Back again. I feel like such a failure. When two people end up reacting to you in a very similar way; that’s on you, right? My shiny new awesome boyfriend, who loved me so well, and made me feel secure and happy, just … turned off one day. He stopped being affectionate, he stopped touching me or looking at me or smiling at me or talking to me. And I am alone again. Still with him, but alone. It feels like death.
I gave it a month, then another month, and then I made myself so busy I couldn’t even think about it for almost a year. But I can’t do it anymore. I am so empty and lonely, and I have no friends. Ok, not true, but I only have a couple of friends, and they are so busy also that I can only see them rarely.
This time of life, with teenagers, is so isolating and anxiety-producing, and lonely. Mainly I am lonely. I live with someone who doesn’t pay any attention to me at all. And I am so busy that I have no time to give to friends. I work two jobs and I volunteer, and my kids are so busy needing me to drive them and wait for them and counsel them and feed them and clean up their physical and emotional messes. There is no time for me. And then to have no support at all at home is a heavy dark load on my back all the time.
My ex does less than his share, as always, of the physical and mental parenting, and my boyfriend does none. So it’s all on me. My house is a pig sty, and I do force my kids to help, but his three teenagers do not lift a finger except to make messes that I clean.
But why did he just stop? I think it’s that thing again. I am TOO MUCH. I drive people away. I’m too intense, and too driven, or too happy, or too honest, or too loud, or too something. Just too much. I know this. Men like it initially – I am vibrant and alive and they want the joy that I seem to get from life. But then they can’t handle the bad parts. They think it’s all good. They don’t see that the joy of this life was hard-won, that I pulled it forcibly out from the darkness. So when the creeping tendrils of darkness start pulling on me once again, and I try to get help this time, to push it back, they can’t handle it. Where did the happy, alive, excited woman go? Why does she need something now? They can’t accept that it’s temporary, and they can’t reach out a hand to help.
Maybe I am picking innately selfish men? My ex-husband is certainly selfish. But my boyfriend told me he likes to be needed, that he wants to be there for people. So why did he push me away?
It feels like failure, again.
Match Penalty 
I am SO glad that you’re back!!!!!! I have missed you and your writing. I too am told that I am “too much” but there’s a better way to look at it – HE (your boyfriend, my recent ex, whomever we are talking about at the moment) is too little – not enough.You are vibrant and passionate and full of life and if that doesn’t work for him then he doesn’t work for you. Being lonely in a relationship sucks and it’s better to be alone than lonely and undervalued. I’ve been alone now for 8 months after having my heart broken into a million pieces and I have decided that I am fantastic – fuck anyone who doesn’t think so.
You are magnificent – exactly as you are.
Love,
Song Dog Sally
(formerly: Single in the Southwest)
I don’t think you’re a failure at all. You cannot help who your heart falls for. These guys didn’t work out but that shouldn’t make you lose confidence in yourself.
love you
—Abigayle
http://www.WhiskeyandMerlot.wordpress.com
I’m sorry your heart was broken; it’s so hard and awful getting through that. I am in a hard place where I am going to have to break up with someone I still love. I am still in love with him, but I can’t live like this. I’m going to try and write more often now – gets me through.
And I’m glad you are still here! I’ll go read your new blog now.
Glad to see an update from ya – somehow I missed previous posts which ain’t really surprising, considering what an overcluttered disaster area my email inbox is!
I was forced to delete my old blogs in The Last Cataclysmic Custody Battle 3 yrs ago (which I lost); I miss those outlets & eventually plan to start a new one once I’m reasonably sure that Ex & Evil Stepmom are no longer stalking me…
Best of luck w/your upcoming obstacles – hard to believe my H2 has stuck w/me thru all this mess, but despite our difficulties we celebrated (yes, honestly CELEBRATED!) our 15th anniversary last fall… My son is now 19 & having “aged out” of the custody wars, has moved 300 mi away to flounder at college & struggle thru HIS first serious relationship w/GF (I feel as though he’s sevefly stunted socially since Z was never able to do normal teenage things, being constantly in transit between the 2 homes) – I don’t blame him for being quit of ALL of us, he had a painful & difficult childhood, but it’s still painful to me. My angel, the many ways in which I failed you, and the long-lost time, never to be recovered…
I need a new therapist too, but mine passed away unexpectedly several yrs ago & I haven’t had the heart to start the search over again.
Enough about me; get my OWN blog, eh???
