I care for her well-being. I mean, I spent 15 years with someone, and I feel like I’m following a guidebook on divorce.

My marriage ended in a mutual tone. She obviously didn’t love me in the same ways she used to, same for me as I used to for her, but she’s still a person, and we still spent 15 years together. Formative parts of our teenage lives were experienced together. It’s not even as-if there’s a void, it’s a gaping hole through to the other side.

I don’t know if she’s dead. I don’t know if she’s ok. I don’t know anything, and I’m afraid to ask. I cut off all contact, as was pretty much universally suggested and even I had a lot of ideas that I’d never really come away from it entirely unless I literally separated my life from her. It’s a divorce. It’s what you do, isn’t it?

I just want her to know it wasn’t so much by choice as it was a commonplace necessity, but… why would she care? I also get the sense that the second my name is seen on any note, it would just the thrown away, and am I even right to send one, and for what long-term purpose?

It’s just a waste of time, isn’t it? We should just move on, but… can I? 15 years. I’m 35 now. I should be spending my last five decent dating years finding someone new, but I’m stuck on her being ok. I don’t even have to be the one to find out, just someone tell me she’s ok.

She probably just hates me and never wants to hear from me anyway, and what good would it do? I’d know how she is, I guess, but she’d have another thread into my life and things could end up more complicated overall.

Every time this comes up in my head, I decide against it, but it keeps coming up, almost daily, like a self-induced torture. “Just don’t think about it!” Easy talk…

  • @UPGRAYEDD@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6•10 months ago

    There is a real difference between knowing the relationship wont work and not being in love with the person. I broke up with my first love after 10 years. I logically knew we were bad for each other at that point. We grew in different directions and wanted different things. However, i still loved her. I had feelings of jealousy thinking about her with another person.

    In this case, no contact would have been much better, but we texted each other for maybe a 2 months or so, and it made it much worse for me. I was unable to even start healing until we 100% cut off. I am not sure if she felt similar. She initiated the end of the relationship, so maybe she had also lost the feelings that i still kept.

    That first year was pretty terrible tbh, but i also have some very fond memories of the wild things i did with friends trying to cheer me up. I also got into the best shape of my life. Exercise was a savior i never would have thought of.

    In the long run, it led me to meeting my current wife and traveling the path we both want instead of some compromise me and my ex would have both hated.

    If your case is similar, i think no contact is good advice. If you have any thoughts of getting back together, any jealousy etc, i would still keep away. If there is none of that, then i have no advice, because i dont have that life experience.

    • BlinkerFluidOPEnglish
      1•10 months ago

      For a long time I went with the old adage that everyone is just the same person experiencing themselves. I felt that, were I nice and did things for my family and spent time with my loved ones that the feelings regarding her would eventually fade to nothing, but they haunt me every night. Every location, every place we rented, every fight, every look, every crack in the wall of our relationship before it went down.

      And it doesn’t matter. I can tell myself that as many thousand times as I want, that it’s all in the past and none of it matters… so then why won’t it go away? Why do I still care about something I can’t help?

      I guess in my perfect world, we would’ve worked it out. We would’ve had kids. We would’ve had that house everyone wants on the hill with the golden retriever and white picket fence. It was right fucking there, but it just didn’t happen that way. Problems led to intimacy excuses led to lies and deceit and backstabbing.

      There was a time where we were so fucking sure of it all.