After that, I ended it, despite his excuses to try to keep it going. I have occasionally stalked his girlfriend’s Instagram since, which gave me all the answers. He was of course manipulating me all along. I realise now he was with her that day he abandoned me and that he had instead driven 150 miles to see her and knew what he was doing to me. I’ve blocked both of them on social media, but I feel so devastated and don’t know what to do with myself. My friends are supportive but not with me all the time. I am trying to work on things with my husband but I feel like such a moron. Please help.
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I’m so sorry for your loss, Salma. Miscarrying is a traumatic loss that’s so under-recognised, with many women feeling as if they can’t talk about it. This can be incredibly isolating.
One of the toughest places to be emotionally is to feel as if you’re struggling or even drowning and yet your partner either isn’t noticing or is standing there watching but, how you feel and perceive might represent what the person is doing but equally it might not.
Many of us fall into the trap of expecting our partner to mind read or to get it “right” even when they themselves are flailing. We get mad at them for disappointing us by not being perfect and for not being able to intuitively understand everything we need without us having to be vulnerable and show and tell.
What we don’t always acknowledge is where we have hinted instead of going the distance and where we have expected them to know the answers even when we ourselves don’t. We also don’t always acknowledge where we are mad at them for not fixing feelings that might be of our own creation–our self-criticism and the knock-on effect of it.
You were looking for more than friendship when you began communicating with the Other Man. You wanted to feel purposeful, interesting, attractive and hopeful–the opposite to how you feel in your marriage.
You have looked for an external solution to an internal problem (the relationship itself and the inner turmoil that you’re going through). He was someone to numb your pain or to act as an ‘upper’.
Anyone can be the “perfect boyfriend” when they don’t exist, which is what happens when you’re in a fantasy situation and that includes when it can’t be a real relationship because neither of you are ‘out of contract’ from your existing relationships. It’s a bit like how some people look like the perfect candidate for the job until they actually start doing the job. He was “perfect” until he had to be real.
This was a simulated relationship and that was part of the attraction.
It’s important to acknowledge that he has been manipulative and preyed on your vulnerability, having scant regard for how his games added to your trauma. He gets off on believing that he has the power to ‘own’ another man’s wife and he’s gets as much if not more security out of knowing that he could have you versus being with you in reality. You have been his own safety net and escape.
You are not responsible for his actions but if you don’t acknowledge that you weren’t really looking for friendship, you will keep victimising you. You will keep thinking and doing certain things and then calling them what he’s doing.
Recognising that you wanted to feel alive, attractive, purposeful and more, and that this motivated you to look outside because you were hurting and couldn’t be vulnerable with your husband because you were too angry with him and yourself, prompting you to protect you via this affair so that you could feel safe in dealing with your husband while having a safety net, means that you can take responsibility for your part with compassion.
You are not the first person to feel lost, lonely and overwhelmed by pain and it has caused you to do something that you regret, hopefully for the right reasons. i.e. not because it didn’t work out but because it was the wrong choice from the outset.
Acknowledging the journey you made to the set of choices will reveal the baggage behind it and it will show that you are far from being a “moron”. When you stop lying to you about him and about you being “useless and ugly”, you will begin to heal. You will start to see what this is all about.
What you’re looking for is inside you and your relationship.
All that glitters is not gold. You checked out because your husband did not say the right words or do the right deeds at the right time, which you have inferred as meaning something awful about you instead of recognising what this teaches you about him or what’s needed in your relationship. You then took up with Hollowman who said all the right things and simulated a perfect boyfriend, only for him to flake out on you.
Be thankful that he stood you up before a few wrong turns became a major pile-up.
Your husband has disappointed you in what has been a very difficult time for the both of you. Undoubtedly you are feeling the loss physically, as well as emotionally, mentally and spiritually and it will be felt differently by you but that doesn’t mean that he’s not feeling and grieving or even that he’s not having his own moments of feeling “useless” and any other criticisms he may have of himself. Your husband may be failing to meet your expectations but it doesn’t mean that he’s a failure just like you having a miscarriage doesn’t make you a failure. Trying for a baby can take its toll on even the most healthy and loving of relationships due to the expectations and the lack of control–we expect things to go a certain way, on a certain schedule and attack ourselves when it’s harder than we imagined or we experience loss.
