SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Things have ended and its been about a week, and I keep going over things in my mind, afraid that I might have been the one to tank it.

I grew very distant from her in the past 7-8 months, stopped initiating sexting, as we were still LDR, stopped saying I love you, stopped saying I miss you first, only responded if she did it. I was so caught up in my head over, why this girl just won't tell me the one thing she knows I want to hear, which is can we finally please after 9 years of being engaged finally move towards marriage. I forgave your cheating, I forgave your family for continuing to remain friends with the AP, I gave in to all your demands, I bickered and argued with you for hours and hours to get you to see my side of things and have any empathy for me. I was so focused on not making any more mistakes that if she were to up and leave me again, I wouldn't be the one she could point a finger to and say oh look, you made this happen, but here I am, now again blaming myself that it was my fault.

I had read about the plane of lethal flatness before but I just couldn't recognize it in me, maybe she played me and my emotions again. Letting me think I was on some power high or something. She kept asking me sometimes whats wrong but my body could literally not muster the energy to say the words of whats wrong without just becoming teary eyed and being unable to say anything and I would just tell her, dont worry about me, im okay.

I think I'm going insane, everyone in my life is telling me shes manipulative and terrible for me and would not, absolutely not make a good marriage partner but I cant help but think I'm the one that messed it up right now, but this is kind of a repeat of when she had her affair, she blamed me for everything (some right, some wrong) and decided to go with someone else and then came back to me and I let it go so easily, literally I said I'll be with her the evening she came to have dinner with me.

Is this normal? I really do feel insane

She ended things literally like a couple or so weeks ago, I've called her back two times already and apologized for my behaviour in the last months and told her I would be so happy if we could just talk about things and try to work things out and I'll be more cognizant of my behaviour and how angry I was, I told her after things ended I had a few days of reflection and realized what a bitter person I was becoming and I dont want to be that person anymore, not with her or anyone else but she just said no, and said "I dont want to ruin us anymore", and offered to be friends but I just couldn't take that. How can I be friends with you when I'm literally been asking you to marry me and you keep saying no.

I feel like I have no self respect or anything left, wtf is wrong with me.

I'm sorry, I feel like my friends and family dont understand at all, and this is the only place where maybe someone has gone through something similar will. Please help if you can, I really do feel like im dying inside. I feel fucking terrible. I keep wanting to call her but then I'd be so stupid to because im the one that blocked her because I was trying to put on a brave face and I didnt want her to see that shes hurting me again.

Why am I so confused about what it is that im doing, why dont I know what it is that I want. What is wrong with me?

Lost, this pining for her is really bad for you. Agreeing to be your friend is her saying she doesn't see you as a man enough for her. And she sees you this way because your erratic behavior doesn't inspire confidence, admiration, and attraction.

You need to find your anger at her. When you find it, it needs to fuel your view of her as unworthy of you. And any attempt to communicate any of this directly to her will make your weakness transparent to her. You will not get closure. Your only dignified recourse is ghosting her. Go your own way.

And going your own way does not mean sequestering alone. It means socializing with other people. Lots of other people. If you are uncomfortable with this, start modestly by doing things with a dude friend or two. I'll also add that you need to maintain your calm around the opposite sex. You've got nothing to prove to yourself. You are young and interest will happen organically if you just keep your socializing light, and lighthearted.

I've read it said, you should never make your love interest central to your life. They should be but a compliment to it.

So sorry to hear that. It really sucks to put so much into R and then have it fail like this. The best advice I can think of though is to go back to your self-care routine and to INVEST in yourself. There's a really good book called The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson that I think might really appeal to you. The author does a great job of explaining how our minds and bodies react to the loss and how we are hard-wired from birth to fear abandonment. It's lighter fare than The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk but I do think, with your medical background, that it will help you to see that your feelings aren't just all in your mind and maybe help you feel a little less isolated.

It's going to be okay. I'm sure you know that already. But we're all living proof that healing happens, and it will happen to you too. Talking is healing though, so work on getting a support network in place IRL.. and posting here will help too.

Duplicate post, sorry.

[This message edited by swmnbc at 3:11 AM, Sunday, November 21st]

One of the hardest things in this life is accepting when a romantic partner wants to end things even though we don't. But it takes two to be in a relationship and both partners can opt out any time they want.

If everyone in your life is telling you that she's manipulative and terrible for you, then you need to consider that your emotions are blinding you to who she really is. And if she would have married you if only you had handled the fall-out of her infidelity better, then what does that say about her? It says she lacks patience, empathy, and true concern for you. She cheated on YOU but she couldn't find a little patience for how you might respond to that?

