[Goldentouch]

Hi!
A few months ago my boyfriend left me for another woman. We lived together for 5 years so I believed it would be the two of us forever.
I have accepted we are over, but he left me with the words; I have been unhappy for many many years. You should have done better. My new girlfriend makes me way more happy than you ever have.
I had no idea about this and I have always looked after him as much as I can.
Now that we have broken up, I have realized that during all these years he have killed my confidence and self esteem.
Do you have any tips on how I slowly but surely can be myself again?
Right now I have no idea who I am anymore.

[CHANDLERS WISH]

Welcome to WH.

Firstly, I want to tell you something. When a person cheats, they rarely if ever take the blame. Their way out so they can continue on with their life is to bring the other person down so low and to make it all their fault.

This is what this jerk did and I call him a jerk because, just because two people may not be as suited as they thought that they were, togetherness for that long should mean, "sorry, it's not you it's me, we just drifted apart" not a cop out so he can smile and walk.

Take that into your heart and mind. Not the words he spoke. Let's face it many, many years is like 3 or more so if he wasn't supposedly happy for the first year or two he had the chance then instead of wasting your life..

"You should have done better" . Suggests immediately what you have acknowledged " he killed your confidence and self esteem". He was controlling love. Never had your interests at heart at all, only his own. If he has another woman now, she was also in the picture before you both broke up, you were never his focus, his focus was HIMSELF and he took what he wanted.

Smile in the knowing Thank GOODNESS he's gone and you can finally be you and only date those that accept you for who you are, love who you are and that's the only person you are going to give to next time.

Be happy honestly. This girl is going to go through what you just did, sad huh?

Write a post it sticker - Sucker I am stronger and more beautiful than you know- Put it on your door, your mirror, your purse and read it 5 times a day every day and smile.

Then go and do something for you, or buy something for you... Re-connect better with your friends and make new ones. Keep reminding yourself he was a controlling person who never allowed you to be you, rather, bought you down enough to do what he wanted and finally you are rid of that and can be YOU 100% finally.

[atskitty2]

I wish I had more time...So much to encourage you with here. It's time to focus on you. Get back to the things you loved before you lost yourself in this relationship & life with him. Resist the urge to get into another relationship, spend time doing things for yourself & rediscovering what makes you tick.
Take some down time to just be with yourself & fall in love with yourself again and figure out who you are on this side of that relationship.

[Goldentouch]

Thank you so much for your kind words.
I feel much better when others tells me he is a jerk. Sometimes it feels like this is just in my head, if you know what I mean?
I'm just so sad it had to end this way and also so confused that the man I thought was the only one who would never hurt me could do something like this.
Maybe I'm still in shock?
What bothers me most is that he a few days before he left me, said he loved me so much and that he would die without me. We had just moved to a house too and talked about having children soon.
He even let me plan our five years anniversary. And at our anniversary he went away with her instead.
I only hear his mean words in my head all day and wish that the perfect picture I had of him can disappear some day soon. Because I really can not understand that the one I loved unconditionally could do this. Maybe its best not to understand?

But as you said; I am glad he is out of my life. This would have happened at some point anyway I guess. Better now than after having a child.

I have promised myself not to look for a boyfriend of one year at least. Right now it feels like it will take about a million years to get back to normal again.
We were best friends for 3 years before we got together so we grew up together. The interests I had when I was 17 does not interest me at all anymore.
I have atleast started to get in touch with old friends and hope for the best!

Do you have any suggestions for activities that might suit me?

[effy2014]

In no way is this your fault. It may well be true that the other woman makes him happier, but you are not a mind reader. Men as a rule do not communicate well and your ex seems to be on the worst side of that spectrum. His silent unhappiness -- if it was not just an excuse for breaking up -- is completely on him. That he blamed it on you is reprehensible. He couldn't even take ownership of his issues.

You are way better without him. Take CW's advice and reconnect with you. I would add that, when you are ready for a relationship, make communication the highest priority. Be sure your new man has the ability to express his needs and is receptive to yours. Check in with him often just to make sure things are ok. If you like to read relationship books, I highly recommend Dr. Sue Johnson's book "Hold Me Tight". It is a great prescription for a lasting relationship.

[Euphoric]

The only thing I want to add to the advice already posted is this: be mindful to never lose sight of who you are. Feeling like you have lost your identity can be overwhelming. You don't want to wake up one morning and think - I'm x's daughter, xx's wife, xxx's mother, etc., and no longer take time to do things you once enjoyed. It's necessary to compromise and prioritize when adding people into your life, but that by no means suggests you lose sight of the simple pleasures in life that are important to you!

