This Is Just Such a Terrible Experience

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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Originally Posted by ChristianonLI [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]

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.

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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?

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.

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!

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.

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Originally Posted by ChristianonLI [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bottom line: You need therapy, and possibly medication. Why is that hard to understand?

Well a big part of the problem is your mentality. Again, you are doing this for you, not for her or for any other people. It's 100 percent payoff because you are doing this to improve YOU. Not to bait somebody else in. It's a bonus to have women in your life but ultimately if you can't get your shit together for you, you shouldn't even be thinking about getting it done for a woman in your life.

You got married and you stagnated. You worked the same low level job, kept the same lack of education, thought that as long as we have each other it didn't matter what you did or how much money you have. Such a common misconception of love. Because what happens when you don't have her anymore when you were so dependant on her? You become what you are today....

I'm not entirely sure how much stagnation really had to do with it though. She left after three months not three years. We barely had time to settle in and she was already on her way out. Isn't that just a little strange?

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Originally Posted by ChristianonLI [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]

I'm not entirely sure how much stagnation really had to do with it though. She left after three months not three years. We barely had time to settle in and she was already on her way out. Isn't that just a little strange?

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You two were together for over 2 years. Your life together didn't start the moment you put a ring on her finger.

Christian, you overinvested. Bad on you. You should NEVER lean on someone so much that you fall down the rabbit hole without them. It's hard not to do. I've been guilty of it myself. It can really **** you up.

In my opinion, you need a drastic change in your life, if only temporary. Move out of Long Island. The weather is shitty and you're wallowing in your own mess. Go somewhere far away and do something completely out of character. Go work at Club Med. Do something to snap yourself out of this state you're in.

Everything that's wrong in your life is NOT this woman's fault. Stand up on your hind legs and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

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Originally Posted by ChristianonLI [Dear Guest/Member you have to reply to see the link.click here to register]

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.

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Okay man here it is.......You are NOT the only person this has happened to. I am going through it right now. It sucks! I wont lie, it sucks bad! I have to get over it the same as you do.

Your pride seems to be off the charts, so she left, so what. It happens to the best of us dude. You cant keep thinking crazy ideas like you have been writing about. Where is your head? and dont say she made me this way because SHE didnt, YOU did. You are in charge of your own destiny, not her.

You really need to work on yourself, go running, talk to a friend, something. If i was acting the way you are my friends would kick my a**. I really cant believe your acting like this. Grow a set and be a man, enough of this revenge talk, Thats bull****! Revenge is for pussies that cant find another way to deal with life.
" 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."
SHE IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS YOUR LIFE! YOU ARE!

"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."

What kind of crap is this? A woman does not decide our value, WE do. Until you can grasp this concept you have no business setting foot in another relationship. For real man, quit the drinking and the drugs and get ahold of reality again. Its making it worse. Im 29 and its been 1 week since she left, i have not had a drop, because i know what it does.

You seem intelligent enough to understand this, yet your still crying about it. Do you need a friend? Ill be your friend, we can write to each other about what weve accomplished since our women left! It will be a good time! There is way too much to life to be living how you are. Pull yourself out of it man, I know you can do it.

It is difficult to explain things at this point. Everyone who has replied to this thread, and the few others I have written, as well as all my friends and family have all said the same things. Logic should then dictate that I would be aware of how wrong my point of view is and how right everyone else is.

I know what I have to do. I have to accept that this woman is no longer in love with me and then move on with my life, hoping for the day I can find another woman gullible enough to waste her time on me. But if all of you truly knew me and had lived my life, you would understand why I am holding onto her so tightly and so resolutely. You would understand why it is so absolutely imperative that she come back so that I don't have to live with this mistake.

I will not have another chance with a woman as clean and pure as the one I lost. I'm not getting any younger. I will never be physically attractive. I will never be educated. And I will never be suave or sophisticated. The range of women available to me has always been small and it grows smaller with every day that passes. Yet just a few months ago I was free forever of having to deal with the disastrous and deplorable mindf*ck that is dating. I was married. I had escaped the hardships so many of you have had to deal with in your lives because I had hit the lottery with my wife.

And that's the essence of it. Every aspect of my life has been avoiding the hardships of reality. Avoiding dating, avoiding the stresses of building a career, avoiding anything that didn't play into immediate gratification. I had a woman who loved me regardless of the fact I wasn't physically attractive and wasn't financially successful. And she wasn't ugly, she wasn't disgusting and she wasn't diseased. And I LOST HER. Seriously, how many normal women out there would want anything to do with someone like me?

That's right, none. Now I have to work hard. Now I have to improve myself, get a real job, and do everything that everyone else in the world does just for the possibility of one day coming across another woman who might be inclined to care about me. As long as I stay the way I am the only women who will bother with me are going to be morbidly obese, fugly beyond description and quite possibly infested with STDs. All of which my wonderful and loving wife was not.

