Feeling punched in the stomach about Christmas

[Lettersjy]

Wasn’t sure where to post. I’m single and have begun to struggle massively the last few weeks. I can go days without seeing anyone other than the supermarket staff.

I broke up with my DP of 4 years in February. We were about to start ttc (has very early miscarriage) and he suddenly announced that I wasn’t right for him, huge criticism of me and I later realised he’d met someone at work. He’s now living with her and they’re having a baby in May.

So far this year I’ve plodded on, had one low moment where an ambulance was called when I nearly took my life. I’m ashamed of it. I’ve somehow managed to keep working, I work from home. Fuck knows how. Had some ok days and some laughs with friends.

But oh my fucking god I am not coping with Christmas. I feel distraught. People sharing homemade advent calendars they’ve made each other, families cosy in their decorated homes. I know I shouldn’t watch but without social media it’s even more isolating at the moment and that doesn’t change the direct messages I get in text or WhatsApp of people sending me these things. It’s also depicted in every advert, in every shop, in songs on the radio. Our street had a light up evening last Friday night and everyone was supposed to come to their doors and cheer. I couldn’t face it. I am struggling. I’m in therapy but no amount of therapy is going to remove this horrible pain. I don’t know if I can face this year alone. All I’ve ever wanted is a home with a family and I’m too old now. Family alone is not an option for me. How many years with I have to do this. I’m afraid and sad.

@burntpinky

Oh my love. Please please don’t give up. I had a similar low point many years ago where my then fiancé ran off with someone else 6 months before our wedding and kicked me out of our house. I was so low and felt like life wasn’t worth living. The pain was unbearable.

But I carried on - with ups and downs over the years until eventually met DH and now we’re married with 2 kids and honestly, I have literally toasted the ex thanking him from saving me from him!

So please please hang in there - life will get better - my mum always says “nothing stays the same”.

Re social media, it’s all a pile of crap. I have a friend who posts all these pictures of “perfect family life”. Everything looks pristine and perfect. But her husband is a complete obnoxious twat, treats her like shit (example: was flirting with my friends at my wedding saying he’d rather hang out with them than his wife who was 6 months pregnant) and basically does fuck all to help with the kids/round the house but is held up on social media as the perfect husband

@burntpinky thanks for the post, it is nice to read someone has been through similar feelings and ended up better for it. I think my age is a huge factor, I just feel like it’s all hopeless. I’ve even started thinking about ex’s wishing I hadn’t ended it with them as then I wouldn’t have had this awful experience with my latest ex. I’m just so lost.

@tyrannosaurustrip

Its really hard. I feel like for women there's this period of 7-10 years where we're expected to get married, have a family, buy a house - any earlier and we're being irresponsible, any later and it might not be possible. Its so much pressure and when you're on that path and it falls apart its easy to feel that was your chance and its gone now. Its not true.

As others have said, I know of many examples of people who met late partners late and had families late. My cousin had her kids at 42 and 45, though I do think she's a bit of an outlier. The simple fact is, even if it doesn't quite work out according to the 'dream' plan - meet someone, have a bit wedding, have your own biological children, in a very specific timeframe - it doesn't rule out achieving your own happy family. A lovely family member was single in her early forties, had an active social life, was a member of a sports club, good career and friends but hadn't met anyone. She decided to sell up, move rurally near where she was from, and open a holiday business. Within a couple of years she met someone who was divorced with 50/50 custody, she has been a loving step mother, in their teens the children ended up living with them full-time, she is a very involved auntie, her home is full of children and warmth and friends at Christmas. She may not have the biological children but she is very very happy.

There's a pathway to happiness whatever form it takes but that isn't to undervalue how shit the situation you are in now is. I think you just need to do what you can to get through it, especially Christmas: a year is a sensible minimum recovery time from a serious relationship. Get to that landmark and then do some thinking about what changes you might like to make. But be as kind to yourself as you can until then.

@tyrannosaurustrip thank you for posting. I think a lot of the anguish is feeling like I have no time. I know people do things later on in life but given my past so far, it doesn’t exactly indicate that it will all sort itself out. I don’t feel I have the luxury of time to pause for a while and then go back into it. I don’t know. I wake up in the night feeling utterly hopeless with a stretch of however long ahead until I can escape it all.

