do you ever feel like you've been robbed of a huge part of your life, i do.

[piratecat]

It's late and I feel sad. I count my blessings i really do, i always try to think of tose worse off than me, and to put perspective into my life. It is a good way to cope.

Yet I feel like my husband leaving me has robbed me of my 'life', as I knew it, as i hoped for. That journey we started out on, the friendship, the love, the marriage, and then we had a child and then --gone. Like it was for nothing.

cue people saying--but you have your dd.

I KNOW, but I don't have my husband. He didn't die, no, he didn't and I know I haven't had to go through that. Yet I grieve for soemthing that's gone, that he CHOSE to do to me, despite saying he would never treat me badly like i had been in thepast. This man .KNEW me.

How could i have not known him.

i am feeling very sad, its 3 yrs, and funnily enough it's 13 since we met tomorrow (or this weekend).

i still love him, what a mess.

is it the anniversary that's making you sad?
I do feel like this sometimes too - even though I know XP was pretty unsuitable and we weren't very likely to make it as a couple. Still hoped that it would work out and we'd be a family. Must be much worse when you've been married too.
Don't be hard on yourself - you lost your dream and you're grieving for it. Hope things seem brighter tomorrow

i don't know, it's just that it also feels like it'so ver with him and dd too. Long story, but they have only seen one another 3 times tis yr, and he is less and less bothered.

i guess it is the anniversay of us meeting, and maybe its subconcious. I feel on the shelf at 39.

I just want to go back and start over sometimes .

Yes, I feel like that. We were only together 2 yaers and he left when DD was 6 weeks old but still, why?
I still don't really know the reason, he never told me how he really felt.
I just think of what I thought I was getting. A decent guy, OK he had his faults but we had a rough last few months because of circumstances.
He was earning decent money, enough for us to have a three bed semi, two cars and a fortnight in Spain in the summer. Not exactly that but you get my drift, and then all of a sudden I was a single Mum on benefits wondering how the hell it happenned. Furious at him for taking my life away.
Even 7 years on I sometimes wonder and still feel angry with him. I still loved him for three years I'd say after he left, not now though.
Now I'm filled with rage that he doesn't care about DD, hasn't so much as asked about her in over 4 years, never paid maintenance, just went back to Australia without a second thought and carried on with his life taking my dreams of a family with him.

I'm going to go through the Australian CSA for maintenance and while we need the money desperately, I will admit that I'll get so much satisfaction from knowing how much it will piss him off to have to pay it.

for you - I felt like that for a long time after my ex-fiance ran off with his secretary; and again after another bf left and robbed me of £4k as well (I lent it to him on the principle that it would be paid back and it wasn't).

I often thought after my ex-fiance left that it would have been easier to bear if he HAD died - because then he wouldn't have had a choice in the matter and he wouldn't have chosen to hurt me. Sooo glad we didn't have any kids together.

It took until I got together with my DH to really feel as though my life was getting back on track again; having your 'security' taken away is a very disturbing process.

EVen though you say you still love him, I'm willing to bet that what you really love is the him who you thought he was before he left you, not the him who chose to hurt you so badly? In which case you might as well grieve his as though he were dead because to all intents and purposes, the man you thought he was is dead.

Not sure if that will help when you are feeling sad but it might be good to reflect back on when you have surfaced again.

(((hugs))) to you

Hello piratecat, very sorry for you. I can understand how you feel. My story was similar to thumbwitch. I was working abroad due to difficult economic times on the continent. When my ex fiance dumped me in an email (despite seeing me 5 days earlier), ten days ahead of my birthday I felt like the carpet had been pulled from underneath me, the last ties with my old life back home were cut. There was someone else on the scene and I smelled a rat but what could I do. All the things we had planned together, the future I foresaw, everything was shattered in one lousy, cowardly email. I sent him a package back, containing a backbone (bought it at biology store), telling him that I hope he'll use it as he's clearly missing one.

3 years FFWD and I've moved on, forgotten him and am quite glad it all turned out this way. We weren't right, he'd have cut my wings and I'd have looked elsewhere, too.

I'm for you that you still love your ex. I think you may love how he was, not what he is now. You're only in your dirty thirties , you're not on the shelf hun. You don't want to be 20x again, insecure and naive, without your dd. Things happen for a reason, I'm sure there are happier days ahead. We experience sadness to know how to appreciate joy. Please don't let yourself down! Rebuild your dreams by making new ones, set the compass anew, change your view, look ahead and not back! You have more years ahead of you than what's behind you. Live the future without being bound by the past.

sorry i didn't reply, i am sometimes guilty of pouring out stuff and taking ages to find the right words to reply with.
alexa i am glad you have moved on, you say you have forgotten him. I think for me and for alot of mums you still feel trapped in a kind of no man's land becuase of the children. And if the ex is behaving abysmally towards your child it is hard to let go of any feelings, be them annoymosity, hurt, love, anger.

thum i am glad you have found someone you love and trust. I did trust mine thats where the huge let down comes in, we were suited, i beleive he 'lost' the plot!!

muggle you were abandoned too, its a strong word but it's one that my counsellor used, and it's so true. I know what you mean about them taking off with your dreams.

hugs allxx

piratecat

I'm having very bad day today as well so can really understand how you feel..

