This Is Just Such a Terrible Experience

[ChristianonLI]

Some of you may remember the thread I wrote about the collapse of my marriage a few months ago. I have periodically shown up on this site since to post a bit but chances are what I'm about to say will just be more of the same old broken record, dead horse beating.

It's been almost three months since my wife left me. A few days before Christmas she served me with annulment papers claiming I defrauded her by promising children and then reneging. In the two months after she left I tried desperately to get her back some way, any way and in spite of all the advice I received from family, friends and forums like this on what to do, I broke all the rules. I texted, IMed and emailed constantly, I begged and pleaded my case and when she so resolutely stonewalled me I got angry, vindictive and spewed lots of nasty, hateful things that did nothing to further my cause.

I have since tried my best to move on. I signed up on Eharmony and so far met one woman though I don't suspect a relationship will ever build out of what is turning into a "friend zone" situation. I met another woman on OKcupid and while we had sex within days of meeting I'm not attracted to her and in no way intend to develop a relationship with her. I feel very guilty about the encounter too because I didn't go into it intending to deceive her, I thought she was a very nice woman and at the same time I believed that a little action would help in the healing process. But it didn't. It just made me miss my now ex-wife even more.

I'm still out of work. I have exhausted all my avenues for possible employment and I am stuck in my apartment day after day with nothing to do. I take horrible pictures and while I have been rated at least a 7 on the looks scale by some female friends of mine in pictures I rate far lower, thereby decreasing my chances of success via dating/relationship sites. Every single day I think about what happened between Jenn and I, the things that I could have done differently to try and salvage the relationship as well as the things I could have done even earlier on to not even cause the brief marriage to start down the slippery slope it eventually reached. I'm such a fool! I should have seen the signs. I should have acted earlier, smarter, more maturely, but I didn't. I missed everything that any other man would have surely picked up on.

And now she's gone forever. I still love her with all my heart but she doesn't care for me in the least. And this infuriates me to no end. She spent two months fighting me, berating me, pushing me away using any manner of scathing personal attacks for the express purposes of solidifying her position of, "I'm never coming back to you." She guilted me into believing it was all my fault every single day when in the end she finally said something that sort of has me believing all along she left because I wasn't smart enough for her. I wasn't mature enough for her. I wasn't the grown, responsible, self-sufficient man she seemed to believe I was though at no point in the years we were together did I ever try to convey this false impression.

And I will never have back what I had. Every day is just one day less in my life and one day less I will get to experience the only thing in this life I have ever cared to experience: an everlasting relationship bonded by a love that doesn't falter, doesn't wane and doesn't fade. I am almost 31, my life has gone nowhere and now without Jenn there is no reason for me to even bother building a life. She was the only reason that existed in my reality to try and be any kind of productive member of society and now she's out living her life, HAPPY to be rid of me. "How dare she!" is all I can feel about that. I pledged my life to her, and she pledged her's to me and I don't believe any reason on Earth should exist to break that. And yet, she went back on her word and now she's happy and I'm not.

Maybe I'm jealous that she got what she wanted. I really don't know. Part of me would love nothing more than to somehow take an active role in seeing to it she never experiences joy again. Another part of me has been fantasizing about keeping tabs on her for the next few years then, if she ever gets engaged again, showing up to her wedding unannounced and ruining her new chance at happiness in a very unexpected and violent manner I dare not elaborate on.

But that's crazy talk! I know I would never do that. I love her. I should be happy for her if she gets married, right? Seriously? I should be happy that she left me a lonely, broken and now potentially insane man because her marriage to me wasn't the story book fairytale she believed it would be? I had a ridiculously mundane and low paying job when I met her and I had the same job when I married her. Now I have NO job and when I do find one it won't be any better. What woman in their right mind would want to waste any of their time with a very average looking man who doesn't make a lot of money and will most likely never be able to afford his own home? At this point, vengeance feels the only acceptable option. Coming to terms with the lack of reason for my own life and then f***ing up her life as much as possible sort of feels like the only logical course of action because, again, that "how dare she!" feeling comes over me again.

But again, crazy talk. Insanity. I share these thoughts with you all here on the board because I don't hold back. Not in any situation in life. I'm not afraid of what I feel, or think or say and hopefully no one here will be. Hopefully it will be seen as mere conjecture without action because I know other broken hearted people, driven to the brink, have surely felt similar feelings of anger, resentment and potential psychotic episodes. I know I'm not the only one, right? Cheated out of happiness, revenge feels like not only the best option but the ONLY option for to me for if I let her get away with doing this to me then I am a weak man. She wins, I lose and I would forever have to live the rest of my life regretting what I screwed up while she gets away cleanly. But if I can emotionally scar her for life, leave her with memories as painful as the ones I now live with every day, then I win.

