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Author Topic: My Story How did you meet someone else?

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My Story How did you meet someone else?
#60: September 29, 2024, 10:28:28 AM
Hello,

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I know we might feel like just words on a screen but we are real people and we care about you.

This is so true and just know that you have to see your own value as a person who belongs with us. It is sometimes on our darkest times that we feel as if we don't belong, but we do. As I sit here typing, my baby nephew is occupying all my wife's time. He has been with us for two days and both my wife and mom are tired. I have forgotten how tiring babies can be especially at six months. He is so, so cute and I am sitting on my couch drinking a cup of  Vietnamese coffee. We are both watching the football game.

The point is that I would have never imagined myself in this place eleven years ago. My ex had just left the house and I was alone trying to make it all work. With my alimony and child support payments, I was left with next to nothing. My back account was wiped out and I had nothing but debt and paying for my daughter's college as well. I saw no end to the dark tunnel, but I made it through.

I know it hurts now and you are in the same dark tunnel. However, get help! I will say it again, get help! Heal yourself and concentrate only on you!

Please keep posting and please know that we deeply care about you.

(((Hugs))) and more (((Hugs)))

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How did you meet someone else?
#61: September 29, 2024, 09:53:28 PM
I was in that dark place too.  I am so glad that I pushed through.  I never would have believed back then that I would have joy again, that I would be traveling to new places I'd never been, that I'd have a new and better job. 

We are here, listening and understanding, and remembering being in that dark place.

Check in when you can.  Thinking of you!
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"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass - it's about learning to dance in the rain."

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How did you meet someone else?
#62: September 30, 2024, 11:42:17 PM
I just want to say like the rest of us; we (partly) know what you are going through. I know I had some severe low moments after BD. Just know we're here for you if you want somebody to talk to and if things get too rough try and get help through a doctor or therapist.

You can't imagine it right now, but it will get better!

Love TH!
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Together for 15 years, married for 4 years
H: 33, me: 33, D: 1,5
BD: april '22 (EA + 'I want to live alone, have no responsibilities')
Left home: june '22
Divorce final: october '22

“They didn’t cheat because of who you are. They chose to cheat because of who they’re not.” ~ Charles J. Orlando

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How did you meet someone else?
#63: October 01, 2024, 09:04:30 AM
Hearbeat I hope you are ok. We haven’t heard from you for a while. I was also once in your situation and I tried to take my life and ended up in a hospital. Now I am glad nothing happened to me. That person was not worth taking my life. If there’s someone you should protect, it’s yourself. Be kind to yourself and please talk to a therapist. It helped me get out of that rabbit hole.. please do not hurt yourself. You are valuable.
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Me 43 at BD
H    45 at BD
Married 11 yrs at BD, no kids,
BD May 2019 (I moved out Nov 2019)
EA or PA with ex gf (not sure), H spent 3 nights with the hoe during our vacation in July 2019, it was a friendly encounter according to H
H wanted D April 2020 seeing suspected OW2 (divorced with two kids) and 2 years older than him, H didn’t file the D
Clinging boomerang
6/21 H moved in with me; kicked him out 01/22
H turned into a vanisher, wants a Divorce, OW 3 (16 years younger and extreme sporty)
14.11.22 Divorce final, I'm done

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How did you meet someone else?
#64: October 21, 2024, 12:08:37 AM
Hi everyone. I’m in a tough spot still.

In the last few weeks I’ve worked really hard on a contract and finished it, but now I’m fighting for payment and I am hoping that resolves quickly. My living situation is still precarious. I’m able to remain where I am for the time being, but I’ve come to realize there are ways the housemate/landlord acts that leave me on edge or taken for granted. I’m trying to graciously move through it because I think our mutual friends and broader social circle does not need drama, and I truly think our connection would be far more neutral if not for this.

I may have an option to live in a different friend’s house next year. Someone I know owns a house here but is trying to get a contract to move to the US to be closer to a serious partner, in which case he’d rather not leave his house standing empty. It would be a really great deal for everyone if it works out, but there’s nothing on paper yet so I can’t rest on that just yet. I’m trying to be hopeful and I’m just sweating bullets about my last two invoices because I need it for rent.

My ex contacted me via email yesterday. I don’t know how to feel about it. He’s had time to mull things over and did apologize for ‘taking three months to work out what he needed’ and expressed regret, said he wouldn’t contact me again unless I responded. He said he missed the good parts of our relationship but felt he had to be alone. I am sad because it feels like another misguided attempt to let himself off the hook, even if he ended it with wishing me ‘peace and healing.’ I can’t ever trust this person again, and I’m aware that nothing in the email was an actual invitation to a discussion, so I just haven’t responded.