I’m glad you are still here – but sorry that your had to delete your blog. I have tried as hard as I can to be as vague as I can so that I may be somewhat untraceable? But being too vague means I can’t talk about anything of substance, so, it’s a conundrum!
I had a great therapist for a while, but one day, she up and moved to warmer places! I was like – what about my abandonment issues?? LOL. I need a new one too. Blogging really does help – can you start a new anonymous one and secretly invite people?
Actually I AM blogging – must have an outlet somewhere! I’ll send you an invite but need yr email. Be warned, it’s mostly raw shit that I can’t spill anywhere else…
P.S. Sally – Can I get an invite to your blog? Best wishes to you too…
Glad to see you are back, but sad to see the circumstances.
Things always appear differently from the outside than from inside. I had missed several of your posts, from the open letter to now. So I read them together and noticed the large gaps, similar to my blog that has gone into a much less frequent update position. Like you I have resurfaced and am writing again, but the relationship situation is different. From the outside reading those last 4-5 blog posts quickly together and seeing your mood through the writing in a span of 15 minutes that actually covered 2 1/2 years of your life there was a consistency of lack of stability in your world.
Having run divorce support groups for a long time I always get my spidey sense up when people mention “we never fight” as it usually seems like a good thing but I have found usually is an early indicator of bad things. Many times if you are not fighting it is because you are not interested enough to engage and so things pass by but like plaque in arteries, build up over time, until the blockage is too great and the flow of communication just stops. It seems that may be what was occurring between you and the boyfriend. Only you can assess the validity of what I saw coming through in a smattering of posts spread over 30 months of life, and maybe I’m totally off base, but as you try to determine what to do and if you move on, how you do that and not spiral into the same pattern again, we always have to learn from our past lessons in life.
I’d agree with others who commented that being in a non-relationship relationship is not a healthy place to be. As I see it you’ve got to decide if you want to try to resurrect this one and clean up the gaps, or realize this is over and go forward into life figuring out where you are and taking one day at a time. You are not a failure, you just need to learn what you can from what happened and adjust. The non-relationship relationship did not happen through your doing alone. If you really feel what drove him to this is not being able to deal with anything other than bubbly and positive, then I go back to may original canary in the coal mine with “we never fight” being the time both of you needed to realize that you were still dating even though you were living together. You were only showing your best selves and only by being open (which you had mentioned you were only finally doing in one of the posts I just read) can both of you see it all. Blending is super, super, super hard as I cover in my blog, and what worked for me may not be the path for others, but it is all I can recommend. Go through the good the bad and the ugly before committing to live together or certainly before you marry (for me living together before marriage was not a choice I wanted to make). That means a LOT of conversing and if you do not fight about anything in the process, commit to talking more, a LOT more, to really get into what you are passionate about (like your healthy food). We spent a lot of time digging into really mundane and what most would call boring things before we agreed that we wanted to go through life together. When my best friend said “You have talked more and about more things in three months than my wife an I have in twenty years of being married” I knew we were on the right track. But it was exhausting, and it was not fun a large part of the time, and it was those things that made me more certain that this was the right path, because we had started to weather some really tough topics and more importantly we had actually fought about things and understood the style. Did I learn things later? Of course, but they were for the most part slight course adjustments, rather than new found things like my step kids are jerks about my food that you need to deal with every day, and that you need to stuff your feelings on every day and that have no way of not being noticed by your boyfriend.
You are in a tough spot, and I hope you find the cleanest way forward. Keep writing as you said, and we can offer up our insights into what we see and hope that helps you. Find a good counselor if that helps you. Talk to friends (I know you said that is tough now, and I know how difficult that can make things. Internet friends can never make up for flesh and blood folks who know you and can help you), reach out to family if possible, and know you are powerfully and wonderfully made and it will get better. And you are not a failure, you’re just in a rough patch.
Thank-you so much for this. This resonated with me: “As I see it you’ve got to decide if you want to try to resurrect this one and clean up the gaps, or realize this is over and go forward into life figuring out where you are and taking one day at a time. ” I spent years trying to resurrect my marriage, and I learned that I can’t waste my time on something that can’t be fixed. I mean that literally – we only have so much time- I can’t waste it! I’m tired of feeling bad about myself, and I am not willing to blame myself and fall back into those old patterns of self-hatred. I am too tired. I think I am truly mid-life now, when I just don’t care. I am tired of the old ways, and I want to be happy. If that means being alone, I am ok with that.