You keeping your disappointment to yourself and/or not telling him what you need out of fear of maybe hurting his feelings or even fear that he won’t be able to do it to the fullest of your expectations, will be far more damaging to your marriage than speaking up, or the intimacy of navigating grief and expressing your innermost feelings and thoughts even if they’re not ‘pretty’, or allowing each of you to try and get things wrong in the process of trying to figure out how to get things more right.
I don’t know what the other problems were but assuming that he’s not shady and that you’re not incompatible [because obviously neither an affair or having a baby is going to solve that], it’s time to recommit to your marriage with love, care, trust and respect.
Please continue with counselling. You might benefit from some individual sessions as well as miscarriage support (utilise whatever is available). This is where you can also discuss your options for working through the affair and hopefully you can both recover from both of these traumas together. Support you with self-care, so give your mind, body and emotions what they need.
You are the one who is abandoning you in your time of need and yes, you do need the support of loved and trusted sources as well as any professional help you can get, but this is only going to make a difference when you support you.
It’s wise to have stopped the prowling on social media (it’s just a distraction from your feelings and more pressing issues). From here it’s about acceptance, the choice that gets you out of stuck and on the move again.
Accept that this guy isn’t the man you assumed him to be but also accept that your husband isn’t perfect but that he also might not be viewing you as badly as you do. Accept your loss so that you can honour it with love, care, trust and respect rather than what will become the almost dirty pain of trying to escape it with toxic choices.
Each Wednesday, I help a reader to solve a dilemma. To submit a question, please email advicewednesdayAT baggagereclaim.com. If you would prefer your question to be featured on the podcast, drop a line to podcast AT baggagereclaim.com. Keep questions below 200 words.
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This post is amazing and really similar to what is going in my life. thank you so much for your brilliance. I needed this.
Yes ditto. Went through such a similar situation and it’s been heart wrenching. I still am processing grief over what happened two years later, but I can’t figure out why. Almost the exact same scenario and I can’t seem to get over him, even though I know he is a rat-bastard and treated me so badly. I think it’s because there are unresolved issues and feelings, and I still have moments where I have him on a pedestal in my head and think of him as this amazing and successful guy who liked me and then I effed it up. Though That really can’t be the truth. More realistically, he was just looking for an escape from the monotony of his marriage and led me on. A good person wouldn’t do that. I have to remember that.
But it’s hard. I just picture them on their romantic vacations that I can’t afford and all the fun stuff they do together, even though if I looked at it more realistically, I have an equally awesome life. Maybe there are something’s that I don’t have, but I am not some big loser. That fact that he tried to frame it this way should say all I need to know about his character. But yet I still feel sad and hurt :/ I wish I could finally stop that!
Day by day to healing. Focus on your own life and work on improving it. Write lists of what is wrong with this other man, what attracted you to him and find ways to bring it into your own life. There is no one who is that great that it’s worth bearing yourself up over this much. Now to take my own advice and really get well.
Lily, I just read an awesome book called Loving Yourself by Sherrie Campbell, I highly recommend it. Natalie’s books are also amazing. Keep moving forward and don’t look back, these men have NOTHING to offer. I believe there are certain people that come into our lives that are incapable of love and have no empathy but they are here to show us where we need to change and to love and respect ourselves. No contact is they way to go!
I think a range of people can relate to the tenets of the story, if not the details.
What I personally see that Natalie didn’t address per se is that how that “Salma” got wrapped up in 2 EUMs — the husband and the temporary “boyfriend.”
When I view “Salma” I see 1 of 3 things: 1) she didn’t state her needs clearly in order for them to be met or 2) *both* men distanced themselves rather than meeting her needs or 3) some sordid combination of both.
Did anyone else catch the emotional similarities of the “boyfriend” AND the husband in terms of a certain type of cruelty towards “Salma”? It’s certainly along the same range: the “boyfriend” was probably intentionally mean/inattentive, the husband? In the same range, though assumingly less so.
