cj2 Posted December 8, 2010 Posted December 8, 2010 This is the first time that I’ve been on this forum, but I’d like to tell my story, it is a bit long though. My ex left me about a month ago, after a 3 year relationship. We weren’t yet engaged, but she had been saying for about 6 months that she wanted to and I was going to ask her Christmas day, which makes it all the more hard. We met on a ski season, I had been seeing someone that summer and it hadn’t work out, whilst her ex had split up with her about a month before. At the time it seemed like it was too soon for either of us to get involved, but we both really liked each other and both thought what the hell and went for it. After a few months she had to go into hospital to have her appendix out and whilst she was there they discovered she had a large cyst, which essentially meant she had to return home to the UK for major surgery. By this point I was pretty much smitten, so packed in my job and came home with her. We came up with a new plan, to go out to Australia for a year together (in August 2008). We were at home for about 6 months, coincidentally our parents only lived 30 minutes from each other, so we both lived at our parent’s houses and saw each other during the week and weekends. She had the surgery that May and after that we started saving to go travelling. During this time her ex kept bugging her though, constant emails, texts, calls etc. It bothered me slightly, but she was friends with a few previous ex’s and seemed to handle it well. So that August we went off to Oz together and moved in with some of her friends. It wasn’t the best of starts, as we were both out of work and things got pretty stressful at times. Her ex stepped things up a gear at this point and kept persisting with the calls, despite trying her trying to cut him out. Then that October, just after we were both sorted with jobs etc and things seemed to be going well she turned round out of the blue and split up with me, saying that her ex had made her feel mixed up and that she needed to be alone to find herself. I was gutted, but not angry; I accepted her decision and came home a few days later. I called her a few days later, just to see how she was and immediately sensed she knew she had messed up big time. It took a few weeks, but she eventually admitted after some questioning that she “felt like she had just made the biggest mistake of her life”. I asked her what she wanted to do and she said there was nothing that could be done now, because she could never ask me to get back with her after what she had done. So, still being head over heels, despite what had happened, I told her I would take her back if she came home for me, she was made up, but said she needed to save up to come home and that it was only right she did it herself, rather than ask me for money. In total we were apart for 4 months, she came home in February 2009, it took a while as her supposed friends chucked her out. To be honest, things at that point were the best they had ever been, her ex was out of the picture, we had managed to do the whole long distance thing with ease and it felt like we both saw a whole life together ahead of us. It wasn’t long before the next life changing event though, that April, we found out she was pregnant. We both took a weekend to think it over long and hard and decided we wanted to go ahead with it. We got a flat together, which was tough financially as she was out of work and with the recession in full swing there was next to nothing out there for her to get. A month after making the call to go ahead with the pregnancy, we made a joint decision that we couldn’t cope as things stood and she had an abortion. It broke my heart to be honest, but we both felt that if we were going to bring another life into the world then we wanted to do it when we were in the right position to do so. So things carried on from there, she went through a couple of temp jobs before landing something permanent that August and after that it felt like everything was starting to fall into place. My work really took off, she started studying for qualifications to help her progress at work and I even taught her to drive. There was one more problem that we had to overcome, with alcohol. Her father had been an alcoholic when she was younger and verbally abused her, which has left her with a lot of confidence issues. She also had some alcohol issues, she would often get drunk to the point of blackouts and quite often that resulted in me having to deal with verbal abuse and difficult behaviour from her. Eventually I made her seek help, as I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore. She would wake up in the morning and have no idea what she had put me through and would break down when she found out. She tried hypnotherapy and it actually did the trick, it wasn’t a problem again after that. At the turn of the year, with seemingly all our issues out of the way, we decided to start saving for a house together. It was at that point last Christmas that she said her dream would be to get engaged on Christmas morning and in my head a plan was formed. We spent a lot of the year saving up, probably not doing as much socially as we’d both have liked, but I thought we were both aiming for that same common goal. We had our ups and downs over the year, but generally I thought things were going really well. We’d even talked about trying for baby again in a couple of years. Then at the start of October I started to notice a few odd patterns of behaviour, she started hiding her phone when texting and spending a lot of time by herself watching TV in the bedroom, being quite avoidant. Usually she wasn’t too happy if I spent too much time on the Xbox, but there was a week where Iplayed it every night and she didn’t complain once. Then one night when I went to bed, I said the usual “love you’s”, but she responded with just a mumble. She had followed the same patterns of behaviour in Australia, right before she had split up with me. Gut instinct told me something was wrong, putting all the little signs together, I asked if all was ok and she said it was all fine but I knew something else was going on in her head. So I did something which I knew was wrong, but I knew would enable me to get the truth and read her journal. There was an entry from a few weeks previous saying that her and her ex (a different ex this time) had been “sharing their sexual fantasies” over email and that it showed up all that was wrong with our relationship. There were two more recent entries, saying that she thought she had fallen for him. I woke her up and confronted her over it, she practically begged for forgiveness, said that it had never got personal and shortly after threw up, she was that cut up. I was pretty distant the next few days, trying to work out how I felt about it all, but by that time it was too late. She broke up with me that weekend, stating that she felt trapped, wasn’t happy, that I had gotten too serious with life, that she didn’t feel ready to buy a house, wasn’t sure about marriage and didn’t know if she ever wanted kids. She moved out shortly afterwards. I’ve told her I don’t want any contact till I’m over it, but with stuff to divide up round the flat, post to pass on etc I’ve still had to see her. She text me at 2am last Sunday, saying she had been trying not to contact me, but wanted to know how I was. I left it till the next morning to reply and it turned out she hadn’t been able to sleep and had drunk a bottle of vodka, then text me. She said sorry for getting in touch. Personally I just felt worried, because she never drank vodka when she was with me as it was one drink that always gave her issues, now she’s drinking it by the bottle. She has made it quite clear that it’s over, in her own words she said that when I read her diary she felt a change and the relationship ceased. In my head it makes sense, but my heart has its own ideas and I know that I still love her, despite everything. I’m still trying to figure out just what to make of it all? We’d been through so much together in those 3 years that I thought we were indestructible. I feel like I literally gave everything that I had to give and can’t really work out where my life goes from here? I turned 30 recently and thought that this was it, that life was all planned out and now I’m suddenly back to square one. I blame myself for reading her diary, but equally, this is the second time an ex has got in the way and I could let it go once as a mistake, but this time I just felt so let down. So that’s it, I hope at least, it makes a good story and thanks for reading. Any advice would be much appreciated!
swfc_77 Posted December 8, 2010 Posted December 8, 2010 firstly mate, im really sorry for what your going through. i'v only been here a couple of months and its scary how common this sort of thing is. the only advice i can give to you is - your ex was not the person you thought she was, if she was ready to settle down then why all the secret txting and so on. my friend went through an abortion a few years back and it really cut him up so i can sort of imagine how hard its been. to be honest i would just walk away and tell her you tried your best if she contacts you again, there's nothing more to say about it. thats all you can do, try your best. you did by the sounds of it and she rejected it, thats her problem not yours. just dont be a doormat mate, if you see the chance to move on take it with both hands, sounds like you deserve better. keep chin up pal,
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