75 year life span is an equatable amount of time. You do the math. Discounting our childhood, there is not a lot of time left discounting those 15 years you gave to one person. That is not a criticism in any way. As I said above, I believe we all have our own timeline of healing. Not feeling the way I do does not negate the feelings and devotion that you had for your marriage.
Perhaps it is a matter of the age at which we go through this. I believe myself to have been more capable of 'bouncing back' at a younger age than I am now. 'Moving on' is a different prospect at 35 than at 55.
Regardless, as much as we would wish a given timespan to the amount of suffering/grieving that we do, it is simply not to be. We are each our own individual, with different life experiences and different expectations. We have separate things in commen. Unfortunately, the thing that has brought us all together is the MLC of our spouse.
Just wanted to add: My psych. has said that my final "ties" to XH will sever other than the long-standing love you have for a long-lost relative once I get into a new relationship. I think she's basing this on the fact that she's been a doctor for 36 years and had lots of client experience AND she is also someone who found herself divorced unexpectedly after 2 decades-ish and years later, remarried happily and is still married.
And yet with as much as I get myself out of the house and meeting people and putting myself out there for online dating, it just ain't happening. The only advice I get from people is to move out of DE because there is no one for my "type" here ;-) With total job security, I'd be leaving an income to find a man. Ain't happening.
Now you two are making me want a drink ;-)
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
Is it true that all women really want from a Relationship is Security? Granted, with enough to freely live my life and know I would have a roof over my head and food in my stomach, I can't see myself really 'putting myself out there' again. I understand completely.
What I sought originally from my XH was strength. I had been a single mother with 4 kids for awhile and desperately wanted someone to love and lean on. Enter XH. A Manly Man. Very Macho, but in a tender way. It didn't take long, however, to recognize I had strengths in places he didn't, such as money management. This is not to say that I didn't love him with all my heart. I did, and still do, to my utter disgust.
Job security will take care of you in your old age. The person we love obviously won't.
From my perspective, I can tell you that "security" is part of it, but it's not financial security at all. I have that down. I have a house, I can make the payments, I can work extra if money gets tight by teaching extra classes at my job. I can also be VERY frugal. I don't need a guy to do the yard work as I do what I can and the yard looks ok. It's not job security; I have tenure. My school has to pretty much close down to lose my job, and that's unlikely. I have a good level of seniority if we "downsize" and that counts legally in my profession.
Is it emotional security? Well I dunno, I have a very supportive family and I have more friends than I've ever had in my life mainly because I started to care about other people outside myself and XH and become social. I have much deeper relationships than I did.
So what gets under my skin, then, or keeps me up at night?
I do think that not having a man here makes me jumpy/nervous on some very low level, maybe biological. This has been really eating at me since my boy cat died a month ago. That little cat would have run for the hills if an intruder came, but I felt a "masculine presence" here. All my friends locally are women. My brother and father live in another state. No adult men have entered my house in 17 months but for XH on his very rare visits to pick stuff up or bury the cat, which was "the last time" he was coming ever, or my brother when he came to cut a tree down. It's all estrogen, all the time ;-) It feels unbalanced. I don't know how to fix it. It feels "off" or "wrong" to me. It feels like it will be this way FOREVER. THAT is what rattles me. The feeling that it will always feel "off."
What else do I want a rel. for? I can't stand it that no one ever touches me anymore. I don't even crave sex so much as just a backrub or a hug or the smell of a man's neck when he has the perfect cologne for him, or just got out of the shower. I feel the lack of touch in my skin. It "hurts."
Does it hurt enough to go pick some guy up? No. I don't think I ever see me doing that. I have one single male friend, and if he threw a FWB invitation my way, I'd probably say yes, knowing I do not have feelings for him other than friendship. He and I flirt like crazy....we're downright raunchy...but he works with me and doesn't want to have something going that would complicate our work relationship, and I get that. He knows I've had one guy my whole life, and he probably thinks I'd get attached to him even if I said I wouldn't.
I think mainly my problem is jealousy. I'm jealous that every time I go out alone, I am surrounded by people who are coupled up. On the alt too, I see so many people just seemingly easily in these long-term relationships. And I was once one of them and lost it all in a heartbeat, and some of them are SO mean to their spouses (male or female) and SO seemingly undeserving of a person who just lives for them, and here I was, a good wife, yeah, I had my issues, but I was a good wife and I didn't publicly belittle my XH as I so often see people do with their spouses, and I didn't sit around and talk about how awful my spouse was as I hear so often.