But again, it's all just crazy talk. It's 7:30 in the morning, I haven't slept in about two days and I needed a venue to vent my feelings. It would be appreciated if nobody really takes me too seriously, I've also been drinking. And smoking. And some other mind altering things I'd care not to reveal. I don't know what to do. I don't want all these horrific, violent thoughts to come to pass and become reality. I was a good man once. I was an honest and hard working member of society, sound of mind and body. But I built all that on a weak foundation. I built it all on what I believed would be the everlasting love of a woman who ended up forsaking me, casting me aside like garbage and essentially leaving me to die in the desert of loneliness, starving, dehydrated and eventually picked apart by the vultures of guilt, anger, jealousy and psychosis.

I'm tired of being told the old cliches. "Time heals all wounds." "There's plenty of fish in the sea." And any of the other dozens of phrases meant to somehow bandage this gaping wound in my heart. Time does nothing but accentuate what I lost and when you're a fisherman with no pole, no bait and not even a boat there's very few kinds of fish you can reliably catch. Maybe the occasional stupid ones that wash themselves on the shore, but how often does that really happen? And would you really want to eat a fish so stupid?

What the Hell happened to me?

[vashti]

I won't coddle you then...

What's with the "no kids" thing? Personally, I think having children/forming a family is the only good reason to get married. If you weren't willing to give her the kids she wanted, I don't blame her for moving on.

Also, you are still young. Get off your ass and go back to school so you can get yourself a decent job, and don't choose some wishy-washy major that will be useless after you graduate. Be practical. You are correct in thinking that you have nothing to offer anyone at this point because most women your age want a family, and right now, you can't even provide for yourself, let alone anyone else.

Your personality alone might have been enough to attract someone when you were in your teens/early 20s, but it's not when you are a grown up.

I think if you take some positive action towards self-improvement, you will feel better about yourself while making yourself more attractive to the opposite sex. Additionally, it will give you something more productive to do than sit around thinking about your ex.

[ChristianonLI]

I did want children. Very badly. We had talked about it often and had both been very excited to get on starting a family. The claim of fraud in the annulment papers was a complete lie.

[lhn]

To feel anger and resentment and "how dare she" is such a prolonged feeling in a breakup, only made worse when marriage is considered.
These feels are honest and predictable.
You're angry, but at the wrong person. No person, whether married or otherwise should be expected to stay in a relationship if unhappy. Her reasons might not be forthcoming or something which you can accept BUT... marriage with no love? Thats not something she has to settle for.

By the sounds of it, she didn't have the balls to cancel of the wedding, leaving you to pick up your heart afterwards. What an awful situation.

Self-improvement - as i posted before, thats now your aim. Dwelling eventually will wilter away.

Once again I'll repeat what I've said before, the time you now have... the time you spend alone... time you spend constantly questioning how you found yourself in this position, its life altering.

[shheadz]

I can't comment on your situation, and you probably wouldn't listen anyway. I just wanted to say I like your writing style, and use of analogy. So you don't seem very dumb to me. Oh, and as far as going back to school, you should try a vocational school. Something that will give you a new skill (like electrician, plumber, etc) within six months.

[tropigal82]

Oh dear, well I am very sorry to hear of your heartache. :-(

I don't know the facts, so I'm not going to make a judgement. The only thing I can say is this. First and foremost, you are still so young, no need to despair! Your life is just beginning! My dad didn't marry my mum till he was 45 (and she was 21) and they've been happily married for 30 years! At 31 you have your whole life ahead of you. And your life is only what you make of it. Detatch yourself from your emotions for one minute, and try and think about this objectively. You have TWO choices:

1) Do you choose to carry this burden of pain like a life-long shackle? Do you wish to spend the next few years wrapped up in anger, bitterness, hurt, disappointment, misery, blaming your ex-wife for all your unhappiness and woes? Do you build a wall around yourself for fear of more rejection and more pain? Do you sit waiting for a miracle fairytale ending (that she comes back to you) whilst wallowing in self-pity and heart-ache, hoping that someone else will make every thing alright? Do you push away all new possibility of happiness, new romantic opportunities, because you are still convinced of your undying love for the one person who you can't have? Do you put your life, your career, your friendships, your romances, your happiness on hold?

