|
(EDITOR'S NOTE: I started this in the breakups thread, and the regs were kinda iffy on whether it belonged, and I've decided to acquiesce and move it to its own thread, because I'm going to deserve things directed at me that are probably verboten in that thread) Hi goons. The last three years of my life have been loving psychotic, mostly by my own decision making, but partly by circumstance and other people. Please go on a journey of introspection with me, as I work some of this poo poo out of my brain, reflect, and figure some poo poo out from the nadir of my life. DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Me - 33 My Wife - 38 Girlfriend #1 - 33 ????????? - 41 IT ALL STARTED in November of 2013, my wife of 4 years went with her sister to her home state to visit her family and see a new nephew. I stayed home because 1) blech and 2) i didn't have the vacation time. My marriage wasn't great, but it was comfortable. We kinda drifted apart to a distance of remaining partners who were affectionate and tackled problems / watched TV together, but not much else. We didn't have any kids (thank gently caress). I met a woman online (dun dun dun). The chemistry was nuclear, she was intelligent and deep in ways my wife wasn't, and we had a lot of overlapping interests. The first night we talked for 5 hours. She told someone the next day that she had the best conversation of her life, and I agreed. During this time, I made an enormous mistake with her that would prove to be a fatal one. In the depth of my depression and neediness for approval, while my wife was away, when asked about my relationship status by her, I told her what I wished it was instead of what it was actually. I told her I was divorced. This completely bad decision snowballed out of control until it became a second life I had to live while also having numerous other barriers to overcome. The barriers were three fold, one: she was married to paraplegic and hated her life, two: she lived hours and hours away. and three: my wife had already decreed that we'd be leaving Colorado to move to her home state in about 5-6 months time, which would put me even further out of reach of the new woman. So what did we do in the face of these barriers? Fall hard and irrevocably deep in love within weeks. I knew she was married, she knew I was leaving, but we couldn't help it. It got so bad that she actually worked up the nerve to break up with her husband. After he was relocated out of the home to his parents house, she quickly broke up with me right after, then wanted back together, then dumped me again. She was single for the first time since she was 19 and didn't want to "rush in" to anything as serious as the trajectory we were on. On top of the drama, we didn't get a chance to meet up (!) before I left the state, we talked on the phone a lot, we video chatted a lot, there were degenerate photos shared, it was very torrid, but it lacked the real life litmus test, which would later prove to be an issue. Things were left up in the air, we felt like we needed each other and would die, but we couldn't work out a way to be together that didn't trigger her anxiety about a commitment, I mean I could have split with my wife and relocated to her home, my work is done at home and is very mobile, I was pretty willing but also had concerns. In the end I left the state, and we resumed being crazy in love while in limbo. I'M SO SAD I WANT TO DIE, I'm living with my PARENTS IN LAW, people who I can barely stomach, bigoted fire and brimstone conservative Christians with lovely opinions about everything and FOX news on TV 24/7. I've got my same old trusty job, but my wife hasn't found a new one yet, and we've been languishing for months in her childhood bedroom with scarcely any autonomy or privacy. It's a god damned hell. I work, I hide on the internet, I get high as hell, and I crawl into my phone to interact with the woman I want to be with. I'm in pure survival/coping mech mode. This goes on for 4 months until I finally tell my wife that I have to leave or I'm going to die. We actually break up, I packed my poo poo into my car and drove east to my home town, Philadelphia, to live with my father until I could set up an apartment. This was in October of 2014, so it's been a whole year since I met the new woman. In that time she finalized her divorce and bought a house in Florida and moved. After I got back, I quickly hatched a scheme to finally meet up in person and figure this poo poo the hell out. What's halfway in between us? Only the greatest city on earth, Fayetteville North Carolina baby! We both drove 7 hours and met at a hotel for the first time, to take "being together in real life" out for a spin. We kissed, we hugged, we cuddled and hosed, we listened to music and watched Netflix. Around day 3 or so, things started to get odd. My bubble popped because hers was obviously. She told me it wasn't like she thought it'd be, there wasn't a spark or attraction in real life, the intellectual chemistry didn't transfer to the physical. I'm not a model, but I'm not a pile of puke either, and I have an aesthetic that's generally appealing (ridiculously tall fuzzy teddy bear guy w/nice dick), but yeah. It just.... didn't work. She actually burst into tears and sobbed about it while I