Struggling with Conflicting Feelings Three Years After Traumatic Relationship

[EmilyJane]

Im sorry for the text wall here. I’m too emotional to work out what is relevant and what isn’t. 
 

But I really need some help to cope right now and figure stuff out. 

My post history on here should fill in most of the missing clues about my relationship. It was beautiful then horrible. I am still paying for his decisions and some of mine. My life has never been the same because the end of the relationship and some things that happened during it mean I have lost my independence because my disabilty got a lot worse. 
 

The bit I think I left out is that as well as substance abuse issues he’d started to be physically abusive. I had to end it. I told myself I just had to do it and hope the shock of it ending would mean we could just have a break for a few months. So I just got through six months of no contact. Then tried to salvage something. 
 

But after six month I did not exist for him and I definitely didn’t matter any more than I had in the last 8 months of being together  (ie not at all).  I held hope. I didn’t want and I was ashamed of it. I intermittently tried to make contact and it always ended the same way - him vanishing, me not understanding and blaming myself. Me emailing in confusion and then realising I’d sent six in six weeks with no response. So extra shame of rejection. 
 

Then 18months ago I was put on medication for brain inflammation. From the first day how I felt about him - the abuse resultant mixture of fear, loss, shame and wanting him. Just stopped. A few months later he did the ex courtesy thing and let me know he’d met someone. I was relieved and jealous because I had not met anyone and my life couldn’t just proceed normally like his did. 

As added info have never moved on. I can’t. My life circumstance don’t allow me to. I haven’t slept, dated, kissed, flirted or even crushed on anyone since. I’m signing up for solo parenting sperm donorship. That’s how sure I am I will not fall in love before it’s too late to have children. I don’t want another relationship again. That one just broke me. I’ve never had a good one and I’ve been in serious relationships for 20 years.

But just now iPhone f***ed itself. Put all my computer pic on my phone. Just had to go delete them all. Saw all the pics of us. You don’t take pictures together when it’s s**t. Now that’s how I feel. 

I don’t know why. I feel so angry and bitter about the unfairness of what I lost at the same time as feeling pathetic and having intense pangs of wanting the life I see in those pictures and wanting to physically feel and smell him. 
 

It’s horrible and I don’t understand my own emotional response. I have a psychologist. I just don’t have anyone I can talk to about this. I don’t have any friends. 
 

I need some help. Someone to please just engage with me and help me work out how to feel better. 

 

 

[ExpatInItaly]

6 hours ago, EmilyJane said:

It’s horrible and I don’t understand my own emotional response. I have a psychologist. I just don’t have anyone I can talk to about this. I don’t have any friends. 

Does your psychologist not know about this relationship, OP?

[spiderowl]

What are the good things you are missing and what were the bad things about this relationship? It seems you are focusing on the good things not the bad.

I get the feeling that you are struggling now because this guy has rejected a reconciliation. He was a load of trouble for you but now that he has rejected you, you have elevated him in your mind as the one you can’t get.

This guy is bad for you, things would not get better if you reconciled. Maybe you need to ask yourself why you have not moved on from someone so damaging? Do you think getting back with him would do you any good? Why can you not open your mind to other guys? Do you feel you are betraying him in some way? 

The unconscious mind is very powerful. It keeps us stuck in situations that, logically, are poisonous dead-ends. I think you need to talk with your therapist about what is preventing you from moving on. Maybe at some level you are afraid of getting into a similar relationship, in which case the idea of moving on would seem like a pointless exercise.

[preraph]

Well, it took a while, but seems like you have reached the next stage of grief:  anger.  So maybe you are progressing after all.  I am so grateful that he did not get back together with you because abusers do not change.  They get worse with age.  Even if one were to control himself, once he gets old and starts losing his filter or drinks too much or gets any dementia, he will revert right back to his natural abusive self.  So he did you a big favor moving on as he did.  

 

I do hope you're in therapy because you do not want to continue to attract and let into your life abusive men, and that can be a pattern, you know.  You give them too much benefit of the doubt.  You think they can change.  They don't change.  Love can't fix them.  They are beyond your control, so you need to just say NO to the first whiff of their anger or control or abuse.