2) OR do you accept that what's done is done. As much as she has hurt you, or betrayed you, or whatever she has inflicted upon you, it is too late to change the past. She has made up her mind and no amount of crying or wailing will change her mind. Do you hold your head up high, learn from the past, but move on, acknowledge your self-worth and act dignified, and understand that it is you who creates your reality. Remember, what you fear is what you become. Everything is a choice between fear and love. If you truly love her, you will let her go, even if it breaks your heart. It may be hard, I'm not saying this path is easy, but ultimately it will lead to a greater control of your life and your happiness. In the meantime, it sounds like you need to get out (but forget about dating for the timebeing, you need to heal yourself first). Why not join a local sports club, take up a new hobby, hang out with male friends, do some charity work. The moment you start loving life again, you will remember that there is hope, and you will find love again!

[vashti]

At this point, vengeance feels the only acceptable option. Coming to terms with the lack of reason for my own life and then f***ing up her life as much as possible sort of feels like the only logical course of action because, again, that "how dare she!" feeling comes over me again.

But again, crazy talk. Insanity. I share these thoughts with you all here on the board because I don't hold back. Not in any situation in life. I'm not afraid of what I feel, or think or say and hopefully no one here will be. Hopefully it will be seen as mere conjecture without action because I know other broken hearted people, driven to the brink, have surely felt similar feelings of anger, resentment and potential psychotic episodes. I know I'm not the only one, right? Cheated out of happiness, revenge feels like not only the best option but the ONLY option for to me for if I let her get away with doing this to me then I am a weak man. She wins, I lose and I would forever have to live the rest of my life regretting what I screwed up while she gets away cleanly. But if I can emotionally scar her for life, leave her with memories as painful as the ones I now live with every day, then I win.

=But I built all that on a weak foundation. I built it all on what I believed would be the everlasting love of a woman who ended up forsaking me, casting me aside like garbage and essentially leaving me to die in the desert of loneliness, starving, dehydrated and eventually picked apart by the vultures of guilt, anger, jealousy and psychosis.

I was re-reading your post, and quite honestly, a lot of this portion is downright creepy. Maybe you should move back home with your mom for a while so you can afford to get some therapy?

[lhn]

He lives in the apartment/basement? below his mum already. It's one of the reasons he feels like he hasn't progressed in life.

Yet, non of the posts seem to indicate that he is trying/doing something to change his life.

[SamFrmMelbourne]

ChristianonLI, I understand what you feel. I just had a devastating breakup and I am now jobless (only doing voluntary and casual job) and the lack of activities intensifies whatever feelings I have. However, you should realize no matter how much you dwell on your past, there is no way to change it. What's done is done. Your ex wife has left you and there is nothing you can do about it.

It's now all about you. You have to 'fall forward', take advantage of this ordeal to propel yourself forward. Make use of the time you have to have a reflection of your life and yourself. Identify the negative traits that you have, work on improving your knowledge and skills. At the end, despite this harsh experience, you will come out wiser, and become a better man.

Don't stop looking for a job, you never know if your next application is the one getting you the job that you've always wanted. Join a charity organization so you get to meet new people and contribute to the society. Spend quality time with family and friends.

There is so much in life than your ex wife. Don't let this event make you miss out on other opportunities. So, carry on, soldier!

[ChristianonLI]

Ihn, I don't know how I could possibly improve my life. I don't have the money to go back to school and even if I did I haven't the first clue as to what sort of trade, skill or career I would want to pursue. For the last few weeks I have been researching businesses for sale here on Long Island and I have a reliable investor lined up who is willing to help me make the purchase but even that has begun to lose its appeal to me. I eventually fell asleep at around 10am this morning and I just woke up a little while ago and that is the general cycle I have become stuck in. Stay up all night, sometimes for a few days, drink a lot, then crash and sleep a day or two, rinse and repeat.

It feels like my life is over but if I were to somehow pick myself up and make my life better I would still lose because my ex-wife would still be getting her way. She would still be rid of me, still happy to be without me, still generally happy with her life and within me there resides a burning desire to enact payback. It's basically how I have always lived my life in every respect. I don't let people cross me without consequences but the magnitude of what she has done to me would require a payback that would ultimately ruin my life as much as her life. And while part of me knows it's insane to even think that, another part of me feels when the time came it would be worth it to know that I had a hand in making sure her life would be as miserable as mine is right now.

