Aw, too bad. Hold your head up. At least you know now.
Here’s the thing: not everyone ends up in a long term relationship. Don’t worry about finding someone else. Work on being happy with you. Sure there are times when I feel like the whole world is Josh’s ark and I’m the lone unicorn, but it’s infinitely better than being chained to a jackass.
This is pretty important. As a widow, you know some of what to expect, the emotional process for divorce is mostly the same, but not totally. The acknowledgement on both sides will make the emotional process much quicker and less painful. It’s still going to happen. Find a counselor to talk to for a few months.
There, thats the advice of a man who just finalized his last divorce ever.
At one point in my twenties, my life was absolute garbage. Wrong man, wrong people, wrong perspective. I met my prince and he is supportive and protective and all of what I needed to thrive. If I ever lost him, I would hope I would try to rebuild my life based on our wonderful life together and not fall back on the awful time I had so long ago. You found happiness before, there’s no reason you can’t find it again.
This is all so confusing now. Wanna turn a frog into a prince? Break up with him. Apparently.
Dude has promptly turned into precisely who I wanted, now that he’s longer mine. Watched him do his own laundry today, before I took an afternoon nap for the 1st time in ages. He listened attentively while I bitched about a minor annoyance last night, walked his dog each morning, and even started looking into maid services. And was promptly sticker shocked.
“Holy cow, it’s expensive to have someone just come and do the dishes & scrub the bathroom!”
I couldn’t help it. “Girlfriends are cheaper.”
Also amusing: his first foray into laundry. Turns out, it really sucks to leave a wrapped chocolate in the pocket! Listening to him bitch to himself about wasting his own time, and wasting a round of detergent and so on was … priceless.
The kicker was the chocolate was intended for me, from some work thing, but since we were arguing & breaking up, he forgot about it.
I finally asked him a few minutes ago, why he’s suddenly stepping up and doing so much. “Necessity. I have to, now.”
If this is all just a ploy to get us back together or something, it’s confusing the hell out of me. Part of me is a bit irritated that it turns out he was perfectly capable of stepping up all along. Part of me wants to be with this guy, this version, but is unsure of how permanent or ephemeral he may be. Part of me is shaking its head at how transparent it all seems - in a sitcom, this would be precisely the next part of the plotline - but is overshadowed by a much stronger part of me that’s far too pessimistic to believe in happy endings.
I’d say, confusing! Wow! This guy is a real piece of work. How long before you move out? Is that even something you’re planning yet? Good luck and I hope it goes down with minimal stress.
Have another conversation with him. If he needs nessecity to become motivated maybe you could help with that, and stop doing all that shit for him!
Yeah, Purple, y’all need to get one of you out poste haste. I went through something similar with my ex, get out, look back as little as possible, and keep reminding yourself why you both agreed it was pointless to continue. He’s not being your prince, he’s being his logically driven self. You’ve already been dropped from his life algorithm mentally.
ETA What** elbows** said may or may not work, it didn’t for me
There is absolutely no reason today why men can’t perform basic household tasks like, laundry, cooking, dishes, vacuuming, cleaning showers and sinks and toilets, etc.
I was married for 20 years and did all of these and a number of others.
To think that men don’t share equally in these tasks is ludicrous to me. Plenty of men I know routinely do this - yes, without being asked even.
sigh I know, I’m just entertaining these silly fantasies of reconciliation out of loneliness. I mean, he’s right there dammit.
For what it’s worth, my big goal for the last year or so has been to GTFO of this city, and ideally the state. Texas is wonderful, y’all, but I’m tired of the damn heat; there are swaths of the metroplex that after all these years still make me tear up, just because of the memories they stir up (of my husband’s illness, death, and subsequent crap) plus my parents are still somewhere around here. His parents, too, I guess.
My current job doesn’t pay all that great, but it’s full time, plus WFH and therefore semi portable. Not to just anywhere, there’s a short list of available places … and the most viable option just so happens to be the city my friend moved to last year.
So for everyone who’s hoping I have an exit strategy … yeah, that’s not a problem. Money is definitely a problem, but I’m used to that. Pretty much a foregone conclusion, really, that I’ll pack my shit and go to <friend’s city> I guess.
It’s pretty much everything I wanted, all rolling together.
So why the fuck do I feel so meh about it? Logically, I should be ecstatic. Shed the guy who’s not quite fitting what I need, get the hell outta DFW, move somewhere cooler, etc. Shit, I don’t even have to find another job first, which would have been an enormous hurdle. (Most of the jobs I feel comfortable applying for come with a piss test requirement within a day or two of accepting the offer, which brings some logistical challenges when you’re a couple time zones away.)
Ugh. I should be happy for me.
First of all, any guy whose only reason for stepping up because he has to (as in is on his own) isn’t worth keeping. Good luck to his next GF.
As for “meh,” are you burned out? Exhausted? Depressed? All three? Getting rid of what you don’t want isn’t the same as getting what you do want. What DO you want? Do you know?
If you’re burned out/exhausted/depressed, it’d be pretty hard to get excited about anything. What do you do to replenish your reservoir, so to speak?
Depressed, I guess. But my brain wiring wasn’t up to code even before the trauma of The Bad Times, so that’s not necessary related.
