Newbie - bf suddenly left after 9 years

[25yearsmlc]

PS

your mother told him NOT to call you to schedule when to get things/keys....that probably annoyed HIM so it's pretty natural for him to not respond all warm and fuzzy...no way would he THEN ask her how you are doing. To him, it is clear you are Unhappy with him.

A Russian author once wrote "when men feel guilt, they attack". Guilt is not your friend.

I guess you need first to decide what YOUR goal is among the choices you have, which are few.

You really only control how you handle HOW HE leaves...

the question of IF & how you'd ever take him back, is way way down the road and might not ever happen...so let's assume he's in the Australian outback, unreachable...for the forceable future...

Now what do you want to do, with YOUR life?

[Italian]

Thank you guys for all your great input! I really, really appreciate it.

I realize on this forum I sound like I'm obsessing over this way more than I do during my day... sorry about that! It's just, for some reason I find it helpful to vent whatever my brain throws at me early in the morning, so once I've got it out I'm rid of it and I can carry on with my day. So you guys kind of get all the useless obsessive crap that I don't want to shoulder around...

Rationally I know I'll be ok. I'm used to spending months abroad on my own barely hearing from him, and I always did just fine. I think this has hit me harder because I had got to a point where I'd settled down in that 'home' life and was actually beginning to like it. But I just need a little time to digest the impact and then I know I'll be back on the saddle.

I'm still trying to decide what to do - a couple of weeks isn't much to rearrange my life, lol - but I do have a lot of interesting plans lined up ahead. I'm in Wales at a friend's house at the moment, and I'm enjoying exploring the town and the outdoors. I have a novel to finish before June so I'm focusing on that... then over the summer I have a lot of PhD work to do, and a lot of good friends I've made over the years are inviting me to go visit them. Rome, Holland, Paris, Brittany, Copenaghen, Austria, Spain, London... I literally just have my pick. And I intend to travel, have fun, be with friends, as I figure out where I will live next autumn. I had a semester in Madrid planned that I set aside to stay in Italy, but now I'm dusting off those plans and am determined to go.

And besides, there are more serious things going on at the moment - Saturday afternoon my friend's mother was in a serious car crash and she's in ICU at the moment, we're waiting to see if she pulls through and if she'll have any permanent damage (brain, spine...). I've been through this before - my father died in a motorcycle crash when I was 16 - so it almost feels like the circumstances conspired to bring me here at this moment, where I can be of help.

So I've set aside my issues and am being strong and supportive and trying to help any way I can. My friend told me it's a big help to have me around, so I'm glad I can do something for him. My focus is on this at the moment.

I'm mulling over a few daddy issues in response to Kml, and I'll be posting that later on. I think this is a great opportunity to learn something more about myself and learn to stand on my two feet, which will greatly benefit me in the future.

[Italian]

Sigh. Having a bit of a down moment - I've been keeping busy and running on adrenalin for the past couple of weeks, but I have a slow moment now and... I miss him. Well, the him of before, at least. That person is gone forever now, almost like he died.

I know I'll be ok, but I just miss him.

[Italian]

Just venting...

Today I woke up really angry. Angry at this horrible person my ex turned out to be, or turned into, whatever this is. Angry at what he's put me through, because I didn't deserve to be treated this way and I do not deserve to be put in this situation.

I have been through a lot of crap in my life. My father's cheating, the ugly divorce, the long illnesses (stroke, cancer, parkinsons, alzheimers) deaths of so many family members - grandad, uncle, great uncle + 2 aunts, 2 grandmas, my father, all by the time I turned 16. And yet I picked up the pieces and kept going. And lately, my stepfather turned out to be a lying stealing junkie, the messy separation, one grandma was ill and I took care of her, the other grandma just died. And through it all I studied and worked hard and got a degree in a second language and am slowly building my career as a writer in that second language.

And now this? And what has he had to deal with in life? Nothing! His family is so blessed they almost don't seem REAL. And now I have to be collateral damage because he's never learned what it's like to be an adult and deal with issues in a SANE way?

I felt I finally could have a few years of peace. I felt I deserved that. And instead I have to pick up all the pieces again and rehaul my life and my future completely again because he acted like an idiot. The breakup would be bad enough if it was a normal one, but dealing with the lies, the betrayal, the cheating... I don't want to be in this situation. I resent him so much for doing this to me.

There are serious problems out there, just see what my friend is going through right now with his mother, and there's nothing to be done about it when life dishes out pain. But when someone you love and trust does it with their own two hands when he could have behaved like a sensible person and avoided all this? I'm so angry at him.

I don't deserve this and I won't let him break me.