I am jealous that there seem to be all these people who have something who appear to be undeserving and I feel like I deserve SOMEONE to care about me romantically, and it doesn't happen.
If I lived in a world where no one was coupled up, seriously? I probably wouldn't care. My own jealousy is what's destroying me.
Sorry that was so long. It was the wine/whine ;-)
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
Just jumping in here. I ain't no spring chicken but yet I can't imagine I'd feel different if I was 20 years younger and this happened to me.
I dated a lot before I was married. I had a lot of fun. Nothing too serious. When I met H, he was interested in me, but me, not so much. I liked him as a friend.
When I finally fell for him, I fell hard. We married and I didn't miss my single life even though I was an instant parent. I never looked back.
Now, even though H has been gone over 2 years I still can't think of being involved with someone else even though I desperately miss that part of my life.
Do I judge anyone else for how they handle their life after their S abandons the M, hell no. It's not even a moral thing that keeps me from moving on. It's that deep seated connection I feel to H that I can't seem to make myself let go of. It's all the life we shared together, the good and the bad for almost 30 years.
Obviously, I was the more connected one. Maybe a D will make a difference? IDK, maybe I need therapy.
Seeking I get what you mean; I feel like I want to date but don't want anything concrete/serious. But yet I'm not someone who wants casual sex either and I guess I'm afraid that most men want that. The guy I met a few weeks ago in the rest. I go to who was super nice but just coming off this breakdown, recently lost his job, divorced, etc., well I've run into him a few times and he is very respectful and kind to me, nice to talk to. Then I started to be friends with the one bartender who works there, who told me that this same guy went up to their busboy and asked him "where do all the hot honeys go around this town cause I want to hook up." To me, he was like "Oh, I'm not the kind of guy who sleeps around." Now I'm freaked out to be around him. Yuck.
Met another guy in the same rest. last night, and when he left I said to my girlfriend, what's that guy's story, he had a wedding band on but he bought us drinks. She said "Him? He's married with 4 kids. We call him "the philanderer."
I think I like this idea of dating that doesn't exist.
I'll tell you, the moment I felt most comfortable in the past week, was when I was sitting with my new friend and her girlfriend and heard that they are both 30 and single and have been for awhile. One said, "we already decided we're going to be crazy cat ladies together, so you can be one with us if you want."
Instantly I felt happy. Maybe we all just need lots of local, single friends to hang with to feel alright in this limbo time where we miss the relationship but can't bring ourselves to find one.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
And yet again my eyes pop open shortly after the witching hour.
I like this discussion. It helps me to know there are so many others out there who have similar feelings after all this time.
Antonia, your guy at the restaurant may indeed be a perfectly nice gentleman, but what they say to us and what they are liable to say in the company of other males is entirely different. I used to wonder how my XH spoke of me in a group of males. I knew how he spoke of others.
Like Seeking, I can't imagine being honestly involved with anyone else at this juncture. I read something tonight in a magazine.
I can't promise to be there for the rest of your life, but I can promise I'll love you the rest of mine.
Poetic, isn't it? That is somewhat how I feel in a nutshell.
My FWB doesn't feel like casual sex. I think you'd have to have it more to qualify. It's more like the very occasional need for the touch of someone else's body next to your own. Some friends feel this FWB is great, but it is keeping me from moving into a more solid, mutual thing. At this point, I do not believe so. We simply fulfill a need in each other for an intimacy that we don't feel otherwise. If my male friend found someone that he truly fell for, I believe I would honestly be very happy for him and this would simpley cease to be a factor in our friendship. There is no jealousy of him involved. He, too, has been burned on more than one occasion. We feel comfortable with each other due to the 40 year friendship and mutual respect.
Jealous of other couples? Probably. It never seems more like the entire world is paired off in twos until you are alone. But I am also aware of the gripes and groans of my attached friends. Some do not try to hide their discontent, others try too hard.
I guess the bottom line is the grass is always greener . . . You don't know what you've got til it's gone . . . Fill the world with Silly Love Songs . . .
