Ask Lemmy

She decided she wanted to explore polyamory without telling me first. I probably would have been cool with it, or at least given it a shot, had we talked about it beforehand

I definitely don't consider the end of the relationship a failure but the entire thing was the failure and leaving was the success.

He wasn't abusive or anything. He was also very Christian and it took me a while to realize that he was fetishizing me for being "bad" while simultaneously putting me on a pedastal. I feel so gross when I even think about it tbh. He wanted kids, wanted a marriage, I convinced myself I wanted that as well. Thankfully we never even got close to that. He criticized me constantly for drinking/weed (I was in my early 20s and in college and definitely wasn't partaking anymore than your average party person), but he criticized me for it in the condescending fucking way only a religious person would.

He also only brushed his teeth like twice a week... Something I only figured out when he stayed with me and my parents for a month and we didn't have mouthwash for him to clean his mouth with daily??

Talked about his previous ex pretty often too, about how heartbroken she had left him blah blah blah. Honestly there were a lot of red flags but I was young and infatuated.

Last straw was when I had to cancel a trip to visit him to travel to my home country because my aunt was sick. He told me to "have fun" (in a completely serious tone, not sarcastically) and was sending me selfies throughout asking me which ones were better as I watched my aunt dying.

I spiralled very soon after that, faced some of the darkest experiences of my life. But at least I broke up with him.

I don't think he was necessarily a bad person after all that, maybe just naive, but I will never trust any feelings of infatuation again. He's probably the only person I've dated where I genuinely regret it.

She died...

Becoming a widower at 40 sucks.

I still don't know. One day they were there, the next I was ghosted. Not really fair but that's life unfortunately.

She was mostly asexual and I was relatively inexperienced. We got along really well and moved in together. Unfortunately we just wanted different things.

She was a parasite, a substance abuser and a manipulator

She had never been in a "real" relationship before, in her late 30s, and I grew to understand why

I am, or at least was, an immature ass.

She was an alcoholic with border-line personality disorder, and as a naive and lonely young Scotsman I foolishly mistook her for a bright girl with a quirky personality who liked a drink and had occasional violent moodswings. Took way too long to realise what the gravity of her condition meant. I was emotionally inexperienced and trusting. And I paid the price.

On the bright side, when i came out of that relationship and healed I met someone well-balanced and kind, who is now my wife. I'm so grateful for the love i now have and the relative stability of my life, and in a weird way I'm glad I went through what I did with my ex, as it makes me appreciate what I now have.

We were polyamorous, had spent 8 years together, and then her other (new) partner decided she didn't like me. So she put a wedge into our relationship by breaking the trust down between me and my partner, framing me as abusive, and eventually my partner abandoned me after the trust was gone.

The other gal turned everything I did into some manipulative scheme or way to control my partners. For example, the fact that I couldn't suddenly drop $2k on a wisdom tooth removal for her became "financial abuse and control".

I'm going to be angry about it for the rest of my life, I think.

She was religious to the point of being crazy, and she was absolutely obsessed with her dog, who was the worst behaved dog I've ever personally known.

I fell for her because she helped me become more of an adult, someone who could pay bills and be sort of responsible for myself. And like every super-religious woman I have ever personally known, she was an absolute horndog but felt really guilty about it, especially if she really enjoyed it.

We were on this yo-yo thing for years where she would determine that im too much of a heathen, so she would leave, and then she would see me talking with some other woman, and she would run said woman off. I was young and stupid and kept going back. We were even married for a bit, but she fell right back into the same pattern and divorced me two months later.

Not long after that she went and married someone else. Finally. Shes with this guy for three months and is trying to get her claws back into me. But by this time I had found the woman I am now married to. My current wife doesn't have the same religious and sexual hangups, and she understands things like "dogs need to be housebroken" and "You have to train dogs not to bite children". Well of course she pulled out all the stops to try and quash it, but I finally learned to say "would you kindly fuck off".

And I have been happily married to a really amazing woman for 17 years.

10 years together. She was upfront about her long-term goal of never having children, and I was upfront about how I felt at the time, which was "meh, I could go either way."

We met while I was diving into the depths of alcoholism. My first (and only) DUI was when we'd been seeing each other for a couple months, They wanted me to pay $300 or spend a few nights in jail, I said "Lemme text my girl so she can feed my cat."

I broke up with her a few times, but kept coming back because she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever met, and we did genuinely care for each other. I said "I'm moving across country, you can come or you can stay," She came. I proposed a couple years later. We married a few years after that.

I finally got sober, and immediately knew that we didn't belong together. My alcoholism told me I wasn't good enough to be a father, but I truly do want to be one. We had become roommates, neither one of us really sharing emotionally or physically. I remember how terrible I felt, when we'd be in the same room, and instead of talking to each other, we'd baby talk to our (amazing, wonderful) little dog instead. I remember feeling so jealous of that dog, because she was so physically affectionate with her, and never (ever) me.

