Hello. This is my first time here. I am looking forward to making new friends, getting help and hopefully, being of some help to others. My situation is not so different from many others, and like so many, I don’t know where to turn or how to deal with my life as it is now. I’ve been married for most of my adult life. My first husband (which I had two beautiful daughters with) turned out to be a cheating alcoholic. I hung in there for just about 10 years. I met another man who I fell in love with immediately. I knew the moment we met and started to talk that we belonged together, that we were soul mates. I still believe this to be true to this day. In retrospect, my first marriage was over before it ever really started. I never loved this man, I don’t believe he ever really loved me, I can’t tell you why we were together, I guess we were both just looking for a way out of the small town life and figured the other had the answer? (I was young, 18, just out of high school). I filed for divorce and started seeing this new guy. He filed for divorce from his first wife whom he never really loved, but married because “he had to”, and life was good. Almost too good. We couldn’t get enough of each other. We’d spend hours and hours talking, making love several times a day, every day, and couldn’t stand to be apart. He was everything I wasn’t and visa versa. We were the perfect match. We spent the next 18 years together, 13 of them married. We melded our families as best as we could (he has a son & daughter same ages as my two girls, visitation every other weekend, few wks in the summer type arrangement). Life was good for awhile, until he got a job at a great company and started on the night shift. All of a sudden I was going to bed alone as he was going to work. I was leaving for work in the a.m.’s when he was coming home to go to bed. After a yr & a half of this he got on the day shift. By then the damage was done, we had grown apart in a way that we didn’t know how to fix. He started going to the bars with his friends, leaving me home with the kids. On his weekends with his kids, he’d go to the bar Friday night & tell his kids he’d get them Sat. morning. (he was suppose to get them Fri. eve) Eventually his kids didn’t even want to come out to our place any more because he was so unreliable. He’d make plans with me and deliberately stand me up. We’d plan to go somewhere or do something on the weekend and he’d inevitably end up in the bar till closing the night before the planned event. He started spending time with other women who liked to party as much as he did, but they were “just friends”. He stood me (and his family) up on X-Mas eve, claiming he got into a small fender bender with a stranger at the gas station out of town while X-Mas shopping, and ended up staying with “him” partying all night. No phone call, just didn’t show up. I’m suppose to believe that?? How many of you would? But still I stayed because I loved him. I was always home. I was not the kind to go out and party. All I knew most of my adult life was my girls and I was always there for them. Then they grew up and moved out to start their own lives and I was excited to start my own. I had looked forward to the freedom that comes with that stage in a parents life. I thought it was finally time for my husband and I to really have our own time together. I was wrong. He ran around more and more while I sat at home waiting. I’ve spent the better part of the last 10 years or so waiting, For what? I have no clue. I finally said “Enough” and filed for divorce. I found a great paying job about 3 hours away, told him I was leaving, filed for divorce and moved. I don't remember him ever asking me to stay. I don't remember him ever telling me not to go that we could work it out, nor did he give me a reason to stay. All this told me was that he wanted me to and I was no longer needed in his life. So I left. I bought a 15 ½ acre farm with a nice house so I could keep my two horses (which are my passion) and thought life would be good. Two months after living in my new place, my employer eliminated my job for financial reasons and I was out of work. This is a very depressed community when it comes to finding a decent paying job so it was/is difficult for me financially. I cashed in my 401K from my previous job to survive. I’ve been divorced for a little over a year now. I still don’t have a decent paying job, but things are starting to look up in that area. My problem is this. I still very much love my ex despite all the bad things that went on in our relationship. My ex says he still loves me too, he, as I, still believe we are soul mates and belong together. We have been seeing each other off and on since the divorce (stupid, I know) but I can’t seem to let him go. He’ll come here for the weekend or I’ll go there. Not the best but sometimes to me it seems better than nothing. He lives back in our old place, still drinking up a storm, partying with his friends, seeing who he wants to see and living his life without me. We’ve talked about getting back together, but the only way that could work is if we both moved to an entirely different place to start over. He’ll never leave his hometown and his friends. This I know for sure, so it’s pretty much all talk & no action. He likes to tell me what he thinks I want to hear so maybe I’ll just keep waiting for him to come around and be available for him when it’s convenient for him. It’s pretty much his way or no way. He wants it all and it’s at my expense. All this I know and still I can’t let go. (What’s wrong with me anyway????) I, on the other hand, sit in my new place, all alone, with no friends, no life and doing nothing. I know this is my fault, my choice but I can’t let him go. I don’t know how. I just don’t. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I have been alone for soooo many years, and just want someone in my life to share things with. To come home to someone who cares about me, wants to be with me, do things with….I dated a guy for a couple of months, but had to break it off because I felt like I was cheating on my ex. It didn’t feel right and it wasn’t fair to him. (the guy I was seeing) He’s too nice to use like that, although that was not my intention I thought I could start over and develop new friendships and maybe find someone to share my time with, but I couldn’t. Sorry this is so long but it’s as short of a version as I could come up with. I could write for days, I’m afraid, but I won’t. Is there anyone out there that has some advice for me? I know I’m not the only who feels this way or has gone through this very same thing. I suffer from seasonal depression and usually it doesn’t hit me till fall, but I’ve been fighting it steady for the past year and feel it’s winning this battle. I don’t have insurance so I can’t “get help”. I’m barely getting by as it is. I need a life. This I know. I need to make friends and move on. I know this too, the problem is; I don’t know how to let go and move on. Please, someone out there tell me how stupid I am to doing to myself the things I have been doing. I’m hanging on to something that can never be again, yet feel there is that glimmer of “hope”. Please convince me there is life after a divorce that I never really wanted to happen. Give me some hope…..
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