Recovering from a Commitment Phobic relationship

[BraveWoman40]

I've come across some other posts on here regarding commitment phobic relationships & I have to say much of what I have read has given me some clarity & hope.

 

By ex who I was with for 13 months left me 6 weeks ago telling me he was miserable, that he needed to make major changes, that he didn't know if he had more deep rooted issues(obviously) & if he needed more AA. He's just hit his four year sober anniversary. I had known him for a year before we started seeing each other & it had been seven months since he had moves out of his ex's place & gotten his own place & was happy to be living by himself for the first time, he's 54 & was married for 26yrs the marriage ended because of his drinking yet he has never filed for divorce. I now know how big of a red flag that was but he had explained that getting sober took time & he didn't have the money, although there are no assets & his children are grown. He has been apart from his wife for six years.

 

Well I had asked him on our first date if he ever thought about getting married again & he said he had. Our relationship was wonderful to start, he pursued me and since this was my first serious relationship & first intimate relationship, Im 39, I spent most of my 20's & 30's dealing with the aftermath of my Father's death from lung cancer, my diagnosis of panic disorder which I worked on in therapy for six years & have now stabilized. Then my Mom needed me & five months before he and I started dating she passed. I had always wanted to meet a good man but I waited because I wanted to be intimate with someone I was in love with & did not want to put in an effort & lose the relationship.

 

Naturally when he & I started dating I told him all this & he was very caring & understood I did not want to get intimate quickly. He said he wouldn't want that either since he wanted it to be special. I fell in love with him, head over heels, six weeks in was when we were first intimate & it was amazing, after that I just fell deeper in love with him & he told me how much he was in love with me. Our relationship felt so wonderful & I was so happy & so sure I had found the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with, I had always been told that it would happen when I least expected it and that's exactly how I felt with him. Six months in I brought up about marriage, first I brought up about living together at some point, I want to buy a house & I wanted him to help me look & he was fine with that. He said he had thought about us getting married but he still hadn't filed for divorce. He claimed that he had to have enough money, he was working on getting his driver's license back, it wasn't suspended from a DUI but even that took him a year to do. He got me beautiful cards for my birthday & Christmas & our Anniversary, we made it to that this past April. He told me he was in love with me, how he didn't like the holidays but without me he couldn't imagine. I found that he could be so indecisive about some things even deciding what he wanted to eat.

 

Once we got to our anniversary it seemed things started to change, he was working more hours because the laundromat he ran was sold to a new owner. I didn't see him as much and when I did he was always so tired. We had a space of a month when we hadn't been intimate but then when we were it was still so intense & passionate. I kept trying to get him to talk to the new owners & lessen his hours, which happened for a while until they bought the ice cream shoppe next to the laundromat. He was working 65hrs a week, I was getting stressed out to the point that little things that never bothered me started bothering me, I didn't like how I was feeling & he didn't seem to do anything to change it although he said he would.

 

Two weeks before he ended it we were talking about my buying a house & him eventually coming to live with me, he told me that although he loved me, he didn't want to live with ANYONE right now, even his son whom he really doesn't have a relationship with caused by his drinking. I had said that we didn't have to get married & we didn't have to live together as long as we were together. I was getting scared I was losing him & I was willing to compromise what I wanted because I feel you work at a relationship.

 

I came to find out after he left me saying he was miserable, etc, that it was little things in our relationship that were bothering him that he was now seeing someone else! I discovered it on Facebook because we were still friends, I have since blocked him, her and anyone I knew though him so that I don't have to see it.

 

Needless to say I was completely heartbroken & devastated! I found out this new woman was someone he knew off & on through AA, he had sworn even to his brother right in front of me that he would never date another woman of AA that they had too many issues, etc. I am not an alcoholic or addict, I just chose not to drink. This woman had been divorced, is the same age as him, had a long term relationship end pervious to getting together with my ex & of course all I saw on her Facebook was how happy she was, how he was the love of her life, he is so wonderful & his comments to her on how happy he is that she came along, that they are so in love! I also found out that he was talking with her two weeks before he left me, so obviously he cheated on me. Then to add the final nail in the coffin and in my heart she moved in with him! Five weeks after he left me claiming he was miserable here he is in a new relationship, she has moves in & now they are looking for their own place together!! OMG this man who said he loved me told me I was the love of his life went a did a complete about face on me.

 

I am still stunned by his behavior, but thank God for my friends, my therapist and the book she recommended He's Scared, She's Scared that is helping me cope. I still cannot get over what has happened, I have started to heal and am going through the stages of grief but I never would have thought my first serious and intimate relationship would not only end but end this way. I still miss him but I know he is not the man I fell in love with, I am working on no contact, I got my stuff back from him, I don't drive by his house, or where he works & blocked on Facebook.

 

I want to know if anyone else has gone through this and how you have recovered. It still hurts because of how much I loved him but I just can't believe the person he has turned into. Any advice would be greatly appreciated