# Dealing with Loss.



## Hoosier (May 17, 2011)

Hello all, my story is posted elsewhere on this forum under "I cant believe I am posting here." Basics; me: 52 xw: 51, married 30 years, three kids two married and gone, one is Junior in college. My xw started an affair this year with a 20 year friend who is 64. Upon discovering the affair in July of this year, she immediately moved out, walked the 5 blocks to his home with suitcase in tow, filed for divorce the next day. D became official 82 days later, she still lives with POSOM will not talk, text me. which in most ways is good. Thru the good people on this forum, I have survived. I have lost 60 pounds thru dedicated exercise, found, that on the dating scene, a guy 52, in shape who owns his own business and home. Who treats his date well, whos daughters love and respect him, whos wife cheated on him after 30 years of being a SAHM, who never beat his wife....is a pretty hot commodity! (I have had two women in the last week tell me that they have never been treated as good by anyone they dated. and one of the women said this after I told her I would not be dating her anymore..so they must of meant it) All is going as good as can be immageined. I still have these moments of just pure pain. Talking with a friend yesterday, I spent 15 minutes discribing my feelings trying to figure out what was going on...she listened then said, "Oh, you are missing things from before." She is right, while I am not pineing away for my xw, I am missing so much of what we did together, from carrying in wood for the fireplace to driving around looking at the holiday lights. Why cant I get my sh*t together? I just run things over and over in my mind. I still cant believe she just walked out never looked back. Never gave R a second thought, just wanted out. Why cant I seem to move on? Is time the only answer...if it is that sucks What did you do to help with the process. I warn you, I am over analytical probably anal. What did you do?


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## morituri (Apr 1, 2011)

Hoosier, 6 months since D-day is nothing in terms of personal recovery. It may take you another 6 months or more before you can feel any sense of normalcy. Besides, as your post shows, you have made great progress in your self improvement and when the time is right, you will have the tools for having a much better relationship with another woman - something your ex-wife and POSOM do not have.


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## Tigrlily (Dec 27, 2011)

morituri said:


> Hoosier, 6 months since D-day is nothing in terms of personal recovery. It may take you another 6 months or more before you can feel any sense of normalcy. Besides, as your post shows, you have made great progress in your self improvement and when the time is right, you will have the tools for having a much better relationship with another woman - something your ex-wife and POSOM do not have.


I think this is great guidance.

I am of no help, really. I'm 6 months (almost) past D-Day and worse than I was in the beginning. No peace, no forgiveness, no understanding...and my H is trying so hard to make things right.

I think it's completely normal to miss a way of life that no longer is. I mean, I can sit here and honestly say that I miss my childhood - my home, our family routine, pets, the smells and sounds, friends, etc., but it doesn't mean I'm not happy with the adult I became and the house, pets, family, smells/sounds and friends that came along with it. It's just a fondness and familiarity I have toward a time in my life that no longer is or could be again. Bittersweet is a great word for it.

As far as still questioning your ex's behavior (the "how could she's?", etc.), I think 6 months is just a place on the timeline where a person is still going to be questioning everything that happened, and experiencing pain from it. 

Go easy on yourself. 30 years is a very long part of your life. I think it's completely okay to still grieve for it. Don't sell yourself short just because you're still having emotional ties to it.

HUGS


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

Yes it takes time. You lost a 20 year relationship. From your prospective your wife is dead.. she died. You have suffered a great loss. It will take a while. Another 6 months, maybe a year or so. 

Give youself the time you need. Dating can be good for you right now. But it will take a while before you can form a new, healthy relationship.


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## Almostrecovered (Jul 14, 2011)

Hoosier you've been on the fast track from the get go on this, do not expect to just get over it as fast the divorce took


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## Complexity (Dec 31, 2011)

30 years is a lifetime, you can never get over it, you'll just have to learn to cope. Best not waste your life years dwelling on the what if's and rather focus on what the could be's and as you've shown, there's a lot. 

It's worst pain imaginable to have the women you love leave you for your friend and feeling no regret about it.


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## Hoosier (May 17, 2011)

Complexity said:


> It's worst pain imaginable to have the women you love leave you for your friend and feeling no regret about it.


Amen! As a man, nothing is more belittleing. I still feel ashamed that I did not see it coming. Good Friend today said, "only thing you did was trust" but still feel the fool.


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## beenbetrayed (Oct 11, 2011)

Hoosier said:


> Good Friend today said, "only thing you did was trust" but still feel the fool.


I agree with this. I've felt like an idiot too but when you love someone, you trust that their feelings are mutual (especially if they say it is) and you don't think that they would ever be capable of such heinous things..... that's until I found this forum anyway. My next gf is gonna have a keylogger on every single electronic device she owns haha!