held her, it was like hugging a drill that was boring into my heart. The person I was in her mind and in her phone didn't manifest in that hotel. I DROVE HOME. Pretty devastated, but hopeful to move on. We chatted less and less thought it was thoroughly depressing all around. During that time, my wife actually came to visit me for Christmas. We had been chatting a little here and there, and maybe hopeful about rekindling our life together. I didn't tell her about the other woman. I figured it'd only hurt her, and it was over, right? RIGHT!? During my wife's visit, which was surprisingly pleasant, my father got an eviction notice from his apartment people. Y'see, my father is a functioning crackhead. I know what you're thinking "a functioning crackhead what", but it's true. The man has had a healthy crack addiction my entire loving life, but he somehow always manages to avoid poverty and homelessness, and hold down a (fairly well paying) job as a CNC machinist. The maintenance strength needed must be super human. I mean sure, my childhood was plundered and stunted in several ways that have given rise to numerous mental issues for me -today-, but let it never be said that my father won't figure some poo poo out and dodge a bullet when it matters, the man is clutch if nothing else. Despite that, I had a panic attack at this horse poo poo though, and I used the eviction as a pre-text to cement my wife and I getting back together. I was enthused about it, to give it a real go, she had a job, we had enough money to get an apartment, and things were going to be great. I packed all my poo poo into my car, and drove back to her home state. We got settled into the apartment early February 2015. I was getting high less, eating better, drinking more water, getting exercise, feeling good. I lived near Chicago, and my wife and I made trips to the city on the reg for good food and entertainment. Things were feeling better all around, so it probably continued forever, right? Well... NO, NOT REALLY. See it turns out that when you have a plethora of mental issues due to childhood trauma, and they're unresolved and cause you need destructive coping tools to keep a handle on your life, you're never really "good", you're distracted, sated, comfortable, deluded or in denial, but never good. There was one brief psychotic weekend where I was going to leave my wife and go live with the girlfriend in Florida. She had went to a therapist who told her to stop being scared and to try to have the happy life she wanted with me all along, that reality could be reconciled with her expectations, and we could really do it. I actually wrote my wife a letter and planned out packing my poo poo into my car yet again, and leaving, again, this time for Florida, while she was out of town. On Saturday afternoon, the day before I was set to flee into another disaster, I sat down and thought about everything. The girlfriend didn't know I was married, how would I effect a divorce from Florida? What if my wife came looking for me to confront me for being a piece of poo poo? What if the girlfriend found out while I was there? I chickened out and probably saved both of us a lot of drama (hah). I told her I couldn't go through with it. She was devastated and we drifted apart again for a few days, until we started in again. Between the realization that I wasn't going to be happy, and the continuing drama with the other woman, who broke up with/got back together with me daily, I went right back into a rut. Disenchanted with the first woman due to the nature of our real life meeting, I sought out something else. Kik is a hell of a drug. Let me say this as plainly as I can: If your s/o has Kik they're probably cheating on you, full stop. Anyway, I met a few women who I could pour my attention into and get that itch scratch that I needed, that "mommy why did you abandon me when I was 5 and leave me with crackhead dad and ruin my life you bitch?" itch. You know, everyone's got issues, right? One of the women was super cool, but far away, meh. We chatted, flirted, shared pics and music and etc. She told me a lot about her sex life and what she needed and wasn't getting, and called me a word to that struck my brain like a lightning bolt, she just blurted out "daddy" to me while being flirty. I kinda redlined on it and went over all the poo poo around it with her. Her interest was mostly intellectual and surface, she liked being a "bad girl" etc, but I immediately started absorbing as much as I could about daddy dominates, littles, and various other kink culture stuff. That led me to a website called FetLife. On FetLife, I met ????????? woman from the top, who became girlfriend #2 very shortly after. If the chemistry with girlfriend #1 was nuclear, it was apocalyptic with #2. She was an eager denizen of the rabbit hole I had just fallen into and hadn't yet recognized as Just Another Coping Mechanism. We talked about everything, but especially our relationships, how we've had lovely relationships our whole lives (common denominator much?) and were just exhausted and wanted to stop playing games, stop manipulating and being obsessed and lying, and just be happy and love. There were some barriers here too. Mostly her being in Canada (!), married but unhappy, and having two older