I'm a 20 year old woman and my fiance with whom I was in a relationship for 2 years just left me. Or rather he left me a month ago, but it has been a blur. It feels like yesterday. It hasn't been getting better, it's been getting worse and worse. We loved each other so much. We were going to get married. We told each other we love each other many times a day, we vowed eternity to each other daily. He told me I could hold on to him, he said he belonged to me and would be with me forever, he told me I could trust him.
I had such a difficult life before I met him. I was hurt by everyone who was close to me. I could not trust people, but I met him and overtime I learned to trust again. I learned to love other people. I was so happy. My life was beautiful and full of meaning because of him. I was so certain of our future, we were going to go to college and then marry and have children. Oh... :'(
But now he's gone. And he says that even though he still loves me we probably will never marry and have a future together. Religion is one of the problems. When he met me I was an atheist/agnostic and he was Catholic. But we fell in love nonetheless and promised forever to each other. We debated a lot about the existence of God and religion, and a year or so after meeting I started to think that perhaps God exists after all, and another half a year after that I decided that I would convert to Catholicsm. Things seemed so wonderful.
The only problem is that I am not a very mentally stable person. I've suffered from anxiety, obessiveness, depression for a while, and this interacted very badly with my Catholic faith. I began to live in constant fear of sin, and I was terrified of hell. This made my life a living hell. There were times when I felt like I couldn't avoid sin, would make giant lists of sins to confess, and would throw myself on the ground and hit myself in frustration. It was horrible. I saw my sanity slipping away and I realized that I needed to stop believing in hell to survive. So I started reading atheist/agnostic arguments again, and started to seriously doubt my faith. I am an agnostic/theist now.
My mental illness was very difficult for my fiance to deal with. I made life very difficult for him in the past half a year or so of our relationship. We were constantly arguing. There were times when I blamed him for introducing me to Catholicism, and even times when I told him I regretted meeting him. I hate myself for saying those things. In the end he ended up being unable to handle it and left me.
Right now he wants to be friends, but he doesn't think we will ever be able to marry. He is Catholic, and Catholics believe in dating only for the purpose of discerning marriage. So he feels he can't be in a relationship with me unless he thinks he can marry me in the future. He doesn't think he can marry me because I don't share his faith and because my mental problems would not make me someone who can be a parent and a supportive spouse.
I want to do everything I can to overcome my mental problems. I'm going to a psychiatrist in a week and I am going to do everything I can to recover. The only problem is that I just can't bear him having left me. I still love him so much. I feel that the vows I made to him (or rather the vows we both made to God) are binding forever. I will never be able to love another man or give myself to another man. I already belong to him. But he doesn't want me. :'( :'( :'( I feel like I don't have anything to fight for.
It's ironic because if he was still in a relationship with me I would have the strength to recover and to fight the mental illness, but because he's left me I don't have this strength and I feel like I am spiralling down to a place with no way out. It's terrifying. I don't know what I am going to do. I don't know how I'm going to survive.
Please tell me if you have any words of advice for me.
Hmm, so many things to talk about. First and foremost, your strength comes from inside you. Not from anyone else. The other person might be the inspiration for finding the strength, but it still comes from within. Yes, you can deal with the problems you suffer from, without him.
Are these psychological disorders you mentioned something that has been diagnosed and that you are getting treated for? Honestly most people with problems refuse to accept they have a problem and don't get treatment.
You might want to duck here, because the bible thumpers here might start hurling brimstone at me for this next part. Now, I'm a non-practicing Catholic. I went to 12 years of catholic school, which is why I'm not a practicing Catholic. Try to remember that all religious text was written by humans to give them answers to questions they couldn't explain. It is a comfort device to soothe the mind when there are no definitive answers. If that doesn't soothe your mind, here is one of my favorite ways to mess with the devoted religious. Let's look at the vision of Heaven most people have. A paradise where you are surrounded by all of those you love, where you have eternal happiness. Now, say there is someone you really care about who might not have been very good. But you still love this person. If Heaven is a place where you are blissfully happy, wouldn't that person have to be there in Heaven with you? Now you figure that no matter how evil a person may be, there has to be at least one heaven worthy person who loved them, so therefore Hell would either be empty or non-existent due to Heaven's very nature. And if you are still not comforted, Hell isn't so bad, I got a corner office there with a great view of the lake of fire.
