[superdog]

I just have a couple of q's .

In response songandance, dont know about your situation or what kind of father your h was, but in mine my h was not involved as he should have been. He worked shifts where he would not be here to help me for 10 days straight and then he did his own things in his spare time. Now this is where the pause doesnt mean anything to me or that i could have prevented that. I was on my own with two kids, no help from h and when i asked for his time he selfishly did his own thing. He paused me, i had to pick up his slack too. Again that bit takes two.

In saying that my h's trauma came from my illness having the babies so perhaps he was gone from the start.

Question. Has this experience made you change your mind any about there being more than one person for you in this life? I am coming round to the idea that yes there might just be and this is all part of the meet up plan.

Sd
X

[Ready2Transform]

Question. Has this experience made you change your mind any about there being more than one person for you in this life? I am coming round to the idea that yes there might just be and this is all part of the meet up plan.

I'm still very much fleshing out my feelings on this one. It's been a huge part of my belief structure for my entire adult life (we got together when I was 17) that we were very much "meant to be", and I felt other life experiences also pointed toward that. I really valued having that experience of being such a solid team for so long.

But I can also very clearly see in others that I have known my entire life that the lessons and experiences they've had when being open and not idealizing one relationship or partner have enriched their lives. I really just have to work on whatever 'block' I have that keeps me protecting this one bond, which has been legally broken for two years now, morally broken several years longer, and continuing to value it as the only one I could ever possibly experience.

[Dji76]

I never believed there was just one person we were meant for. Its a big world out there and there are lots of people we would be compatible with if we are open to it.

[superdog]

Hey R2T,

I think i am of the generation who's parents and grandparents did the whole "you only get married once"  " this ones for life" thing. Feeling like you've failed becuase it wasnt like that. Well to be fair there was times growing up that my parents probably should have taken a break!  My grandparents celebrated 50+ years as have my parents, but honestly were they all happy years, no not really.

And also women were not as independent as they are now and previous generational women could not stand on their own two feet financially. Now it is different and we have different choices.  We dont need to stay coupled with men who cheat lie abuse etc etc like our husbands and wives here have done. We dont HAVE to accept that for ourselves. Accept who they are yes, but we have a choice to keep such toxicity out of our own lives.

I am open to the idea that perhaps there is more that one person who fits the second half of our lives better than the one who fit the first half. Its true we pick our partners based on our own development state. So i have developed but my h hasnt. We will never be atracted to one another in this scenario. I will attract someone on my new development level and that excites me to think that at last i would experience something of mature healthy love instead of what i have had this pasat 44 years. My mum was immature, then my h was immature. Time for something a bit more grown up.

I dont feel lonely, i am quite happy with no h and just being me. But i believe in fate and that things come to you when they are meant to. If a mature healthy man came into my life i would take the chance. But i am not going looking for him.

Just purging my thoughts.

Sd
X

[superdog]

Thats the difference DJI76, before we looked for fireworks and sparklers, now we look for compatability and companionship because we knwo the fireworks and sparklers were just a crock of $h!te anyway that go BANG.

[Dji76]

Well said SD. Its definitely different meeting women now than when i met my x at 19. Im not really looking for anything which i guess makes me open to lots possibilities. I havent been dating but for 3 months but im yet to find anyone i really connect with.

[LaughLoveLive]

But I can also very clearly see in others that I have known my entire life that the lessons and experiences they've had when being open and not idealizing one relationship or partner have enriched their lives. I really just have to work on whatever 'block' I have that keeps me protecting this one bond, which has been legally broken for two years now, morally broken several years longer, and continuing to value it as the only one I could ever possibly experience.

This is so beautifully written and encapsulates much of my feeling in his subject also.
But I have  lots of questions these days, questions I never thought I would need to question
I thought we were "for life" - we enjoyed each other's company, seemed a solid unit, seemed to be growing together. I loved the companionship and contentment of a long term relationship
I wanted to be "for life".
Comments from friends and family show that considered us "for life"
Like superdog mentioned, I feel a sense of failure that we are not " for life"
Is it pride?
Is it fear?

My parents recently celebrated 50 years marriage and sure there were tough times but the point is that they never gave up on each other and saw their marriage as bigger than fleeting feelings of unhappiness or dissatisfaction.
I don't think I looked for fireworks, I always valued contentment but I suspect H wanted continuous fireworks which isn't how it works. And part of the reason an affair seems so exciting when compared to a long term relationship.

I agree that theoretically there have always been other people I could be compatible with and that I could have built a satisfying relationship with someone else. But practically I had chosen a life partner. I was building and sustaining a compatible relationship with him which had been working well for 25+ years. I wasn't into discovering whether I might be able to build a life with someone else.

Now.... Despite my own feelings of failure this doesn't seem to be the feeling of people around me. There might be some who "blame" the LBS ("he wouldn't have strayed if he was happy at home" sort of thing) but that doesn't seem to be the view of people I care about and frankly I'm not interested in the views of others.

So I'm starting to feel OK about a new partner for the remainder of my life. I can see it could be wonderful and I would really like to have a life companion, a go-to partner again. I think it's important to be able to be happy just being me too so I'm working on that and not actively looking but if someone came along and was interested I might just think about reciprocating the interest.

[Priya]

In the midst of our spouses having affairs and blaming us for that and ourselves torturing us with tormenting questions as to why did this happen??
Then reading articles that we may have failed to fulfill their emotional or physical needs which could be the other way around too but we still managed to stay commited and loyal to our spouse
My husband who was never romantic with me but very loving has become a real Casanova with the OW
It is almost like they are acting a part in a movie and how much they love each other and cannot stay without each other when they have known each other only for a year and he has known me for 22
Yes I did not know he was unhappy at all until after the discovery of his affair lately he has been saying how unhappy he was in the marriage and how this person is making him so happy
So we get so depressedistrnibg to all this and his betrayal and the articles which mention how we made them vulnerable for an affair?

[jjal]

As I have had a bit of time to reflect. I know there were some things I didn't do well -- like tell her how great she was, that I loved her every single day, wasn't attentive to her needs, and I wasn't good at relaying what I needed. All boiled down to communication issues. But I tried asking what was wrong when I noticed something was amiss, all I got was "nothing". I know my communication skills weren't fantastic, but I refuse to shoulder all the blame for the split. And that's what it felt like when the bomb dropped.

With a few honest rounds of communication during those final few weeks, issues could have been addressed and worked on in earnest. But she chose to walk away.