@MacbookHo

And you are definitely not too old to have the life you want. I get why you’re floored - you were on a conveyor belt of stability which has been ripped away, and that has thrown everything up into the air. That’s terrifying! I bet when you look into the future you just see... nothing. Just blackness. A void.

I felt exactly like that when I was 39. My first husband just left, and I was suddenly alone. I remember telling anyone who’d listen - strangers, people walking their dogs - what had happened. I saw NO FUTURE.

But then life got better and I’ve bought a house, moved, made new friends, changed careers, been abroad - so much stuff!

At times like this you have to trust that a higher power, or the universe, or just something, has got your back. You don’t know what’ll happen. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be utterly wonderful. (Don’t expect to believe that yet. It takes time.)

Also - could you use this enforced upheaval to change more stuff? You’ve been on a path for ages, in every area of your life. Working to a steady plan. And that hasn’t worked out. So why not just think “fuck it” and spend 2021 doing whatever YOU want? Travel. Move house. Keep 1-hour fake tan on overnight. Write a screenplay. Change your name. Ditch friends you don’t like. Move in with friends you do. Embrace the chaos!

@MacbookHo thanks you’ve totally got how im feeling, it’s all very black, no real picture of what is ahead and it’s no just scary but also very lonely and isolating. Everyone around me seems to be making plans...even my ex with this immediate family suddenly in his world, it feels so unfair. I don’t know about the things you listed as I was so happy with what I had, I just wanted to share it that’s all. I worry so much that nobody will want me now, I’m different to who I was. I hope in time I wil feel ok, better, but I am still changed by it. I don’t feel like anyone will want the bruised and healed me. It will be a new version of who I once was. I liked who I was. This person is now someone who has suffered deep hurt and loss and depression.

I pretty much just skip Christmas when I'm single. It's just a holiday for kids anyway, see no reason for the rest of us to bother with it, unless it's in the religious sense.

Make it a me-day. Buy in some things to pamper yourself with.

I often send the parents their gifts in the post and then just visit them in january sometime when all the pressure is off.

You dont have to buy into it. Put on Netflix instead of normal tv, skip the decorating nonsense and just spend it sleeping and over indulging.

I know exactly how you feel OP. I do have a child (single parent) but before I met her Dad, I'd lived alone for 13 years and every year I felt miserable seeing happy families & couples.
I still look at them all envious but in a different way as DD's Dad wants nothing to do with her. So now I'm envious of the Mum & Dad and kids set up for my DD but also lonely as fuck. It hurts.
Not just at xmas either. When we go away to caravan parks, we're surrounded by big families and groups of friends......then it's just us.

I'm deadly serious when I say that the answer is to change your mindset and how you look at.
I can't change our situation. I would if I could but I can't. I have to make the best of it and believe that it won't always be like this.

Now I look back on my single life with envy! Wishing I could do what I want when I want! Now I only have 2 hours child free a week to do anything I can't do with her around and get no time to myself. I CRAVE it! Whereas I used to despise it and felt forgotten about and utterly useless. Isn't it funny how we always want what we don't have....

I'm not trying to invalidate your feelings though OP. I know how hard it is. You'll be amazed how quickly it will change though - and I promise you, it WILL change for the better, one day.

@MikeUniformMike

Ignore Christmas as much as you can.

Regarding your XP, you are well rid. It might not feel like it now but you are. He's been with someone else presumably less than a year and there's already a baby on the way. He will probably have left her this time next year.

Stay off SM. Looking at him or her on Fakebook will only upset you.

Get yourself strong. You'll get through Christmas. Come on here if you need to have some 'human' company.

@MikeUniformMike I know it doesn’t help to think about them but it’s hard not to some days. He said very socially aware in the sense he will want it to look like it’s all fine from the outside now there’s a child so I can’t see him ending anything with her. He seems to have got his happy ending and I’m almost certain he only met he right after we ended. If it was before that then it wasn’t long. How come he has this special ending, I feel like the world is against me sometimes

@Isthisnothing

Big hugs OP, this is an utterly awful time for you but it will pass. Allow yourself to feel sad, lonely, whatever but know that like everything else this time will pass.

