ok lets go for it - worst relationship stories ever..but best bounce backs to so its not too miserable!!!

[prettyfly1]

it appears either my ex has reproduced himself all over the country and is sleeping with more women then even i gave him credit for or we have all experienced some really bad moments at the hands of someone pretty rotten so.. what was your worst experience BUT rather then jsut bitch tell us all how you came back from it and share some positive stories about how you learned and move on so we can all pick up some tips and know there is hope for us yet!!!

i know - and you cant even begin to identify with it. its one of those "oh, really..errrrmmmmmm....so the weather. dreadful isnt it...moments!!"

I think the saddest thing is that she hasn't moved on at all. In fact they stayed together in the house for two years until her ex decided that he (she?) wanted to start seeing men. and it was at that point that they sold the house and she moved out.

Her ex now has a new (male) partner, but as far as friend is concerned she took her marriage vows very seriously and they will always have a relationship.

For me it's a delicate balance between trying to remain understanding and sympathetic and wanting to shake her and tell her that life has to go on and that she has to get on with her life and let her ex go because he's not coming back.

My very best friend in the world, God love her, is not lucky in love. She met somebody who even I said seemed nice, she was with him two years & they worked in France together, very limited time in the UK.
She sent me a message on FB saying that she was upset, they had split up, she'd sent me a letter with more details.
I read the letter and burst into tears. With every word she had written, I could feel her pain, I'm going to paraphrase but she wrote "it is so lonley when you realise that you can hold your hand out in the world and there is nobody who loves you enough to hold it". She was very lonely, and very miserable.
I wrote back to her, doing my best, telling her I loved her. She was due home from France a few months later. She has since met a new bloke, and she is really happy.
I still have her letter, it still destroys me to read it, even though she is very happy now.

Boyfriend at university couldn't come to my father's funeral because his parents ahd booked him a last minute skiing holiday. I have never screamed, ranted and raved at anyone so much. We split up and it broke my attraction to that "type" of bloke so ultimately it was a good thing. Very painful at the time though.

oh that is horrible!

just made me remember how my ex + all friends were more concerned about how damaged somebodies car was when they'd had a little bump than I was the day my grandfather died.

What a bunch of wankers I hung around with!

yeah my friends at that age were complete rotters. mind you i wasnt a saint.

I married at 23 to someone I loved who turned out to be a controlling sadist. The relationship broke down when he started to be physically violent on top of all the emotional abuse.

Many years later (I am now 41,) I have a wonderful partner and a gorgeous DD 22 months. I am on a different planet - and the place is beautiful. That was life in hell, retrospectively - but I hope I am living proof there is life after divorce and trauma - maybe you are more likely to get lucky/make it work when you have a few of life's knocks under your belt.

Elf I have been there. .

When I left South Africa I was still going out with a guy I'd started going out with at school. I honestly believed he was the love of my life and that we were meant to be together for ever. But when my parents left I'd just left school and had no job or money so I decided to come back with them and get a job and save up enough to go back so we could be together.

We kept the long-distance relationship going for a year. During that time I got a poxy telesales job and saved up a reasonable amount of money. On the day I booked my ticket back to South Africa he rang me and told me he'd fallen in love with someone else that he'd been seeing for 6 months . Even at the time I realized it was probably inevitable that one of us might move on but the fact that he didn't tell me was what had hurt the most.

Anyway about three months later he rang me and told me that he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. By this time I had got a permanent job and was reasonably settled, although I did still want to go back. So I said to him that I wanted him to come over here and stay with me, and that if we still felt the same about each other I would go back to South Africa with him. He wasn't prepared to do that so that was that really.

It later transpired that the new girlfriend had not split with her boyfriend as they had agreed so he had come crawling back to me.

It was at that time when I felt truely lonely and unloved though.

I've since heard that he recently threw his wife and son out because he "wasn't ready for domestic life" his son is 9. So luck escape me thinks.
I met my dh about a year after that and we have been together 13 years now and it is our 9th wedding anniversary tomorrow.

wannabe thats a nicer story. does make me think about the pot luck thing again. gotta be so careful!

when I was 16 i went out with a 21 year old. As time went on he became much more clingy and serious than I was (I was 16 and by no means ready for all that) and he would tell me things like that he wanted us to be together for ever and that he would wait for me no matter how long it took for me to go through uni etc .

