Does anyone remember me?

[doesnayoneremember]

I am not sure if anyone remembers me. I had a thread about 19 or 20 months ago because my Fiance disappeared and wouldn't explain why. He just changed overnight and went from being lovely to being horrible and he left me in a hotel room with my sick child.

I asked for my thread to be deleted back then because I was so upset and in so much shock I gave away too much personal information and someone pm'd me to say they had found me online, but back then everyone was so great and helped me so much. I remember mathanxiety and garlic and sorry to anyone else (my memory has not worked so well since all this).

So I am a while on from all of this but I just feel like giving up. I am so tired of fighting so hard for so long and just want to curl up and go to sleep. I would never hurt myself (could not do that to my family) but I sometimes sit for hours staring at a knife or a busy road and the idea of it all just being gone in a second seems so peaceful. I don't want anyone to worry for me, I would never do it. I just feel that lost.

I do try. I do everyhting. I went to counselling for a year and a half. It got me through. I generally put on a happy face and sometimes even feel happy but there is just this black empty space inside that I can;t ever seem to escape from.

I miss him. I never properly understood why he did what he did. We did get back together once or twice but only for a few days and he never went back to who he was or ever gained normalcy. It was like he just lost all his love for me in one day and he could never explain.

There was never another woman and his life did not get happier after what he did. He actually became a heavy drinker at first and seems to go off the rails a bit. He's now skinny, lives a quiet life and is on anti depressants.

The last conversation I had with him he told me he just stopped loving me but he could not say when or why or why he had to leave in such a ball of flames and cause so much destruction on the way out the door.

I had to live with him being so viscious. He turned people against me and told me it was all my fault.

He'd always been the big love of my life and the person I loved and trusted the most. I never throught he would or could ever harm me, he was so protective of me and kind, so I struggle in my midn with it all.

I think the day he stopped loving me and decided to harm me, was the day I stopped loving myself and absolutely nothing can ever regain that.

I'm not asking for advice I suppose. Just feel so tired. I thought time would bring me answers and it never did.

Life is a journey, not a test to which you pass or fail! You have time to rechannel your energy in a new direction. don't give any of that energy up to a man who is no longer in your or your DCs life He is your past. What can you do differently today?

I know exactly how you feel. I'm in the same place. My H had an affair, left me but a year on I still love him and miss him terribly. We have DC so I have to see him, it still hurts so much when I do, that he doesn't love me anymore and he loves her, but I can't bear not to see him. I'm even willing to be his friend even after he lied and cheated because I will take any scrap of time he will give me. It's very sad and quite tragic.
I don't know why I have such low self esteem that I still feel this about for someone else who has treated me so badly.
Sorry for hijacking, I just needed to put that down.
So all I can say is you are no alone. Sending hugs

I don't often post on relationships like pp but just wanted to add my sympathy. No advice really. You are still in love with this bloody man. Don't take anything to numb the pain. You are grieving for the loss of your relationship and what might have been. Let it all out here and IRL.

Have you read the book "Runaway Husbands"?

I'm sorry, what an awful story, you are still mourning the relationship. It must have gone some way to explain his actions when you realised money trouble was at the root of it but he behaved badly.

Ultimately you have your DS to concentrate on,time is normally a healer but you still feel like a zombie so for his sake please consider going back to your doctor. Although you fear that anti-depressants may numb you further, you need to be able to cope.

What a horrible thing to happen to you and definitely sounds to me like you are still reeling from the shock of it. Just as you would when someone you love and care for hurts you in the most horrible way.

What on earth was he thinking? What an absolute tosser!

You see I'm getting really angry for you at what you're fiancé did and the way he chose to do it. Horrible nasty little cock!

Did you ever get that anger out? Did you sink immediately into depression? Anger and depression are at opposite ends of the same scale. Swallowed anger leads to depression. I used to teach a form of counselling that helped people who felt depressed get in touch with that anger. By helping them to express it in a safe environment it helped them to get their energy and zest back.

Yes, problems were still there but they coped better with their problems with their vitality restored.

This is a very potted version of the process. As you can't go round and punch his lights out because what he did to you and your child was horrible I would suggest taking up kick boxing or some sort of physical sport and while you are pounding away use that as a safe vehicle for channelling your anger against him.

