Hey, there, if you are who I think you are, I am not surprised by your beautiful words. Thank you for sharing. I so admire you for still coming back here and trying to help others after all this time. I also admire your continued strength and grace. Everything you said rings so true with me.
I am, on most days, one of those who says she would not have missed this journey. I have met so many wonderful people, people that helped me through some horrible times. People who have helped me to learn about compassion and patience and forgiveness. People like you.
I'm not even yearning for a relationship. I'm just yearning for someone to hang with. I just asked a female friend to come over to my house after having a few drinks with her, and I got the same "oh, I don't know, I have to work tomorrow" excuse. So...she'd rather go home to sit with her mom than cool-a*s me.
Honestly, people, I have been rejected nearly 100% of the time when I ask people to hang out/have a drink/come over to my house and chill/make dinner for them. Everyone has something to do, or is too tired. Yet everyone says how awesome I am, how "young" or "how cool" I am. So...which is it? Is it all lip service? It really cuts me when I make the effort to ask someone (which is outside my comfort zone) and I get rejected. And these are WOMEN. Not even men. That's a whole 'nother level.
Anyway I don't mean to hijack this thread, sorry. I do agree with WS that these boards are a lifeline and that many of us are drowning. I was at my workplace today and didn't have this board bookmarked, and went to look for it on google, and came across what I will call "a competing message board" by accident, and I looked over it and all I could think was "stop criticizing the people who saved my life."
All of you are my lifelines.
I mean that :-)
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
Yes, you are right, and it is good to hear from you. I think my xh found out who I was, and then I stopped posting for quite a while as I got my head back together. I was a different person by then, and it also seemed safer to change my user name.
If I am frank I still miss my old life. We were such a loving and secure family, or so we thought. I am extremely proud of what we have rebuilt, and grateful for all the many blessings I have, but to some extent I am still a refugee in another country. A country which has been good to me, but my homeland for so long was my marriage. But I have met amazing people, and my h was going crazy, so that life would not have gone on, even if he had not run off quite so dramatically!
If you have my details do get in touch [exchanging them now as you know is not allowed]
Ah, Antonia. If I lived within a 100 miles of you I would suggest a weekly dinner or lunch half way in between.
It took my friendship group a long time to rebuild, and like you I experienced a lot of rejection at first. But all I a can say is that persistence pays off. Also I moved - and that might be an option. Or consider spending a summer in another place, although with pets that can be hard.
And yes, I heard a lot of praise, but not a lot of preparedness to spend time with me. Sadly a lot of married friends have a problem with a spare woman. Spare men get invited out a lot. I know because I shared a house for a very enjoyable period with three other really lovely people [another option] We had a huge house, and had all been in long term relationships, so we knew the territory, and never argued about the stupid stuff. Also we laughed a lot. So there were three rather beautiful women and a man. Great guy, but honestly, no Adonis. However, he was a hot property, but we got invited out a whole lot less. He is now in another [disastrous imo] relationship, and one of the women is getting married next week to a lovely guy.
I suspect that you may be living in a very small pool where you are a big fish. And your career may take you in another direction .... everything you are doing is preparing you fo rthe next bit of your life.
What I have also learnt is that when all doors appear closed, another one opens.
And what's weird is that in many ways that has already happened with me...that there are ways I've been freer to deal with things on my own and become a happier, more integrated personw without him in my life. So all that comes down to, my fear, is my own ego being crushed.
If I could take my ego, put it in a box, and ship it to deep space, I think I would. It's the one thing that stands in my way :-)
I usually post in Newcomers but cruise this topic regularly.
Antonia, I'm right there with you.
Great thread, Beatrice.
Me 57/H 58 M36 S 2.5yrs R 12/13
Let me give up the need to know why things happen as they do. I will never know and constant wondering is constant suffering. Caroline Myss
I am four and half years post bomb and there are days I still struggle with it all.
For me, coming from a horrific childhood, I dreamt my whole life of what it would be like to have my own family, growing old with someone, sharing all the important moments of a lifetime.
When this all happened, it was more than just an end to a marriage, it was the end of a lifelong dream.