Anyway I grew up and he didn't and so I ended the relationship.

18 years on he has never had another girlfriend and still lives with his mother! so another lucky escape there me thinks, although I can't help wondering if I broke his heart. he recently confessed to me via email (it was in general conversation not a come-on or anything like that) that he'd never felt the way about anyone that he felt about me. .

the way I look at it, bottom line, if my ex hadn't ditched me in awful fashion, I would not have met DH, and ultimately would not have had DD.

I would never want to be without her, regardless how miserable I felt at the time!

(just uploaded new pics on my profile, look at her, she's a princess!)

I was swept off my feet by an older charming man when I was 18. I had a abusive childhood and couldn't wait to get away from the stepdad.

I married him and he slowly, subtly turned into a controlling, abusive, manipulative, unfaithful bastard (ironically very much like the step dad i had been trying to escape). I was not allowed to do anything - get a decent job, study, learn to drive etc. I lost touch with all my friends and family. I couldn't wear what I wanted. If I so much as spoke to another man, he beat the crap out of me and was so incredibly jealous and possessive.

The final straw came when an 8 month pg woman turned up on my doorstep and informed me that she'd been having an affair with him for the last 12 months.

I finally left - he left me in £40,000 worth of debt and with zero self esteem/confidence and totally isolated...I was 24

Within a year I had passed my driving test, moved in with a house full of 5 girls, got promoted at work and got accepted at university to do a degree part time (whilst working). Within 3 years I had paid off the debt and bought myself a flat...

10 years on, I am about to marry my fabulous dp and we have a gorgeous dd together

I did sew kippers in the hem of the curtains and spray painted "wanker" on the bonnet of his jab before I left him though

Jag (not jab - just in case anyone thought that was a euphanisim for something - it wasn't big enough- honest - )

tilly - i was gonna cry then i got to the end of your post WOOOHOOOOO.

Lets here some more please girls. nothing like a bit of inspiration to get you through it. Earlier tonight i was so miserable and having a really bad weak day and now i feel much better!!!!!

I started going out with my first real boyfriend when 16 - he was 19.

We went out for 5 and a half years.

during this time his mum banned me from their house and car and he went on holiday a few times without telling me (for 3 weeks).

On one occasion he asked me to pay for the drinks because he "didn't want to break into a fiver"

We split up because he wanted me to pay him petrol money to see me(could you imagine what he would have been like if he had to pay £50+ to fill up his tank)

We got back together 2 weeks later.

He used to have a classic car which Simon Templar used to drive in The Saint. He also had a matching T-shirt .

Anyway, we finally split up about 2 years later in December and I met my (now) DH in the following July. When I started going out with him, I couldn't believe a man could be so generous and kind.

I probably wouldn't have given my DH a chance if I hadn't have gone out with the ex beforehand.

tilly that was an amazing post! so inspiring.

i'd love to post some of the unbelievable stories from my relationship with dd's dad but the wounds are still fresh. however i have absolutely thrived since we broke up and i know i will laugh soon. really, you look back sometimes and are a bit ? why the f*&$ did i put up with that????

margosbeenplaying- i dont know if this is your point exactly but before xp i was into guys who played it cool, good looking, flirty, centre of attention. it is only now that i really want to have a nice, polite, kind non-flashy man in the future. i will consider different men than i would have before xp when i'm ready to date again.

mama - thanks . Its amazing how much you can change isn't it. Hope the wounds heal soon

Apologies if this is vomit inducing - but I'm having this reading at my wedding later this year - I think it sums it up to me

'Maybe...We are supposed to meet the wrong people before meeting the right one so that, when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift

Maybe...it is true that we don't know what we have got until we lose it, but it is also true that we don't know what we have been missing until it arrives.

Maybe...the happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

Maybe...the best kind of love is the kind you can sit on a sofa together and never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had

Maybe...you shouldn't go for looks; they can deceive. Don't go for wealth; even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile, because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright.

Maybe...you should hope for enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, and enough hope to make you happy.

Maybe... Love is not about finding the perfect person, it's about learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.'