Well done for the progress you've made. It's a tough journey.

The sun will shine again. Honest. I've been in some real, horrible shittiest of shit situations.....and life is good ;-)

He did an awful thing, but you seem to have lost perspective. I seriously doubt that your self esteem went the day he lost the love. If it was there before, you would of known at the time that you deserve better and would not be still pining for this inadequate man.
You have attached the responsibility for all your happiness and worth on one man, not on yourself, and that is why it all came crashing down at the same time. Do you see that no man should be attributed to having that power? Your self-esteem was already fragile and built on wobbley foundations - ie 'him'.
He has shown you how troubled he is, you are better off out of it. The hankering for the past is your problem, and it's something about your person that is doing that, and is your responsibility to sort out. You gave him the power before he left, and you are still basing your happiness (or lack of it) around him. Time to take back the power, self-esteem should be built by you, using someone else to justify your happiness and existence is always going to be risky. Co-dependency is never a good path.
More looking to what you have achieved in life since and the lessons you have learned - or not, as you say, you still seem to need to date someone for validation. Until you get to a stage where you are reasonably content to be on your own, you will not be ready to find a healthy relationship and are likely to walk into another disaster.

Thanks everyone. Getting this out made me feel better.

to respond to everyone...

DS being bullied is difficult. He is high functioning autistic if anyone remembers from my first thread and he finds it hard. He just started big school. It's a lot for him to cope with but he is also quite tiring / rigid and won't lsten to me the way he did his stepdad. Adoescence seems to have hit full swing and I admit I feel overwhelmed at times. My parents and family have been amazing (I moved closer to them) and I know that for the most part I handle it well but on certain days feel like I need someone to take care of me and no on is there.

Yes, I don't feel like there was ever resolution. I look back to the days before all of it and see no sign it would ever happen. All he kept saying was that it was tough times but we had each other and that was all that matterred. He kept telling me not to feel alone in it and that we were an unbreakable team. It's hard not to feel so shell shocked when life makes so little sense.

Thank you for saying I was resourceful. I forget that sometimes and hearing it makes me feel better. I lost my home, my life, my very uch loved stepson who I'd been raising for years and I was so distraught I left almost all of our personal posessions and it was like starting again from nowhere and with nothing. My most prescious possession is a card from my best friend that says "I have never met anyone with such strength, compassion and loyalty as you. What happenned to you and DS should never have happenned and while I know there will always be a scar I don't know anyone who would be so testd and survive as well as you have".

Tyger I am so sorry. It is hard to stop loving someone when you really did and they shocked you. It's so difficult to change your mind set from this being the one person who loves you most to this suddenly being somethin very diferrent. I really feel for you and know exactly how you feel. I also accepted scraps and to soem degree still do. That is so intrinsicly tied up in the complete loss of selfesteem.

Yes, I have read Runaway Husbands three times and it describes exacty what he did. Alas not for another woman, but it does describe him pretty well. Just like in the book we were widely considered to be THE most rock solid couple and I felt like he particularly adored me. Until one morning he no longer did and he was gone. All positive feeling towards me, all compassion, all financial support and all responsibility to our children was gone in the snap of his fingers. Who was that man? I will never understand.

Dowser Thank you, such positive words. I read them and am reminded that "no", I never did get angry. I just thought there must be a reason and tried to support him and talk it through. I was fighting a losing battle. He had some sort of mechanism inside of him that enabled him to run away from me and the kids without feeling any value in us at all. It is hard to describ...it was like he deleted me. His family deleted me. I have never seen any of them since. It was like I never existed. He kept talking about new chapters. I didn't know what hit me.

He sent me a message yesterday asking me for money. First I have heard from him for a year and yes, I voluntarily send him money every month. I got very upset by the message and sunk quite low. My friend was shouting at me. She said "he fucked off and left you in a HOTEL room with DS and ou were HOMELES and where was he to care about you then? He would not even answer the phone? He destroyed you and said and did awful things and made you believe it was your fault" and I know what she says is true.

So why am I not angry?

I can't get in touch with that at all, and I often feel like I just got so low I forgot how to defend myself. I used to be very fiesty.

I was the firsty one in the relationship. I think I just gave up.

