Why is your ex your ex?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Gosh, the guy I dated as a freshman in college, who had been a really good friend that I admired for his quirky genius, turned me down, then begged me to get back together, then broke up with me again after three whole days, insisting we were both too crazy to make a relationship work and that I wasn’t his type (his exact words were: ‘‘I just can’t bring myself to be physically attracted to you.’’ Like okay, I know I’m not a showstopper or anything, but he wasn’t exactly off the cover of GQ either.) We didn’t get beyond the hand-holding stage of the relationship, so I can’t say it was a devastating experience. I remained aquaintances with him after the break-up and we still talk… he is batshit fucking insane. WAY more insane than me. Despite my complete lack of interest in having a romantic relationship with him (I really feel like I dodged a bullet there), he has a special place in my heart as the first time I ever realized there were kids out there like me (you know, uh, psychologically different.) Occasionally he infuriates me and I have to stop talking to him for a while, but we’ve always had a weird sort of intellectual/emotional connection that keeps us in touch.

At least he has the screwed up brain chemicals to justify his weirdness. The guy I dated before that was an idiot (I mean REALLY an idiot… Like if you told him, ‘‘It’s a quarter to ten,’’ he couldn’t figure out that meant 9:45.) He was also a pathological liar – lied to me about getting scholarships, lied to me about having a car, lied to me about every conceivably stupid thing under the sun to lie about. He even pretended he had the same values as me, and I believed it for about three months, because he was really fucking hot. There is no question he was very much in puppy love, but his possessive bullshit (he alienated all of my friends, which cost me a very dear friendship.) He went too far one day, was screaming in our hotel room at midnight at the top of his lungs, and I was so embarrassed and disgusted I tried to leave, at which point he held me down by my throat when I tried to get away from him. I broke up with him with no remorse, refusing to heed his tears, because I simply do not tolerate that shit. We were just 17. He also lied about returning some movies he’d rented in my name, so that immature little asshole cost me another $200 post-relationship.

That is the extent of the adult relationships I’ve had. Before that, I dated a guy for three days (3 is the magic number I guess) who was 27 and divorced with three children and told me he loved me the first day he met me. This and his relentless pressure to get me to have sex caused me to drop him like a hot potato. It’s not even really fair to say he counted as an ex either.

At any rate, you can’t say I don’t learn from my mistakes – I made all new ones every time – and then my husband fell into my lap, and the rest was history.

22

Ditto this.

23

That’s a rough situation, Aesiron. Best wishes.

24

Gosh, its been so long ago that I hardly think of her as anything let alone an ex. We were together in high school and most of college. She broke up with me any time she felt like the relationship was too steady. I always took her back even when there were some pretty bad things involved - like finding her in bed with someone else when I came back from a trip unexpectedly & finding out she slept with a guy I worked with - while I was covering for him at work. I guess I had plenty of reasons to dump her. I should have dumped her long before I did.

Eventually, it was pretty obvious that I should dump her when I found myself in love with someone else. That happened quite unexpectedly - just kind of… well, “happened”. Anyway, that was over 23 years ago and I have been married to the “someone else” for the past 22.

25

Very first boyfriend: He was and still is a gamer. Canceling dates to play matches. During the middle of our three anniversary date, he got a call from one of his playmates that they were being challenged to a “match” online. So he said in the middle of dinner that he had to go home and play and the rest of the date would have to be rescheduled. That and a few months before I became pregnant with his child, only ending in an eptopic pregnancy 2 moths later. There were signs everywhere.

Ex- Husband… because he is way to emotional, controlling and I just didn’t love him the way a wife should love her husband. Though I will never forget the look of his face when I left him. I actually saw what a broken heart looks like on someone’s face. I hated myself for a very long time because when I finally put myself before someone else - I hurt someone that really cared for me. I just wished I felt only half what he felt for me. Maybe it would have worked out… I dunno.

26

Og knows I’ve posted enough about this on this board.

Turns out she was totally batshit insane. On SSDI for Mental Illness, or as I like to say; Certified by the Federal Government as Completely Fucking Insane.