I met my DP at 38, we have a beautiful daughter and three DSC. You don't know what the future holds.

You do know however that the OW is now living with a man and about to have a baby with a man who can cheat and lie and who makes foolhardy decisions.

You also know that there is a lot more going on behind those SM photos your friends are all sharing.

I know it's tough though and I don't wanna minimise. I didn't have an identical situation but I had my lonely years where it was nothing but surgeries and bad news while my friends got engaged, got married, had babies.

I would also consider fostering, lone parenting. Don't wait for life to start, it's here now.

2020 was an all round rubbish year. All you have to do is get through it.

@Isthisnothing thanks. I feel like he has got everything he wanted while I lost everything I wanted. I’m not sure they met before we ended to be honest, if they did it was only a short overlap. They are planning their future and it feels so unfair he gets to swan off into the sunset and have his family rally round and look forward to this future. I put my all into our relationship and would have continued to do that, I was kind to him and supportive and he threw it back in my face.

@Lettersjy, I have been through the punched in the stomach feeling. Looking at fakebook is a bad idea.
I did and it just generated feelings of 'How could she be better than me?', 'Did he give her that?', 'How long was I 2nd best?' and the like. None of it did me any good.

All you need to know is that you will get through it, 5 minutes at a time or whatever.

Make sure you have some moral support, and use the heartbreak thread on here to offload the emotional stuff.

The world will only be against you if you let it. He's the one who's lost you.

@Lettersjy having been in your position, and - then dealing with a newborn - it is honestly not all peachy/rosy/glowy. Many, many times I thought - what the f@@@ did I wish this for? It is HARD, by far the hardest time of my life. Yes - I put up all the cute social media pics, but the reality is utter exhaustion, and a completely loss of freedom - you give your life over to a screaming, inconsolable baby. If this all happened pretty quickly for your ex, and he sounds like an awful selfish person - I doubt - very strongly - that things are going well for him. His new partner will have turned into a banshee, and he’ll be feeling like he’s been hit by a truck.

OP if he would care about how it looks from the outside that’s all the more reason to assume they are not nearly as happy as it seems. I think their relationship sounds like a disaster. I think at the very least you should delete and block him from all social media. Good luck, you will find your happy ending. I did and I appreciate it so much more for the waiting. My friends that married 10+ years before me are all bored to death of their husbands by now!

And yes agree the people posting the most perfect stuff on sm are just as likely the least content with their lives

@Alethiometrical

We were about to start ttc (has very early miscarriage) and he suddenly announced that I wasn’t right for him, huge criticism of me and I later realised he’d met someone at work. He’s now living with her and they’re having a baby in May.

Been there, got the Tshirt. Now look back and think I had a VERY lucky escape.

But you poor thing. I want to give you a big hug.

For various reasons, I'll be alone at Christmas, but on Zoom with family. They're all overseas, and normally I travel for most of the second half of December.

I am secretly really looking forward to 3 days of hibernation.

I've heard of another friend in the same town whose late teenaged DD has decided to go to her boyfriend's for CHristmas & my friend is upset she'll be alone, so I'll probably suggest we do a 'Christmas bubble' for a day or two, but actually, I'm looking forward to 3 days of snoozing eating chocolate and watching trash television . My job is incredibly full on, and I have a huge deadline in mid-January, so no real holiday for me except Christmas Eve to Boxing Day.

But that's me - I hope you find something to keep you going, and enjoy yourself.

It is REALLY tough for single people at the moment - and I don't mean those living alone with a partner elsewhere. I think single people of working age have been overlooked in these current circumstances.

HUG HUG

@Alethiometrical thank you for your kind post.