And that's why she has to come back. She was my golden ticket to bypassing everything that causes stress in daily life. And once upon a time she LOVED me. I was her world. How could I possibly live the rest of my life knowing she will think of me as a mistake?

If you were really her world, she'd still be there. She's not. You're kidding yourself, and it's hard to watch.

Come on, Christian. She's gone.

That's your problem again, your mentality. You identified the problems: you aren't this, you aren't that, etc. etc. You are just being a victim. You think it's too late and everything is gone and you don't have anything else to look forward too and there is nobody else out there. You have to want to do something.

You are fully capable of doing something. Even if it has a little impact, it's an impact and it's positive. There are other people out there. And it's not like you are in your 50's. You are 31. Nobody said you could get instant results and nobody said it would be easy. If you won the lotto right now, I bet your ass would be feeling better in a heartbeat. But that's not going to happen, it's not realistic. You have to want to work at it and it's going to take a while. When you decide to do that it's up to you. The longer you wait, the harder it gets.

Well then, why do I still feel compelled to send her emails and Facebook messages apologizing, explaining my side and trying to somehow reverse this? Why, when I have sent her a message, she responds with a rude and childish Facebook status denouncing me? I've apologized a thousand times over. I have tried since the first day she left to appeal to her rational and logical side. Logic dictates to me that she should have come back, no questions asked. The things I did wrong were not so terrible as to warrant her overreaction and her immediate need to end the marriage.

Yes Giga, she's gone. And it's wrong on multiple levels. And she knows this. Yet still she refused to come back, refused to listen to a word I said, and steadfastly stuck to her desire to stay away from me and end the relationship. I don't care about her free will at this point, I only care about her righting the wrong against me and granting me my right to not have to live with this horrible mistake for the rest of my life. If I couldn't keep her after just three months of marriage I have no hope in the world of ever keeping a better woman around for even a fraction of that time. Therefore, it's either her or nothing.

And unless a better woman shows up tomorrow, I am going to be stuck in this mindset. Unless the light at the end of the tunnel arrives immediately, thereby providing me the proof that I can get out of this, there's no point in trying to get out of it because as far as I know there IS no getting out.

I still love this woman. I am still in love with this woman and I am not receiving those feelings in return from her. As far as she is concerned she's been done for months and her life is better now. Better WITHOUT me. Can anyone possibly imagine a greater insult? I am now forced to live with the guilt of what happened and forced to live with these feelings I have for her. She should consider herself blessed to have a man in this world who feels so strongly about her when so many others will only use her like a piece of meat, pretending to love her so they can have sex with her then tossing her away. I tried so hard to open her eyes to this reality, that "her type" of man (not me) is the type of man who will use her and never genuinely love her. She should be running back to me right this very god damn moment based off nothing more than the fact I am in love with her because nothing else should matter. And I should not have to be faced with trying to rid myself of this love for her. She is supposed to be smarter than this. She is supposed to understand and realize that she threw away the greatest man on the planet. But instead she felt she could do better.

How could I possibly let this woman get away with such an insult? Why should I? Or I could stand up for myself, maintain my dignity, and pray every day that the misery she has inflicted will come crashing down upon her for this disastrous slight against me. Either that or she wakes the F*** up and returns and does her responsible adult duty.

And no, if I won the lottery I would not feel any better. I would still be miserable and lonely and any woman I meet thereafter would most certainly only be attracted to my money. That's not a lie I want to live with.

Love is not a selfish tool. You don't give love to somebody and expect repayment. You give that to them because you want to give that to them. No questions asked. When they don't give it back to you, you shouldn't have to get upset and demand they owe it to you in return. It hurts when they do not feel the same way about you, but you do the best to understand where they are coming from and do the best to understand that you are not in control of what they want or how they feel.

She is incredibly lucky to have somebody in this world that cares as much as you do, but the more you try to prove it to her and show it to her, the less she is going to listen because she doesn't want to listen. And you are right, there are alot of guys in this world that can and probably will treat her like trash. There are also alot of guys in this world that can treat her right and make her happy. Don't think you are the only one and that you are the best person in the world for her. We don't know what will happen in the future, she might find a better guy, she might find a worse guy. It's out of your hands.

You cannot teach her anything she doesn't want to hear. You cannot do anything about how she feels. There is no longer you and her. It's just you. If this is what you choose to do with your time and your life, good luck. It's a vicious place to be putting yourself into.

When you stop blaming her for everything that is happening to you now, you'll be ready to take the next step.

I want to know why you have avoided all of these "stresses" of life. Everyone has a sad story man, once again your not the only one. It doesnt matter where you came from, it is where you go from here. I have built MY life, no one gave it to me. I was not born into money, I work out to stay fit because thats what i have to do so i dont get fat and sloppy (witch would happen if i didnt) You need to start looking at life as a adventure, not as a stress. You are not guaranteed anything in life other than death and taxes. Everything else is up to you.