Second this. My ex husband was a terrible husband. Now he and his wife are my family and best friends. And they treat the child I had later like part of their family just the same as the child he and I share. It's become one of the best and most supportive relationships in my life.
This is so inspirational! My question is this as I am going through a divorce right now and just can not fathom a happy relationship between me and my soon to be ex-wife: Did it matter how it ended?
Was there cheating? How ugly did it get? Or did time and distance cure the anger and bitterness and allow the two of you to reconnect in a positive way?
My wife wanted us to be able to be friends still after our divorce to which I laughed at originally, but did wind up giving it a try, but then the guy that was “just a friend” wound up not being just a friend and we are months away from the divorce being finalized and they are in a full blown relationship already! We have two kids and want to co-parent, but I have no idea how to be anything more than amicable toward her. I’m not strong enough to watch her do this and be happy for her.
A breakup always come with a lot of complex emotions and by your description you've not fully let go of things either. That is, in my experience, one of the keys to a healthy breakup and remaining friends, it's accepting that the person is no longer "yours", or so to speak. Your wife sounds like she's fully accepted that things are over and has mentally moved on. Everyone does that at a different pace and how things end is, I believe, really the key.
Soon 2 years ago I ended a nearly 10 year long relationship. It wasn't an explosive breakup, and I think that helped a lot. You change in 10 years, and I think we both saw that we were starting to pull in different directions, and as a result we had a lot of unnecessary conflicts. And the thing is, neither of us were really "wrong", we just wanted different things, and our goals in our lives were no longer compatible. In the moment it sucked, and finally we had a big talk about how things were not working and decided to go our separate ways. A month or so later we started to talk a bit, and it was tense at first, but we did not hate each other, and so over time talk became more natural. And now we're talking on a regular basis, hanging out on occasion and enjoying life as good friends.
That is at least my story for how I remained friends with my ex, but your situation & feelings are not identical to mine, and if you can handle being friends with your ex is really up to you. It's important to not be jealous if things go well for them and they find a new partner, have kids and so on.
But how do you not feel jealous of another person living your dream? How do you get over the feeling of them leaving you - which means you weren’t good enough for them? It’s only been 10 days to my breakup where I actually begged him to stay but his feelings had “plateaued.” I don’t even know what answers I’m looking for. I can’t fathom being friends (he wanted to).
If you still harbour very strong feelings for the other person then it's going to be a lot more complicated to become friends with them.
A few things to keep in mind though:
If they leave you it means you were not the right person for them, not that you were not good enough. Very different things, though when you're full of grief that isn't such an easy thing to differentiate between. If your ex still want to be your friend that means that they still value you.
You're 10 days off from your breakup. Your mind is racing, you probably don't quite know your own feelings, that's natural. It's easy to blame yourself in this instance, but relationships often end without it being anyone's fault.
If you keep blaming yourself and feeling like it was your fault that you broke up you'll never heal. Give yourself some time, but look forward, don't focus on "what could have been" (though given that it was just 10 days ago that your breakup happened, that isn't going to be easy).
A rule I've given myself for my exes, which helped me at the very least is to both remember why I got together with them, and why things ended. The former helps me remember that they're still good people (rather than play the blame game), the later helps me remember that we were just not meant for each other and that I should not cling to any feelings I once had for them.
Thank you for the perspectives. The intense pain in my heart right now won’t let me forgive myself for not being the right person for him, but maybe in a few days I will have dried my tear ducts and will have to start working towards healing.
I can see value in your rule - thank you so much for that - I’ll keep it in mind for later. I hope to really grow after this and become a better person, whether or not I find love again.
I was here only a couple months ago!!! And now… it’s only mildly better. Just being honest. Sometimes healing takes a long time and I am impatient and want to heal and be over her now. I recognize it’s over. I recognize that she carries at least half the blame when, at first, I shouldered around 90% of it. I also know that, to a lot of women, I am quite the catch! Family man who values spending time and raising kids, stayed at home with them for 10 years while my wife pursued her career, learned to become quite the chef and love making people food as well as using my espresso machine to make yummy lattes and cappuccinos, and am musically gifted and play the piano and sing! I’m sure that you have tons to offer that would attract many guys!
