Dear Greed4UrLove:

You are welcome. “my ex has now entered into another relationship with another woman”- a serious relationship? Her getting into an emotional, committed relationship contradicts what she told you earlier (“she did tell me that what she wants now is to have ‘adventure and fun’ so in other words, to go out and have ’emotionless sex'”).

“I feel she is ‘getting away with it’ with little to no repercussions”- I think I know what you mean by it, but I am not sure:  can you tell me specifically what she is getting away with?

anita

Dear Greed4UrLove:

Reads like she is selfish and self centered when it comes to her kids, like you wrote, “having a rotating door of people for then to get attached to then lose”. Too bad for her kids.

“the dynamic is just different”- that’s a non-explanation, a meaningless something that she told you.

She is getting away with her selfishness with her children because it’s not illegal (and even if it was  illegal, the police is otherwise occupied these days, at least in the US), and it’s not illegal to lie, or to not tell the truth, as she does with you, so she gets away with it.

I don’t know if it was a good relationship (as your title indicates)- was it a good relationship, now that you are looking back at it?

anita

Dear Greed4Love:

I want to see if I can figure out something new, so I re-read your posts. A little summary:

Relationship: Oct 2019- April 22, 2020 (six months), including you staying in her home with her children many nights, forming relationships with her children.

You: mid-thirties, came out in about 2004 (teenage), separated from an emotionally abusive girlfriend of 8 years.

She: mid-thirties, came out in 2019 (mid-thirties), separated from husband of 9 years (two children) Sept 2019, started relationship with you the month after, Oct 2019.

She broke up with you once in March and a second time on April 22. The reason for the breakup, she said: needing to be alone. Later stated that she should date different women and have emotionless sex, later she entered a new monogamous relationship with another woman, with whom, she says, “the dynamic is just different”.

My thoughts this morning: I think that when you met her and entered a relationship with her, for you, she was the One and the relationship was It. You were willing to settle with her and her children for life. She realized at one point on that you are more serious about her and the relationship, and she felt trapped in your expectations of a lifetime, and-they-lived-happily-ever-after life with her. So she broke up with you, telling you that she wants to be alone.

Maybe she did consider dating different women and having emotionless sex, and, like she told you, she “went on a lot of dates and met a lot of people”, one of whom is a woman who didn’t give her the vibes of someone serious who is looking for a lifetime relationship. That may be what she meant by “the dynamic is just different”.

This is the  best explanation I can come up with, at this point.

I agree with you that she has trouble being alone. I figure she is not into dating multiple women and having emotionless sex, that she feels the need to be in a monogamous relationship, but not with a woman who is very serious about her. Does this make sense to you?

anita

Dear Greed4UrLove:

Reads to me that you did everything right in regard to her and the relationship ended through no fault of your own. When she expressed to you that she wasn’t ready for something so serious, you responded by giving her more space. When you did that, she complained that you didn’t care about her. So.. nothing you could have done to make the relationship work.

You’ve been “left stuck trying to resolve the feeling of having lost someone who (you) thought could be ‘the one'”- here is my theory (based on the fact that we all want more of a good feeling): during the time you were with her, you believed from one point on that she is the one. A wonderful, powerful, intoxicating feeling attached itself to this belief.

Fast forward, she broke up with you twice, now in a relationship with someone new, but you still believe that she is the one. What motivates you to  hold on to this belief is the hope of re-experiencing that intoxicating feeling.

What do you think?

anita

Dear Greed4UrLove:

“I’d never felt like I’d met ‘the one’ before.. with how strongly I felt this, I feel almost foolish for being so wrong about it”- that you felt it and so strongly, it doesn’t mean to me that you were foolish, not at all. It means to me that you are beautiful for wanting the-one so strongly. So many people don’t want the-one, they want this one and that one, and then the other one…I know how it feels to be one of those one’s: a no-one to someone.

It is beauty within you that I see about you feeling the way you did.

There were things about her that caused you to feel this feeling, so this feeling that she was the-one was not without a foundation. But then, there were things about her that took that foundation away from under you, and you were left kind of suspended in air.

Let yourself slowly reach a new foundation, that of knowing that you are beautiful, not foolish, and that you do want the one, and therefore you can look  for her.  You will take your time getting to know a woman in a variety of contexts, before you get emotionally overly invested, build that foundation underneath and one day, you will trust that foundation and she will be indeed the one.

anita

Greed4UrLove, likewise – thanks for the kind words! I have indeed found solace on this forum; people are really helpful.

What Anita said about chasing the intoxicating feeling has really stuck with me. I recently briefly dated someone else, but after about six weeks of talking and then eventually meeting up post lockdown she said she realised she wasn’t over her last relationship and couldn’t commit anything, I was sad about that, and I don’t doubt I liked her, but what’s interesting is looking back I can see that objectively, we were not very compatible; what I was chasing was the intoxicating feeling. Same with my ex – I feel myself pining for her at times but if I take a step back, I realise I am pining for a version of her that doesn’t exist- one that is clouded by this intoxicating pull, and it is that that I’m pining for.

I don’t know about you but my self esteem and self worth is generally low – I find myself seeking love in others and being hugely self critical of myself. I think that’s why I find the pull so intoxicating- because it validation I can’t/don’t give myself at the moment. So I am going to take a break from dating and work on that. Easier said than done but as you said, it’s about being willing to be open to hard truths.

Thanks for allowing me to put my thoughts here. You are clearly a kindhearted, good person and I really hope you are feeling better soon.

Hey guys, I read your post. I think you fell in love with her, but your post motivates me about my relationship.

Thanks