If you're not in counseling, that should be your first priority. Learn about your attachment style. Learn what to do when you feel an overwhelming urge to contact her . . . journal, talk to a friend, post here! Please know that you didn't tank anything. It didn't work out because she wasn't healthy enough to be faithful and honest nor patient enough to see you through your trauma.

Your heart has not caught up with your head.

How exactly did you "ruin" an already horrible relationship? She cheated. Not you.

You had a normal reaction to her infidelity. She just didn’t want to do the real heavy lifting to make amends and help you heal. So she ran out in you instead.

@The1stWife

I suppose I feel this way because she said that she was really trying and to some extent I agree she was, she was saying all the right things, doing all the right things but I continued to feel anger and resentful and became distant because it wasn't what I wanted from her. I wanted her to really try to understand me, feel some empathy for me, I wasn't trying to be a victim I swear I just wanted her to ease the constant pain I was in.

Deep down in my gut I just had this sinking feeling all the time, that something doesnt feel right, that she says things to comfort me but the way she says them or the words she'd use, they'd give me mixed signals when I thought about them later, I didnt feel any clarity and infact more often than not when I would talk to her about these feelings, id end up feeling more confused and hurt than better. Thats the reason I just stopped sharing anything I was feeling with her because I was genuinely just scared to be open anymore. I told her this as well, I said to her one time in the last few months that "I'm afraid to be vulnerable with my thoughts to you, I dont know if I can share those things" and she acted very concerned that "I must be a terrible person for not creating a safe space for you" but in the end nothing changed, she didnt say anything like "hey no matter what you say, how often you say it, or what happens, we are gonna be here together and work through this", thats what I wanted to hear, but instead I heard "you're making me feel really bad about myself because you're saying I'm a terrible person for making you feel this way"

I remember a conversation we had when I was so angry, I told her this in the best way I could muster and I said " I dont want to be in pain anymore, maybe id rather be on the giving end of it than the receiving end", I had run out of words, I had run out of things to say to her to make her understand me, I had written letters to her, cried to her, and she did give me comfort, she would hug me, console me, but in the end when the one thing I wanted from her was to just run towards me like she ran towards the AP.

Hello. Please step back and look what you are doing. It is pathethic. She doesnt show empaty for you becouse she doesnt really care about you that much. Thats why she cheated on you,she doesnt love or respect you. Plane simple. Now,ypu are very lucky becouse you didnt marry her! Now,stop all comunication with her for ever,go get counseling to see if you can learn to be a more manly pearson,a person with stronger integrity and self respect,and live your life without her.

I didn't see you mention IC anywhere in your post. I think you should get into IC and start focusing on yourself. If you keep pining for someone who doesn't really seem remorseful or even particularly invested in the relationship then you're going to end up bitter and resentful that she has treated you this way and you were unable to stand up for yourself.

My friend, this ain’t the one.

You have been abused and traumatized.
Stop allowing her head space. She broke the relationship not you. If you were unable to move past it and rugsweep what she did then that's ok.
Cheating is a deal breaker for many reasons.
Please consider IC. I honestly think you need to deal with the trauma to heal yourself and move forward and be happy in life.
Life is much more than a relationship with one person.

but she just said no

This is the best part of what you wrote.

Not married and no kids.

Consider this a gift from her.

I can virtually guarantee that you would be marrying an adultery time-bomb if she were to say "yes" - and the pain of this betrayal is 1000X worse when children are involved.

Your pain is originating more so from your quite evident codependency and lack of assertiveness of your self worth than her infidelity and deceit.

This person IS NOT the end-all be-all of who you are, what you are, and your worth in this world.

Not. At. All.

YOU, and YOU alone determine your self worth and your self respect.

Your focus MUST be on why you would pine for and have so much angst for a person who would willingly betray your trust.

Her infidelity was NOT about you or your relationship at all - it’s imperative you know this.

But, all this longing, yearning, and desperation to get her back is a problem within YOURSELF that you must finally come to terms with and address in a true and meaningful way.

When you are finally extracted from her world of infidelity and have truly realized your self worth is not dependent on ANYONE else, you will be able to look at it all from the outside and realize just how shitty this person is and has been for you.

Yeah I won't disagree with anyone telling me I'm acting desperate, pathetic or weak willed etc. I realize this, I did read and am reading a book about codependency and do see alot of myself in there, something I'm working on.

