This Issue With His Ex Is Killing Me...

[Jen1689]

This may be long, but I’d just like to get some people’s input on this. I’m really suffering… I am 22 years old, and I am married to the most wonderful person I could imagine ever meeting. We have been together for the last two years and nine months, and have been married for about two and a half weeks. I can honestly and confidently say that he is my best friend. I am also confident that he feels the same way about me. We can talk about anything, we are both very goal oriented and responsible, and we both know what we want from each other and this relationship. I know that I will never find another person like him, and that he is, without a doubt, my soulmate.

When we first met, we had both just gotten out of relationships. I had moved across the country to be with a guy that I had met on MySpace, but things ended after about seven months of living with him. Unfortunately, we had signed a year-lease and had to live together for another five or so months in complete agony. I had initiated the breakup, and having to see him cry in front of me every day sucked big time. I was only nineteen at the time. My husband was about twenty-one and had just gotten out of a relationship around the same time. I didn’t hear much about her then, though.

My husband (we’ll call him Kevin) and I were friends before anything more happened. I met him through a mutual friend that I was somewhat seeing at the time. Kevin had clearly expressed an interest in me, although I rejected him quite a few times. He pursued me for months, saying that he knew we could be good together, and that he could make me happy. I knew he could, but I honestly wasn’t looking for anything serious after coming out of what I had from my previous relationship. Kevin finally told me he was giving up, and I realized that if I didn’t do something, I would lose him in my life regardless. I gave it a shot, and I fell instantly, and he admitted that he had loved him from the moment he saw me. I lost my virginity to him only two weeks after dating at twenty years old. It felt perfect.

From that point on, we were inseparable. We loved each other dearly and truly, but aside from all of my fairy-tale memories of those times and the Honeymood Stage of our relationship, something had to ruin this bliss. Nothing can stay perfect, or at least not for long...

Shortly into our relationship, we discussed the past, as everyone does. He inquired about my past relationship, and I inquired about his. It seemed harmless, but in fact it was the worst thing that could be done. He told me about his relationship with his ex (we’ll call her Christy), which wasn’t a pleasant one. They dated for about two years (on-and-off) when he was 18-20 and she was 15-17, a fairly typical age-gap scenario. In that time, she cheated on him, lied to him constantly, manipulated him, and was irresponsible, irrational, and immature. At first, I didn’t mind him opening up to me to let me know about his past with her. It was just the occasional story here, the unpleasant rant there, but soon it got to be too much to ignore.

Nothing he ever said about her was pleasant. He would often say things like, “I can’t believe how sweet you are, SHE would have never done anything like that for me”, or, “I can’t believe we never fight, all I ever did with her was argue on a daily basis”. We would be walking down the street, and something would trigger a memory in his head regarding her, and he would instantly share it with me. This went on for about five months into our relationship. I got so used to randomly hearing about her that my mind would automatically think about her when anything – and I mean anything – was mentioned. I snooped through her MySpace on many occasions. I kept wondering what it was about her that kept him going back. He claims that he “hated” her even when they were together, but that he kept going back because he felt responsible for her and wanted to fix her. She was heavy into drinking and drugs and promiscuous sex when they were together, and he tried to get her clean of all of that. But then she’d go behind his back to do them. He also said that he was afraid that if he left her alone, she would harm herself. She threatened suicide on him on many occasions.

All of this I can see how it would make him unable to completely break free of her for quite a while, but I’m having a really hard time coming to grips with the fact that he still slept with her. It doesn’t make sense to me why you’d have sex and be intimate with someone you claim to “hate”. I guess guys do have a different outlook on sex, though.

When Kevin broke up for good in 2008, she sliced her arm open with a bread knife out of desperation. Kevin found her, got her help, but then cut all contact with her. Not even two weeks later, she was sleeping with someone else. A month after that, she was pregnant. When I first met Kevin, he was terrified that it was his child, although it would have been physically impossible given the timeframe.