[SamFrmMelbourne]

It feels like my life is over but if I were to somehow pick myself up and make my life better I would still lose because my ex-wife would still be getting her way. She would still be rid of me, still happy to be without me, still generally happy with her life and within me there resides a burning desire to enact payback. It's basically how I have always lived my life in every respect. I don't let people cross me without consequences but the magnitude of what she has done to me would require a payback that would ultimately ruin my life as much as her life. And while part of me knows it's insane to even think that, another part of me feels when the time came it would be worth it to know that I had a hand in making sure her life would be as miserable as mine is right now.

Before you learn to deal with your anger and let your ex-wife go, your life wouldn't go on! Who cares about what she is feeling now? If she did something wrong to you, she would pay the price by herself. Life has its own ways to maintain balance. Rather than contemplating on revenge, it's much wiser to spend time thinking what you can do for the betterment of your life.

[shheadz]

Geez.. has it crossed your mind that instead of bring her down to your level, you should rise up to hers? And don't start in with the self defeatist attitude you've been spewing for weeks.

Your ex didn't do sh!t to you. She fell out of love, and that's not her fault. It's purely biological. And no, she shouldn't have stayed with you anyway because of some promise she made in front of a preacher. She's not the problem here. You are. You're the one wallowing in self pity, and that's also not her fault. Maybe she was right about you. You've had every chance to pick up your life after the split that she's had, and you've done nothing about it.

I don't recall you saying how old you are, but if you're under 35 you should seriously consider joining the military. You don't need any money, they'll take anyone, and they won't let you sit around feeling sorry for yourself. It will be a way to get out of your mom's basement, and start living life again.

[ChristianonLI]

The thing is shheadz, there are certain details from the original thread I wrote regarding the collapse of my marriage that I did not elaborate on in this thread which you may not be aware of. For the purposes of filling you in, I will explain some of them as briefly as possible.

We got married in July 2009 and she left me by October of 2009. She came to me with a laundry list of things I needed to change about myself which I immediately put into effect with no change in her overall behavior. She grew increasingly unhappy with the marriage and I didn't understand why and the week before she left, before I had done a single thing wrong, she was telling me she didn't love me as much as she used to.

That's wrong. It's not fair and it should not have happened. She expected a magical Cinderella story and she got a harsh dose of reality and she couldn't handle it. It was her obligation as a grown woman to make it work but she refused. Her first reaction was to find any way on Earth to run home to mommy without caring in the least how I would feel about it.

So she left after three months of marriage. She let her feelings for me fade without good reason and now here I sit, single and totally f***ed up with no way out. It shouldn't have happened and if by some miracle she woke up and agreed to fulfill her responsibility as a wife right now I would oblige her and take her back.

This is a god damn nightmare that I have been living. Each and every moment I only hope that I will awake from it and I'll be back in early September with my job and my wife and all the knowledge necessary to fix everything before it collapsed. There is no reason on Earth that I should be forced to start over in my life like this.

[cmacattack1]

We got to start all over again and start taking it one day at a time. One thing I did to help me on my path to doing a little growing up was to make a routine for me everyday. It begins with getting up earlier than I usually did, going to the gym, cooking myself a nice breakfast, going to work for eight hours, come home with a few hours to do something before bed. Those few hours you can choose to put towards positive things: reading a book, looking up classes that might be interesting (even if it's just one), and so on. It's about managing your time better and putting it towards something positive.

I'm not saying that you aren't hurting and that you are trying to deal. I'm not saying that you aren't going to hit rough patches in the future. Numbing the pain and staying up all night are just putting you in a bad cycle. Don't you want to come out of this? Do you really want to wallow in this and wake up and be 40 and still have the same problems? There is no time better than today and there is no instant cure. You have to stay at it and turn your negativity into possitivity. Rejection sucks, it's my greatest fear and many others agree. This does not change who you are as a person though and that you have good qualities: enough for the woman of your dreams to fall and love and want to marry you. That wasn't an impulse decision to marry you. You have to shake this and I will keep telling you this over and over if you need to.

[ChristianonLI]

I guess the core issue is that I cannot bear to live the rest of my life with the fact I may have screwed up the most important thing in my life. While it really feels like she wanted out and I did nothing wrong, I'll never know. The fact she gave me a range of bullsh*t excuses that weren't backed up by her best friend leads me to believe this. If her friend had just reiterated my ex wife's reasons for leaving then it really would have been me.