kids. YIKES. But she's crazy and married, so I'm instantly interested. The first woman I ever fell in love with had severe borderline personality disorder, and it was from that fractured relationship that I was released into the world as if hardened criminal from prison with innate distrust, scheming and ruthless conniving. I've always said I have a 4th degree black belt in relationships. We made ground rules to always share our true feelings, not lie, and not interpret reality to each other. It was working wonders for my brain and general mood/anxiety, but was it just more distraction and coping? She, knew I was going through a bad breakup, but also thought i was divorced. Y'see, not content to just be a lovely idiot liar to one woman, I told the new girlfriend that I was also divorced, again, not wanting to introduce entanglements and uncertainty into the mainline drip of intimacy I was getting. 2015 was the summer of ACID AND DENOUEMENT. I found a hookup for lucy, my absolute favorite drug, and while dropping every 2-3 weeks would spend hours talking with my new girlfriend and come to some kind of epiphany about what I needed to do to escape the hosed up TRIPLE life I was living. There were explosive events one after another during the early summer as my hosed up stupid idiot life came crashing down around me in a really well deserved and awfully overdue way. In the first event, I confessed that I was married to the new girlfriend, #2. Because I was drifting a bit from her, she noticed it, and wanted to break things off due to how lovely it felt. I laid out a confession to her and told her everything, unvarnished and interpolated. We actually got back together stronger than ever, and she was my biggest ally in the events to come. In the second event. I confessed to girlfriend #1 that the whole time we were together, I was married and trying to figure out how to ditch my wife and be with her. She was understandably, profoundly hosed up by this revelation. I truly regret every crazy hosed up brain ripple I've caused in her, and this one had to be a whopper, but she 1. deserved to know the truth and 2. especially about what a piece of poo poo I was so she could give up on me and move on. In the third event, after two years of careful clandestine phone calls, my wife actually caught me talking to girlfriend #2 in a voice call. I thought she was gone for the evening with her sister, was in the middle of being all saccharine goo ga with #2, and just hear the front door to our apartment slam shut. Uh oh. HERE'S WHERE IT GETS CRAZY, my wife isn't stupid, she digs through my phone history on the billing website and finds the one or two times I was dumb enough to call girlfriend #1 on the mobile instead of Skype. My wife finds girlfriend #1 and they have a chat, together, they find girlfriend #2 by breaking into my e-mail. They all have long conversations with each other about what happened over the next couple days, what they thought was happening, and how hosed up it all was, whether there were anymore women (there weren't). I poo poo you not, it was like a convention of women who were hosed over by my spiraling descent into a mental breakdown. They should have pooled their assets and just put out a hit on me, but girlfriend #2 wanting my garbage fire rear end self saved me. Girlfriend #1 basically gives me the "I never want to talk to you again,", my wife gives me the "you have to move out by the end of next month", and girlfriend #2 gives me "hey at least we still got each other, right?". I PACK UP MY poo poo, AGAIN, into my car, and drive back to Philly. I'm basically in an emotional daze at this point. My wife is definitely going to divorce me and never talk to me again, and girlfriend #1 has dragged me to everyone we mutually knew to let them know what garbage I was, in addition to the never talking to again. I'm surfing on a wave of revulsion for myself, from myself, and others, but still surfing it. I get back home and start to self-medicate again, and dig in deeper with girlfriend #2. We're still committed to the idea that we want to be better, and despite everything, what happened that summer was the only way to get on a path to getting better. it's around this time that we realize that we're horrifically codependent on each other and obsessed, in a sinister kind of way where we think we're not but totally are, think we're above it but totally aren't. It's now January of 2016, a scant 7 months ago. I'm still working full time, partying with friends, tripping balls, and trying to figure out what the gently caress I want out of life. Girlfriend #2 is so far as to be infeasible to get to, she's in Dickfuck Saskatchewan. She's visited me a half dozen times already, and it's always magic, it's always the best time of my life and each time is better. I want to be with her, she wants to be with me. So what do I do? I MAKE PLANS TO MOVE TO DICKFUCK SASKATCHEWAN. Yes. Yes guys. No, I don't get my own apartment in Philly, see a therapist, and take some time off, why would I!?!? Despite her initial reservations, girlfriend #2 comes around to thinking this is for the best. I can get an apartment there, get some therapy there, we'll be together to help each other, she'll finish up breaking up with her husband, and everything will be