I attempted to become friends with her after obsessing over her for at least a year. I added her on Facebook and we began chatting. She seemed a lot like me. She was a girl who was insecure but who handled it very differently. The father of her son left her only a year after he was born because Christy still did hardcore drugs and spent all of her money on that and booze. She has dated a couple guys who have dumped her numerous times.

I’ve hung out with her a few times as well. Kevin was uneasy about it at first, just because he knew how it made me feel (insecure, inadequate, jealous, etc.). He also knew that she had ulterior motives behind becoming friends with me. He knew that Christy was still bitter about what had happened between them, and he knew she’d want to see him unhappy. Kevin and I have gotten into multiple fights over the fact that I can’t leave her in the past. We’ve nearly broken up over it. He knows she’s a terrible person and only knows how to manipulate people to get what she wants.

Despite the fact that I know she’s destroying me and my relationship, there’s something about her that I cannot break free from. She’s not drop-dead gorgeous by any means, but she’s an attractive girl. I know I’m jealous of it. I used to spend hours upon hours looking over her photos and comparing myself to her. In all honesty, we’re quite similar-looking. We’re both short, petite girls with brown hair and blue eyes. But next to her I feel like I’m incomparable. She’s also got a lot of friends and a large social life (despite the fact that she has a two-year old). On Facebook, she parades her life around like it’s fantastic and that she’s living the best of the best. She parties all the time, is in-and-out of relationships, and has dozens of friends supporting her because she wants to seem like the victim in every circumstance to gain pity.

Last week was the breaking point… I went to hang out with her (behind my husband’s back) and we ended up drinking with a couple other people. I was drugged and blacked out. I don’t remember a thing. Luckily my husband found me and got me home safely, but he threatened me with an annulment or divorce. I’ve never felt so incredibly foolish in my entire life. I’ve never felt so stupid and selfish and awful. I sobbed for days and couldn’t eat.

My husband wants us to move past this, and so do I. I’m still having SUCH a hard time letting go of everything, though. I still think of all the things he ever told me about her, and I still writhe in jealousy. I just keep thinking that a relationship with so much drama evoked so much more passion than love itself can capture. I’m still jealous of her looks, although I have not seen a picture of her in days, and I don’t plan on looking at one anytime soon. I’ve deleted my Facebook and won’t be bringing it back for a while. I’ve gotten rid of every single trace of her I can think of. I don’t know where any of this is stemming from. I genuinely dislike her, borderline hate, but somehow I feel as though she’s better than me and that I should be graveling at her feet to make her accept me and like me. She honestly has nothing that I want, but I still feel as though I have a lot less going for me than she does. It’s incredible sick and twisted, but I don’t know how to stop feeling this way. I don’t even know WHY I feel this way. I love my husband with every fiber of my being, and I will do whatever I can to get him to trust me again. I know I screwed up, and I want to make things better. But I don’t know what to do about these thoughts of resentment and jealousy towards her. I’m desperate…

[aisle_seat]

This situation is so foreign to me I'm not sure what to say, but here goes:

 

While I think it was very uncool for your husband to continually bring up his ex (a little sharing of the past is one thing, but to constantly bring her up makes no sense to me), what is it the motivation for you to want to be friends with his ex? If you have some curiosity as to why he was with her, ask him. If he can't explain it to your satisfaction, let it go. It's not really your business anyway (though I agree he kind of makes it your business by bringing her up all the time).

 

You sound a little insecure and you admit to that, but I see NO gain for you in befriending his ex and hanging out with her, especially since you seem so easily manipulated by her that you would allow yourself to drink enough to pass out. She sounds like bad news and you should stay away from her.

 

Meanwhile, talk to your husband and remind him he's with you, you are a different person than his ex and to stop with the comparisons. She's the past; leave her there. And you really need to analyze your motivations regarding your obsession with his ex.

Edited October 10, 2011 by aisle_seat