Ask Lemmy

When my wife became a drunk and started fucking her coworkers it was a pretty good sign things weren’t going to work out

Oh dear, to avoid revealing anything identifiable, and not write a novel, I'll keep this shortish.. but to answer the question..

My last relationship, she pursued me aggressively, then once she got me to agree to relationship with her, ended up screwing around with 3 other people behind my back not long after. slipped up her story with one of them, which made all 3 aware and her house of cards fell, and she had the audacity to come to me expecting there theres and head pats telling her it was all right from me, while telling me about all 3 and everything she did with them.. I gave her a nice tirade about what I thought about her audacity, and her, and told her to never even think my name again, much less contact me in any fashion.

The relationship before that, another woman that kinda aggressively pursued me, got me to spend a lot of money for her, would emotionally manipulate me, and eventually started to physically hit me. When I finally stood up for myself in the smallest way, she lost her absolute shit at me, which resulted in me finally saying enough is enough and ending the relationship.

The "relationship" before that, that I'm just mentioning for a laugh over how ridiculous it was.. another woman that approached me and asked me if I wanted to try dating her, I'd casually known her for a short while as a friend of a friend kind of thing, so I said sure..30 minutes later she was in another room with her dress hiked up bouncing on someone elses lap on a couch. Obviously this wasnt a real relationship, so its not like I had any hangups from this one, but its certainly a what the fuck moment.

So yeah, I've never really had what you'd call a healthy relationship, and honestly at this point in my life I genuinely thinking I'm giving up on women in general, as far as relationships go.

I moved across the country

It never really got started. Ive known this woman for many years, back to when we were both kids. We met through a friend of a friend over the phone, so for a while, I thought she was much older than she actually was. When i found out she was significantly younger than me, I had to tell myself no. And that "no" stayed in the back of my head for a long, long time.

Now its been many years, and we've stayed close for a long time. We had a few periods of fooling around once she got older, but between going away for college and both of us starting careers, it never worked out. A couple years ago she moved back and we had been spending more and more time together. We actually started getting intimate with each other in the last year or so, even if we saw each other barely once evey month or so.

I had a traumatic incident at work, losing my job, and spent about a day in shock, and she was there for everything for me. She didnt judge me or push me or do anything besides understand and comfort. I didnt know that was something I desperately needed until that point.

After about a week of pulling myself together, i turned to really pursing her. I asked her out on dates, I tried everything I could to make myself available to her. Weeks went by and she never has the time. Then she told me she'd asked someone at work out and how excited she was.

I was devastated. I didnt understand for a few weeks. Then we talked about it and she said she just didnt notice that I was even making an effort. She said it just felt like the old hang out and whatever between us, and that she had let those feelings go a long time ago.

Im still recovering honestly. Part of me entirely understands where she is coming from. I told her no when she wanted it most, and it bothers her that I would take her saying no so hard now. I asked her if she felt it would have been taking advantage of her to accept her back then, and she said she doesnt know, but wanted it anyways.

The intimacy over the last year is what confuses me most. We'd done some rough kissing a few times, but nothing like what we shared in the last 12 months. Part of that was finally having time and being close enough to each other, Part of that was growing as people and being more honest about being what we wanted. I just dont understand why she would want that with me if those feelings were really gone a long time ago.

I really dont know. A huge part of me just wants to wait for things to get better. I sleep a lot. Between the loss of work and the loss of hope, its hard to tell which one feels worse. I still message her. We share dumb memes. It hurts every time I see her notification pop up, but hurting is better than nothing sometimes. Its been a long time since I've been so deep in the hole, but I've always pulled through before. Just have to wait. Sleep is good for waiting. Dreams dont hurt.

Everyone copes.

We had an open relationship that he completely took advantage of. Every night that I wasn’t home, he was at a bar trying to hook up and often did. Problem was, I worked overnights and I wasn’t home 5 nights a week.

Then he said he didn’t love me anymore and moved in with a woman twice our age. Can someone say, hobosexual?

It was really funny when he kept coming back to me trying to hookup. The fucking crocodile tears when he went to kiss me and I turned away. He sobbed like a little baby bitch and said “I just wanted to feel like you wanted me here” like I hadn’t begged him to come back multiple times. Not my best moment but I’m better off without 🤷‍♀️

She died...

Becoming a widower at 40 sucks.

Because I'm not good at relationships, I'm over reliant on being independent and spontaneous. My ex's needed much more but I couldn't be what they deserved and I hope they've found what they need. I'm not sure if I can ever give someone what they need, I need the time to be isolated from people.

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 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 was unmedicated.

I am a muse with a soft spot for strays. I curate sexual and financial talent and then it leaves the nest when it's ready. I've made peace with it because I too just move on to the next thing. But like, if you are broke and horny and we date long term, history suggests that within 3 years you'll be clearing $150k and fucking with your feet behind your head. It keeps happening and I can't explain it, but I also don't hate it.

I feel like in the third act, my harem of wealthy exes is going to unite to do something great.

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 and relative stability of my life, and in a weird way I'm glad I went though 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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

We were together for 4 years. At the start i was nihilist and she was christian but respected each others views. Then we broke up coz satan made a guy gay.

Then in the last year of our relationship she suddenly wanted to me to go to church and listen to this guy talk about finding god. I thought fuck it, ill entertain the idea, whatever.

This guy (who was obviously gay) was talking about how satan made him gay and that turning to god made him straight. All i could see was pain in his eyes and hear the lack of conviction in his words. He brought his family out and everyone looked miserable. I felt terrible and cringey hearing this guy trying to convience everyone and himself that he wasnt gay and had found happiness.

My partners dad afterwards in the carpark was banging on about how the world would be better if gay people realised they werent gay but had a mental condition brought on by satan and i lost it and told her family to fuck emselves.

The guy ended up killing himself a few years later so I guess finding god didnt actually workout. Such a fucking shame cunts cant be themselves without other cunts judging em