On 10/10/10

[AntoniaB]

Look, the guy I was in a relationship with for just 6 months, which ended just over a month ago, HE is bothered that I'm not seeing anyone. He immediately started seeing someone and he's "in love" apparently, and he's acting like a different person with this girl than he's ever acted in his life. I'm actually finding it kind of comical. And he is asking every other week if I'm seeing anyone yet, or if I'm still on match.com. When I said that I was "done" with online dating because it has been one bad experience after another and I'm happier alone, he acted SADDENED by that. He started saying "oh come on, you can't let it get you down, you have to get back out there! There is someone for you, I know it!!"

This guy didn't betray me. But he feels guilty because he's with someone and I'm not, and the fact is that for all his talk about independence, he's really not independent of needing a relationship. This only makes me feel MORE powerful or "together" because I'm seeing I don't need a relationship to have happy moments in life.

Your ex I'm sure has some level of guilt. If you're with someone she can tell herself that she did the right thing because you've found someone new.

I agree so much with everything 25 years is saying. I think these people DO care about us. In fact I believe my XH loves me. He "loves me but is not in love with me." And I totally get that now, because that's exactly how I feel about him. Therefore it really almost doesn't bother me anymore that he is with someone else. This is where your XW is coming from. It is entirely possible to care deeply about someone but not "choose" to be with them romantically. Just because someone pledged to love us romantically for life doesn't mean that it has to happen that way.

Simplify it this way: These people for whatever reasons woke up one day and felt differently about the way they connected with us. Maybe it was a one day thing; maybe it was a slow-growing realization. They didn't feel in love anymore. Emotionally they weren't feeling a connection.

Many of them likely hid this for a long time and went through the motions. Pretending they were happy. Why? Because how do you tell your spouse, the person you pledged to be with for life, this horrible news? So they faked it on some level. They hoped things would change for them. Things didn't change.

They got in deeper and deeper, living a double life, a life where on the surface they pretended to love us. In fact they may have even OVERDONE it a bit, saying things like "hey let's get remarried and redo our vows" (my XH did this a week before leaving me and I think I remember yours doing the same, Tad). They laid on the charm and the love and insisted, even when we asked if things were wrong, that things were GREAT. Then there came a point where for many of them, they met someone else. Someone who loved them for the persona they were OUTSIDE our lives. The person they projected they wanted to be but could not around us because we'd have said "what's wrong with you, why don't you love me anymore?" This new person made them feel GREAT about themselves. There was no guilt over the way their feelings changed, over how they were living a double life. They were this single entity with the OW/OM. And that OW/OM probably worshipped the ground they walked on.

Eventually they made a choice. Go off with the OW/OM because that was "easier" than trying to repair things with us, because they felt "in love" with that person, that was a sure thing, where repairing things with us when they were already distracted by someone else was just an impossible task for them.

And this is when the bomb hit us. Out of nowhere.

So it seemed to us at the time like we had to keep asking why. Or how. How could they be one person one day and another the next? How could they just keep on treating us this way after they left, toying with our emotions?

Well the answers are all there, in all the behavior that is the same among all our exes. They fell out of love with us (and for MLCers this is often more about their own inadequacies unfulfilled than relationship problems, but they buried or hid relationship problems as well), they panicked, they hid their true feelings, they became ashamed of their feelings, they found someone else to confide in who very presence would not trigger that shame in them, they realized this new person could ONLY make them feel good about themselves and never bad, and they chose the path of least resistance:

They chose to cultivate that "in love" feeling with someone else rather than face us and themselves.

And in the end, they aren't in love with us at this time.

That's all there is to it. Remove your shattered ego from it and it's almost clinical. A series of steps taken by someone weak who could have or should have said from the getgo that they were feeling differently, but likely hid it for awhile. I honestly believe my XH thought he was doing me a favor hiding the way he felt. He said "I didn't want to hurt you. I hoped my feelings would change back to what they used to be on their own."

My XH acknowledges now that he should have spoken up, shouldn't have misled me with false proclamations of love or promises to renew vows. But he can't take it back. What's done is done.

My XH isn't in love with me anymore, and he's in love with someone else. And you know what? I can't change that. I accept it. So my energy is 100% into MY life, MY relationships with family and friends.

Tad I beg you please try to look at this from a more detached, clinical perspective. On some level it's the most personal thing you'll ever face, likely, but on another, it's a script, and it's NOT personal. It just is. It's what happens when someone is human and can't keep a promise made, tries to hide it, then ruins things completely.

This person, your ex-wife, needs to follow her path. She needs to get married if that's her choice. She needs to see where it takes her, and you have to let her go and follow your path. It may be that some day your paths converge again. I don't think her being married is the end of "hope." Some of these people marry or even have kids and years later realize the full extent of what they did and try to reconcile.

But you can't be a good role model to your kids if you sit there ignoring your own life waiting for this to happen. You have to live as if she is GONE. It's the only way for you to really survive and thrive.

I'm sorry this is so long but I guess I thought I had a lot to say that I hope helps you see things from a more detached view.