I think I just keep thinking back to how good things were when all this didnt happen, I was so happy to have those dreams of a really blissful future with her but yeah I have to come to an acceptance that those things are lost with her and will have to rebuild them with someone else who deserves all that I did for her and she appreciated none of it.

I didnt used to be like this at all, I went into depression during my 2nd year of medical school and became quite dependent on her and she truly was there for me during that time and was probably codependent on me. Now after her infidelity and her continual denial to move our relationship forward (something she said she had an affair because of - because she wanted to get married before but I said to wait until I just finish school so that I can support us financially as well and I would not even be in the same country as her), I think she took that as a sign of lack of commitment and then just went rogue ever since. Though, I never cheated on her, wasn't ever mean to her, always listened to her, helped her through anything she needed, tried to see her as often as I could etc. Then finding out after that she cheated, I think my self esteem took a really big hit and I became obsessed that if I could get her back, it would mean I am better than OM - these are just really honest thoughts im writing here.

I know everyone says her cheating had nothing to do with me, but I keep thinking to myself, maybe if I was taller, more handsome, richer so I could have just married her then, or more assertive as everyone has pointed out, etc then I would have kept her and I keep thinking I lost her because of a deficiency in me as opposed to her screwing up. im trying to shift this narrative in me as everyone tells me that its really the other way around.

I think she also toys with my mind a bit, like yesterday a significant person in her family passed away and our families are close, so I had to phone her family / parents and her to offer my respects and condolences and while I was trying to stay on topic she just stopped me mid sentence and was like "Hey dont worry, I love you so much, seriously I love you so much" and I was just like ... stunned, and my reflex was to just say I love you too and then before she ended the call she did the same, she said I love you. I get so confused, like if you do, then why dont you want to be with me? Why do you constantly do this? She knows that I had been acting out in the last 10 months or so because of her refusal to listen to me, she constantly pushed me and pushed me until I would snap and then she would cry and I had no feelings left to comfort her with and then I would feel like shit. Then when she ended things this time around, she blamed it all on me again, saying he fought with me everyday but I did no such thing, I only retaliated to her instigations I didnt fight at all. I never once brought up an issue to her, I was just trying to exist with her, w/out intimacy yes but I never once started a fight, but she would constantly complain about my behaviour even when I wasn't doing anything (I was just working, I work at 2 clinics and on my free time I would just eat and play video games).

I could have stayed in the USA with her after my med school ended but because of COVID I had to delay my residency app to this year and had to come back home for a year so we were long distance, she could have visited me but I wasn't allowed to go to the US and she didnt even try that once, like I keep telling myself this isnt on me, I would have done anything but so why is she still so successful at pinning everything on me, I seriously dont get why my brain keeps defaulting to blaming myself, like my looks, or my behaviour when I literally was in just survival mode - hardly feeling anything, just numb to everything and just drowning myself in work and distractions to keep the pain away from our relationship being shit and her not doing anything about it. I had finally got to a point where I was like - there is nothing left for me to do, I have said and done everything for her - the rest of this relationship and its life is in her hands and lets see what she does, and part of me saw this coming and yet it still kills me.

I was just like ... stunned, and my reflex was to just say I love you too and then before she ended the call she did the same, she said I love you. I get so confused, like if you do, then why dont you want to be with me?

It sometimes gets lost or forgotten that loving you and wanting to be with you are not synonymous. I still love my former fiancé but following her cheating, I had no desire to be with her. It's not good to be with people who don't wish to be with you, even if love is still there.

I know everyone says her cheating had nothing to do with me, but I keep thinking to myself, maybe if I was taller, more handsome, richer so I could have just married her then, or more assertive as everyone has pointed out, etc then I would have kept her and I keep thinking I lost her because of a deficiency in me as opposed to her screwing up. im trying to shift this narrative in me as everyone tells me that its really the other way around.

Let this shit go.

Because it had nothing to do with you.

It was not because of anything you did or did not do nor because of anything you said or did not say.

Her reasons for her infidelity and deceit exist ONLY within her and those reasons were there long before you ever met her.

No person compels another person to lie, deceive, and betray.

Any assertion otherwise is called blameshifting.

Infidelity is not the result of a shitty relationship or marriage.

Infidelity is the behavior of a shitty person.

Lost, you know she isn’t right for you.

Deep down.

Stop being your worst enemy… be your best friend. I know you would tell a friend to be thankful it is over. That they deserve someone who can’t wait to marry them, and love them everyday. You deserve more than what you had.