tl;dr long rant, I don’t care if anybody reads it, I just want to get it out because I’ve been depressed and suicidal for months now (not so much suicidal now, I’m not in any need of immediate help, but it’s scary how my brain was working through the logistics of getting it done).
42 M, I’ve been through breakups in the past, I’ve been through plenty of failed relationships for a variety of reasons, but I’m coming out of a ~10 year relationship now with somebody whom I have a kid with and we’ve been partners through alot of shit together, but I think I’m just done now and it’s tearing me up inside.
It started a few months ago, she was finishing up nursing school, which I had been supporting her for the past year through it financially (paying her rent) and helping her with most of her classes. It was supposed to be a big achievement, but the week before her final exam, she told me she it was over, that she’d been seeing somebody else for a few months and that she didn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore. I was devastated, but stayed around like a pathetic dog because we have a kid together and her being successful would help everyone out in raising him. Even though I had just had my heart broken, I helped out with some post-graduation things, thinking maybe it was just a temporary thing, maybe things would turn around once the stress of graduation and her nursing board exam passed, but nothing really changed, I just got more and more pathetic and suicidal.
Her behavior though after graduation started becoming problematic though, she hadn’t passed the state certification exam (the requirement to actually becoming an RN), but she’d basically just checked out at that point. She was more stressed about planning for her graduation party than she was for studying for the exam. She failed the exam and essentially has 45 more days until she can take the exam, but still she doesn’t seem to care that much about studying for it. Things apparently broke off with whoever the other person was that she was seeing, or so she said, and then started talking about traveling across the country to Seattle to work some nursing jobs out there, as if she was basically just tossing 2 years’ worth of schooling down the drain.
Things briefly rekindled for us the past two weeks and things seemed happy again, though in my mind I suspected I was just being used again, but I was tired of being depressed. She wanted it to be an open relationship though, no strings attached, and I stupidly agreed, just telling her that I didn’t want to know anything about anyone. else. On Wednesday, she wanted me to watch our son while she said she was going out to study with a girl-friend from school. Thought nothing of it and was glad she was applying herself. The next morning, I stopped by her place to pick up something for our son before he went to school, she wasn’t there, bed was empty (she normally sleeps in). When I called to ask where she had been at, there was no response, just dodging the question, it was obvious she’d gone out with somebody else and stayed the night with them, and she hung up on me.
I know I had opened myself up to it by agreeing to a NSA relationship in the first place, and I thought maybe I could distance myself emotionally from it, but I couldn’t do it, I felt betrayed, after all we had been through and all I had done to help her over the course of our relationship, I just couldn’t go through with it, I can’t willingly go along with that with somebody I care so deeply about (even if it’s not reciprocated).
In a way, I was glad it happened, because it gave me the anger I needed to break things off between us for good I think, but I’m so pathetically lonely and touch/attention-starved that I don’t know that I’d be able to keep myself from falling back into the relationship if she tried to start things up again. One of the big complicating factors is that we have a kid together that we co-parent and we’re constantly picking him up back and forth between us, so it’s not like I can completely cut myself off, but it’s painful to think about her moving on with somebody else, I don’t know how co-parenting couples get past things like that.
And so everything just feels pointless to me now. Life feels empty. All my future plans had revolved around our relationship and plans together, it all just hinged on her getting through nursing school and then we were going to start building a life together, and now it feels like I have nothing to look forwards to. Obviously I have a son I love very much, but I just feel a big emptiness inside that I can’t get past. The events of the past week with the election have further compounded things, but I’m at the point where I just don’t care about that even. I don’t care if the world burns.
Close your eyes. Cast yourself into the future 10 years from now. You’re 52. Your ex has her own life of some kind that you only intersect with on matters of your child. You yourself are in a relationship with your true soulmate. You smile when you see your child is looking at the world of early adulthood. You’re content, and its the most wonderful feeling. Its a calmness that is safe and warmed by the love you have in your life. Its not the amazing thrill ride of extreme happiness (which eventually comes to an end), but instead an enduring feeling of “home” with your soulmate and your child that will last until the day you die. You remember life 10 years ago when your world felt like it was collapsing around you when you learned the true nature of your ex. You remember how hard it was to mourn that relationship, but how the actions you took afterward put yourself back together and ended up leading you to the content life you have today.
That is your future.
You have three tasks now:
- Continue to be an amazing parent to your child
- Mourn the relationship including the vision and woman she used to be to you. That person is gone. There is no resurrecting her. The person that remains today looks and sounds like her, but its not her. The person before you hurt you deeply. The person you knew would never do that, but she’s gone forever now.
- Find the path and get on it that leads you to the future I listed above. Become a whole person again, and be worthy of the love of your soulmate when you meet her.
I believe in you! You’ve got this! Now get to work making this a reality.
Hey. This shows you that you’re vulnerable, feeling, breathing,…human. it’s okay to feel broken for a bit when your world breaks.
We all feel weak. I do. We can have communion in that. Much love
I don’t think at all you’re pathetic. Dude, that’s a hard situation to navigate. Well done that you put your child in the first place!
Sorry man, I think you should focus on taking care of yourself. Get into a situation where you can see her as little as possible. Go to therapy. You’ll work through your emotions and feel better in time. It sounds like she is not emotionally stable or mature at all, and you should move on. It’s hard, for sure, but will be better for your mental health and well-being than trying to stay connected to someone who wants to date other people. Once she has flipped that switch in her brain, she’s likely never going to unflip it — except temporarily when she needs something from you, which draws you back in only to get hurt again when she shows what’s really going on for her.
Go get into therapy. Take some time to yourself. Get some distance from her and the situation. You’ll be okay. You will be okay.
Holy smokes I’m sorry. I didn’t know if my story can encourage you or not, but maybe it will.
I got married in 1987. Not quite 20 years in in 2006, we split up. I was unhappy, and became an asshole and walked out in her and my three sons. I realized almost immediately that I couldn’t look myself in the mirror. And twenty months later we decided to give it a shot. It lasted almost two years before the wheels finally came off for good.
So here I am, not quite 50 and very single. I met another girl, we became a couple and have now been together 13 years.
It can happen. You can find happiness again