He sent me a message yesterday asking me for money. First I have heard from him for a year and yes, I voluntarily send him money every month.
What????

Ys, Derxa. I am that stupid. He is such an arsehole. Can;t believe he is the same person.

Smorgasbord, I know what you are saying makes sense but it's not like most breakups. Not like them having an affair or slowly losing interest or fighting all the time. It's diferrent when someone abaondons you that you don;t have a single rason in your mind for - it's more like total shellshock and there's no moment of "how dare you" or anger. Just total shock. You jyst can't believe it and bcause you love and trust that person your head is wanting to believe there is an explanation.

Gambling debt he is hiding?
Brian tumour?

Whatever...you just can't believe it, so you are not sitting there viewing it as a relationship breakup - your loved one has disappeared - you are viewing it as "where are they, and what can I do to help".

It's so hard to explain but perhaps if you have a hubby or loved ones try and picture coming home today to find they have left you and wht it would feel like if you were never able to have a conversatin or explanation.

Its easy for people on paper to reas this and say "her fiance was a shit". But for me it's harder, because I lived with him and he never was. He ws just like someone else's Dad or husband or someone much loved and trusted.

There is not a single person who nows him who can believe he did it. It;s just one of those things in life.

I am quite well written usually, sorry for all the typos.

i do need a new direction in my life and to stop trying to replace the love I lost.

It's become amost compulsive / addiction level for me to get approval or whatever from men. I have to break out of it because you are right I am attracting horrible people

I need to strongly disagree with derxa - ADs don't 'numb the pain'. That's not how they work, at all. And I've never, ever felt like a zombie on them - I only ever felt like a zombie while still in the grip of deep depression (or while seriously sleep-deprived while not depressed). And you do sound very depressed. Telling someone who is so clearly depressed, and who doesn't feel counselling has particularly solved the problem, not to take anti-depressants is incredibly irresponsible.

The pane of glass thing is something I really relate to, and I was in a very dangerous place when I felt like that. I also happened to read Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar a little while after that time and was amazed and wished I'd read it earlier. You say that you suffer from feeling that no-one ever understands - I really recommend you read The Bell Jar. I hope a book recommendation doesn't seem too flippant in the context.

He did what he did because he was not good enough for you, and that is all you need to know. Searching for a why, is what drives people mad, but really, its not relevant, the deeds speak for themselves and say everything about him, but nothing about you.
Yes, you need to sort out the compulsion to have men in your life, was that there before your ex?
The other thing is the money you send him every month!! Stop torturing yourself by maintaining a connection to him. You have to choose to move on, you are not responsible for him, it will only serve to keep his co-dependency and connection to you - which, if you are honest with yourself, you clearly still want. Set yourself and him free, at the moment you are not doing either of yourselves any favours. He will never develop himself by making him dependent on you for money, and you will never move on.

Thansk OhFuck. I know I sound very depressed, but am honestly not. I do know a bit about depression, have experienced it with DP and also friends and I don't have it. I am just very sad! I don't feel like medication is the way out of it, I would feel like that was avoidance.

Smorgasboard, no. I was single for 5 years before DP and veyr happily so. Normal relaitonship history. Good self esteem. Pretty independent person. It's only now I feel like I almost can't sleep without someone next to me. It's hard to describe but it's a very powerful pull. There's ike a big void and I keep trying to fill it.

I send him money every month to pay off joint bills that existed in our relationship. Not much, but my share. Felt like it was important for me to "do the right thing" even if he didn't. I am not sure why I do it in truth. Should really tell him to fuck off - he chose this, not me.

Even now - he doesn't actually show any remorse so to speak. In his mind "people break up" and there's nothing that abnormal about the way he did it.

Did he have a nervous breakdown?

That's his story Derxa.

All I can tell you is that he was perfectly normal until the day he left, and any signs of being off the rails appeared afterwards. He's depressed yes, I'd be willing to say he has been significatly depressed to the point it has affected his normal life since he left, but what I qualify as a breakdown and what he does differ a lot.

He managed to continue with every aspect of his life normally aside from being suddenly completely unable to love me or give a shit about me so I find it hard to attribute it to a breakdown. Apart from a few weeks, he continued going to work and all that. He acted pretty normally in front of other people and it was only really me he lashed out at.