You will get through this though. Just about everyone here has been through something like you are experiencing. And with time you will find yourself getting stronger and happier. You will survive and get through this and find even more happiness down the road.
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I know the difference between right and wrong, I just don't care.
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Shut up, I'm not done blaming everyone who isn't me.
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"I have done that," says my memory. "I cannot have done that," says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually--memory yields.--Nietzsche
Part of the reason my ex and I ended was over religion. I am deist/agnostic and he is full blown fanatical Southern Baptist Christian (or so he likes to think)
Well, that's a whole other story we won't even get into right now.
Time and time again, I see just how detrimental religion can be. It starts wars, end relationships, ugh the horror.
Consider yourself lucky that you got away from someone who would be so crazy and fanatical over religion. Could you see yourself really being in that kind of relationship forever? Someone who puts this human created religion before all else? He is creating his own misery, and indirectly - yours too! (at least for the moment)
You will find love again. Despite your psychological problems, which I understand, you will be happy again. I still won't say that happiness is found completely within. We are social animals and we *need* companionship and love. But you will find all of these again. It just takes time. When you meet the person you are really supposed to be wtih, you will look back at this time in your life and laugh. You will be THANKFUL this relationship ended because had it not end, you would not be wtih the person you eventually will be with.
Stay strong, and don't let anyone get you down so much that you feel like ending your life. I just posted a response to someone else feeling suicidal over a breakup. I will say the same to you that I said to her. What if you killed yourself when only days later you would have met the real love of your life? Better yet, what if there IS an afterlife afterall and you are no happier after death than before (hypothetically speaking). Sure would suck wouldn't it?
Pain and suffering is part of the human existence. You will get through it. All pain is temporary...happiness will come your way before you know it and then you will look back on this and think how crazy it was for you to consider ending your life over someone like this...
Phew, Devildog. Your posts are usually excellent, but someone else's thread is not the opportunity to work out your problems with Catholicism. Or mine, for that matter Same to Nemesis.
Questioveritas, I'm really sorry to hear your story. Please hold on - as Nemesis says, pain and depression do pass. Especially if you're working out your issues with a good psychiatrist. The process can be very slow and sad, but you will get there in the end.
Is religion really the only issue with your ex? After all, he dated you in the first place when you were atheist/agnostic. And what about the vow he made before God? What was it and why isn't he sticking to this?
Would your ex be willing to accept a compromise? Two of my best friends are with Catholic girls. They can't swallow the Catholicism, but both have found that they can cope with various brands of protestantism. Especially since many protestant churches have a different balance between sin and grace.
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That is not me in the photo. Nor is it my ass
Originally posted by questioveritas
Catholics believe in dating only for the purpose of discerning marriage.
Which mental illness do you have? Stupidity is not a mental illness! Just kidding, just kidding... trying to cheer you up a bit.
Look, you're so very young and you'll love a hundred more times in your life and be hurt and loved and dumped and happy and sad... You will earn more self-respect, emotional stability, and optimism as life goes on. The first few months to a year after the break-up are the most difficult. But the pain does go away and after a while we almost feel like we never loved this person.
If you really believe you have a mental disorder, going to a therapist is crucial. Don't be afraid; millions of people live with all kinds of neurosis and treat them medically with a great success.
I found Devildog's outlook on heaven and hell to be pretty neat.
Your fiancé is the wrong person for you, there are some things that are really hard to overcome, I count religion among them as the babies suck it with their mother's milk. If he's happy with it and has no doubts, you won't be able to change his views on relationships in the next future.
It would be nice if he was there to support you through therapy. I assume of your problems is the fear of being alone and that you're not independent enough. If he was a stable person he might help you to get through it, to provide you with enough strength to overcome your problems, while showing you where the borders of his support are. If he isn't that strong or mature, you will end up clinging to him and use him as a crutch, because he's giving in to your emotional demands. In the end he will be of no use for you and very likely he will finally retreat and run from your clinginess. If he's not there to help you, you will have to do it alone. Don't expect anybody to be there to help you, it's great when there is someone to support you, but when he's not there, you must find the strength to do what needs to be done alone.