The pressure of everything makes me want to crack. In my hopeful dreams, my friend gets his job and gets to move, I get to live in his place (I love the area he’s in and I’d finally get some time and space to just exist with my cats), and my career takes off and is decently compensated. I would like to find a partner who loves me enough to build a life with me, not just go on endless escapist escapades. I’m lonely and scared but I’m trying.
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How did you meet someone else?
#65: October 23, 2024, 09:09:13 PM
Sending good thoughts your way, heartbeat.
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Survival Instructions for Newbies

The Apology Every LBS Deserves

My Journey

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass - it's about learning to dance in the rain."

"Don't become a container for bitterness.  It's a toxin that destroys what it's carried in."

h
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How did you meet someone else?
#66: February 03, 2025, 10:10:14 PM
How did you meet someone else?

It’s been a year. I’ve done my healing as best I can. I hardly want to be alive but I’m going to update for anyone out there who may care.


After my ex left, in his wake I had to figure out everything. I felt paralyzed. I still can’t get a date and I’ve realized I can’t have casual sex. My home life is suffocating often, I don’t have privacy or space to myself. I quietly hope I don’t get ra/ped when I do go out and try to meet people. Meanwhile, I accidentally found out that my ex went home to our home city and started a business in the kink scene there. He took aspects of my identity that he used to demean in front of friends (gender identity stuff), and now is using those same terms to describe himself. After years of telling me how exhausting I was for liking certain types of kink, and that he either was too excited to have consensual discussions or that he was too tired to talk about it after he’d do things like randomly start engaging in new kinks that we hadn’t discussed, he’s posed himself as a safe person and is claiming to be solo polyamorous. I don’t think he’s being safe but I can’t stop it. It’s firetrucking gross. He left me saying he wanted no obligations to anyone, only to employ the lowest accountability language possible to dovetail his way into a scene where people are often pushed to give the benefit of the doubt. For what it’s worth, in the end when he was spinning out at my expense, I actually remained open to changing our relationship to poly, and being gender fluid myself, had always encouraged exploration in that subject. I don’t think I deserved to be the learning ground he used and abused in order to get to whatever his current track is, and quite frankly, he doesn’t sound like he’ll ever do the healing work.

However, I’m left with both the physical and emotional scars he left on me, and he’d play it for an ‘oopsie well I had to find my truth’ (aka I needed socially acceptable language to destroy a long term relationship and firetruck whoever I can). Nice. I do deserve a kind partner who I don’t need to teach empathy to at this stage, but…

I’m struggling. I’m about to move again and the situation is tenuous. I’m still vulnerable in the sense that I don’t have much money. The housing contract I’m in is with a friend but it’s rather complicated. I’m hoping it will all work out because if things go as we hope, I’ll finally be living alone and then maybe I can find anyone to date me and actually show me kindness so I can embark on healing from my sexual trauma, which has been near impossible. I pay over 1k a month for a room where I keep my desk, my cat furnitire, my bed and paper thin walls. I’d like to think this is a symbol of my survival but who the firetruck would want me in this mess? At least if things work out with my next place I won’t need to keep literally all my possessions in one room, but there’s a lot of details that are out of my hands.

I’m tired. I’ve gone to therapy, I’ve done the work, I have sorted through my regrets. I have a mountain to cross with career stuff, I am extremely keen on staying in the country I was abandoned in, because if it fails I end up back in the United States and I simply can’t stomach it. I’d love to get sterilized. I want enough to pay my bills and renew my visa and feed my cats. I have begun to realize there were abuses committed to me at the end of the relationship, in the midst of the MLC, that I or no one could possibly deserve, no matter what mistakes I regret on my own part. I want to receive the love I deserve (and no I don’t believe that one has to reach some arbitrary goal post of life to fully deserve such things, I am actively working on what I need regardless and I am ready to be loved and actually cared for for once in my life).

I want to die in the sense that I have only experienced existence as survival for a very long time; I want to live in the sense that I would just like things to be vaguely okay.

Has anyone else had a spouse or partner leave and then disingenuously use the language of polyamory to excuse their actions? I find it ethically disgusting. I will never seek out my ex again and I leave him to the spiral of his MLC, knowing he won’t get what he deserves, but with any luck I will.
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How did you meet someone else?
#67: February 04, 2025, 09:08:31 AM
Not my life experience, but if you remove the gender/sexuality specifics, many of us have experienced our ex/spouses lying about us or using some of our characteristics or values or experiences as part of their narrative. Why do they do that? Usually bc there is not much ‘there’ there….they wear others’ coats bc they lack their own, if that makes sense.

You do you, heartbeat.
In life, as you probably know, you doing you has very little to do with what others say or do.
Right now, you’re probably a bit early on in your own healing process to see that what your ex is saying or doing in this area of their life says nothing at all about you. It’s no reflection on you, it takes nothing away from you (unless you allow it to) and in a positive sense it’s no longer your circus.

We get those feelings you describe of survival vs living, of how hard this is, of how it feels like a relentless marathon rather than the mighty quick bound you might wish it were. But tbh that seems to be what recovery is….slow and steady wins the race, tortoise rather than hare. The most important thing is to find whatever kind of healthy fuel keeps you going and sometimes that’s a lot of small things rather than one or two big things.