[quote Wrecktal]@Lettersjy having been in your position, and - then dealing with a newborn - it is honestly not all peachy/rosy/glowy. Many, many times I thought - what the f@@@ did I wish this for? It is HARD, by far the hardest time of my life. Yes - I put up all the cute social media pics, but the reality is utter exhaustion, and a completely loss of freedom - you give your life over to a screaming, inconsolable baby. If this all happened pretty quickly for your ex, and he sounds like an awful selfish person - I doubt - very strongly - that things are going well for him. His new partner will have turned into a banshee, and he’ll be feeling like he’s been hit by a truck.[/quote]
@Wrecktal as awful as this probably makes me sound, it’s made me feel a bit better to read this! I have images in my head of her caring for the child while running a happy home, his dinner on the table and he just gets to have this family slotted in without it really affecting his life in a bad way. I can’t get these images out of my head most days. I have taken him off social media but the last photos I saw was him and her apparently moving in together and that was enough for me to want to block. They were certainly very smiley then!!

OP I'm so sorry you are in this place. I completely understand how you feel.

It's completely understandable being unable to embrace wedding plan if others when you have so recently experienced so much pain. Be kind to yourself.

Social media is horrific when you are in a dark place. I had to come off it for my mental health and just never went back there. It's not helpful.

There's some lovely support on this thread. I think in your shoes I'd pick a theme for my winter annual leave. Give it another name and plan different activities for yourself that you will enjoy.

Things will get better. You'll emerge from this and life will be good again.

@Lettersjy it’s a myth - and what you’re describing is exactly what I pictured too. Of all my closest friends, NOONE has found it easy/had that outcome. And a VERY common theme is feeling unsupported by DP/DH - and their selfish behaviour.

Christmas is such a difficult time of year if you are grieving or suffering. I'm sorry you are going through this. Try to be kind to yourself, plan things you might like to do, treats for yourself. Distract yourself with comedies, books, music, radio shows anything to turn your mind away from this for a little while. Your ex is a cheating mean person and what goes around comes around. It may not feel like it, but you are well out of the relationship with someone who has behaved badly towards you. Its very difficult that this has happened during lockdown but things will get better soon, so please hang in there.
In the meantime, 36 is still so young, although it may not feel like it right now. You have your own place to live and your own independence and although they can be annoying you still have your parents and sis who care about you. Things will get better, cross off the days. You will get through this.

Sending you love ❤️- but you're not old. Trust me on this. Perfect age for starting the next stage of your life

They were certainly very smiley then!!

It's highly highly unlikely that ANYONE would share their woes on FB or Insta. Why would they? Those platforms are for smiles and (stealth)boasts

Oh lovely, it’s so so shit and hard and I’m so so sorry.

My ex of many years called our imminent wedding off saying he’d had second thoughts and it later transpired he’d actually been shagging a younger woman at work and had gotten her pregnant. We’d also had losses and I desperately wanted to be a mum. I remember the searing hot pain of lying in bed alone and knowing he was getting his happy ever after with someone else whilst I was left with nothing and having to start all over again, terrified it was too late for me. And the misery of the first Christmas afterwards.

I also have some crappy associations and find Christmas very hard as it’s when my mum died.

I know this sounds like a glib suggestion and it’s really not meant to be but - I got a dog. Genuinely be mended my broken heart and it’s not over dramatic to say some days he was the only reason I got up in the morning. I don’t know if that’s an option for you or even something you’re interested in, but just throwing it out there.

It’s doubly hard for you because you’re dealing with this through this shitshow of a year, can’t even do what I did and plan/go on as many trips as possible. You are doing so so well to even hold down your job and keep going. This is not how it ends for you I promise, this too will pass. I kept telling myself ‘it will be alright in the end, if it’s not alright it’s not the end’. You loved your ex honestly and with an open heart - you’ve proved you have the capacity for a good, decent relationship - it’s not on you that he shat all over that. He’s not a good person, and his new relationship will always have started in a shitty, deceitful way and that’s something neither of them will be able to get away from.

For what it’s worth, I met my now DH at 35, nearly 36. I knew in my soul he was a good one, we started ttc pretty quickly and it wasn’t a straightforward path but we have our beautiful baby now and she makes absolutely everything that went before worth it. It’s absolutely not too late for you to get the ending you hope for.

I worry so much that nobody will want me now, I’m different to who I was.