[Wonka]

Italian,

And instead I have to pick up all the pieces again and rehaul my life and my future completely again because he acted like an idiot. The breakup would be bad enough if it was a normal one, but dealing with the lies, the betrayal, the cheating... I don't want to be in this situation. I resent him so much for doing this to me.

Kiss his ass good-bye and thank him for that "gift" as you now see his true colors! If the tough get rough before marriage, babies, mortgage, etc...and HE runs away??!! Is that the kind of guy you want to spend the "rest of your life" with??

What you relay here reminds me of one of my favorite teachers back in 4th grade. She had a long-term BF who was a grad student at a local university. They had been together for approximately 8 to 10 years. He couldn't or wouldn't commit to her. He did his PhD studies in Europe. That "separation" forced my teacher to re-think her priorities and came to the realization that he was not the husband material she wanted. Then ended the relationship. Now? She is now very happily married to her husband of 15 years or so.

Think long and hard about this guy, Italian. Can you really count on him to have your back and being the steady presence for the next 50/60 years?

And for the record, he didn't betray you, but HIMSELF. It is all on him.

LET. HIM. GO.

My thoughts? He isn't in MLC or whatever. He's a lost Peter Pan wanna-be.

[Wonka]

P.S. I hope your friend's mother pulls through this awful accident. Wicked scary!

[Georgiabelle]

Hi Italian,

I'm so sorry you find yourself here. Married or unmarked the pain and sadness is the same.

You have received some input from some very wise and helpful people on this board. 25yrMLC, Kml, and Wonka are a cornucopia of knowledge.

I dated someone for almost 7 years prior to meeting my h. When I got together with my h, I thought it was sweet that he was so sensitive and a bit of a tortured artist type. He had a brief marriage where his w left him for another man. He was very doting and about 5 months later told me he wanted to marry me one day. About 3 months later, he began behaving strangely and left a vm breaking up with me. I was livid. We reconnected a few months later and I got pregnant. I was very nervous (even though I was 30) and he immediately proposed.

I tell you all of that because Kml's story she posted on your thread is very telling. Everyone kept telling me how devoted h was to me and he had such a wonderful family. His parents worked hard. His brother worked hard. They all valued marriage and commitment and his parents have been married 45 plus years and mine were married for 51. The problem is that my h is not his family. Never has been. My h says I have to be right (something I've been working on in all facets of my life). And you know what? I could not have been more wrong on my h. He has never had a strong work ethic, was unemployed frequently while I still paid for daycare, and took a nap every day. I worked full time, raised 3 kids, kept house, and paid 85% of the bills. I used to let him sleep in on the weekend (what????) because I thought it might make him happy. Wrong. He is a miserable human being.

Listen to everyone- kids really, really change things. I have 3 gifts from my time with h and wouldn't trade them for anything.

As Wonka and others have said, this may be a gift you can't see yet. You sound smart, successful, and caring. Maybe there is a better fit for you than your immature bf?

[Italian]

You guys are right. This is not the kind of man I want to rely on in building a life together.

I'm having a hard time re-adjusting my perspective so quickly - for a long time I thought he was a man like his father. A responsible, honest, down-to-earth man, without any odd whims, who spent his life working hard and taking care of his family. So maybe he wasn't all intellectual and worldly and full of surprises, but we come from rural Italy and I appreciate simplicity, honesty, practicality. They are both very quiet people, which is associated with wisdom and introspection.

Lol, now I realize he was quiet because he had, as we say in Italian, crickets in his head.

At least I find comfort in the fact that I'm not the only one he has fooled. Everyone was always telling me what a mature, responsible good man he was, and I was always enthusiastically agreeing. Now everyone's shocked - everyone who knows, at least, because he's going to great lengths to keep the secret. My mother can't look him in the face, my grandma is heartbroken because she'd welcomed him in the family like a son and has seen an almost exact replay of what my father did to my mother (yep, there's a big fat post on daddy issues coming up soon...). Even his own father is embarrassed and astonished and has said something like 'I don't understand, I don't know my own son after 33 years, how is that possible'.

Yup. He had us all fooled for so long. Maybe he even fooled himself, who knows. And chances are most people will keep seeing him as that excellent person because they will never know the truth.

Good thing it came out now rather than further down the line. I'm still in time to disengage and get back on the saddle career-wise. In five years I wouldn't have had that chance. I have surely learned a valuable lesson about giving up opportunities for myself in order to be with someone - won't be making that mistake again!

[Italian]

Bad news about my mom's friend. Don't know the details but I've been unofficially told to prepare for the worst. He's spending the night at the hospital.

I'm very tired. I wish I could call my best friend and talk to him, but he might as well have fallen off the face of the earth.

[Italian]

I meant my friend's mom. man I'm so upset my english is going out the window.