Does the pain stop?

[Empty]

Hi, I'm a new to this but have been struggling for a long time. I hope that maybe someone has some insight on how to let go and feel whole again.

In October after 5 months of marriage and a 10 year relationship my husband decided he was unhappy. I wasn't sure how to react, and the fight was to the extreme, wanting to know why and what was going on and how things went from great a week earlier to "i'm unhappy", knowing that both of us are bi polar I decided to stay with a family member to give him a few days so that he can figure out what the problem is. Two weeks later I found out from a mutual friend who was our best man at our wedding that he was sleeping with another one of our friends, a girl that I was close with, who helped me plan my wedding. It's now been 10 months, and yes i've been counting. I couldn't get an explaination from him, I wanted to know why and still do. All I ever get is, nothing happened til after I left, and that we had nothing in common and all sorts of stuff. During those first few months he would invite me out to dinner during the week, and text me all day long, get my hopes up telling me that "its not like that" with her. Then the weekends would come and he would shut his phone off. It's been a long time now, and we have both said terrible things, it went from I'm confused and this should have never of happened to I don't care what happens to you. I don't know what to do, the anger and shame is building now. After all this time it seems to be getting worse. He has not asked for a reconciliation, but that's all I want in my heart even though my head tells me no. I can't let go, I don't know how to walk away from someone I'm so in love with even though he is such a terrible person. I feel like I'm drowning and I can't keep holding myself up. I went to therapy a few months back and reliving it with therapists makes it worse. I just don't know what to do. All I want is closure and resolution and he won't give that to me, so the fights and the nastiness continues. He doesn't understand what this feels like because I would have never done something like this to him. If I pull myself together and don't contact him for a few days, then he contacts me asking me how i'm doing, like he cares or something. It's a mess and I don't know how to stop any of it.

[CHANDLERS WISH]

It seems that marriage was either the downfall of this relationship seeing as you were together for 10 years... He had trouble with commitment.. Who's decision was it to get married? Yours?

That's along time to be together, off course your going to be hurt and in pain and I am so sorry for you.

Cheating is one thing, but with a friend especially someone who shared that special day with you is horrid..

Yes he is a jerk... through and through regardless of either of your Bipolar situations.

Love, Counselling does "eventually" help just not when your not ready to hear it....

Your not...

How to you stop any of it? Change your number... Refuse to speak with him... It may have been 10 years but remember who you are and what you are worth.

CW

[Empty]

Honestly it was both of our decisions, I never forced the issue once since we were together. He was the one that said, pick out a ring, we were engaged for a while and then planned the wedding. He was also the one that said he wanted a decent size wedding (which he is now stuck paying the loan for). I wasn't a bad girlfriend or wife, I'm a quiet person, and I like to let loose once in a while, that was the thing with us, we had our days where we would just wander around the house doing our own thing, then watch movies on a rainy day, or go out and have some fun. I'm more of a social butterfly than he was, but I was content and happy. The plan was (everything was always planned) that we would buy a house this past spring, and be preg this month to start our family. That's what I think makes all of this worse, taking my dreams of a family. I'm 31 and although a lot of people say that's plenty of time to start over and have a family, my medical issues might keep that from happening in a few years. The only thing I had got, and the therapist I did talk to said the same thing, he is self destructive because of his childhood, and he's afraid to be a father because he doesn't want to turn out like his. 2 weeks before everything went sour, we were at a friends house for a bbq, we had more fun in that one day then we had in a while, he walked up to me during beer pong (lol) and said you have no idea how much im in love with you at this very minute, more in love then I have ever been. He said it was because of how much fun we were having, and i replied by saying well M you never wanted to play any of this stuff with me, it was always about his friends. It was an amazing day, the week after he said he had a nightmare about being a father and didn't know if he could do it. I said I'll wait until you are ready. M is a very closed off person, after 10 years he had finally started to let the wall down a little, he's not an emotional person and has trouble communicating his feelings, but the couple of months leading up to this I saw a change in him, he would talk a little more and actually get tears in his eyes. I don't know what happened to change everything in the course of those two weeks, and I did eventually get the phone records and she was the one that started contacting him about a week before I even knew we had problems. Shes 6 years younger than me, she's not pretty, i'm not saying I'm amazing looking but she is def 2 steps below me. She was literally the town "who#" and had been with so many people and so many other married men, I had kind of pushed her out of our lives for a little while, as did the rest of our friends because we were all tired about her drama and guy issues. Even M said he couldn't stand her being around because all she did was whine and complain. Guess he learned to stand her. There is so much to this story. I'm looking for support from people here now, I decided to cut the last links out a couple of weeks ago with mutual friends, I was tired of finding more things out and people bringing it up all the time. Some of them understood, some did not.

[WildChild]

It's going to hurt for a while. Talking or writing can help you balance your feelings. Get out and try some new things, is there anything you have had a passing interest in but haven't explored? This may be a good time to pursue it, start expanding your horizons.

You can't "fix" him. Only he can do that. You could have been a catalyst, part of his support system, but if he has kneejerked into a response that cuts you out there little you can do. Obviously he isn't self aware enough or emotionally evolved enough to see what he is doing. I'm also dealing with a man who has kneejerked into a very negative emotional state, I think he's mad at the world and I'm highly suspect because I care for him. I'm doing a lot of self examination because I have attracted this over and over. I'm trying to use this as a springboard for greater self understanding and development.

