thread to get over a breakup

*comforts MP*

oh mookie...

<3 <3

aw mookie :(

We're here for ya, pal

mookie, five years from this (that) moment there will be wonderful people/things in your life you don't know anything about yet because they are a surprise <3

^^^^^^^^

in my phone i have made an entry for feb. 18, 2016 that says "bitch at estela"

i'll be long gone by then.

noooo

just a bit of magical thinking, so let's be cool.

<3

thinking of making this thread into a self-help book, anyone object?

Fwiw & apropos of nothing, my first (and hopefully last) serious ex got married a fortnight ago. Spent almost a whole day in a navelgaze funk before remembering that it's six years since we broke up and i've spent five of them with the current ms mac and we're stupidly happy. Exes and breakups, though. Strange.

I look forward to several more serious exes

oh dear. Personally, i hope not!

so...things have not been great with the wife for some time...not quite done yet, but seems like we are heading in that direction. We've had our "talks" and done marriage counseling in the past (about two years ago) and things rebounded. Then I lost my job and things went progressively downhill from there. I started a new job last September and it just seems to get worse and worse. She never seems to be happy about anything anymore and neither am I. The joy we get is our son. She consistently gets on me to spend "family time" all the time, I don't think she understands that I sometimes want to be alone or not always want to spend "family time"...sometimes I want to go be a guy and have a beer and watch a sporting event with my friends. I ask for once a month.

Im not perfect by any means and have my flaws that she is not happy about, but blah blah blah she's not the same person I fell in love with 15 years ago. She's turned into her mother. I know she wants structure and stability but she is never happy with anything i do anymore and is putting me down repeatedly over my failures at acquiring a college degree...which in my mind is not the fucking be all end all of life. Im just fed up.

She also is worried at all times at how she is perceived by her parents....she's 35 and is still seeking constant approval from them.

I probably sound like a selfish cunt. Im just exhausted.

Who's got advice?

You're trying to get over a breakup that hasn't even happened yet?

What's the status as of right now. Are you def splitting?

Also, :( I am sorry to hear this. I know how much it sucks.

chris, what's she doing? I mean, is she working, does she spend time with friends or with other moms, does she have things she does in spare time?

I have friends in this boat and it really sounds like she's either genuinely down on the relationship, or she just isn't getting any validation from her life so she's searching for it from her parents or by constantly having you engage in "family" stuff.

yup, because im actually more sad at the thought of not seeing my son daily at this point then not seeing her. Sometimes I feel that if we did seperate it would help me realize that i still do care about her but im terribly worried that i'll realize i don't...and that scares me. SHe's all i've know for a long time, we've been through hell and back together (fertilty issues, her post partum psychosis etc..) and we made it through. How can we not get through this baffles me.

we are up in the air at this point, we go from lets seperate to lets wait it out. Which i don't know if we are holding on to something purely for our boy or because we still care for one another? I do still love her...just seems not as much as I used to.

Sometimes I feel that if we did seperate it would help me realize that i still do care about her but im terribly worried that i'll realize i don't...and that scares me

that's heartbreaking stuff chris. all the best.

if couples counseling helped you guys rebound once maybe it would help again?

yes, she works constantly. she has a great job, which stresses her out and she travels a lot for it..she just got back from a 5 day trip. and she does spend time with friends and other mothers...she tells me she wants the best for me and just feels disappointed. I'm not a very ambitious guy.

She was brought up in a house where "appearance to others is everything"....social stats etc....education...she always follows up things with "what are my parents going to say"...WHO CARES, its your life now...not your parents. When i got tattooed a month ago it was "my parents are going to think your a bum". FUCK OFF.

honest to god, the only response to that is "if you care more about what they think than what I think, then it's obvious who you need to be living with."