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## ing (Mar 26, 2011)

Hi Hoosier.
My wife of 25 year walked out with another man in March. I think that saying "you get used to it" is the best way to deal with it. 
I feel a profound loss of my greatest friend. She vanished without trace. 
I too am finding that it is getting harder. I have two daughters in school and am missing them one week in two.


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## jnj express (Mar 28, 2011)

More than likely, until you find out WHY---she decided, she needed this other man in her life, you will have problems with your sub--conscious

You can't fill in the blanks, and your mind, comes up with all sorts, of possibilities, none of them good

Since you are not together, you may never know her thinking, ---the only analyzing you can do, is from your side, of the relationship

You might enlist the aid of your kids, finding out the deep down WHY, this happened, will help you toward peace of mind, later on.


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## morituri (Apr 1, 2011)

jnj express said:


> More than likely, until you find out WHY---she decided, she needed this other man in her life, you will have problems with your sub--conscious
> 
> You can't fill in the blanks, and your mind, comes up with all sorts, of possibilities, none of them good
> 
> ...



I beg to differ. For all we know, Hoosier's wife may not even know "Why" and even if she claims that she knows it, her answer is biased by her distorted view of Hoosier.

Maybe the best way for Hoosier to transcend this ordeal is to view his ex-wife as having died a few years ago and that the woman who inhabits her body since then, is a complete stranger.


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## Hoosier (May 17, 2011)

If you asked her she would give you different answers on different days depending on who you are, and not in a planned way, but what she thinks is the truth....it changes based on criteria. I dont need to know why, How I could use some help with, but why is not a problem. What saddens is reading His needs her needs for the first time, realizing that if I had read it a year earlier maybe something could have been done. But that would require her wanting to and she just doesnt and she gave up way before that. I just miss what I had, and it wouldnt be so bad getting new stuff.....if it just would be as shiny as the old, but it is not....Getting back to work now first time in 6 months....gtg.


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## AFEH (May 18, 2010)

Hoosier said:


> Hello all, my story is posted elsewhere on this forum under "I cant believe I am posting here." Basics; me: 52 xw: 51, married 30 years, three kids two married and gone, one is Junior in college. My xw started an affair this year with a 20 year friend who is 64. Upon discovering the affair in July of this year, she immediately moved out, walked the 5 blocks to his home with suitcase in tow, filed for divorce the next day. D became official 82 days later, she still lives with POSOM will not talk, text me. which in most ways is good. Thru the good people on this forum, I have survived. I have lost 60 pounds thru dedicated exercise, found, that on the dating scene, a guy 52, in shape who owns his own business and home. Who treats his date well, whos daughters love and respect him, whos wife cheated on him after 30 years of being a SAHM, who never beat his wife....is a pretty hot commodity! (I have had two women in the last week tell me that they have never been treated as good by anyone they dated. and one of the women said this after I told her I would not be dating her anymore..so they must of meant it) All is going as good as can be immageined. I still have these moments of just pure pain. Talking with a friend yesterday, I spent 15 minutes discribing my feelings trying to figure out what was going on...she listened then said, "Oh, you are missing things from before." She is right, while I am not pineing away for my xw, I am missing so much of what we did together, from carrying in wood for the fireplace to driving around looking at the holiday lights. Why cant I get my sh*t together? I just run things over and over in my mind. I still cant believe she just walked out never looked back. Never gave R a second thought, just wanted out. Why cant I seem to move on? Is time the only answer...if it is that sucks What did you do to help with the process. I warn you, I am over analytical probably anal. What did you do?


You suffered what’s called an attachment trauma. Over the 30 years you were together there were probably 1,000s of events that bonded you closer and closer together, it’s like a fusion of emotions, hearts, minds, souls and spirits. We don’t actually realise it’s going, it just happens and it’s called Adult Attachment, it may help to read about it attachment trauma.

It’s like our partner has been living inside of us, the bonding is that strong. What happened in your case is the physical bond, your separation happened very fast and very sudden. Your separation was just like your wife had been wrenched away from the inside of you. That’s what the trauma is, you have gone through a massive loss, in some respects the same loss as losing a child.

The trauma has left you wounded and you need to heel. And that believe it or not is what you are doing, you are heeling. But it’s not an A to Z process. We go from A to C, back to B type of thing but slowly but surely we move forward.

I think over time we start to become philosophical about it all, it’s better to have loved than lost than to never have loved at all, that sort of thing. In time the extreme emotions felt at the beginning begin to fade away. I think they’ll always be there, anger, sadness, joy, happiness but much less pronounced than they were at the beginning.

I think the wise man doesn’t can his decades of very fine and very fond memories. I think he enshrines them such that he has a place to go to when he feels the need to recall all the good things in his past marriage. My shrine is a two hour video I’ve made out of thousands of photographs going back to the 60s when we first met. The sound track is all the music from the times. That shrine is exceptionally precious to me.


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