You've given this 10 years, there are two ways of looking at it; one is that you don't want to feel that is a loss and want to fight to save it, the other is that you should cut your losses. The thing with dealing with people is that you can only control you and your responses. No matter what you do or think, it may have no effect on his actions or thinking. So move on, find new interests. Don't abandon all your old mutual freinds, pick and choose. Get out and meet some new people too. Time will heal, expanded interests and activities will speed the process

[Empty]

I spent all those years "trying to fix him". And he finally had learned what a real family was, and was able to take all his friends to my parents house and party for the weekends, he seemed so proud to be able to do those things. When we had a party he had invited his mother and step father I think just to throw it in their faces of how much my parents loved him and respected him. It's been years of a rollarcoaster, but we had related to eachother in some odd way. The way it all happened is what lingers, the whys and what happened and what do I do now. I went right from my parents to him. I've never been independent in my whole life, I've always needed that extra attention. And now, I had to get out of my sisters lol, so i have a new place with all new things, and it's just lonely. I tried dating, and it seems like people want more than I can give, I always lay all my cards on the table, that I have really good days, and then some reallllyyy bad days. But like I said, they still want more than I can give. And the last 3 people that I cut out, I had met through his friends, it's their wives and girlfriends, so letting them go was for the best. I know if i'm going to do this I have to do it right, and start fresh. I have my sister right down the road, she's not around but at least I know she's there. My parents are 2 hours away which isn't too bad. But still no one seems to understand the pain, which hasn't even gone away a little lately. I get a lot of "your a pretty girl you'll be fine" what the heck does being pretty have to do with anything. When all of them have been in relationships for like a year or two or three. I just don't know. I don't know who I am without him, because I lost myself a long time ago. I try to find peace, and some days i'll sit here and read for hours and loose myself in the book, but then it all comes rushing back. I know what's right and what I should be doing, but I can't seem to find the strength to pull it together. He's the one that has brought up divorce from the beginning, but yet hasn't done anything about it. And i'm not filing because I know he just wants me to pay for it, and I'm done paying for everything. Also, his health ins is way better than my company, so i'm gonna ride that part of it out til he decides to do something, let him cover the ins he screwed me over, now he's stuck with it, oh and the wedding loan, which will always be the best part. He'll be paying that off for years.

[WildChild]

The, "you're pretty" thing is an assumption that you will attract some other man's attention. It kind of reduces you to a commodity and that's not comforting. I've dealt with that all my life; the you're intelligent and attractive, you should have no trouble with men. It's a lot of hooey. I have tried to own the fact that it's My choices that are the real determinate factor but now I'm coming to understand that is true- up to a point.
Some people are really good at masking who and/or what they are really about until they have you completely drawn in emotionally. Once that has happened, you are too likely to overlook or make excuses for their unacceptable behavior or indicators of big issues coming down the road. Why can be a variety of factors, maybe we were sheltered or abused and just lack the skills to detect these problems, we may have become so conditioned to being treated badly that we can't really believe that it's possible to have a relationship where we are treated lovingly and well.

[Empty]

I just got sucked in, and I know now that yes this is probably better off. I've tried blocking him from my phone, which is fantastic, thank you parental controls lol. And I've given up on blocking the emails because he'll just create new ones. If I could go 2 weeks or longer without contacting him, this would be a lot easier. The bigger issues is because I had no idea that this was going to be a permanant thing, is that he didn't allow me back in the house to pack everything, he did it. And now as the months go by I realize how much stuff i'm missing, maybe not big stuff, but even little things like photographs and bs stuff. That's what the aruging is about now, he ended up moving in with his friend and his wife (who was my best friend) because I wouldn't help him financially anymore. Turns out he is causing major problems in thier marriage now, they got married the year before us. And the guy he grew up with, him and his "boys" from childhood are still very close and the women in thier lives get pushed out, it's the way it's always been. He's just so messed up, he will still tell me how down he is all the time, and I laughed at him the other day, saying oh whats wrong she doesn't make you happy already. It's just f'd up the way it all happened.

I need to find a way to make new friends that don't know him at all, I went to a club down there about 2 months ago, not 1 guy will approach me because they all know who he is. So now that i'm about 30mins north, I'm going to start going out around here where I don't know anyone. I'm not looking for relationships or anything, just friendship and some fun.

I'm looking for my own idenitiy I guess.

Thank you so much for listening, it has made me feel so much better. If I babble on too much I apologize, I just have a lot to say about him!

[WildChild]

It's good you are out on your own. I really believe that everyone and especially women need to live on their own (as in not in a relationship) and be completely self supporting for a hew years before they entangle their lives with someone else's. You need to know absolutely that you can take care of yourself, so that when you let someone into your life it's because you enjoy them and not from dependency.

Do try to find some places other than clubs or bars to meet people. You just don't interact very deeply in those settings, you really can't assess very well what kind of person they really are.

[Empty]

I agree, there are a lot of people in bars and clubs that are fake, and I don't trust the situations. Maybe i'll just run into someone at like the book store or something.

Today seems to be an ok day, I wish they were all like this, yesterday I think I cried for 10 hours.

I miss so much of my old life.

[WildChild]

Right now you shouldn't be think about anything but friends. You need to get yourself emotionally stable and healed before you bring anyone else into your life.