amazing. It was quite the ludicrously arduous undertaking. I've never flown on an airplane before, I've never left the country. I had to get a passport, luggage, send thousands of dollars cash to my girlfriend who had to set up an apartment for me, buy plane tickets, mail my computer and work poo poo to Canada, fly, WITH MY CAT, and take a shot at this crazy life. I DID IT THOUGH. That's how committed/deluded I was, that's how powerful magical thinking can be. I arrived in Canada near the end of June 2016. I had a cool apartment, I had my trusty job in my backpocket, my paycheck is on steroids here, and I got the girl. Everything is going to be amazing, forever, right? No. Not really. The first month was amazing, everything I thought it would be. We were together, we dated, we watched movies, we talked, we reveled in each other. The second month got harder. She was being torn apart by her loyalties. To her kids, her home, her husband, her business, and me. She was anxious and concerned about how things were going to go. Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. August 2016. Her husband has been making her crazy by threatening to ruin her life if she doesn't break up with me (he's known about us all along, but thought he'd be okay with her wanting the marriage to end, turns out he's not). She's having a mental health crisis that now requires interventionary level treatment. I support her going for in-patient therapy, just... just wondering where I'm going to land in all of this, but kinda knowing already where I will. Finally my worst fears are realized. She wants to take a break from us to figure things out. We should just be friends. I react predictably, as one does when they move to a new country leaving everything behind to pursue love: I got a bit angry. I'm a scorched earth kind of break up person, and interpret "we need a break" as "I'm leaving you and hate you fuckman". After a few days of fighting and disbelief and crazy 8th dimensional manipulation attempts, she decides we need to break up for real and sever communication as she prepares to go to an in-patient treatment center in the United States for a month. This would be 12 days from now. That's where I'm at now. Completely alone, no automobile, in DICKFUCK SASKETCHWAN, with my cat and my guitar and my job. My girlfriend #2 is now officially my ex, and it couldn't have hosed me over any more than if it was orchestrated by my ex-wife and ex-girlfriend #1, loving psycho thriller movie style. While she's gone, girlfriend #2 wants me to go to therapy, for PTSD from childhood, abandonment issues, codependency, and all the other toxic bullshit in my mind. She wants me to get better, and to write her, but she won't promise anything about getting back together until she gets back, gets clear, and knows what she really wants for herself, what's sustainable. So yeah. I've e-mailed a few therapists, but I have very little faith in therapy, in medication, or in me getting better. My best plan so far is buying a cheap car and driving back to Philly, because it'd be cheaper than air travel and I could take my poo poo with me, and you can't rent a car in DICKFUCK SASKETCHEWAN and leave it in Philly apparently. I dunno what else to do, I'm scared, hurt, alone, anxious, and in pain, and I deserve all of it, but at the same time, I dunno what to do to begin fixing it. I welcome all unvarnished opinions and questions. That's the end of the story.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 18:11 |
|
|
|
| # ? Aug 26, 2016 11:21 |
|
|
Stop dating completely you trainwreck
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 18:34 |
|
|
Wedemeyer posted:Stop dating completely you trainwreck Fair. To be honest, I think this is where I'm landing, sadly. I think I have to get the hell out of here, go home, and spend probably a decade sorting my poo poo out before I can offer anyone anything.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 18:35 |
|
|
I want to hear more about the adventures of crackdad, and whether you think your path in life will end up mirroring his.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 18:40 |
|
|
you probably shouldn't have cheated on your wife
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 18:45 |
|
|
You hosed up all your relationships by being a narcissistic little poo poo and now all the people who could have helped you through your poo poo are kicking you out, and rightly so. You're going to have to start from square one, work through whatever bullshit you have from your childhood and correct your deplorable behavior before you even have a shot at being in a relationship. You need to be in survival mode now, focusing on housing, job, car, savings and therapy or you'll end up like crackdad.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 18:47 |
|
|