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. its so funny. i know another variation of that reading and its how i felt about my ex. it sums up loving someone truly perfectly. lets hope my mr right is on his way.

also can i finish it off with a new addition that i think is certainly appropriate to me and a lot of the girls on here..

and enough strength, integrity and courage to always be able to wish even those who hurt us most the same happiness and peace we find.

Tillyscoutsmum that is truly beautiful.

The worst relationship "event" I've had with a "happy" ending was:

Finding my boyfried drunk and starkers with the bloke from the flat downstairs in a compromising position. The "happy" bit was my punishment to him later that week...when he was really drunk I shoved a vegetable up his bum and told him if he felt like being gay that's what it felt like.

Needless to say the relationship came to an abrupt end...

uncontrollable snorts of laughter from prettyfly

My first serious bf (first love, first everything- I was 17) went off with my best friend, and I was the last to know. The worst thing was the humiliation of people feeling sorry for me. I can still cry when I read my diary from that time- I really thought I would just die of unhappiness. I'd lost my best friend and my boyfriend in one fell swoop, and I was just about to go off to uni in a strange city where I knew noone.

My new flatmates were wonderful- 1 is still my bestest friend in the whole world. Uni was a great experience. I made up with my ex best friend, because I didn't want him thinking he was important enough to wreck a long-term friendship. Once I gave her my blessing, the attraction wore off pretty quickly. She cheated on him and treated him like crap, so that he ended up crying on my shoulder at a party that she didn't love him and he'd made a terrible mistake (I was with new boyfriend by then, and despite myself felt nothing but sorry for my ex) I feel proud that I behaved with dignity through it all, and was the bigger person. It really made me stronger. The last time I saw him, I was actually running the half-marathon (and dating DH, who was everything ex aspired to be- haha! Ex was a small guy with a complex!) and I beat his time. I now remember him as a bit of a saddo! But I wish I could have told that heartbroken 127-yr-old me how things would turn out. Incidentally, best friend later fell madly in love with a bloke who did the dirty on her, and she was devastated (despite dismissing my pain as "alls fair in love and war" at the time of her deception!) I am a strong believer in karma!!

My next bloke was lovely, and still is! We were together nearly 7 years, and I felt we needed to decide where we were going. He was a bit of a perpetual teenager, and commitment-shy. I ended it, and felt ok. I knew I wanted marriage and a family one day, and he couldn't even give me "one day". He was gutted, but we parted amicably and have mutual friends. He is still unmarried to his new gf, who he met before I met DH, while I have a wonderful DH and 3 kids.

I really feel that both these experiences have made me a far stronger person. I am not on bad terms with any of my exes really, although I was hurt at the time. I'm a big believer in looking to the future and moving on, and I know whatever happens I will cope. I know I've not really had a really really bad experience, though, and I count myself lucky.

Obviously 17-yr old me- not quite 127 yet!! !

exdh had an affair with my best friend the whole time we were married. She was the chief bridesmaid ( matron of honour) at our wedding. She was also married - so cheating on her husband. Both her husband and I were the last to know.

Exdh took off and drained out bank account - left me with nothing but bills, mortgage payment etc. Then told everyone it was because I was such a bitch to live with. Pot and kettle come to mind. Anyway - his mother got in on the act threatening me and generally making life very very difficult.

THe only positive - there were no children.

He had to turn up to family court for our divorce hearing and she was pregnant. Very tacky - lots of people were commenting on that couple of there - being my ex and her. Made me chuckle and realise how sad he was - strange how when you are in the situation sometimes you can't see it. He was very emotionally abusive in hindsight but it was so subtle that I did not realise until I was out of the situation.

ANyhoo - 14 years later after I had met dh and had three gorgeous girls - I ran into and did not recognise them. For two people who were always so anal about their appearance and looking good - they looked horrid. She looked beaten down by life and he looked like buddha. I would have not even recognised them had he not glared at me.

All I could do was laugh and be thankful I had a lucky escape. I thought if he could still have an issue with me 14 years later when really I had done nothing to them then I was so much better off out of that situation.

I managed to move to the UK to live and work where I happened to meet my now gorgeous dh.

Even better- no longer have to deal with the MIL!!!! My MIL is gorgeous.

I love this thread, Prettyfly! So great to read all the happy endings.