Bottom line though, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm single again. Henceforth, I now lack value and purpose in life. My friends and family cannot understand my line of logic or reasoning. As far as I am concerned, the value of my existence is directly correlative to the value put upon me by a woman. If no woman loves me the way my wife once loved me then I am nothing and I will be nothing until another woman comes along to provide me with that love. It's like money, really. Money doesn't have intrinsic value in nature. It is only valuable because that is how we perceive it. We place that value on money but without people, money would be nothing.

"But what about the love of your friends and your family?" you may ask. Believe me, others have asked already. Well, that love from friends and family is entirely different and, to a certain extent, it doesn't matter to me. I'd be perfectly fine having no family and no friends as long as I had one woman who was in love with me. But on the reverse end, all the friends and family in the world can't make up for the fact I'm not getting any intimate contact whatsoever. I'm single. I'm alone. And knowing the woman I love so dearly is out living her life not caring about me makes it all the more painful. Knowing she's now looking for someone new, and may even have found him, thereby NOT viewing me as the greatest man on Earth is disgusting and reprehensible to me. The very fact I love her should be enough for her to love me back. I know it was for me when she first said "I love you" to me.

And so now I am forced to START OVER. It's unacceptable. I shouldn't have to be starting over from the beginning. Going months, most likely years, without a woman who loves me, every day hoping and praying either my ex wife comes to her senses and realizes where she belongs or I find someone better. But at this point, at this stage of my life, I will only be trading down. My ex wife was a virgin. She had hardly dated at all. I was her first for everything. Any woman I find now is going to be used goods. She's going to have baggage. And she's not going to be a trade up at all unless I actively work my ass off to improve my life to bait one in. I'd found my wife having done nothing with my life and not improving myself as a person in any way. I had hit the lottery with her and now she's gone. So what's left for me to do? Rigorous self improvement in the hopes one day I might find someone? What's the point of doing all that work if I don't know the precise moment another woman will come along to free me of this emotional train wreck that I've now become? There's no point if I don't have a 100% guarantee that it'll pay off. I could work hard the rest of my life to be the best person I could possibly be and die alone at 85. Or I could sit on my ass, being lazy and self-serving and have a miracle fall into my lap just as my wife did in 2006.

I guess the fact I don't want to kill myself anymore is an improvement. But just a marginal one. There is nothing good left in this world for me. Everywhere I look I see happiness. I see people in love. I see everyone but me getting exactly what they want out of life while I sit here, day in and day out, getting nothing but punishment while my ex wife is out happily living her life. Well, the way I see it, the only way I could ever be happy now is if she becomes as miserable as I have been. Either that or she wakes up, realizes her mistake and comes back to me as my wife where she pledged she would stay forever. That's not a promise anyone should be allowed to go back on. She had an obligation to make the marriage work and to stay in love with me just as I was obligated on both of those things to her. I'm STILL holding my promise in my heart in hopes she'll one day reciprocate. She had always told me how marriage and children would make her happy and that's what I wanted to give her. I wanted her to be happy. So why wasn't it enough? Suddenly I had to be a knight in shining armor? And because I wasn't she gave up in three months? I didn't deserve that and I will hold this grudge until the day I die. Or the day I inflict permanent misery on her. I still want my revenge and either I find a new woman who is better and helps me forget about my ex wife or I will continue to seek that revenge and when the time is right, I will have it. I don't really feel she has any right to be happy if it means making me so unhappy.

So where does this leave me now? In my basement apartment, still alone, still hoping and praying either for a miracle or for ultimate vengeance, slipping deeper and deeper into an abyss of psychosis. There will come a time when I cannot claw my way out. And when I reach that point of no return, we all know who's fault it will be. Jennifer Lee's. She could have stayed. She could have sucked it up and been a grown, mature woman and done her duties as a wife just as I was doing mine as a husband. But no. Her personal happiness was more important. It didn't matter that she would be breaking me mentally and physically by doing this to me. Nothing mattered to her but getting out and getting away from me. And you folks really expect me to pull myself up and move on from this? this grave, disgusting and disastrous insult? Her telling ME I wasn't good enough? Her telling ME I wasn't the greatest man on Earth to her anymore? If I walk away from that, if I accept that, I'm a horrible failure. It means she will find someone she will forever believe is BETTER than me. And that just can't happen. I won't let it. Not now and not ever. She believed I was the best man in the world once and that's how it should stay.