Is splitting up if unmarried seen as less significant emotionally?

[Gettingfedupgrrrr]

I was with my ex for close to 20 years. From school upwards. To cut a long story short it ended due to his cheating and not just with one person. This sort of destroyed me, I became a very different person who never went on to find someone else or have a family. This is a tiny snapshot of what was a bit of a convoluted longterm relationship but this isn't about the specifics of my relationship. I live on my own now and honestly couldn't contemplate being with someone now some 15 years later, but overall his cheating and our messy split affected me emotionally financially and psychologically for many years. One thing that has got to me over the years since, is how our split was viewed and treated by friends/ family/colleagues as if it was ' just a boyfriend' and wasn't held to the same level of 'trauma' as if he had been my husband. It was swept under the carpet and I was never allowed to talk about it, or rail against what happened, just shut up , move on, find someone else. This, from my experience, wasnt something that ex wives were expected to do, (possibly due to having children) and seemed to have been permitted to feel more aggrieved by their circumstance.

Is this just my experience?...or am i being unreasonable?

I’m sorry you were let down by people who should have supported you. I think you may be right but things may have changed in the years since it happened to you as more people choose not to marry.

Legally it obviously is different. There’s less/no paperwork and the state wasn’t involved with the making or breaking of an official commitment. But 20 years is a long time, his infidelity must have been devastating, and you deserved more support from the people around you 💐

I think some people do think / assume that if you’ve taken an active decision not to get married in a long relationship that it’s an indicator that there’s less commitment and perhaps that even the couple themselves don’t see the relationship as lasting forever. There could also be an element in your case that your family and friends were just relieved that what sounds like a crap relationship was over and that clouded their feelings - they thought it was the best thing to happen to you, rather than a devastating loss and struggled to treat it as one.

I think there is an element of truth, but it’s usually because there are children involved, but I’m sorry to hear that your family and friends weren’t able to support you properly.

Apparently you are unable to feel emotions, love or devastation 'because you don't have children'
No-one before having children, or childless can be in that world.
So I suspect your 'friends' and family assumed that you had no feelings about this, and sadly, your ex had no care either.
I really hope that you are having a much better life. Feel as angry, sad, aggrieved as much as you want. Find new friends!

My friend’s partner cheated on her and in my mind it was exactly the same as if they were married. His betrayal of her and then the separation, childcare arrangements etc all so stressful for her.
i guess it comes down to how many shared commitments you have which makes it more stressful- so shared house/ mortgage, children, finances, documents etc all add onto how difficult it is to manage the split. Emotionally though, how broken hearted you are varies from relationship to relationship and how you felt about each other.

I think when one partner has cheated it is very easy for friends and family to just dismiss them as a wrong un and think that you can do 'better'so they actually end up feeling frustrated if you then seem to still be struggling with the break up. They subconsciously don't want to encourage you to go back there and get hurt again so their attempt to tell you to move on is from a good place. I do think long term partners are not taken as seriously which is quite an outdated approach. I do hope you are able to find happiness, whether that be alone or with someone new x

Thank you for the kind responses. My friends and family, I think, were under the impression that being as they were toward me was being helpful, and that I was being self indulgent by being sad and emotional afterwards. For me I think this prolonged how long it took me to recover from not just the practicalities of the break up, but the emotional fall out of the cheating, lies, deceit etc So recently I noticed how my sister spoke about a friend of hers who had split with her cheating husband ( their children are adults now) and i couldnt help but compare how my sister had been in my circumstances. My sister isn't a horrible person by any means but she was/is more indulgent of her friends mood, emotions and need to talk about it . I've also noticed it with others and it kind of makes me mad that there is this discrepancy.

I have a dog, (the best therapy/company ever) and I honestly couldn't see myself living with or being with someone and the bonus is we will never 'split up' or get divorced.

I mean this in the kindest way, it seems to have affected you very deeply for it to have dictated your decisions to such a degree for such a long time. It’s not wrong for you to feel this way, but perhaps they felt they weren’t best placed or able to help you.

Everybody grieves the end of a breakup differently, but working through it is a choice and an active process. If you seemed stuck and unopened to looking forward perhaps after a time they felt that they could not help you and discussing it further would make it even harder for you to engage with the present and look towards the future.

This is just another perspective that doesn’t take into account your marital status. If you’re with somebody for 20 years, that’s an incredibly significant relationship with marriage or without. I would hope that most people recognise that.

MCout thanks for that perspective. Whether married or not, no one really knows what goes on behind closed doors and how it affects that person. It can depend on someone's personality, previous experiences, and how that journey has affected them, influencing how they manage going forward. I know myself that at a certain point in our relationship I was stronger but this changed as time went on and my experiences affected me more than I realised at the time

Maybe my family and friends didn't know how best to manage it/me, but I felt very lonely for a long time.

I think you're right OP. I have children, split from a 20 year relationship. It definitely isn't treated as as big a deal as others in the family who were married and then divorced. That said - I'm free! And so are you - enjoy it. 💐

I think only in the sense that don't have all the legal stuff hanging over you as well in the same way. Emotionally I don't see it's that different if you have psychologically committed to spending the rest of your life with someone, even if not actually married. People don't marry for all sorts of reasons, its doesn't necessarily mean that they are less invested emotionally. It's still a grieving process if it ends.

I agree with you OP. My partner walked out after 10 years - not married and no kids. I felt that both his parents and my parents would have viewed things differently had we been married. My mother compared my breakup to one she had had in her 20s and said she knew how I felt - I was 40 at the time of the breakup and couldn’t believe she was saying this. I think his parents excused behaviour from him that I am certain they would not have done had we been married. This all still affects me still. I very much saw us as committed and have never seen marriage as an essential.