You’re probably better now. Choose to see yourself as better. I’m a better person now for everything I went through - so much more empathetic and kind. Maybe we’re both less naive, but is that so bad? I don’t think so. If you look at the world’s most famous and successful people, their lives often contained tragedy early on.

II hope in time I wil feel ok, better, but I am still changed by it. I don’t feel like anyone will want the bruised and healed me. It will be a new version of who I once was.

I saw a quote on Instagram earlier and thought of you: “There’s nobody stronger than a broken woman who has healed herself.” Write that down. Keep it on your phone. Read it every day. It is true.

I liked who I was. This person is now someone who has suffered deep hurt and loss and depression.

The person you are right now is not the person you’ll be at the end of this. You’re currently 3/4 of the way through your grieving and healing. This is not the final you.

When I got divorced and it was all the black void, a quote (can you tell I like quotes 😆) really helped me: “When you’re going through Hell, keep going.” It’s apparently by Churchill. I LOVE that quote.

Keep going! This is not the end! This you is not the ultimate final you. You’ll come out if this differently, but you’ll be better. Even more lovable. I promise.

@Skinidin

I rarely post here but thought I would chip in.

Met my DP when I was 39, had DS at 40, and DD at 42. Had given up on men and children.

You never know how your life can (and will) turn around. Just when you leat expect it, just what you least expect ( as the Pet Shop boys once said) and they were right!

@Skinidin thanks for the post. It’s just so incredibly hard to imagine. Before now I always had hope after a break up, now I just see total darkness ahead. I can’t imagine feeling differently whatsoever.

@ClaireP20

Hi OP, I am a mum of 3 boys. First conceived at aged 40! Met my husband online through a dating website - not tinder haha! E-harmony. Your ex was willing to try to conceive after 4 years together but not to get married to you. Don't make that mistake again. Online (grown up) dating means you both know where you want to be heading, so if it does work out there's a bit of clarity. You're young babe, and I bet you're gorgeous too. Get to that hairdressers after lockdown and do something drastic. Then get online and make it a Friday night thing. Good luck OP xx

@ClaireP20 thanks, I just think firstly nobody will want me now I’ve been through this stuff, the miscarriage alone was so traumatic and then also the break up. I feel like nobody will understand or accept me now I’ve been through this stuff with someone else. I also can’t imagine having feelings for someone. It doesn’t seem possible anymore. I’d usually have a crush by now! No feelings whatsoever for anyone.

Just wanted to reach out. You are not alone in feeling desolate at Christmas. As others have said it can be the best time but also the worst time if you are not where you want to be.
I've also been through some dark times at Christmas, for different reasons, and I can distinctly remember that 'next year will be different' thing.
I'm so sorry it's been such a difficult time for you lately. But you've got through so much - and of course with the added element of the pandemic to cope with, which is enough on its own!
As others have said, there are so many people who have not had the path they were hoping for but ended up having no regrets whatsoever in the end, looking back.
So try to remember that old phrase 'it will be alright in the end, and if it's not alright, it's not the end.'
Take care.

OP, you need antidepressants. How you’re thinking right now doesn’t appear - from the outside, looking in - rational or logical, just incredibly depressed. You might have PTSD too. Did they not offer you antidepressants?

@whatever1980

So sorry OP. I've been there. Waiting to wake up and for that horrible pain to have just disappeared. Feeling like everyone else was moving on with their life and I was moving backwards. Just wanting to sleep. I had to make myself do exercise getting the endorphins going. I'd go for runs at 9pm on my lit street just to get outside but I didn't want anyone to see me. I did online dating and it's the norm now. I joined book clubs and a netball team all felt alien to me but then I thought what else can I do? I worked on my own so no social life there. I got there. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and kept going. 36 isn't too late by a long shot. You will be happy and have the life you want to have.

@whatever1980 that’s how I feel, trying to put one step in front of the other but not enjoying the journey one bit. It feels so pointless. I’m scared because I’ve gone from feeling hopeful in the past to absolutely no hope now. Other break ups I’ve picked myself up. Now I feel totally and utterly numb to the world. I honestly can’t imagine looking at a man and feeling love.