It is vitally important to gauge the man’s capacity for emotions and emotional growth within a range of experiences before committing to them in marriage, partnership and family. Of COURSE there is no way to predict how the man will react to every situation, but . . .how many of us out here have experiences with potential long-term partners that require immense pressure on the relationship, emotionally? Or is it mostly concentrated on “fun” or “shared interests” or “sexual compatability” or whatever?
I haven’t had this experience personally, but vicariously through friends — 1 male (the husband vv. his wife) and 1 female (who miscarried herself). It was night and day — the emotionally available one was able to support his wife as “expected” but the emotionally unavailable one was not — I was told he was hanging out with his buds while his wife was bleeding out.
Of course I am only a voyeur in other people’s business — rightfully so or not — but by my observation, the behaviour of the 2 men also differed in courtship. The emotionally available one seemed to me to be fully devoted, or willing to be, while the emotionally unavailable one seemed to me to want a “wife” instead of a “girlfriend” while concurrently maintaining a separate identity and single lifestyle.
Though Natalie’s response is very compassionate, and needed to be, I don’t think there are enough details to draw the conclusion to stick in there with “love, care, trust, respect” to get through it. I mean seriously? Sometimes “love, care, trust, respect” can also mean getting out of something that isn’t working emotionally.
For my portion, I’d say a man who can’t or won’t support his wife emotionally during such a time in her life needs a very hard dissecting as to what he and the relationship is about, how she managed to pick 1 EUM and chase another, and re-configuring in terms of how to move forward — both in and out of the marriage, if it can survive.
In my female friend’s case? Well, I was told he did not want children=no support for the miscarriage. They divorced. Just sayin’.
That’s why I’m saying in “Salma”‘s letter — there are not enough details to decide whether the husband just “isn’t perfect” or is more realistically like “wtf, rat bastard” on the spectrum of emotional availability.
Best wishes either way, though — hope “Salma” gets what she wants and needs, including baby, either way.
Yes. Salma needs to take a very hard look at her husband. If he’s this unsupportive now, how will he ever be there for her or any children he might have in the future? Child rearing isn’t easy, and it’s even worse to become an effectively a single parent when one is partnered with an emotionally absent adult.
Agreed — The story is really pretty generic and common. It needs more details about their relationship prior to the miscarriage.
An affair for a woman can be a last straw kind of a thing and is commonly based on the man’s ongoing emotional neglect, not usually a physical or sexual thing. Emotional neglect builds up over time and is usually not confined to one dramatic event — even one so sad as losing a child.
Also, a lot of women do the have a baby to save the relationship situation — knowingly or not.
Ladies, I appreciate your point of view but please remember that there’s a real person behind this letter, that there are only a limited amount of words, and that I respond in a manner that’s in alignment with Baggage Reclaim’s values. To Salma, this is not a generic story and as is the case with most people who have read or commented on BR, it’s felt like the most unique situation in the world even though of course she knows it’s not. I could very easily have said, “Your husband’s a beep beep beep beep” in line with what some of you have said, but that’s for you to say, not me. That’s not what I was ‘reading’ at a deeper level and that might vary entirely from how you see things. That also means that in line with my values, I don’t blame the other party for why they’re being cheated on.
For clarification, Salma has been in touch since I answered her question to let me know that they continued with counselling and he now understands why how he handled his own grief and their issues had such an impact on her plus she is addressing her own actions.
Again — I’m just a voyeur in other people’s lives but I would like to add that the dirty little secret no one wants to talk about is the myth of “having it all”.
Miscarriage among working women who delay having children past their 20s when she is most fertile is more common than people talk about. Also, the stress of work and trying to conceive is a fairly toxic combination.
That said, most women I personally know that had a miscarriage were kind of high-powered “have it all” types. One woman I know even miscarried *multiple times* before having only 1 child in her late 30s — she couldn’t have 2 for siblings. Can you imagine?
So, even as a voyeur, I feel like I’ve had a lot of vicarious experience of this type of thing. It’s a blessing to partake in such a private moment. For me, that’s no different whether reading a story and commenting on it or as a (supportive) friend in real life.
