Dear Sierra:

Congratulations for the ending of this relationship. I base  my congratulation on you sharing  that here that  he mistreated you and on you explaining how he mistreated you in your previous thread.

It would have been  better  if you broke up with  him, but I suppose second best is that he  broke up with you. Too bad someone  else is  likely  to experience his mistreatment.

anita

SharonaL

I got hurt, and blubbered and begged and promised to change. That was mistake number one. Then, I got angry and petty and vengeful. That was mistake number two. As I told Sierra, there is nothing we can do if the person you love doesn’t want to love you anymore. For instance, I have spent the past week and a half watching every video from a “relationship guru” I can find in an effort to get an idea of how to play this now. Some say to break off all contact and make them miss you. Others say that only works on men and women are likely to leave you behind and get over you faster if you ignore them. But they ALL agree on one thing: work on yourself. You likely cannot ever be who you were when you met them, especially with the lengths of both of our relationships (yours 18, mine 15 years). Hell, I was 24 then. I likely had not even become the person I was going to be yet by then. But you can reignite the spark of attraction in the other person, and a lot of that just spawns from letting them go and bettering yourself. I know I told Sierra that success without them is the greatest “revenge”, but more appropriately, it’s how to make them regret letting you go.

If you truly want this to work, then this is your best way. It makes the most sense in a psychology sort of manner. My wife and I ceased being two people a long time back. When we first met, we were independent, happy and driven people. But as we grew together as a single entity and lost ourselves in the process, we lost some of that drive, and a lot of that happiness because of it. My wife has said that she wants time to “find herself” but is adamant that our marriage is over. I don’t want to discount her feelings, but I highly doubt she is as certain as she claims to be. But she IS right. I need to find myself again. She needs to find herself again. And should God or whatever force you believe in sees fit, those two new people might want each other again. We did before. The thing you must remember is that they married you, so they found you physically attractive. So that is one problem you don’t have to worry about anymore. But if your career stalled out, or you stopped doing fun things, or like me, just sort of fell into a rut of the same old, same old for years now, you have to break those habits and live your life like today is the last day on Earth. Your husband will see the change. He might start to rethink his decision. Or he might not. But living your life for yourself will make it so it doesn’t matter. You will be happy no matter what.

It’s gonna take some time. Trust me, last night was filled with dreams of my wedding day and my beautiful bride standing across from me, and for the first few seconds of the morning when I woke up, I was happy again….because for those brief seconds, I had forgotten reality. And then it all swept in again and sadness hammered me. It also doesn’t help that I have a son and 3 little girls who are shattered by all of this and constantly crying (yeah, try not to be sad around THAT) about the divorce. I have found a good way to deal with that sadness is the gym. I know that sounds really cliche, but I mean it. You can focus all of that energy and sadness into working out, get a good endorphin rush, and at the same time, you are actively working towards bettering yourself, which as I mentioned, is a great way to spark that attraction between you and your ex again.

I will ask this, however: Do you KNOW he is having an inappropriate relationship with the woman at work? Or do you just think he’s having one? Because I can tell you from experience in my past (not my own) that accusations with no evidence often backfire. Not only does it broadcast that you don’t fully trust the person, but as a friend of mine found out, it can actually facilitate the action you are accusing them of. He had often thought his girlfriend was cheating on him. He would confront her about it often and finally she did. When he asked why she would do that to him, she simply stated “You were sure I was doing it anyway, I might as well have the fun associated with the accusation”.

Long story short, don’t sit around moping. Get out there and live your life. Better yourself, keep contact limited (I likely wouldn’t do the “no contact” thing….it just seems counter intuitive) and let the man see what he is missing out on. If he truly wants to be with you, and you look like you are bracing yourself to move on without him, he will come running.

I will say to not do some of the more counter productive actions that often times are associated with this sort of thing like rebounding with someone to make him jealous, or attempting to disrupt said relationship with the other woman. Let him think it doesn’t bother you, be out and about having fun (which I know sounds hard right now), and trust me…..even if he doesn’t come back, you learning to live without him will happen while attempting to do so.