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  • Bad.

    My wife and I broke up several days ago. We were never legally married, and I suppose that makes it a lot easier, but still not easy.
    We both had severe emotional control issues, for different reasons. I tried countless meds to help, and keep myself, and us, together. Tried therapy. But in the end, more often than not, there was no voice of reason in our relationship. We could reach points where we'd go a month or so without fighting, but it'd always happen again some day.
    Finally, at a time where we were both calm and unemotional, we came to the decision that we needed to work on ourselves separately. When the consequences of our mental illness were not just hurting ourselves, but each other, it was just too hard to cope with.
    We're still friends. We're still supporting each other, but I feel like I've lost the best thing I've ever had in my life and it's my fault. I'm happy that she no longer has to feel chained down by my angry outbursts, my constant panic attacks, and wondering every day if I'm still going to be with her tomorrow, but I wish none of those things existed in the first place, so we could be happy together.

    On top of all this, the catalyst for making this decision in the first place was that there was a new guy, who was very interested in me. When he found out I was already taken, he tried to back off, but.. I guess now my ex-wife encouraged him to keep going. We'd been open to the idea of polyamory from the beginning of our relationship, so that's how we were hoping it would go. Unfortunately, it turned out he couldn't be comfortable with polyamory, and wanted an exclusive relationship.
    And that's when we suddenly realized that there was a choice. I could try to stay with her, hoping one day things would get better, or find a new relationship and hope it doesn't end the same way. We realized quickly that the second was the only healthy option, even if we really, really didn't want that.

    And now, several days later, this new guy is already telling me he's in love with me. He said it was love at first sight for him. I told him I'm going to need a long time before I can even consider anybody else romantically, and he's told me he's willing to wait however long it takes, but the concept scares me.
    My last relationship ended largely because of emotional and psychological problems that feel insurmountable. I'm terrified if this goes anywhere that I'm going to screw it up the exact same way.

    I just don't know what to do anymore. I've checked up on my ex a few times, and it feels like she's handling this better than I am. At the very least, she'll survive, and that makes me happy. I was friends with her for a long time before we even started dating, and I'm just really hoping I can learn to see her that way again. But this is the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with emotionally and I don't feel like I'll survive, even if I know consciously that I will get through it.

    • Hang, in, there. I can't understand nor relate to your situation, but you'll find with time and reflection that things, did in fact, stabilize. Just know there are people that care about you and that you generate meaning and joy for people in your life.

    • It doesn't sound like it was all your fault, nor was it all theirs. It sounds like two people who care very much for each other realized that the patterns they were reinforcing were not good for either of them, and took painful steps to keep the relationship they could. I'm really sorry you're in this position now, but I'm also really hopeful that you see the good in your decision and that you were able to make it calmly despite the emotions of the situation. That's a crappy consolation prize but maybe you'll learn and grow your emotional toolkit to make the ability to handle situations like that even stronger.

      Something that helped me to become better at communicating my feelings (and communicating when I couldn't manage it well) was reading about mediating other people's conflicts. Self help / self regulation books and the like weren't helping me to navigate these situations but ones about mediation in the workplace or at home helped me to see the types of patterns that played out in my relationships. Discussing these techniques - like lots of "I feel" statements and no "you make me" statements - with my partner and agreeing to try them gave us the emotional space to really start practicing better management of ourselves.

      I hope I'm not overstepping with this, but I am scared alongside you about starting anything else this quickly afterwards, and especially this intensely. It doesn't sound like you're being kind enough to yourself to give enough time to process, or to build up the emotional management skills you're hoping to. Coming on so strongly to someone who's just been through something like this doesn't speak very highly of this guy's character either, from where I'm sitting (just north of total ignorance, but still).

      Whatever happens, I hope you find the space and peace to train those relationship and emotional skills you want for yourself, and the person or persons who help you to reinforce them.

      • Your suggestion in the second paragraph sounds good. Most of our fights were more or less caused by extrapolating information incorrectly due to our high strung emotions. Things like she'd mention a famous person in passing, and I would happen to know said famous person had a horrific controversy, and I'd suddenly go on high alert thinking she supported said terrible things, which would snowball into "If she supports that terrible thing, she must support all these other terrible things as well," at which point I'd explode, she having no idea why because she didn't know about said controversy and didn't even like said famous person very much in the first place.
        When she'd blow up at me, it was usually because I ignored a load of warning signs that she was in a really bad mood, because I felt bad not helping when she felt bad, but the only help she actually needed was for me to leave her alone until she could settle down.

        As for the new guy, the situation is a little complicated by the fact that he did actually try to do the polyamory thing at first, and a bit into that is when he first confessed that he was in love with me. However, we realized that what he was really hoping for was that I'd fall for him so hard I'd decide I wanted to be exclusively with him. Once he realized that, that's when we realized polyamory wasn't going to work and I had to make a decision.

        It still disturbs me a bit that that happened so fast, but I don't feel like I should be judging since I was exactly like that with my ex before we started dating. Just fell so deeply in love that I couldn't bear not telling her.
        At the same time though, maybe that should make me more worried, because I was absolutely off my rocker back then and the first year of our relationship was almost entirely her reigning me in and teaching me how to approach relationships in a more healthy way.

        • more or less caused by extrapolating information incorrectly due to our high strung emotions

          💕 the topics are different but the pattern is similar to some of the struggles my wife and I have faced together. In many cases, my own anxiety and hypervigilance tendencies have caused me to react to small things and turn them into big deals. It's incredibly easy to just... be in those moments. "I feel" statements have helped me to give agency back to myself in those times, and I hope you discover the tools that best help you in those situations.

          My knee-jerk reaction about the person is changed because of the complications; my hope for you to have the time and peace to choose how you decide to is not. Whatever you decide to do, use the opportunities you get to practice the skills that will help you be the person you want to be. If that involves him, I hope you do great. If it doesn't, I hope you do great.

37 comments