You don't need a man that needs babying. Happiness comes from within and if a person thinks it is your job to make them happy, then they have major issues. Again, compromise…yes, become a doormat…NO!

Living together suggests committed relationship. If he cheated on you (and he did), chances are he'll cheat on her. It doesn't feel like it now because of the hateful comments he made to you, but he did you a favor. He didn't deserve you. Think about that…he didn't deserve you. Quite sobering isn't it?

[Something_Awesome]

Jerk is too kind a word Chandlers. Your ex was trying to convince himself that you were bad to get over the guilt of breaking up with you, and throwing away 5 years of your life. He understood that for a woman time can be precious, especially if you are interested in starting a family.

Trust me on this, I am a dude. Guys will often try to get you to break up with them, or convince themselves in their mind that you are very bad to be able to eliminate the guilt they feel for pursuing an infatuation. When someone is infatuated with another, it can drive them to do really stupid things (especially if it's a guy), even if it means trying to invalidate his 5 years with you.

[Goldentouch]

Thanks again for your posts. It means more than you know right now.

Today is a day when I'm angry instead of sad. He might have crushed me completely right now, but one day I will show him that I'm much stronger than him. I really have learned a lesson.
To be completely honest, I thought I would die in the first weeks after the breakup. If I did not die of grief, I would have died of dehydration after all the tears.
After that, I felt something strange and something I never thought I'd feel. I felt relief. No more requirements to make him happy.
And after that I realized that he was a spoiled baby all this time. I have even provide for him all these 5 years.
I get mad at myself when I read what I just wrote, because I should have known this a long time ago.
But maybe it's good that he's been a moron, it makes it easier to try to move on.
Knowing that he gave up a relationship of 5 years for a girl he talked to on skype for 3 weeks and met once makes it easier to realize that he is not worth me.

Thank god I'm still pretty young, so I have time for kids in the future. Although I'm sad to never get the children we talked about. We had even picked out names.

Today I did something I have never done. Ordered beauty products, self-help books and subscriptions on magazines for $ 500. Used the money we had saved for our anniversary. Felt better than I thought.

[Baboy]

Golden, you've received some good advice here.

Assuming your bf was unhappy with you almost from the start as "many, many years" suggests (which total unhappiness is something I doubt), yes, it was reprehensible for him to throw that in your face after all that time. Should he have not communicated the source(s) of his unhappiness years ago and started some dialogue? Either the problem would then have been resolved or the relationship dissolved earlier. I join in the view that you have nothing about which to blame yourself. As a guy, if find his conduct shameful and immature. Probably he would not have been great father material.

He found some excitement through a new girl showing interest in him, without knowing anything about him. Once the novelty wears off, she'll probably be seen as unsatisfactory as well. He decided to dump you for a bit of excitement and, to justify such foolishness, he had to recast his relationship with you as an unhappy one. Disgusting that, as he was walking out the door, he had the temerity to lay the denouement of the relationship at your feet. To call him scum would be placing him too high. I'd call him too low to kick and too wet to step on.

Notwithstanding my indictment of your bf's character, I'll part company with some of the posters above who suggest you wasted 5 years of your life with him. I do not think you should have to look back on your time with him as 5 lost years. That's a bit of a burden to carry and somewhat unwarranted I'll venture. No doubt you had a life apart from your bf. No doubt there were some good times. No doubt you have some good memories, although perhaps painful to recall so soon after the breakup. No doubt you learned a lot and grew while you were with him and you have learned a lot and gained strength through this process. I do not see any of that as a waste. You will go forward more experienced, wiser and better equipped to recognize a quality man when one enters you life, as will surely follow. A wag has it that men are like busses, another comes along every 5 minutes. There should be a few good ones in the mix.

[jen1447]

Today is a day when I'm angry instead of sad. He might have crushed me completely right now, but one day I will show him that I'm much stronger than him. I really have learned a lesson.

Just as an added note, you're dealing with this in the intellectual realm for the most part right now, since the breakup is still relatively fresh. That basically just means that you're telling yourself things, trying to make sense of it, finding faults where they lay and all that kind of stuff. The reason none of that ever feels particularly good is that the healing comes from the emotional realm, and the way that works is very different. There's basically one thing and one thing only that makes you heal emotionally, and that's time. In the short term you can tell yourself he was a jerk (he was) and be mad (you should be) and feel wronged (you were), but it doesn't add up to much comfort somehow. But you'll know you've won when somewhere down the line he and his memory just don't affect you anymore. At that point you'll see him for what he really is and be glad - genuinely glad, as in "Oh my god, I almost spent the rest of my life with that guy?!?" - that he's out of the picture.