Originally posted by ReluctantRomeo
Troublemaker. You're not too far away for me to come and kick your butt
How romantic you are, my Romeo.
There may or there may not be a god, I'm sure though that religion has been used many times to be used as a mean to keep people under control with the prospect of eternal damnation and searing pains. I sometimes wonder if there's a god or not and if he minds that I don't go to church, I mean, you never know. I usually remind myself that the idea of having people suffering not to be conform with the fundamental concept of love and forgiveness that you will find in the Christian religion. I also believe (I don't know why though) that any kind of punishment for my sins will meet me in this life, not the next one. Maybe it's like this in order to preserve the educational purpose, where's the fun to get your butt kicked in your next life without having any clue for what?
Questioveritas, look at religion as something to comfort you and put all the nasty stuff aside, after all it's just a collection of the writings of human beings. Take the good and wise parts and leave the rest for whoever wants to believe in hell. I can imagine that the idea of all the alleged horrors that await you after death scare you to death, but if I understand it right, that's not what being Christian is about.
Start your therapy and remind yourself that even when religion wasn't such an important factor for your boyfriend, your mental sanity surely is. You need to stability for your relationship, but most of all for yourself.
I'm sorry that you're hurting right now. It's awful. I think all of us in here understand how you feel, that's why we're here too. I'm not going to even comment on the religion subject because to each is own. It's pretty obvious that was a huge problem is your relationship.
What I'm going to say is about you as a person. You can't truly give yourself wholeheartedly to someone until you're happy with who you are. It sounds like you have some issues to work out. Therapy is excellent. I did it for awhile myself when my breakup happened. It helped me do a lot of self-exploring. I'm a completely different person now than when I was before I started going.
Remember too that you are so young! You haven't even lived a quarter of your life yet. You should be out in the world trying to figure out what you're all about and what you want and what you believe. This comes with having different experiences with the world and the people you meet.
One big lesson in life that I learned is that you can't depend on a person for your happiness. You'll never be happy if you do. You have to depend on yourself. That's what makes you strong.
In the meantime, surround yourself with loved ones and keep busy. Just remember that you rock and you will find someone someday that will fit you perfectly. Keep us updated on you.
I agree that strength must come from inside of myself, but it's very hard when my whole world just fell apart. Perhaps it was a mistake to make such an intense commitment, to trust, and to love in the first place. I was talking to my dad about it, and he seemed to say that I shouldn't believe when people make such vows, because things change and they end up not keeping them. That was very hard for me to hear, because it's equivalent to saying that love and commitment aren't real. I don't know how I will ever be able to trust people again.
My ex-fiance and I saw ourselves as one being, we were convinced we'd spend our whole lives together. There were times when we asked God to marry us right then and there (I'm pretty sure more than once, he remembers only once). There was always the belief in the permanence of our relationship. We even made vows similar to what marriage vows sound like "Dear God, we vow to love, honor, serve, protect and trust each other forever" and said them very frequently for the past year or so. I never imagined that our relationship would end, but I guess the insanity got the best of us. I don't blame my fiance for leaving, I did make it very bad for him. At one point the insanity got so bad for me that I actually left him for a few hours. I don't really remember how it happened now or why, but Catholicism and the fear of hell and what I felt as being trapped by the religion were major factors. Things were so bad that I actually don't remember most of what happened at that time.
Right now I don't know how I will keep on living because I feel very strongly that the vows I made to him are true and binding. I love him very much. I feel that I am his and will be his forever. It hurts a lot that he doesn't want me enough to fight for me, and just says that the chances of our being together are almost zero.
I know that I have a lot of problems I need to overcome. And I know that I could overcome them if I were fighting for something worthwhile. A big problem is that now I've lost the will to live. I spent all of last night in tears and intense pain. Every minute of being aware of my existence and of having lost him is so painful that I just want to be unconscious. I'm not all that sure that this life is worth fighting for. Suppose I did heal from my illness, so what? I would still be eternally committed to and eternally in love with a man who will probably go on to marry and have a family with someone else. Is this really a future worth fighting for? Wouldn't it be much better to stop existing altogether?