But right now, we both need to heal and grow. I’m having the hardest time letting go and that’s stunting my healing. I’ve definitely grown a lot due to my striving to “win her back” I poured myself into all the ways I failed her and learned how to be a better partner which will serve me well in future relationships. Part of the bitterness I carry is that I FEEL like I never got the chance to fight for our marriage. In reality, there were tons of chances for me to see and recognize all the ways I was hurting my spouse and choose to make a change. I ignored them and thought “things are fine”.
I hate it, but divorce can be a big opportunity to grow for people if they are willing to look honestly at themselves and pursue change. It just sucks that it so often takes drastic life events for major change to happen. I believe I could have done it without divorce looming, but my wife didn’t think so. Yet she mentions how she sees the change in me now, but she’s been checked out for so long that it doesn’t seem to create any longing for any reconnection.
Get in to counseling or therapy. It will do wonders for your mental state and help you identify areas for you to grow and work on yourself so that you aren’t so stuck despairing about what you “lost”. There is hope for you! You have value! You deserve to be loved! If you can learn to look with optimism to the future, then the best of life is yet to come! Dwelling on the past is what will prevent that.
Thank you, kind stranger. It’s silly to compare but you seem to be going through a worse struggle and putting up such a brave face! I cannot even begin to imagine the shock and pain of a divorce.
I guess you are right about there being signs that we could have worked on but in the moment it just felt like “there’s time” - what a falsely reassuring thought! Late realisations is all I’ve got. It’s all gloom and doom for me right now and I’m not sure what a few more weeks or months will do but I shall hold on to the hope that I will heal. I will consider therapy soon if I keep spiralling into negative thoughts and dragging down my self worth.
Wishing you healthy healing and a wonderful life ahead.
Healing takes time, just don't blame yourself too much for what happened. Give yourself some time to feel sad, it's okay, but make sure to also live, hang out if your friends and your parents and do things that makes you happy, that will help the healing process.
You will find someone new, even if it does not feel like it right now. Just as long as you allow it to happen.
Life isn't a dream, it's living. They aren't living your dream, but rather you are stuck dreaming of a life with them. Your dreams of that will fade, but only if you use this opportunity to grow and see your potential to be yourself. Look ahead rather in the rearview mirror or daydreaming of them. You need to live your own life. It hurts that they left, it can leave a nasty hole; but it seems like you were relying on your partner to complete you, to make you feel good enough for them/you/anything. You put far too much emotional weight on "being good enough", but sometimes people just drift apart. Idk, you both probably made mistakes, but this isn't about perfection which is impossible. They don't hate you, they just don't feel a romantic connection anymore which isn't neccesarily anyone's fault. Breaking up doesn't automatically mean someone did something wrong. If you hate the idea of being friends with him, then don't be friends, but don't use that as a coping mechanism for secretly dreaming of them or being jealous of their happiness in life.
Beyond the initial “I hope he rots in hell” I know I wish him well. I know I’ll never find someone as good so it’s just so much harder. Life had given me a chance and i just wish I’d known/done whatever was needed to have made it work. I know I sound pathetic. I’m sorry - it’s all too fresh and painful. And I know he’ll have a wonderful life with someone who deserves his love. He deserves nothing less.
You deserve happiness too. You are so down on yourself as if this one relationship was your only chance or he is the best person in the world. Nobody is perfect, not even him. Life has unexpected paths, and now your path is leading away from him. It doesn't help anybody for you to keep dwelling on this, it doesn't even help him.
I hear you although I can’t stop blaming or pitiying myself as yet. I hope to start healing soon. Really appreciate your kind words and perspectives in your earlier comment too.