The Groper posted:I want to hear more about the adventures of crackdad, and whether you think your path in life will end up mirroring his. Despite being the catalyst for so much of my bullshit today, I don't hold much of a grudge against my dad, because he's just a guy who never got help and never thought he needed help. He'll give you the shirt off his back if you catch him with his shirt before he's traded it for crack. If he's flush, your flush, if he's broke, he's going to borrow from you. As long as he owes you money you're never broke. He's a loving hilarious guy firstly, like great sense of humor and fast with jokes. He's not super book smart, at all, he dropped out of school in 10th grade and went into the trades, but he's like a savant with angles and radius and trigonometry. He's an excellent machinist, set up and operation. Basically his cycle for the last 25 years has to been: 1) Smoke crack on the weekends 2) Work hard and work a lot of overtime for 8 months 3) Steal from his job constantly, anything he could steal, dumb poo poo, paper towels, cleaning products, coffee, sugar, he can't help himself 4) Get fired for absenteeism 5) Collect unemployment /get a big tax return /sit on his rear end and smoke crack for 3-4 months 5) Get a new job and start over. He's done this consistently for the past 2 decades, and I admire his dedication to the enormous difficulty in being a crackhead who can maintain.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 18:53 |
|
|
As to whether I will mirror my beloved crackdad in life; I don't know. I don't do a lot of hard drugs, mostly just smoke pot, drop acid, and gently caress with oxy sometimes. And I actually maintain my jobs too, I've never actually lost one or been fired. I have seen some eerie similarities between us recently though, for sure, however, he was given an ultimatum by a girlfriend once about 20 years ago, clean up and give up crack or she was gone. The man chose crack and has never looked back.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 18:54 |
|
|
man I got about halfway through that sad sackery before I couldn't stomach any more. Have you tried not being a little bitch and owning up to your problems and issues and your own personal responsibility for your situations? You hadn't as of half-way through your rambling.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:03 |
|
|
Sigma-X posted:man I got about halfway through that sad sackery before I couldn't stomach any more. How does one "not be a little bitch and own up to their problems and issues and use personal responsibility"? Is there a store where I can buy this ability if I don't possess it or perhaps a tree I can pick it from and consume like fruit?
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:08 |
|
|
Loving Life Partner posted:How does one "not be a little bitch and own up to their problems and issues and use personal responsibility"? Is there a store where I can buy this ability if I don't possess it or perhaps a tree I can pick it from and consume like fruit? Understand the negative things in your life are you own doing, sit and think about why you made those poor choices, hammer on it until you figure out the broken parts of your psyche that make you a whiney narcissist, fix said problems, apologize and don't make the same mistakes again. You know, feel some shame.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:15 |
|
|
Arkanomen posted:fix said problems You skipped over the exact part that nobody knows how to do.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:17 |
|
|
The post/username combo is loving epic. I say get another wife and repeat from step one, grab life by it's lysergic acid soaked balls!
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:18 |
|
|
I'm 33 years old and I've survived a lot of horrendous bullshit circumstances, and have a pretty good grip on things. Despite that, I've been medicated for the last 5 years on anti-anxiety/AD drugs, I've been to a half dozen therapists for short stints, and have no faith that anybody can say any magical combination of English words that will be able to fix the bullshit that I have to carry around. I dunno, I recognize that I've hosed over my wife and my ex girlfriend (the first one), and I don't begrudge them anything. I'm kinda super pissed at my current ex for sandbagging me the way she did, but hey she's trying to fix her own bullshit. I just dunno where I go /what I do to fix allllllllllllllllllllllll this craziness.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:20 |
|
|
Stop doing illegal drugs alongside your prescribed, stop making poor decisions, work with a therapist wether you think it's "helping" or not. Set some realistic, positive goals for yourself and focus on meeting those.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:30 |
|
|
Write a book, drat.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:32 |
|
|
Hit post too soon. Words along aren't going to help you unfuck your brain processes. CBT is a lifelong process and you have to be committed to working out those issues. Right now you are facing a basic needs crisis and that needs to be addressed before you handle anything super complex like interpersonal relationships or childhood traumas. Focus on cutting out illegal drugs, maintaining personal health, finding and maintaining a job/income source, housing and transportation and lastly finding a good therapist to being work with you. Once that's settled and you're in a good spot you can branch out and begin to work on your bad spots, but you gotta go back to square one and rebuild pretty much everything.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:34 |
|
|
So what's your problem again? That you are stuck in Canada?
