I don't understand why I am not over it by now

[Shdbe]

Regular but have NC for this. Common story: married for years with children, I thought we had a great marriage, he cheated throughout, all my friends knew but no-one told me, I found out eventually, getting divorced. The thing is that even though I found out about this three years ago, I seem to have got to a certain stage in the recovery and then got stuck.

I don't want cheating ex back under any circumstances, but I feel so bitter. I wasted all my youth and most of my adult life with someone who was not worth it. I can't ever get that time back. He lied to me for years knowing that I would have left him while I was still young if I had known when he first started cheating.

I cannot imagine ever getting close to another man again as I can't bear the idea of someone else abusing me. Every man I have ever known well, including my father and married male friends, has cheated.

I don't even really feel close to my children any more. I just look at them and to me they represent the fuck-up I made of my life and I am trapped until they are grown up. I would never show them that as their father has hurt them enough. It hurts me that they still love him and are excited to see him after everything he has done, I'm damn sure I wouldn't get the same if I had behaved as he has, but I don't show them that, it's just my cross to bear. I do feel though that I have always behaved decently and tried to do the right thing while he definitely has not, yet he gets the great new life and I don't.

The thing is it is so hard to go on. I really don't see the point. Every day I drag myself through the motions and promise myself tomorrow will be better, but it never is. I feel irretrievably damaged as though I have lost my will to live and certainly my hope for tomorrow. What I really want is to go a long, long way from everyone and everything I ever knew and just be on my own.

I have had counselling, two lots of it, which was helpful to an extent, but nothing can change the fundamentals.

I know I should be over this by now and in some ways I am. I have built myself a whole new set of friends and a new job, but the past just feels like a huge keloid scar. What I lost along the way was my innocence and my hope. Im finding it really hard to keep plodding along without those two things.

Someone tell me this is just an unusually long phase which is normal but wears off please!

I'm so sorry you feel like this. What a shit experience you've had. Betrayed by so many. The lack of joy from your kids completely makes me think it's something more than a prolonged period of grief. Have you thought perhaps you are depressed?

You sound very practical and focused. Do you have a friend who makes you laugh? Or an activity that makes you feel free? I found myself doing dangerous things like mountain biking beyond my ability in the wake of my divorce so I could feel the adrenalin.

First of all please don't see your relationship as a waste of your life. You have children that's a positive, see it as a lesson learned. I know how difficult it is to feel the will to carry on but all hope is not lost. Not all men are like that I can assure you!

Unfortunately your children will feel excited when seeing him and what not but please don't see this as a bad thing, see it as a means of a rest-bite encourage them to have as much to do with him as you can as that will allow you some time to be yourself and do for yourself!

Counselling can help some but not everybody, you may be interested in a few self help books there is one in particular that changed my bloody life! this is it if you are interested

You will come out the other side a much stronger person keep going you are doing superbly.

Concentrate on yourself and your children that is all that is important.

Oh, your unhappiness is palpable, I am so sorry

What are you feeling is completely understandable. I think you should see your gp though. If you are not on anti depressants it sounds like you should be, and if you are like they need adjusting

There is Joy to be found in life, one man cannot be allowed to destroy yours

Get some help with it, love

It takes ages. Don't rush. But be open to suitable offers.

Thanks for your kind messages. I have ordered the book. I agree it may be a form of depression but I am reluctant to look at AD's as they have hugely messed up a couple of friends. Will try the approach suggested in the book first.

To me you sound very isolated by the experience. You can't share it with your children because you'd see yourself as disloyal. You can't share it with your family because the men in it sound just as badly behaved. Maybe you're not at that level of friendship with your new friends where you feel you can talk candidly or maybe you think it would be boring or self-indulgent? I'd also assume they didn't know him. So it's a lonely pain

You also sound very angry still at the injustice. You mention his 'great new life' and I can empathise with that. Nothing so viscerally upsetting as feeling that you simply got the shitty end of the stick and they didn't. If there was any kind of cosmic karma or natural justice in existence, people like your ex (and mine) would not skip off into the sunset surrounded by their admiring children would they?

Out of interest, why do the children think the marriage ended?

Oh they know he cheated with other women. He's living with his current girlfriend who pre-dates our split.

You are right about it being a lonely pain, that is really why I had the counselling, so I had someone I could talk to about it. A few friends know about it, but this far down the line there is a limit to how much I can go on about it and not watch their eyes glaze over. Yes I am angry, though I know that is utterly pointless.

I think I need to find a project to become obsessed with where I can lift my head and find that ten years have passed. Something absolutely consuming and out of my comfort zone like taking on some massive building project or starting a business. Maybe there is something in TeaMakesItAllPossible's suggestion that I need to create an adrenaline surge so that the anger gets channelled in a useful way.

This really resonated for me. ExP and I split about 7 yeas ago, but were on and off til about 4 years ago. Its taken me soooo long to stop being bitter. I'm still not a fan of his, and it does affect me when I see him, but I'm not like I was.

What helped for me is starting a degree. It's completely for me, he would never have encouraged me or believed in me, and I hate to say it, but it makes me feel 'better' than him as he is never going to be anything more than struggling on minimum wage with absolutely no skills. I feel like he robbed me of my youth and potential (Iwas 16 when we got together, to his 22). Now I'm proving that he didn't, that he didn't break me when he cheated, or was violent, or he put me down. I AM better than him, and this is my way of proving it. Even if he doesn't actually care, it's only because he's too thick to realise how much better I am!

Find something you could never do with him, and full on embrace it. Give it all of your energy, and make it a big 'up yours' to him, and you may be like me and realise that, actually, you don't care any more.

Oh, and DD sees through him now. It's taken a lot of years of him letting her down, but she's realising who comes first in his life- him. It's caused her a lot of pain, but she's realising its not her fault.

I agree about finding a focus - I have started a degree (also something I never would have done had I stayed). Bought an exercise bike and redecorated and refurnished the whole house. V therapeutic.

I understand how you feel. I couldn't believe I would ever move on but I did.

I tried all sorts of things and the best thing for me is a journal that no one is ever going to read. I wrote down all the unmentionable things I thought and rambled, bad spelling, grammar and sometimes making no sense but just pouring out anger, hurt and my huge sense of sadness over my life.

somebody very wise said to me 7 years ago "it takes five years to get over something really painful". In my case it was an abusive man. And I also felt angry with myself (although not immediately afterwards, that came a bit later) for my part in having sacrificed a portion of my life like that. But cut yourself some slack. Allow yourself time.

Do you live in the FMH? I did, for far too long. I have moved, and it is literally a weight off my shoulders. It really helped me to feel I was making a clean break and leaving my 'old' life behind.