…and the very minute we got married, I became the villain of the story, everything became my fault, and I was the one who allegedly needed help.

No matter how many times she hit me so hard I contemplated going to the Emergency Room but didn’t for fear of what story SHE would tell the police.

27

We were very much in love but he slid into a depression that I was not able to recognize for what it was at the time. He quit both of his jobs and sat around drinking all day without any attempt to find another job or get into school. I stopped trusting him because he lied to me about all sorts of stuff and he just moped around because his girlfriend didn’t trust him, so it fell apart over time until we could barely stand to be with one another.

28

I have the same question. The woman I refer to as “my ex” was never my wife, but we might as well have been married.

Our problems began when we talked about getting married. She was Roman Catholic; I was not, and arguments developed around whether the children would be raised Catholic. This also created problems when discussing the wedding itself; she wanted a full High Mass, my Protestant family and friends were to sit and wait while, as my Mother put it, the Catholics had to be fed their snacks by the priest. (My Mom said she’d “go out for a smoke while the Catholics ate.”) Language was also an issue; Spanish was my ex’s first language, and she wanted her children to grow up speaking Spanish. I pointed out that while a second (and third) language could only ever be a good thing, Spanish might not be the best first language in English Canada, and would be totally incomprehensible to the child’s paternal grandparents–that is, my Mom and Dad.

There were a number of other issues, but they all seemed to feed back to the intense pressure she was under from her family to get married and have Roman Catholic, Spanish-speaking children. In the end, we parted ways, and wished each other well. I don’t know what ever happened to her, but I hope she was able to achieve her dreams.

And I am now married to a wonderful young lady whom I have none of the above issues with. Life does work out at times.

29

Exhubby #1: we were immature brats with issues who shouldn’t have been allowed to cross a quiet street without supervision. He discovered cocaine, which didn’t fit into my vision of Happily Ever After.

Ex#2: He was a crazy lazy drunk. I eventually grew up and got out.

30

I drop a hint or two here, but you have to really look for it, because it’s subtle.

31

After about nine years together, we had grown a bit tired of each other. About the same time I was moving back to the States (from France) and she didn’t like the States all that much, so we parted.

Spent the weekend at her place in Geneva about this time the year before last. I love her to pieces and always will, but parting was clearly the right thing to do in this case.

32

She wanted to move back to Seattle because there was nothing to do in Montana.

She got bars with hip bands, the opportunity to work 60 hours a week and fresh seafood.

I got the dog, the mountain bike, the raft, the kayak, the 4x4, the snowshoes, the cross-country skis, the hiking boots, the backpack, the trail-running shoes, the fly rod, the tent, the four-minute drive to work, the 10 minute walk to downtown (two breweries, dance bar, thai, mediteranian, italian, gyros, mexican, free wireless for five blocks, street dances every Wednesday from May to September) , the house with the two-car garage, front porch and back deck on a dead-end street at the edge of the mountains, the hot springs of Montana, camping, trout rivers, sailing, etc.

We’re both happier, though I wish I still had access to her family cabins at East Rosebud lake in the Beartooths.

whistlepig

33

He was an insecure alcoholic womanizer who cheated on me at least nine times during our 16 year marriage. He met a woman who better fit his ideal…she was a bar-hopping amateur hooker who liked to boss him around. He divorced me, then married her…she divorced him a few years later when she realized he’d never earn enough money to keep her happy. She crushed his soul…and then he woke up and realized he’d thrown away his relationship with his kids for her. He asked if he could come back…I of course said no.

34

I didn’t like his girlfriend.

35

He has a scary horrible temper. When I tried to tell him, he was scaring me with his ranting, he would just say, “I’m not ranting at you.” He is on disability for a bad back. I know he’s in chronic pain, but he also self-medicates with alcohol…a lot. He only wants to watch my cable TV and eat my food.
He wanted to stay married but he no longer wanted to have sex with me. When I finally broke it off with him for good, he seemed mystified that sex was that important to me at all.
Most of all, he has got to be the most selfish man I’ve ever met. And I realized I was worth more that this and maybe someday I could be in a relationship where I could actually be happy!