I can’t find a YouTube link, but there’s a Simpsons scene with Grandpa saying, “Change is scary and dangerous.” That about covers it.
Logically, I’m giddy and ecstatic.
There actually is a club. It’s called Widownet. It includes a mostly moribund old fashioned message board (in these Facebook days) that still has a lot of good information. Now days it’s a FB group call (duh) Widownet. I think there’s another MB called Widder.
I imagine he lives in his own head a lot, and that he got comfortable having you around to manage ‘the outside’. It’s a combination that breeds complacency and makes a fellow blind to signals. The break up is probably necessary for both of you, but that doesn’t mean he’s not hurt by it as well.
Good partners are made, few are born perfect. Sometimes an irretrievable and painful loss is necessary to effect introspection, growth, and positive change. Unless dude is a complete tool (and it sounds to me like he’s more clueless than mean) his next GF might well wonder why he wasn’t good enough for P.
And there’s a sub-reddit, and I’m currently going to a grief support group. I was talking more about a group of widowed dopers specifically.
That would be great, and I really do hope that happens, but in general, real growth happens slowly. My guess is he’ll pull his own weight cleaning-wise until the next girlfriend (or until he gets a cleaning/laundry service), when he’ll probably find himself slipping into his old mindset and habits because that’s what seems comfortable and normal for him. If THAT girlfriend won’t put up with it, then he’ll change, but it won’t be a continuum.
That’s a good observation about him maybe living inside his own head and having her manage the outside. If it’s a habit he fell into, that could be more easily changed, I guess. If he’s always lived inside his head, though, change would be much tougher. Anticipating and recognizing others’ needs, reading their facial expressions, understanding the impact of his actions (or lack thereof)on others–those are not skills someone who’s always lived inside his own head would have picked up. He’d have to make a concerted, sustained (maybe lifelong) effort to learn those skills, and if this really is the case, then I hope he does that. He didn’t do it for the OP, though, nor did he say promise to do those things if she’d take him back.
I hear you. I’m a little that way, myself, and my mom was a lot like that. I got her a Maxine fridge magnet that said, “Change is good, as long as I don’t have to do anything different.” Fit her to a tee.
So maybe after you move and have adjusted, you’ll be happier? Do you need to simply take it on faith?
If you looked in my window and saw me and Mr.Wrekker on a regular day, you’d probably think it was strange. We talk very little. Its a dance of eyes and previous discussions. We know each other so well, speaking isn’t always necessary to communicate. I’m quiet by nature. He’s a one sentence wonder.
It shocks even me sometimes.
All relationships are unique. You have to decide what you’re happy with. If you cannot abide him, you’re better off alone. IMHO.
This was very insightful, Inigo M. and I think you’ve described him & our current situation quite accurately.
I’m not blameless in all of this, by the way. He’s fed up with one particular bad habit of mine (bottling things up, then having a drunken meltdown) plus quitting my job a couple years ago meant he had to shoulder a bigger financial burden just as he was starting to get close to his goal of buying a house. So he feels taken advantage of, too.
There are some communication issues on both sides (intake and output) and for extra funsies, I have anxiety … and he has ADD. Or ADHD I forget which, sorry. His stuff is well controlled by prescription medication; mine less so. Which also factors into my desire to move: equally important for me to get both away from here, and to a state with friendlier laws.
Anyway, there’s a lot here in everyone’s replies worth thinking over. I know he’s mulling things, too. We talked a bit this evening, and neither of us seems to be in that “I hate you, can’t stand you, go to hell” space. He floated a few suggestions, as a hypothetical more than anything else, and even had good insights on why 1 or 2 of the things we tried in the past didn’t pan out.
Oh, boy. OH BOY. He brought up the ADD thing again yesterday, which puzzled me. Today, out of nowhere on a whim, I googled “ADHD relationship communication problems” and whammo every link described our arguments & little misunderstandings & weird little bits of our daily life like they’d been spying on us.
It cleared up what’s been bothering me so damn much all along. How could someone who said they loved me, who showed flashes of such genuine awesomeness * also care so little about me? I didn’t think he didn’t do the dishes to actively spite me; I thought he just didn’t give a shit about me enough to care whether or not it bothered me in the first place. I guess I see now that this was not so. What I read gave a lot of context for behaviors that had made no sense to me.
So, this has helped so much, and dissipated nearly all of my anger and resentment.
But.
I don’t know if this is about him, or us, anymore. It seems like right now is my best chance to get the hell out of this city, and out of this state. Staying together will mean living here for at least a couple more years. I’ll spare the boring details, but that’s a near certainty … and he knows how much moving outta here means to me. But it wouldn’t be in the cards for a few years.
He made an offhand comment during an unrelated convo that he may not go buy a house now that we broke up, at least not right away, because much of the point seemed lost. The context was, basically, having someone to make happy - I’d been talking about finally having a veggie garden and chickens. He doesn’t give two shits about either but seemed genuinely pleased at the idea of being able to provide them for me.
The idea that pursuing my dream would deflate his doesn’t sit well with me, now that I’m no longer seething with resentment. A couple of days ago I would have had a really petty feeling of “serves him right!” but I don’t feel that way anymore.
- remind me to tell you the Cup O’ Bacon story sometime.