I guess a big problem now is that I don't really know what, if anything, comes after death. It's so strange because through all of this I realized how little we know about the nature of existence, and how the only thing one person can be absolutely sure of is that his consciousness exists. I can't even be sure that other people exist, or that the external world exists, or exists the way I perceive. For all I know every person I meet is not a real person but is just like a person I dream about. All this is very scary And having been abandoned in this most difficult time of my life is unbearable.
Have any of you asked those distubring questions about existence?
P.S. Someone asked why the vows don't mean anything to my ex-fiance anymore, and essentially he talked to a priest about it and the priest told him that the Church does not allow Catholics to make vows like that (unless they're in a labor camp in Siberia where there is no priest) and that therefore they were void from the beginning.
Last edited by questioveritas; 18th May 2005 at 7:02 PM..
Originally posted by questioveritas
Have any of you asked those distubring questions about existence?
Yup, many times. I've come to the conclusion that what matters is only how I feel about it, if I'm convinced that I did the right thing or not. You can't know if God exists or not, but you will always have yourself to judge your actions and whether you really did your best to live up to your ideals. You don't know if this is not some kind of matrix world where nothing but your consciousness exist, but you can still live as if everything was real and still taking the responsibility for the people around, because what happened if it was real indeed and not only a dream? What matters is that under these conditions you decided to realize the best decisions and to do what was necessary.
Originally posted by XNemesisX
Time and time again, I see just how detrimental religion can be. It starts wars, end relationships, ugh the horror.
Religion does not start wars or end relationships.
People do.
Jesus taught us to love and cherish one another. No where in the bible did Jesus say "Start wars and end relationships."
In much the same way as there are Muslim terrorist, there are Christian extremist who tend to go TOO far and lose sight of God's desire for us to love one another.
I know you had a bad relationship with someone who claimed to be a Christian, but I can tell from your description of his actions, he has fallen too far from God.
Originally posted by kooky
Yup, many times. I've come to the conclusion that what matters is only how I feel about it, if I'm convinced that I did the right thing or not. You can't know if God exists or not, but you will always have yourself to judge your actions and whether you really did your best to live up to your ideals. You don't know if this is not some kind of matrix world where nothing but your consciousness exist, but you can still live as if everything was real and still taking the responsibility for the people around, because what happened if it was real indeed and not only a dream? What matters is that under these conditions you decided to realize the best decisions and to do what was necessary.
How do you feel when you think that this world might not even be real? When I first started thinking this way I was afraid that I was schizophrenic or something. It helped me a lot when my mom, who is completely sane, told me that there was a time in her life when she asked those questions too. It's so terrifying for me to not know whether things are real, and whether they are the way I perceive them to be.
Originally posted by questioveritas
How do you feel when you think that this world might not even be real?
I feel empowered by that thought. If that is indeed the case, then that means YOU are in control. You decide if you are going to be happy or sad. It means the world is indeed your oyster and you can go out and shape it any way you choose to.
questioveritas, I can assure you, the feelings you have about the end of your relationship is nothing new to most people here. We all have our own little stories, some of them would probably make you feel like your's is nothing. You should look up my original thread sometime, "Marriage in Jeapordy due to male "friend" with an agenda". It a long read, over 300 posts, but it is a pretty good roadmap of how most situations like this work out. You can watch me go from where you are now, to where I got to be.
Please note: The suggestions and advice offered on this web site are opinions only and are not to be used in the place of professional psychological counseling or medical advice. If you or someone close to you is currently in crisis or in an emergency situation, contact your local law enforcement agency or emergency number.
I hate myself for saying those things. In the end he ended up being unable to handle it and left me.
Just kidding, just kidding... trying to cheer you up a bit. 
I usually remind myself that the idea of having people suffering not to be conform with the fundamental concept of love and forgiveness that you will find in the Christian religion. I also believe (I don't know why though) that any kind of punishment for my sins will meet me in this life, not the next one. Maybe it's like this in order to preserve the educational purpose, where's the fun to get your butt kicked in your next life without having any clue for what? 
Linear Mode