I feel that was just another way he got himself to come out smelling like roses. Poor him. Breakdown. But he painted it in the light that being with me /responsibility for me and DS etc. was the blame for his illness. His words to me were "I worse myself own trying to keep everyone happy". HE twists things, because I can assure you our family was in a time of crisis and I was equally worn down, and equally trying to keep everyone happy an look after everyone. To me it was part and parcel of life and being a family and yet to him he percieved that ebb and flow as a burden.

Sure, at the time, my son was ill and it was creating a big pressure on both of us but I can promise you over the years I took many hits for his child and never for a moment resented those because I loved him.

It was like a light switch going off.

One minute I was literally the best thing in his life, his raison d'etre and the centr of his universe and the source of all joy - his perfect girl and he had no idea how he'd got so lucky,

24 hours later he was ill, it was all my fault, he hated me and it was completely my fault, he didn't love me and didn't even care about my wellbeing. He could not bear to be around me another minute, to discuss it or to even properly explain specifically what it was that was making him unhappy. He talked in circles. It made absolutely no sense at all.

I feel a creepy sense inside of wondering WTF it actually was that made him feel that way. It has messed with my head! I carry this deep feelijg inside that there's something secret wrong with me or something.

I do feel sorry for him - can't help that - he's a mess - but I just wish I could put it all behind me and start a new life with someone who would never do this to me. I wish I could find a way to see him in a bad light because if I could do that I could maybe stop blaming myself which I think deep down I do.

I have no idea why -I can't think of anything I did wrong. He certainly never came to me with any issues at all. The opposite.

If i take a step back and I am completely objectively honest with myself, I think this is what happenned.

I think he had a very weak character. A very kind nature and loving nature, but very weak character. I think he feel madly in love with me and had me on a pedestal. I think on a daily basis he was pretty stressed and had a lot of past pain which he hd not adressed. I think he saw me as his angel, the answer to all his problems and I think he painted a fairtale for me. I think he never wanted to lose me or face life without me to the point of being terrified and perhaps unable to come to me when he felt weak or low or even resentful or angry as a person might normally in a relationship.

So I think he kept on a happy face during times of stress and I think he probably swallowed little resentments and frustrations. I think he felt a deep sense of financial failure that he could not support his family and that we were in trouble. I think he was very worried about what outsiders thought of him.

I think he developed depression and as such he lost a little bit of the joy he'd found in me, but he kept it quiet because he was afraid to talk about what he felt, and I think for whatever reason on that particular day he could just not keep up the ask anymore and he exploded.

I feel like 15 years of anger, sadness, frustration, fear and everything that had been bottled inside of him exploded onto me that day and he felt he could not keep up the role he had created for himself as the perfect husband /father /stepfather /son and he ran away. He just ran away because he wasn't able to get help or to face up to it.

I think then what was mild depression spiralled into a massive depression and he went off the rails completely. I think he wasn't able to feel any compassion or care for me or the kids at all because he was in some sort of massive crisis and running away / doing what he did to me and the kids made it a thousand times worse but by then he was too deep into the decsion to turn back.

Within a week he had got his own house and told his son that ad his parents and his boss FFS we were never coming back and to go back on it would have been more than he could cope with. But I do think the loss and grief hurt him as much as it did me and that is what made him have the breakdown if that is what he had.

I think that he now likes the loss of feeling he gets from his medication. He describes it as being comfortably detatched and he likes that - I can't see him ever coming off the drugs, when he tries he goes off the rails again.

I do think he loved me to the maximum of his capacity, but the compulsion to escape and save his own arse was stronger in the end and he assosciated me and DS with being the cause of it and blamed me.

He's beating you up emotionally and you are beating yourself up as well.
I have no idea why -I can't think of anything I did wrong. He certainly never came to me with any issues at all. The opposite.

You sound very decent and far too good for him.
Are you sure he has no one else?

A thousand percent certain he had no one else Derxa. Absolutely not a chance! Still no one else either.

He just made a simple equation "life is falling apart around my ears and I can't cope. The cause of the stress right now is her and her child, thus is I escape that I will be ok".

That was the simple equation in his head.