I'm really sorry about your troubles & situation, btw. Not trying to be flippant.

she also used to make me cover up my tattoos when visiting her parents and not smoke cigarettes at their house (outside and away from the house) until last year I said fuck it and took my shirt off and lit up a camel wide right on the front lawn.

i think we will probably give the counseling another shot, its worth it. I guess.

pixel, thats actually something I need to say to her and i didn't take it as flippant at all.

and granted my upper body looks like a russian prisoner but it doesn't make me any less of a person because im tattooed and not a college graduate.

It sounds like she wants what she believes is the quantitative "best" for you (career, time spent) and not the qualitative (i.e. shit that actually makes you feel human). If she gets to spend time with friends, leave you during trips where you're presumably taking care of the kid, then you need to have your own space, too.

I swear, people spend so much time trying to do what they think they're supposed to do to be fulfilled that they never figure out what actually makes them feel.

imo if she had the cojones to marry the dirtiest dogg in town, she should know how she's got to roll. If you're even half as cool in real life as on ilx, you're a pretty awesome guy, chris.

^ she was the prepster, i was not. and she was down for that back in the day...i think it boils down to the fact that men basically dont want to grow up.

yup all i ask is for a little space now and then and i would be happy as a pig in shit.

and thanks MH!

Yeah, that's a good point -- were you the russian prisoner when you two got together? Did she marry you with the idea that she'd "fix" you or clean you up? Fuck that, a relationship partner is not a fixer-upper project.
xpost

and your right its what she perceives as the best for me...not what i see.

i had a few tattoos when we got together and she liked that...as i got older i acquired more and will continue to acquire them, i like them and its basically the only "art" i enjoy.

That "men don't like to grow up" thing is kind of bullshit. Some people have differing tastes / needs as they get older or have kids or whatever, but some really don't. The idea that everyone is going to want to calm down, buy a house in the suburbs, drive their kid to soccer, work some corporate job as they get older is completely wrong.

Different types of maturity, too.

yeah im obviously not the most mature 36 yr old going, but i have my moments. Fact is most of my married friends with kids act just like me....and when we all get together watch out. Our wives love that.

The thing that gets me is that some women in these situations will satisfy all the hallmarks of maturity/stability, but then act like total shits in every other way. Emotional maturity is worth a hell of a lot to me.

thats the thing, my wife isn't emotionally mature at all. sometimes she acts emotionally like a 18 year old.

i find that with people some times.
they reach hard for the typical symbols of maturity yet have none to their personality at all.

(not that that's nec. your wife)

a lot of people say that about my wife that she has no personality. She used to, she sort of lost it when she started this job 7 years ago. She's very rarely fun anymore.

is it because she is a mother now that all fun went out the window?

to turn to the old cliche - maybe she just forgot how to have fun? her job sounds stressful.

try slipping some extacy into her cereal. who knows!

(i'm being silly now because you set the tone with the fireman chick thread)

i tried to get her to smoke some pot with me a few weeks ago and she was all "im a mother".

man.

i think that line might apply to her mentality in more than just the pot smoking situation.

does she genuinely want to be with you, or just some idealized image of you?

imo if she had the cojones to marry the dirtiest dogg in town, she should know how she's got to roll. If you're even half as cool in real life as on ilx, you're a pretty awesome guy, chris.

One of the most OTM things I've read on ILX in years imo.

we talked about this on the sex droughts thread chris & I don't know how much of this is "about" sex, but I'm guessing that's a significant part of it. What you're saying here makes that clearer: post-partum depression is just another reason why she might want to avoid sex now, since there's presumably a chance every time you fuck that you'll spawn again.

I'm not really in a similar situation to you but I can relate, being the same age as you & married with kids for a while now. The one thing I'd say is that it's tough to be a 30-something professional married mother---lots is expected of you, on the job, from your kids, in the sack, & we don't have great models for how to manage all these things. But to get to that point, you kinda gotta learn to be a robot, to balance all that stuff...& I think it's not clear what's left, relationship-wise, after becoming a robot.

xp The problem is not that men don't grow up, the problem is that women are expected to grow up too quickly and too much.

how so?