This is an aside, but, For our entire relationship together, the only thing I ever really asked for, was a giant cookie for my birthday. It's a family tradition, and I love them. 10 years I asked for a simple $7.99 giant cookie from the grocery store, with a Happy Birthday message, and for 10 years, she never did it. I did everything for her, took care of everything. The car, the house, the groceries, her health care, her mental healthcare... I realized that's all she wanted, was a caretaker.

Well, it came to a head one night when we were randomly talking openly, and she told me the only reason she slept with me was so I wouldn't leave her. When I sobered up, I started a mental clock of two years, and told her what I needed from her, and gave her those 2 years to fix it. She didn't, so after two years, I told her we weren't right together and we split up. I cried, so much. It was awful. I still very much love her, but, I was right. We just weren't meant for each other.

It's been 5 years since then, and I've been having trouble finding my person. I went to therapy, went HARD in therapy, really worked on myself. Got better physically, mentally, have a much better job, and just recently started texting a woman that lives a thousand miles away in Texas. She's beautiful just like my ex-wife is, except she wants to have kids.

Pray for me, bros, I really like her, and don't want to mess this up.

She can't have kids, I don't have kid(s) of my own and want one.

She had “left” years ago but was hanging on for the money and the kids. Constantly yelled at me, refused to do any family activities together. I even funded her savings to escape ( all of our money was ours except what was hers) on the claim that it would reduce her anxiety. Eventually she filed, blames me for “not fighting for her”.

So much stress gone. So much more peace in my life.

My biggest regret really was not fighting for full custody. We have equal custody but for the first few years I was able to get the kids most of the time

He died, which really put a damper on the whole thing.

I wasn’t allowed to have any feelings other than happy. I wasn’t allowed to negotiate within the relationship, I had to take what he was offering or I was “blackmailing” him. He treated me like an extension of himself and if I didn’t do and act exactly how he wanted I’d get iced out.

The short version of the story is I was seeing a nurse, then Covid happened and she did the travel nurse thing and I never saw her again.

In fact...remember those 3D printed notebook divider face masks? I had volunteered to make a bunch of those, including one that, one spool ran out so I started another spool so it came out two-colored. Just so happens she was the point of contact between the hospital and the maker community, so she was the one tasked with the "how to correctly use" instructions, and that was the one she wore in the demo pictures. Those are the last pictures I have of her.

I do not consider past relationships failures. Given enough time, I believe we are all able to go from "why is/was this happening to me?" to "what is/was this teaching me?"

With that said, I'll gladly share, starting with the latest:

1. Divorced her after eight happy years, in 2021, because she wanted kids and I didn't. Having kids was one of her dreams and I didn't think it fair to keep her waiting for me to have a change of heart on the matter. Also, she called me "stupid" whenever I intervened in quarrels, brawls, threats or other antisocial behavior on the streets. Lastly, she told me once, when I opened up about my clinical depression, that I probably have to live alone the rest of my life.

2. Broke up with her about ten years ago, after dating for one year, because she couldn't take having a long distance relationship. In addition, she had apparently fallen for somebody else.

3. Broke up with her over 15 years ago, because she couldn't wait while I sought medical care for my erectile dysfunction. She called me names too. Took me 15 years after that to realize that my dick was causing gender dysphoria, which in turn made me unable to fuck "like a man".

4. My first love, over 20 years ago, I broke up with after four years of her cheating on me with my best friend. For some stupid reason, I forgave that sorry excuse of a human being every single time, destroying my self-esteem for life in the process.

She emptied our joint bank account to buy crack.

She decided to move to another country.

It was an unhealthy relationship in many ways so this was probably for the better, but I was messed up for the better part of a year after.

We were together 13 years. We both grew as people but not together. I did a lot of therapy and finding myself. He kept pushing everything down and refusing to experience his feelings. We were never bad to each other we just kinda... Became roommates over time. We basically stopped being intimate both physically and emotionally.

One day we sat down, talked about where we've been, what we both want, what our ideal future is, and realized we were going in different directions. We decided to get divorced. We lived together for another year and a half after that because we own the house together.

I moved out a few months ago. We still talk every day, share pictures of the animals that we each kept, we're good friends. We just didn't open up to each other the last few years. He's done therapy and started some self exploration since we decided to divorce. He seems much happier. We're both dating other people and we're both genuinely happy for each other.

May have lost a husband but, I definitely did not lose a friend. This was literally the best divorce you could ask for. I hope the best for him.

She cheated on me, forgave her, she cheated on me again. I ended up a husk of a man unable to date until very recently