So, I’m trying to say that I meant my comments as a supportive friend and tried to add to that. In real life, even with my female friend(s) I never called out the husband’s behavior to her face or even his, even though I could see his strange, unsupportive behavior playing out and trouble ahead. Same troubles I saw when they were dating, coming to a head with a lost baby.
So, I feel you on not calling the husband a “beep beep beep” on rat bastard behavior b/c I’ve been in that situation and didn’t either. But I’m used to seeing the situation from both sides — the husband and the wife. For me, not enough about the husband was provided for me personally to draw the conclusion that you did.
As such, to me your response gave an example of being compassionate toward emotional unavailabilty in a man and working through it. I personally have not seen that work in this specific type of situation — because it’s too much for a “have it all” type of woman to handle work, a lost baby and an emotionally unsupportive man all at once. Relief comes — a divorce, an affair, whatever it is, but relief.
Your response was compassionate and, as you explained, needed to be. The relationship you have with Selma is personal to an extent, but
writing about her makes her story to me sort of like reading like a public figure — like a movie star or something like that. That’s why
to me it felt like yes, be compassionate for the lady but seriously? What’s going on with the husband? Because there has to be *something.*
There were not a lot of details about what that “something” was until now. . .to an extent.
So, thanks for the update. I’m *still* seeing an unfortunate emotional unavailability in the man that came to a head with the tragedy. PLENTY
of guys are like that as well as PLENTY of guys are not, given similar circumstances. I think it’s vitally important to try to suss him out in the dating phase — committing to marriage and family with an emotionally unavailable man who does weird stuff like withdrawing, acting weird, having his own affair or doing things other than being fully supportive in times of crisis has consequences. That’s what I see, that’s what I still see.
A lot of it is related to his behavior about a woman’s body — anything related to pregnancy, losing a pregnancy, menopause — anything related to the peculiarities of a woman’s childbearing abilities can cause an EUM to do odd things. Beware, that’s what I think.
Thank you for the opportunity to share and offer an alternative perspective that you yourself chose not to, for obvious reasons.
I hope you are able to pass along good wishes to Selma from supportive online friends, including myself.
That sounds highly judgemental of women who, for whatever reason, have children in their 30s or 40s.
In addition, the fear mongering around having children prior to age 30 is ridiculous. The notion that fertility suddenly drops off once a woman turns 30 is unfounded:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-long-can-you-wait-to-have-a-baby/309374/
Hi everyone
I am Salma! Some of the responses here have been more helpful than others… Nat’s response to me was amazing.
I want to update. My husband had his own self esteem issues that he was dealing with badly. We’ve both had counselling and are in a much better place now and healing together.
Anyway, onto the AC narcissist. I made the mistake of sending the fecker a Merry Christmas text (nothing else) as stupid me, I thought we could be mature adults about it and just wish each other well. WRONG! He replied to me very quickly with a text making out that not only was the relationship ongoing (despite three months of NC which was started by him stonewalling me when I refused to continue the relationship), he restarted the exact topic that we were talking about when he started doing that and berated me for not ‘telling him what I was going to tell him!!!’ WTF?!!
He’s still with his girlfriend. I’ve stopped stalking her instagram. There was only so much ‘here is me in lingerie about to go to bed with my boyfriend’ / #mrhandsome / #perfectboyfriend I could take without throwing up.
I think now maybe I was drunk during the entire relationship! He is also clearly so off the planet that his ego consumes the entire Galaxy.
All this time I’ve been doing so much emotional work on myself and all the time that I took prior to finding BR when I was blaming myself for it going wrong, pining for him and feeling jealous of her… What a waste of flipping time. People, do not waste your emotional energy on the AC. It really is true! Focus on healing you.
I’m really lucky that I have come out of this and whilst the exit was not clean and I have experienced some serious emotional pain and destruction, as the saying goes, from breakdown comes breakthrough. Good luck to all of you.
