From Survivng to Thriving & backslides in between.

[AntoniaB]

Kimmerz you really get what I feel. You sound exactly like me, the stuff that runs through my head. It's no longer a feeling of trauma, the edge is really gone. Wistful? I don't know how to describe it.

I'm trying not to view my rel. with my ex as some sort of holier than thou thing for the many years it was really good. Not trying to put it on a pedestal. I mean, people break up all over the world every day. Millions of relationships fail. But I guess for me, it was the one and only ever time I was truly and deeply "in love" with someone, and I think the thread that I still hold connecting me to him comes from the feeling that I cannot ever feel the same way again about anyone.

I'm not saying I can't love someone else. I can. But I can't love someone else with the same lens as I loved or still love him, the same "innocence", if you will, because I am so drastically changed inside. I will always have trust issues the rest of my life. I will always remember the suspicions I had that were confirmed. I will always remember that what I believed to be 100% bona fide true love eventually was rejected. And all of this has changed me in such a way that I cannot imagine ever really giving my heart completely to someone else. EXCEPT FOR HIM.

So like you, I do feel like this is something I will live with the rest of my life.

A very close friend of mine lost her husband to a heart attack in his early 40's. Very suddenly, no warning. She was alone for 3 years or more. He was the love of her life. It nearly destroyed her. She threw herself into her writing and publishing and career. (she is a friend to me and my mentor). Well eventually she met someone, and she resisted him for so long, and he pursued her. She told him that her first husband had to be a part of their marriage, that the love for him she had was so all-encompassing that she could not/would not simply edit him out of the conversation. This man is very secure in himself and he's fine with that, fine with her mentioning her first husband from time to time, talking about memories, leaving photos up. And she often says to me that she believes we have many soulmates, that her first husband was one, so is her second, so is her best girlfriend, etc.

But when I talk to her, I can see through everything, and I know, that as happy as her second husband makes her, she still loves her first more. It will always be that way. She will always wish that he had not died. She had an innocence with him that she can never recapture, and the second husband is great, but he's not the first nor can he make her stop wishing that the first wouldn't have died.

That's how I feel about any potential future relationship. No matter who I meet, no matter how wonderful he is, that I will always love my ex the most, despite what he did. It's not because I need him or can't live without him. It's just because that's the way it is.

And that's a sobering thought. I guess this is what being a grownup feels like ;-)