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:39 |
|
|
What do you do if you're too tired/exhausted/depressed/unable to work up the will to do all that? It's like a catch-22, I don't feel alive unless I'm in love, when I'm in love it's great and there are no problems, then when it self-destructs because of my issues / their issues (because I more or less always am attracted to women with unresolved issues), I'm back to not giving a gently caress and coping to get by. gently caress.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:40 |
|
|
So crackdad hits home for me LLP, I have a potdad at home and I have certainly become him in ways early teen-me would have flipped out at. I've also gone through the therapy wringer, and come up again and again with that "why doesn't this just work?" type of frustration. The answer, as far as I've found one, is to learn to accept that yes, you DO have to carry around this pile of bullshit, and no amount of therapy will change the past, the intensity of your formative memories in an unstable environment, or the fact that you probably inherited addict-brain, which imo would explain your nuclear, apocalyptic internal response to finding a fresh source of feel-good chemicals. Thankfully, putting the effort into therapy can help you learn to recognize when you're doing things to sate the addict-brain demands, and pump your brakes. And really, that's the most important, effective thing I've found to manage anxiety. Learn to check yourself->don't gently caress up as much->feel better over time as you have less to ruminate over. Obviously you might be responsibly managing your pot, acid, and oxy use, my apologies if so.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:45 |
|
|
Loving Life Partner posted:What do you do if you're too tired/exhausted/depressed/unable to work up the will to do all that? I think it is probably more accurate to say infatuated than in love. Juggling a bunch of relationships doesn't really indicate that you respected any of your partners, let alone loved them.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:51 |
|
|
I'm open to that possibility, and the start of something, the "infatuation" stage is definitely the hit that maintains, everything after is a lot of work, so you keep chasing what you believe some hosed up fairy tale version of love is supposed to feel like all the time. It's funny, after everything, where I am now, I just feel the worst about what I did to my wife, whose feelings I didn't give a poo poo about at all during all the madness. She actually saw who I was and was okay with it and always gave our relationship her all, if I wasn't garbage I could probably have been way happier with her for a way longer time.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:54 |
|
|
That motivation is always a challenge and keeps far to many people from making positive steps and yes, it's really hard to do and that's why people turn to coping mechanisms to get by. But you're here posting this thread so some part of you knows this is a bad path and isn't happy with the way you are living your life. Look at what you posted. You destroyed what sounds like an average marriage over your personal problems and selfish desires. This same narcissism also killed off your two illicit relationships. Not to harp on you and slam you with guilt, but your own selfish nature hurt not one but there people who had or potentially had feelings for you. Your wife loved you enough at some point to accept being with you the rest of her life and now she's kicking you out. Your problem is a lack of empathy and a huge slice of "Me Me Me". I think if you took a moment and did a self evaluation you'd find that you really don't want to be that person ever again and that is where you should dig in and draw motivation from. There's gonna be days you don't give a poo poo and want to lay down and rot. There's gonna be days where instead of getting up and going to an appointment or work seems like torture and you'd rather trip out on acid. There's days where you'll resent everyone around you for not giving you exactly what you want. Those are going to be the tough days and that's when you'll have to think back to this post and all the negative things that your past life choices made and then you power through the day and try again tomorrow. I wish I had something quick and easy for you OP, but you're going to be rebuilding your life and it's gonna be a struggle and take some time, but remember why you are doing it and focus on that for the hard days. Remember the therapist and your future friends are there to help you along. Good luck man.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 19:56 |
|
|
Loving Life Partner posted:I'm open to that possibility, and the start of something, the "infatuation" stage is definitely the hit that maintains, everything after is a lot of work, so you keep chasing what you believe some hosed up fairy tale version of love is supposed to feel like all the time. You can always talk to her. You can't take back what you did, or make up for the bad things, but you can apologize, tell her you'll honor her request and give her space and let her know that you're going to try better to be better and maybe somewhere down the line you'll be a man worthy other and then you can maybe try again, but she might just cut you out for good and that will be that. Feeling shame for what you did is a good thing and will help your broken brains begin to relearn choice and consequence. You should apologize to her but make it clear you aren't doing so to get something out of her or to clear your own guilt, more you should do it because she deserves it from you.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 20:00 |
|
|
Congratulations on finding the niche where you know you're aggressively stupid but are too aggressively stupid to do anything about it
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 20:11 |
|
|
did you meet girlfriend #1 on a mud
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 20:23 |
|
|
Arkanomen posted:You can always talk to her. You can't take back what you did, or make up for the bad things, but you can apologize, tell her you'll honor her request and give her space and let her know that you're going to try better to be better and maybe somewhere down the line you'll be a man worthy other and then you can maybe try again, but she might just cut you out for good and that will be that. Your advice is good but I think he should just leave the poor woman alone. I can't imagine an apology from him would be sincere in any way at this point. The thread wasn't made because he feels terrible about what he did, it was because he got dumped. Yes, go back to Philly. Dickfuck Saskatchewan doesn't need people like you.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 21:20 |
|
|
its funny to me that you kept dating married people. whats the deal with that?