I have been crying my eys out after visit to park today where a lot of mums with children in my dd age were pregnant with no2 already. I'd like so much to be pregnant with another child. And would love for my dd to experience growing up with a sibling. It's not going to happen..

It kills me when I see fathers out playing with their children. DD's father is punishing me for leaving him beacuse of his violence and he refuses to see dd. He knows how much it hurts me..

I mourn the life I was supposed to have every day but know that this is not going to change anything so I do try to count my blessings and look forward to future.

hope you feel better soon x

pc.
I am alot newer on this trail than you, but can relate to the feelings of him choosing to do it - that hurts so much. And the loss of the friendship (in my case 17+ years of it). And also that he got to this point, and was obviously so very unhappy and yet I was unaware of it.
It is all just so sad.
I also love him, I am very hurt, and I don't like what he has done, but he was my best friend for so many years, and I can't just forget him.
Mine isn't a bad person at all, although what he has done, and not talking to me earlier, was completely the wrong way to do it.
I also feel for you re your dd

Oh piratecat, with forgotten I mean that I have shelved my feelings of hurt, anger at being betrayed and all the remarks and nasty comments he made. If I sit still and remember him, it all comes back up, but I shove it away. I'm not hurting anymore but he sure gets my blood boiling for being so cowardly and calluous leading me to believe I could change his decision, only to find out he was already shagging someone else.

I understand what you are saying in regards to single mums and the dc. I have not experienced this personally but I have 2 close friends who are raising their dc alone and got a glimpse of the anguish, the hurt and loneliness they go through. 2 very fun, pretty women who'd be off the market in a blink but bc they have children and exes that don't make things so straightforward. I think a lot of my friends' anger or sadness wells up when their children suffer because it cuts through their hearts, when they feel their dc are losing out bc their fathers' focus shifts and they behave more and more unlovingly.

I don't really know what to say in respect to your dd and the dreams you had for your family, I guess what I'm trying to say is that you as a woman, as an individual has to make new plans, set yourself new goals where you can take your daughter with you. It is also worth remembering that you are still young and healthy and fit to find new goals and try things out. It's not all set in stone yet!

I definitely feel robbed.

I missed my son's first birthday, his first step, his first word. He's being moved 300 miles into a house with a man I don't know and have never met. He may be there right now and I have no right to know.

The fathers in my family are all very involved and divorce is virtually unknown. It is accepted they play a large part of their children's life, but my ex has done her best to cut me out of my son's.

Like Thumbwitch , I would have preferred my XH to die (still would, actually ).
People who are dying don't abandon you on purpose. They don't do it, not caring whether it will hurt you or not. I know that sounds horribly selfish, but that was the way I felt at the time.

It was my 'separation anniversary' this weekend. 4 years, and I still feel so much... ???...something. I really don't know what the emotion is; I can't name it.

I feel anger now and again at the work he left me, raising our children alone.

I do mourn the loss of my dreams.

I feel contempt for his abandonment of his children.

I am humiliated at the way I debased and erased myself throughout our relationship, just so he might stay.

But it's none of these emotions. I can recognise all of those when I experience them.

I don't love him (althouh I did, with all my heart). I don't even like him. He is an unlikeable person, once you get past the surface, in all honesty.

So what the hell is this emotion that makes me cry at the thought of us not making it? I sometimes feel that if I could only identify it, I could understand it, and then it might go away.

Does that sound mad?

i don't know what the emotion is. I hear you tho.

Sometimes i just want to scream at him, but i know it makes no difference.

I think thats a killer, knwing that they do not value you as 'anything' anymore, when all you are doing is giving 100% to their child.

PC, I think that's the difference. I don't love mine anymore, so it doesn't bother me at all what he thinks about me. In my heart of hearts, I know I'm the better person, so his thoughts on me are irrelevant.

I know when we first split up and I did still love him, though, I couldn't stand the thought that I meant nothing to him anymore.

Are there any strategies for getting over it?
I mean, was he really such a nice guy that he is worth spending all this grief on? (Not being flippant or mean, just wanted to know if he was a hubby worth having?)

He was a hubby worth having.

We were very much in love, and went thru alot of traumas over a short space of time, never seeming to get back on our feel before the next blow.

I believe to this day that our marriage was savable, and that when he went it was a running awya thing, plus i believe he had a breakdown.