All the good things I was were forgotten. All the love and support I gave him. All the times I had been there for him were forgotten and in that moment he made the decsion to blame me for his life and while he has since vaguely acknowledged that and apologised I carry the nagging feeling tht I am a burden. That anyone else I get close to might do similar. It just made me feel worth nothing.

I feel like a hamster on a wheel trying to constantly convince myself that I was a good partner, a good Mum, worth more than my worst day. I try and tell myself only a complete dick would leave someone sick with their kid without a roof over their head or even a job but what I deep down believe is that if i had been better, worth more, he would not have done it.

I really want to stop feeling that way. I know it's unfair to me to think that and also illogical.

I think he has to believe it was me, my fault, because he could not live with himself any other way. He hated men who did stuff like this.

He really did a great job also of making a lot of other people think that too. He told a lot of lies to make himself look better, and told a lot more by ommission.

I know that I look at him and the things he has said and done and scarcely believe he was capable of it. Some of it was pure evil for want of a better word and all that from the kindest, sweetest man I knew. So if it is hard for me to cope with his deeds, I am sure it is equally hard for him.

I've come to understand the way huma being rationalise their shitty acts in their own mind by blaming others and for sure he blamed me.

If I asked for the reasons he gave for blaming me, they were absolutely ridiculous or totally unfair and things he'd never even once mentioned before.

I have said efore it felt a bit like he had been telling me for years his faveourite food was steak and asking for as much steak as possible and then he turned around one day and filed for a divorce because he hated steak. It was very much like that. He was telling me things were a problem that he'd always apparently seemed to like and were certainly not things you would attribute as grounds for separation. He was just making excuses and making up reasons because he could not say the truth.

The truth being he was a weak, cowardly, selfish prick who reached a really hard time where we needed him and he fucked off to make his own life easier.

Sorry if I am venting off the page here. It's been so long since I spoke of all this...probably months since I saw a counsellor and definitely more than that since i raised his name with friends or family because I don't want them to know I still suffer so much with it. They'd hate to know that.

I do feel a lot better today than I did. Like I said it isn't every day I feel so low and some days I actually feel happy. Some days it just hits me in the guts and I remember it all just as if it was still hapenning and yesterday was one of those crap days.

I know I am not depressed because some days I wake up with such genuine posiitivity and warmth and a sense of hope and I know that I will keep on fighting until I get there. With blips and some days where I can't face it.

vent on op. You sound like you are getting in touch with your anger=very good and healthy way to work thru what he did to you and your son instead of taking it out on your self with depression. You keep saying he fell apart yet he got a house for himself within a week of leaving you and your son homeless in a hotel ?? I am finding it hard to work out the logistics of this. A house costs money, legal actions, planning, searching and finding etc . How is this possible in a week for anyone far less a man who does a runner because he is falling apart? and he told lies to everyone blaming you and he told parents, your son and his boss that you were never getting back together.Sounds to me like he was planning the great escape in detail for quite a while . He had all his ducks in a row- a house to live in , the lies to tell, the doors to shut---. what about the bank accounts? Logically he would have made sure you had no access . Or maybe the preparation and planning went to the extent that you were beleiving there was no money. Which does not hold up as he cannot get a house with no money , plus he had a job and had his boss prepped with lies about you. This whole story of his stinks and is full of holes big enuf to drive a mack truck thru. You are being well and truly gaslighted,op. I'd want to get to the bottom of it but i'd leave it to my subconscious to figure out and get on with making life better for me and my son. #1 i'd not be sending him any more $$.

And other days you spend crying. hmmm

He could afford the much smaller place without me and DS. Getting rid of us got him out of financial issues to a degree overnight. Sadly, was that simple. He hadn't been planning it, no, he took the first apartment he found in a place many miles away from his work (not a lot of thought went into it) and it was furnished. He left all our funiture and belongings and was just gone. The timing was such that it worked out that what he did left him in a better position and me with ultimately nowhere to go. It was actually only six weeks ago I ended up getting my first permanent home so it's been a long road digging myself out of it. I don't think he had his ducks in a row, but I think in that split second moment he realised a route of of it was to do what he did - so he did it.

You're well rid of him and it takes a lot for me to say that. Well done.