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 21:43 |
|
|
Leave your poor wife alone. Any "apology" at this point would be about making you feel better, not about her feelings and needs. You're hurt and angry and finally alone, so now suddenly you remember your wife. You don't suddenly care about her feelings and feel bad for hurting her. You feel bad that you hosed up the most stable relationship you had because you have now destroyed all your other relationships and have no one else to care about you. It's still all about you, whatever you're telling yourself. You are only considering her now that you have been left out in the cold and realise you can't stand being alone. The best and most unselfish thing you could do for her is stay away and let her get over you. Deal with your regret and issues yourself rather than trying to get her to share them. If you truly do feel any remorse, you will leave her alone, not force her to confront and deal with your "guilt".
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 21:53 |
|
|
You should definitely not be dating anyone in the foreseeable future, but when you fail to heed that advice, at least don't date anyone online / stick to people in your immediate area. Like half your problems that don't involve being a lovely cheater appear to be online-dating/LDR problems: "we had no chemistry in person" and "I dropped everything and moved for a woman I've never met" come to mind.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 22:00 |
|
|
Ocean Book posted:its funny to me that you kept dating married people. whats the deal with that? Like attracts like?
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 22:12 |
|
|
Bail on Canada. If you're still working remotely out of the US then you probably don't have the right kind of visa anyway, right? And it'll be much easier to access the services you know that you need in a country you're a citizen of. I think your plan to get a car and go home with your kitty and your things is a good one. I don't know if anyone hangs out in PI anymore but you can check there or PM me if you want tips on traveling with your cat. In Philly, get a hotel or an airbnb or something until you can get an apartment. It sounds like you work entirely online. I suspect that spending your entire life on the Internet is bad for you and provides you with too many opportunities to indulge destructive coping mechanisms. Some people just aren't good at having access to the internet. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm gonna run with the idea that I'm not for now. My advice as soon as you've settled in to a place in Philly is: 1) contact a dozen therapists that your insurance covers to try to get an appointment. Bring your post to the first meeting. 2) set yourself a timer outside of work hours for Internet use. Maybe an hour plus an hour of gaming or something if it's not interpersonal. Don't use the Internet to talk to friends you don't know. From hearing that girlfriend #1 "dragged you to all your mutual friends" it sounds like all or most of your friends are online or some poo poo like that. Internet friends aren't real friends! You can have meaningful relationships online but the two types of relationship aren't identical and it doesn't sound like you develop healthy Internet friendships. You seemed to discover bits of this with girlfriend #1. The Internet just isn't real life. If you have real life friends, now is the time to lean on them. If not, use meetup or something to try to make new ones. Go to church, join an iron gym, whatever. Meet people. Real people. And develop some offline hobbies. Spend the time you've set yourself where you're not allowed to be online reading books or learning to knit or fostering kittens or woodworking or tutoring middle schoolers or even writing fanfiction, just don't spend it developing circles of online-only friends, who only have the context you want them to have and never see your whole life (that's what this forum is for!) 3) Do not date until you have spent significant amounts of time with a professional trying to decide how on earth your definition of love can include treating someone so horribly and unfairly and miserably as you treated your wife. Don't befriend anyone you're attracted to at this time because lmao. 4) make a list of your coping mechanisms and start replacing them with boring, helpful ones like "a cup of tea and a 10 minute break" instead of "cheating on my wife" and "lifting weights" instead of "joining fetlife". You're the worst and yet I still think you're gonna be a good poster, godspeed you terrible man you.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 22:21 |
|
|
Loving Life Partner posted:How does one "not be a little bitch and own up to their problems and issues and use personal responsibility"? Is there a store where I can buy this ability if I don't possess it or perhaps a tree I can pick it from and consume like fruit? The first step is not being a whiny little bitch and instead acknowledging that you have control over your life and get to make decisions, and that internet cheating on your wife and leaving her to bang some chick you've never met was a bad one.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 22:41 |
|
|