I know the wound is fresh. Healing doesn't happen overnight. This isn't a failure on you, it's just one of the many trials in life that we persevere through. You deserve love, but that needs to start with loving yourself. I sincerely wish you the best.
I get that completely. It's such a rough situation to be in and I'm sorry you're going through that! I'm actually going through divorce #2, also still friends, although it's all a lot more complicated.
With my ex-husband, there was no cheating, it was just a lot of built up resentment and we just were not a great match romantically. There was a lot of vitriol for a while, and then we were just amicable for some years. But that saying time heals all wounds is accurate, and I keep reminding myself of that when I worry about the future with my current marriage ending. I really really understand how it feels to worry about the future and how it will work out. My ex husband and I are able to laugh now about the things we hated about each other during our divorce. Him and his wife are my family and best friends. I think living separately for some years and also being there to help each other with issues in life (because we shared a child together and that's just what you do for your child's other parent) helped us being better friends. I hope you can reach that with your situation.
I’m in counseling and have been for the last 4+ months, but one thing they say is that, when it comes to trauma, time does NOT make it go away. Now, not all trauma is measured equally and it’s more and more common to call something trauma today when there are next to zero ptsd or similar symptoms attributed to it. That being said, until this divorce, the hardest thing I ever went through in life was abandonment by my childhood best friend. It hurt me worse than when my parents got divorced as it was so abrupt, severe, and received zero closure. This divorce is stirring up all of those emotions I experienced when I was 14 and amplifying them by piling on betrayal as well.
It’s going to take me years to recover from this and I feel so trapped because I just cannot stop thinking about my wife. I think about her all day and all night and recognize that it’s unhealthy for me. I could distract myself with multiple forms of entertainment, but that’s partly what got me into this situation in the first place, so I don’t want to fall back in to bad habits. I could just jump into a “fluff” relationship, but that doesn’t seem particularly healthy either. I feel stuck. Trapped in a situation where, in order to move on quicker, my only choices could hurt me as well.
I also don’t think that I can ever be happy for her while she is with the person who willingly helped destroy our marriage and break apart our family. He knew she was married. He knew she had kids. Yet he still pursued her romantically. I don’t want to see him fathering my children.
Should she break up with him and move on to another guy, fine, but there’s way too much resentment to ever get to a place where they are my “best friends”. That and I have to learn how to handle my own abandonment/betrayal trauma.
I would love for my soon-to-be ex-wife and I to be able to reconnect and be good friends some day, but I think both she and I are coming to terms that it’s not going to be any time soon.
Partially just the fact he wasn't quite ready to grow up. A lot of angry outbursts, a lot of leaving the parenting and things to me, disregarding the feelings of others, etc.
Exactly right. I don't, but mostly because we were very young and I was extremely depressed and not making the best decisions for myself, hadn't learned quite a few things about myself until that experience. And we have such a good relationship now that it's so much better than any romantic relationship for me. AND his new wife is one of my absolute best friends.
This somehow turned wholesome. Im happy for u guys . Same here. My current wife semi seldomly do ask my ex for their childs pic. Me myself also kept in touch with my previous best friend, who is now my ex's husband.
Seperated because its not meant to be. And genuinely happy with each others partners and the fact we try not to make it weird with each others kids
I mean that sounds like some weird church speak, but it's not like that.
It means sometimes we need those things to make us learn. We need those feelings. We need those losses. They make us better people. It's how we learn and grow.
Also, not to gloss over it... but it doesn't mean /u/Top-Candidate-9992 was a perfect angel either. I am sure she also became a better person after having to deal with her ex.
I didn't realize that at the time. As I said, there were a whole host of reasons I decided to marry him, pregnancy was not one of them. Not sure why you're being so hostile and judgemental over a comment about me being friends with an ex 🤣
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u/Top-Candidate-9992 5d ago
Second this. My ex husband was a terrible husband. Now he and his wife are my family and best friends. And they treat the child I had later like part of their family just the same as the child he and I share. It's become one of the best and most supportive relationships in my life.