Then he met someone else, who very quickly got her claws in and seemed to brainwash him. Ok i know we can say that we are al responsible for ourselves, but in a fragile state, I think he lost it. I could never have envisiged his lack of respect. He himself despised the sort of person he is now.

So for me, my love is hard to break, and it's hard not to cry and be angry.

kind of like unfinished business then, really.

Yes, and the longer time has gone on, the more stuck i have become.

Just reasons would have been good.

I sometimes, still think it's all been a bad dream!!

Piratecat, I was like you....very much in love, we seemed to be perfect together...I felt like you for 5 years after he left. A long time....that awful rollercoaster of grief, anger, pain

It is now 12 1/2 years since we split. I feel nothing. I look at him and wonder who he is. When I talk to ds about him, it seems we are talking about 2 different people. Ds doesn't recognise any of the things I say about him.

You do get better slowly, some people take longer than others. He left when ds was 18mo. I remember him coming to a school play when ds was 7. That would be 5 1/2 years later. It still managed to upset me, even after all that time. Wouldn't care now though

It will go away in time. I promise xxx

Also I felt robbed for me and ds for years...but do you know, I never even think about it now, although i don't remember when it stopped.

It is his loss after all, and when I was going through it, I never thought I would say that

thanks fizzbuzz, as i still feel stupid mourning him at times, well others make me feel stupid too.

Yes, others would make me feel crap saying stuff like why are you wasting your life away thinking about him, better off without etc.

It made me feel as if there was something wrong with me that I couldn't be like that...but I couldn't. He was my perfect man (or so I thought)..but now I think he's a bit pathetic.

But in Greece, widows mourn for 5 years, that is how long it is meant to take. A split up is also meant to be harder tha a death to recover from, beacuse there is usually a lot of acrimony, and the hope that they will come back.....

Have you met anyone who vaguely tickles you since then? (metaphorically of course!)

How odd that I haven't really thought about this for a while.

When dd's dad left us I was 3 months pregnant. One day he was the man who would do anything for me, who couldn't be away from me, who I got on really well with. I would have known him 10 years now.

We hadn't even had one argument, or a bad word between us. One day he was my bf, next day he was gone. He just very simply walked away and I never saw him again. I spoke to him once before he changed his number. He told me in no uncertain terms that he never wanted to meet his child and to this day he hasn't.

At first I wanted answers, I couldn't sleep at night. All I wanted was to see him face to face and for him to give me one reason why he did what he did. I felt like that for about 3 years. I dont feel like that now. He's gone, and that's all there is to it. I did nothing wrong so I have nothing to worry about. I do idly wonder about him at times but that's more out of boredom I think. Anything I felt for him died instantly the day he told me he would not meet our daughter.

I dont feel robbed by him. I feel for dd, am livid on her behalf that her own grandparents dismissed me instantly when I called to ask if they wanted to meet her, would not even speak to me "I am going to put the phone down love, i'm sorry". Ice cold (I can see where he gets it from). I dont think that family has a backbone between them.

Well its their loss. They should be ashamed. I dont think the anger I feel for them will ever go away, but I bury it because we quite simply dont exist as far as they are concerned. Most of the time it works pretty well that way

i feel a lot of what has been written on this thread....
I dont love him or want him back but i def feel robbed of the life we had.. and i guess I wish we were still having...
I also feel increadably(sp) envy towards him he left me and dd's for someone new, bought a lovely new house (bigger than mine!!!) got married and now have a baby on the way, before baby is born will be buying an even bigger house.. you know talk about come up smelling of roses!!!
He does work hard and I am not saying he doesnt deserve nice things but i work flipping hard and i cant move, we are crambed into a shoebox (i am grateful for my shoebox)

Guess i am just a jelious person!!! but it HURTS loads , maybe if my life ever moves on i will feel better about it all

No, it's not as base as jealousy Choccyspiders. It's not only you who hasn't got these things, your own DC's haven't got the things his new wife has and new baby will have.

I'm sure you hurt as much for them as for yourself.

true i def feel for dd's... I work really hard but i also work to fit in with them, i could obviously work longer hours to have a higher income but i choose to work 9-3pm so i can take and pick them up from school.. But i can never give them the life that we could have given them IYSWIM.... unless i meet a rich man

Was just looking at some reports at the cost of rasing children, (quite shocking) I am going to copy for him to look at in the hope he will up the child maintenance ( well i can only ask!!) as he is bound to want to reduce it when new baby is born even though they will have 2 income's and we just have one apparently he will be within his rights to do this

I dont know what the answer is i used to blame myself- I wasnt sexy enough, glamourouos enough etc but since the split i have met some wonderful women it has happened to so it happens to the best and nicest..

keep smilling all surely it has to get better it better anyway it is the only thing that keeps me going

god yes i do feel robbed and i feel for our kids that they have been robbed too how can i ever make things ok for them? i am feeling a huge sense of responsibilty.