FordPRefectLL posted:did you meet girlfriend #1 on a mud God no, don't let my secrets out Zero >_> Ocean Book posted:its funny to me that you kept dating married people. whats the deal with that? It's happened a total of 5 times in my life, and by now I basically figured out that my "thing" is to find women who are at weird points in their life as far as close to transitioning and missing something, and I just pop up and "am" that person. I'm incredibly charming and fast on my feet and easy to get along with and just slip beneath skin like quicksilver. The disappointment at their current live almost serves as fuel for the infatuation that's to come, like how going from happiness of -5 to 10 would feel way more amazing than going from 8 to 10 or something. I don't know. Single women who know what they want and don't have mental issues are kryptonite to me. They see me as a profoundly hosed up weirdo from a hundred miles away. I don't have any plans to communicate with my wife much now beyond settling some debt between us. I've been as amicable and stand-up-ish as I can, all things considered. The divorce was just finalized last week. InEscape posted:
This is a really fantastic post, thank you so much, honestly.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 22:42 |
|
|
Loving Life Partner posted:I'm incredibly charming and fast on my feet and easy to get along with and just slip beneath skin like quicksilver. I like that even when you're talking yourself up it is by saying you are metaphorically poison
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 22:45 |
|
|
I'm not defending myself at all, I know what my strengths are and I know I've abused them, but I've never put a gun to anyone's head. My self-esteem is basically a black hole, and I've faked having it so long that I've made it, and once i got there, I figured out you don't have to be the person that hates yourself when you're meeting someone new, you can be something else entirely, but whatever affection and love they have for the simulacra never bleeds down to the wretched creature beneath.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 22:48 |
|
|
To give you an idea of how complete the transformation is, girlfriend #1 and girlfriend #2 had a conversation about how I'm addictive, not me personally, but just the way I made them feel and it's like going through withdrawals, if I turned off of them for any reason, they ran to catch up with me again without even thinking about what they'd give up to do it, either in relationship capital or what have you. Girlfriend #1 tried to have a similar conversation with my wife and she just laughed at her confused, like completely didn't understand what she was talking about, because she knew what a distracted uninterested conceited self absorbed dipshit I generally was in the real world, once the "bubble" was popped.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 22:53 |
|
|
poo poo. I just realized we have a $2000 mattress that we can probably return for a refund and I can use that to buy a decent enough car to get home?!?! LIKE SOON!?
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 23:07 |
|
|
Loving Life Partner posted:To give you an idea of how complete the transformation is, girlfriend #1 and girlfriend #2 had a conversation about how I'm addictive, not me personally, but just the way I made them feel and it's like going through withdrawals, if I turned off of them for any reason, they ran to catch up with me again without even thinking about what they'd give up to do it, either in relationship capital or what have you. These are the people you should not be around as whatever bs they have wrong with them is feeding into your narcissistic delusions. You are not "addictive" nor are you some sort of animal magnetism sex beacon. People are not addictive beyond the sense that emotional availability plus sex makes people get clingy. Your self esteem isn't in a black hole, it's just coming back down to normal/low levels after whatever your manic phase consists of.
|
| # ? Aug 22, 2016 23:23 |
|
|
|
| # ? Aug 26, 2016 11:21 |
|
|
Loving Life Partner posted:It's happened a total of 5 times in my life, and by now I basically figured out that my "thing" is to find women who are at weird points in their life as far as close to transitioning and missing something, and I just pop up and "am" that person. I'm incredibly charming and fast on my feet and easy to get along with and just slip beneath skin like quicksilver. The disappointment at their current live almost serves as fuel for the infatuation that's to come, like how going from happiness of -5 to 10 would feel way more amazing than going from 8 to 10 or something. I don't know. Single women who know what they want and don't have mental issues are kryptonite to me. They see me as a profoundly hosed up weirdo from a hundred miles away. What I think you don't realize is that it's really easy for pretty much anyone to be charming to an insecure/broken person (like the women you seem to attract). I'm sure that I would also feel like the most attractive guy on the planet if I only interacted with emotionally needy women in failing marriages. In general you seem really narcissistic. While you're willing to say bad things about yourself, you seem to feel the need to balance them with how great you are in other ways (or in the case of the above quote, the same way!).
|
| # ? Aug 23, 2016 01:47 |
|