36

Hey, I think that’s my ex boyfriend. :eek:

We didn’t even know we were dating until it was pointed out to us that if we weren’t we really ought to be. We just hung out every single day before that. I was twenty, he was… twenty-six, I think, give or take. We dated for a little over a year before moving in together with some friends of both of ours. That ended up being a mistake – I did not get along with one of the roommates (I no longer call him an astonishingly lazy irresponsible argumentative no good unemployed porn addicted idiot unless I really think about it) and to prevent loud arguments spent most of my time in my bedroom (well, mine and my boyfriend’s) rather than socializing in the living room.

“Why don’t you come downstairs, honey?” “Because I don’t want a fight to start.” “Oh, it might not…” “Is he down there?” "Well yes – " “Then it will, so I’m fine up here, thanks.”

I’d noticed Ex getting kind of distant about six months after we started cohabiting, but he insisted nothing was wrong. Gentle nudges of ‘if there’s something I’m doing you don’t like, I can’t do anything about it if you don’t tell me’ fell on pathologically nonconfrontational ears. Finally, in November, I was spending too much time closeted in front of the computer. This being the one place I could go in the house to not get yelled at and me not having the money to spend all my time outside the house, I was a bit nonplussed, but as Mister Cranky was moving out and Ex was giving me the ultimatum of ‘no more computer games for God’s sake, spend some time with your boyfriend’ I decided to suck it up.

We had a fine time for that month and I was quite optimistic, enough to get him some rather nice gifts and sign the lease for another six months. Sunday before Christmas he comes up and says it’s not working, he’s going to move downstairs, and I’m still staying through the lease, right? :dubious:

We are still pretty good friends because despite all that he is a generally kind and thoughtful fellow who remembers things like favorite songs, birthdays, and personal details. I don’t regret the breakup. Depending on the day, I don’t regret the relationship.

Also he likes the dick now, so there’s that.

37

Turned out she wasn’t gay.

38

Most recent: I wanted to get married, he didn’t. Hurt like hell, but it was a relatively civilized breakup as such things go, since we both weren’t going to get what we wanted and we knew it.

Before that: He turned out to be a mama’s boy. I don’t want to get into it, it hurt too much.

39

I’ll tell you with the same words that I told him:

"If I had a heart attack, I know you’d be genuinely upset. But we’d have to deal with your being upset before we dealt with my heart attack.

40

Husband #1–we got together in high school and had two kids by the time I was eighteen and he was twenty one. He had a pretty serious bipolar disorder going on and had a really hard time deciding to go permanently on lithium because it really messed up his affect and destroyed his creativity. I couldn’t raise two kids and deal with his mental problems so I chose to be a mom rather than a wife. We split up when I had just gotten out of a month in the hospital following a serious car accident and found him in a terminal depression over John Lennon getting shot–I couldn’t deal with the fact that he cared more (it seemed to me) about a dead stranger than caring for his disabled wife and threw him out. In spite of his mental illness and his struggles with authoritarian religion he managed to be a good dad to the kids and for that I honor him regardless of our differences. We still see each other once in a while when he visits the kids and we exchange music–we both like blues and bluegrass.

Interim Boyfriend–old friend who moved in to help care for me while I was on crutches and then on a cane; about seven months until I was back on my feet. After I got better he backslid into alcoholism again and I found out he had blackouts during which he’d beat any woman near him, i.e. me. Kicked him to the curb. Lost track of him years ago, not sure if he’s still alive; considering his alcohol habit he’s likely dead by now.

Husband #2–married for security and found out too late that we were fundamentally and profoundly incompatible. He weaseled out of the provisions of our divorce agreement in which I gave up my rights to half his assets in favor of him paying for my kids’ college. I’ve never forgiven him for that and I may yet take him to court over it. He married a fat realtor and they’re apparently determined to own everything. I have no interest in seeing or speaking to him again, ever.