I do not expect to get over that in a mere four years. This was 30 years of my life.
And while I know that I can have new dreams, that doesnt negate the sorrow felt as a result of all this.
I always say, you feel what you feel. There is no right way or wrong way to feel, there is no timeline to meet. Your feelings are yours, they are valid, they matter.
As far as another relationship goes, I was ok alone. I met someone when I was not looking. It was nice to have someone to hang out with, to laugh with. I have since realized that I am not ready. I have told him how I feel. I have explained that I still have work to do on me. I cannot give him what he may be looking for. He lives 2 hours away. So, I do not know what will happen.
Either way, I will be ok. I know that I will be fine alone. For the first time in my life, I like me.
Antonia, please dont take the rejection from women personnally. It happens to me all the time. And Bea, it is true that women dont like to be around a woman alone. But that's their problem. I just keep trying or I do things by myself.
As always I never ceased to be amazed and grateful for the community I find myself in! Although i had a very happy childhood, and loving parents, I too cherished the dream of growing old with the person I loved. It is getting the rug pulled out from under your feet in Spades isn't it.
What I am getting back at last is my lightness of spirit - I knew I had lost something of myself post bomb. We talk a lot about losing ourselves in the marriage, but this was a bit of me that got lost in the trauma.
It is reconnecting with a lost bit of me, and it feels so good that I don't want to lose it again, ever. It is re-finding myself It isn't detachment exactly - that is about our attitude to our former spouse, but in letting go finally of them, something flows back into us. does this make sense?
i have always been a bit uneasy about the idea that we got lost in the marriage. maybe we did, but I certainly got lost post bomb, big time. Couldn't work out who i was. i used to know, and then I didn't. I think it was trauma, because I had a strong sense of identity prior to this.
I think however it is important to not underestimate how brave it is to take yourself to the place where it is OK being alone.
I've speculated on this issue for years, and I've come to the conclusion that we are pack animals and we operate best in strategic partnerships ... to be balanced enough to fulfil all our emotional and physical needs ourselves is brave and it's tough and at times it's lonely.
There is a gorgeous poem by Nan Witcomb, that articulates the enormity of what "freedom" really means ...
Freedom b
FREE, as the wind upon the ocean, free, as a bird about to fly, free, as a tiger in a jungle, - freedom, that’s the universal cry but do we cry for freedom without thinking - like a child wants everything he sees - do we know that freedom can be lonely ……….. do we really have the courage to be free ? Free, as a gypsey in the winter, free, as a bird without a sky, free, as a dolphin without water, freedom - that’s the universal cry …….
Nan Witcombe, Thoughts of Nanushka
V
Never make someone a priority, who makes you an option.
Bea, my friend, I know exactly what you mean. While I most certainly lost myself in my marriage,I also understand what you mean when you say you lost yourself in the aftermath.
No matter how it happens, this losing of oneself, it is in the finding of ourselves once again that is the goal.
I am so very happy for you that you are feeling a lightness of spirit and that you have begun a new part of your journey.
Brookie - you posted on IBs thread about our children's relationship with their MLC parent.
After the anger at the abandonment has died down, and that takes a while for them, in the case of my kids the problem then is that the person they knew just isn't there. They occasionally meet and spend a little time with their father, but there is no connection. They actually want to have a relationship with their father. they hate what he has done to them, to me and to himself, but they could get past that if he could connect with them. They could rebuild something new. There is no rebuilding going on. It is just marking time.
They find it frustrating and unsatisfying to meet this person who simply says banal and occasionally inappropriate things to them. My eldest son told me - I am prepared to meet dad a couple of times a year to keep him off my back, but we talk about nothing. And that really isn't enough for me.
This no longer makes me sad. It is the way it is, and none of us can change it. My xh chooses to think or pretend that he has a walk on what he has done, but I suspect that deep down he knows he has messed up so badly that if he allows one chink in his armour, one admission that he wishes things were different, the whole house of cards would come crashing down.
It isn't our problem, but as I am the active and engaged parent, I am aware of how very damaged my xh is, and well my children are coming through the trauma. My xh absolutely refuses to see he has any problems at all.