Peace out. xx
I hope your husband comes to his senses and dumps you. No accountability for your actions, recontacting a man you were having an affair with, and a childish obsession with a bad boy narcissist. You’ll get what you’re looking for eventually sweetheart. Enjoy.
I been working out west in the oil fields trying to still financially recover from my last relationship 3 yrs ago. It’s so lonely out there as a woman. Like a scifi movie post apocalyptic loneliness. Men everywhere plenty of propositions for almost any woman, plenty of users abusers too. I stick to myself. Was drinking a glass of wine in my hotel bar and guy next to me started conversation. Very cute and very smart. Spoke to me in Hebrew so I said I’m Russian Jew and laughed, he started speaking to me in Russian! Which was my minor in foreign languages in college. Long story short I fell fast and hard. Then later discovered he was separated from his wife. Then later found out she is a stay at home mom and they have 4 kids under the age of 12. Then found out he drives to Montana every wknd to see his kids. Then find out he’s got other women he texts with I’m not the only one. Well by this time I’m in love and still having the fake fantasy relationship. Texting all day every day, cooking dinner late after work and texting him photos. Soon he is always busy and too busy to have dinners together. But he loves me and tells me how smart I am but the’n he can’t see me anymore but won’t stop texting me. Over Christmas I was laid off work and all alone — I have no family and cut off contact w all my friends bc of my ex husband… it was rough. I sent him some late nite texts and a few days later he sent me a nasty gram saying his wife knows his life and he was never in a relationship with me, that I need to get a grip and go find my own man. That hit me really hard. The pain I was killing being with him flooded back into me plus all this new hurt from him was like being knocked down by a tsunami. Well I texted him next day and said I was offing myself and it was all his fault. Then disconnected my cell phone and got a new number. It’s been almost 2 weeks now. I haven’t offed myself and I’m in a warm safe place near Canada. I’m not feeling suicidal anymore but I’m still in serious emotional pain. The shit men have done to me in my life has broken me. I have a lot of rage towards myself for ever letting a single man into my house in the first place. I lost everything in the last relationship with a narcissist academic at University, we’ll this guy was a blue collar man like me and everything my ex wasn’t. I feel so lost alone empty used up and just like really sad. I miss my career I miss my old life and this man made me forget all that that maybe he was a different kind of future. And also I feel like shit bc of course there’s this wife at home w 4 kids and I’m this home wrecker bc I don’t have my own home. In a very bad way just reaching out into the Internet void here.
Jane Doe – you’re not the only one. So many of us are going through the same thing, different details.
The crux of it is as you said, ‘The pain I was killing being with him flooded back into me plus all this new hurt from him was like being knocked down by a tsunami. ‘ Ditto me too.
Killing pain with a substance (alcohol, heroin, food) or behaviour (gambling, anorexia, toxic relationships) is addiction.
The pain we’re trying to kill is caused by a lack of meaningful bonding and leads to our desperate need (aka addiction) for it. There is something that can be done! By taking care of ourselves and making changes we can get to a place where we no longer need to kill pain. I’m on that journey too.
Here is an in depth article on how the lack of meaningful bonding is a major cause of addiction and that it is possible to break the habit and find a happier place.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html
Interesting. Not sure though that reaching out for connection is the going to heal me from this hurt. Actually letting these men into my lives is what led to these situations in the first place. The connection at first was genuine and healthy. It’s not my fault he lied led me on took advantage of my feelings etc. I wouldn’t say I’m addicted to him so much as it just hurts losing that connection. And being alone again. It may be the age of loneliness but this is a cold cruel world. Men want what they want until the have it then they don’t want it anymore. It just is this way. The only way any of us can survive is to protect ourselves our hearts and our finances. Never let anyone get so close that they’re living in your house and know how much money you have. And never let anybody get so close that they know your vulnerabilities. They will just use them against you they always do
But thank you for your response. Interesting that I had a bottle of red wine after posting. So substance abuse to kill pain has definitely been a thing for me past 3 years. I suppose it is toxic that I didn’t walk away from him as soon as I found out he wasn’t divorced or “legally” separated. I just really loved him and was so alone. I loved his hands and his locutions, his use of double negatives, it was just so cute. I miss him.