I don’t know how or from who you are gleaning this info, but I would encourage you to stop looking. Shut the door on it in order to concentrate your mental and emotional energy on all of those things you are currently trying to build as part of your next version of you doing you.
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T: 18  M: 12 (at BD) No kids.
H diagnosed with severe depression Oct 15. BD May 16. OW since April 16, maybe earlier. Silent vanisher mostly.
Divorced April 18. XH married ow 6 weeks later.


"Option A is not available so I need to kick the s**t out of Option B" Sheryl Sandberg

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How did you meet someone else?
#68: February 04, 2025, 01:21:37 PM
Oh don’t worry Treasur, I hear you loud and clear and I’m happy to elaborate a little on my brain space about it all.

I accidentally found this info out on an old social media account, I had logged in to basically clear out old data and I clicked through to a profile that I genuinely did not know was my ex’s until I actually saw it. I glanced through it, saw what I needed to see (and more if I’m being honest, but basically I verified it was him). I noticed that things he had insisted were ‘too bothersome’ from me are part of his forward facing identity in the kink community in our old city. I was never and will never be down on someone for exploring queerness, sexuality and kink, but I sure as hell know that it’s wrong to have spent a lot of drunk nights yelling at me about how much easier I had it, telling me that he couldn’t control himself with trying kink or flipping it around and insisting I had too many boundaries, only to go and posture himself in this way, so I did the only thing one can do in all this and blocked his ass before turning to my closest friends and asking them to hold space for me while simultaneously needing to fill them in on a lot of details about my former sex life that I otherwise would have never mentioned. Doing this made me realize that some of the current struggles I have with sex or casual hookups are in part because I had gotten used to tailoring a lot of my desires to his fragile ego and inability to communicate maturely, and that the part about this no longer being my circus is wildly correct. I have spent a year making sure I haven’t wasted anyone’s time or jumping into anything too fast, as well as being extremely clear about my standards. I still of course worry about being a burden or ‘too much,’ and I can’t tell if I’m attractive anymore, though my friends tend to tell me I look better than I think. I do, sadly, believe that at some point I’ll hear that this has blown up in my ex’s face, but it’s so beyond being my problem that it’s not even funny. I felt like throwing up the day that I found this and it made me feel awful, but I didn’t even cry. I am far past the realization that I create my own closure and I’m luckily I’m a creator in nearly every aspect of my life. It’s still painful to realize how deceitful he was and how this has all shaken out but the amount of good friends I have and the work I’ve done has largely pulled me through it.

I am tired of not being loved correctly. I have goals for this year and I’m far more concerned about housing and finances than I am about any dumb, potentially dangerous $h!te my ex is doing, and I am at the point where I keep saying to my friends that my door has swung open and I’m ready for a big gorgeous angel of a partner to appear in my life so I can spend ridiculous amounts of time giving them my love. Don’t get me wrong; it often feels like I’m going to die alone. But I do deserve a kind partner who doesn’t have selfish avoidant tendencies and I do deserve to move on. I’m doing my best to recover the solo parts of my life but it’s the first time in my life I’ve realized that outside of those important but mutable aspects, I do have a lot to give and there is nothing worthwhile left to grieve in the loss of my old relationship.

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#69: February 04, 2025, 04:03:35 PM
Hello

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I felt paralyzed. I still can’t get a date and I’ve realized I can’t have casual sex. My home life is suffocating often, I don’t have privacy or space to myself. I quietly hope I don’t get ra/ped when I do go out and try to meet people. Meanwhile, I accidentally found out that my ex went home to our home city and started a business in the kink scene there. He took aspects of my identity that he used to demean in front of friends (gender identity stuff), and now is using those same terms to describe himself.

Understand that MLCers tend not to be creative when it comes to living the "new" life and often repeat everything that they did in the past with their ex spouse.  My best advice is to avoid worrying or concerning yourself with what your ex is up to.

The dating scene is crazy and it has its ups and downs. Maybe you need to do group activities and just enjoy going on hikes, tasting wine, or going to the movies as a whole group. Just enjoy being with the group and not focusing on the dating aspect. You have to get to know someone first. From your posts, I don't feel you are ready to date let alone get back into a relationship.

Instead, you need to focus on finding bliss within yourself. Get yourself back on your feet again and support yourself. Being independent and self sufficient will build the confidence you need to enter a relationship on equal standing. Please don't get involved with someone because you have to have somebody. Be in a relationship where both parties mutually benefit.

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I am actively working on what I need regardless and I am ready to be loved and actually cared for for once in my life).

Read other threads-just like you, they all had their darkest moments. They were used and discarded. That's not love, that's abuse. Yet, if you stay true to yourself, you can find love-love for yourself. Until you can validate yourself, no one else can do it for you. Be you. Love you.

Just know you are in my prayers and understand that this is your journey to recovery.

Keep posting,

(((Ready)))

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