# How do I know I won't make the same mistake again??



## SilverPanther (Feb 2, 2012)

This has been bothering me all through the nightmare of my husband abandoning me and then the divorce proceedings...the question of how can I trust myself not to make this mistake again?

See, four years ago, when my stbxh and I were romantically involved but had no serious commitment going, he started to get verbally abusive to me, and I started having some serious emotional problems and fallout from the stress of the way he was treating me, and how intensely I loved him. So I told him to take a hike, got involved with another guy, was happier than Id been for a LONG time. 

But as time passed, I simply didn't think about my ex at all, and a point came where I couldn't remember how bad things had been. I knew I had left him for a reason, but I also started missing him a lot, and didn't really ever think anymore about the bad memories, but more and more thought about the good ones.

Enter him back into my life, telling me how much he loved me and how he'd realized I was the one he wanted to spend his life with. I tried to be shrewd, and spent a couple months evaluating him, getting to know him again without being romantically involved. Then even after we got back involved again, I spent a couple more months telling myself that if I saw signs of trouble, I was outta there.

Then we hit a point of no return, where I felt that this was my destiny, my great gift from God, and that no matter what, we would grow old together. Even though it started to get harder. He was less sweet and romantic as time passed, more demanding and critical of me. I just put up with it all, like a frog in a pot of water, until I woke up one day and realized I was boiling to death. He had become entirely dismissive of me, was verbally abusive all the time because I was, in his opinion, not being a good, obediant and pleasing wife, he was bugging me all the time about how he fantasized about other woman all the time because I was so sexually dull, and he started making wild demands, saying he was going to take us overseas to "save the world", because to his mentally ill mind he thought living in a gutter in Nepal (we had no money or way to support ourselves and he wasn't especially interesting in figuring out any, either, just screamed and cursed at me when I would try to point this out to him) was his calling in life.

All of this and so much more was piled onto me by this man that I had rejected once before for being unstable and toxic to me. But then I forgot all the bad, and let him back in, so much further into my life and my heart than ever before, only to a much, much grimmer end. 

So what now? I'm so scared I will do this again. My stbx is gone without a trace, but I just have a feeling he's not gone forever. And will time erase the memory of the trauma and horror I went through, so when he waltzes back in singing a good tune, I'll make the same mistake again? This is what I ask myself all the time. I ws SO sure I was never going to be taken in by him again. Then I was SO sure he was the one for me and everything was going to have a fairy tale ending.

I feel I have learned and grown and become a much harder person on account of this. But I still ask myself every day...what will I do when he comes back?


----------



## SilverPanther (Feb 2, 2012)

He's been gone about two months now, and I'm still only getting more relieved he is gone. Which is a good thing, I think. I think in the past when this happened I never dealt with the fact that I missed him, I thought it was so much more cool and tough to just throw him out of me life and feel nothing- but I *did* feel things, I just never confronted them. This time, I have been confronting it all along. There are times I cry because I miss him so much, but never a time that I regret my decision. I guess that's good, right?


----------



## 2nd_t!me iz_best (Feb 28, 2011)

sounds like youre doing good.
i think probably most in your position feel this way.
if you are having no regrets, then it sounds like you feel like you did the right thing and will be able to cope with it well, even though you miss him.
good luck to you with your new and better future.


----------



## Conrad (Aug 6, 2010)

SilverPanther said:


> He's been gone about two months now, and I'm still only getting more relieved he is gone. Which is a good thing, I think. I think in the past when this happened I never dealt with the fact that I missed him, I thought it was so much more cool and tough to just throw him out of me life and feel nothing- but I *did* feel things, I just never confronted them. This time, I have been confronting it all along. There are times I cry because I miss him so much, but never a time that I regret my decision. I guess that's good, right?


What was your childhood like?


----------



## PBear (Nov 16, 2010)

Write a letter to yourself, about how you're feeling now? Keep it for future reference.

C
_Posted via Mobile Device_


----------



## SilverPanther (Feb 2, 2012)

Conrad- It wasn't terrible but it wsn't great. I was an only child who was homeschooled by overly protective and emotionally unstable parents. So I didn't have a ton of friends early on, then later on I rebelled, now I'm ostly over it. Why?

PBear- the letter is not a bad idea. I actually do keep  a journal, and have written diligently in it over the past couple months, and I have kept some of the really nasty things my ex wrote to me, as well, so I don't forget how he can be. But I am really good at denial when I want to be- case in point the two years I just spent telling myself I had a fairytale romance that nothing in the world could break apart.


----------



## Conrad (Aug 6, 2010)

SilverPanther said:


> Conrad- It wasn't terrible but it wsn't great. I was an only child who was homeschooled by overly protective and emotionally unstable parents. So I didn't have a ton of friends early on, then later on I rebelled, now I'm ostly over it. Why?


Have you been to therapy?


----------



## SilverPanther (Feb 2, 2012)

No. I can't afford therapy. I'm actually studying to be a psychologist myself and know more than a little about the issues that can be the fallout of a troubling childhood. And one of those issues is going through repetitive bad relationships. So yes, that is something I worry about, but I am also leery of therapy being the ultimate solution. Right now my sister is in therapy, has been for years, and her therapist basically has her convinced that nothing in her life is ever her fault, and she can't do anything about any of it, so why bother trying anyway? So she just barricades herself in her home and sits on the computer or watches TV all day, lamenting that she just can't bring herself to bother because she's too mentally ill.

I know some therapists are good and some are bad, but I've seen more examples of bad or just useless therapy than truly helpful therapy, so I'd rather not shell out $100 a week on something that's very hit or miss as far as success anyway. And no, I don't have insurance, and when I do get it, it will be the very barest of low income insurance, so I don't think psych will be covered at all.

So why, then, do I want to be a therapist, if I hold such a mediocre opinion of them? Because *I* want to be one of the good ones. 

That was a lot of extrapolation from your very succint questions, I don't know if I'm reading your thoughts wrong or not.


----------

