Ask Philippa: How do I get over my ex

You are between stories. And the next one will be yours.

Lady in Blue: Yelizaveta Martynova

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The Question

Dear Philippa,

My husband ended our seventeen year marriage. I should have ended it before then really, but I suppose I loved him. There were naked picture of his clients on his phone, he is a personal trainer, he met other women for drinks and probably sex. He just said that being a personal trainer and a pilates teacher, flirting was just part of the job. I was an idiot I know to have been taken in by such an excuse, but I suppose you’ll believe anything when you want to, and he ended it anyway. I have since discovered he was also advertising himself as a “tantric sex healer” and that was only found out by accident, a friend googled him and found it. I have been a fool.

Anyway a couple of months have passed, and although it has been excruciating and exhausting I now feel as if I can just about breathe, but my worry is that I am stuck in a place where my life is on hold.

I have paid him off, and am about to move into a new home. But there’s so much anxiety and fear about where I go from here. He has moved on remarkably quickly, seeing other women and not once discussing any of this with his children. I have been, literally and metaphorically, discarded. It’s a brutal end to something I fought hard to save. It leaves me wondering what the hell I’ve been doing all these years.

How the hell do I re-frame my life so that I am neither bitter nor resentful at what I cannot help but see as wasted years.

I loved him very much, we had three step-children together, they probably kept me tied to him much longer than I would otherwise have accepted. Mercifully they are very present in my life and I have a strong relationship with them. I don’t have children of my own, but love them as if they were mine. My greatest fear was that I would lose them, however, they have let it be known that they love me and want me in their life. It makes me weep with love, the tie is so strong.

My question is how do I cut the final ties with this man and not become one of those people who are bitter and ‘divorced to’ instead of ‘divorced from’ I have set strong boundaries in place and have nothing to do with him. There is no need. He violated every part of our marriage and it makes me sick to think I put up with some pretty unpleasant name calling. He called me a bully, a gaslighter and that I frightened him. He reminds me of Trump really in that everything he accuses you of, he is guilty of. Eventually things just disintegrated to such a point I could no longer speak at all. Of course, he’ll have his side, none of which anyone really knows because he’s wiped the slate clean and doesn’t talk to anyone about me. Grim, debilitating and immensely hurtful. Seventeen years and now it’s as though I never existed.

My wish is that the breakdown of this marriage is a chance to thrive and live a glorious life. I am mid 50s and know that I only have a finite time on this planet. I do not want this experience to define me but am struggling to put it in context of a life I am hugely proud of.

I’ve done extraordinary things with my life and I want to truly live it, not be suffocated by pain and loss.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

The Answer

You are between stories. And the next one will be yours.

It sounds like your relationship ended, with gaslighting, erasure and blame-shifting, and if that has left you reeling, I’m not surprised. He walked away and, it seems, tried to wipe the slate so completely clean that it sounds like an annihilation. It ended in a way like he has discarded the years and the life you shared. What an extremely hurtful thing to do. But what I want you to know is this: your existence in that marriage is not erased. You lived it. You gave yourself to it. And you are still here. When you were in that marriage you existed, obviously! But you existed in his eyes (as well as in the eyes of others and yourself) and maybe because he was your most significant other, that mirroring from him was a large part how you saw yourself, so when he erases you, he is no longer that mirror, it is no wonder you find yourself thinking, how can put this into a context that makes sense?

What do people say? They say it is a month’s mourning for every year in a relationship that has ended. I don’t hold much store by such things and I’m hoping it won’t take you as long. But I mention that because you will get over it and you won’t get over it overnight, but, I think, getting over it will come sooner rather than later. When you say, “I don’t want to be one of those people who are bitter and divorced to instead of divorced from”, I think you are already well on the way. Bitter people do not write letters like this. Bitter people do not look themselves and say, “How do I thrive?” They do not take ownership of their own hopes. You are doing all of those things. You are doing this right. You ask how to cut the final ties. I think you already are. You’ve set boundaries. You have nothing to do with him. He may be trying to erase the past by refusing to speak of it, but that is not your concern now. He is not the author of your story, and never was.

He was obviously very charming, seductive and I’m afraid to say it, predatory. You will not be the only woman he hurts. He is, in the words of the younger generation, "a playa”. You were not a fool, you were taken in by a male equivalent of a skilful tart, who was playing you, like it sounds like he plays all women. I don’t think he’s a very nice man. I think he can play the part of a very nice man convincingly, which is different. He is obviously charismatic and charming. Charm and Charisma are not always to be trusted.

I suspect that you love and support and care for the people around you, including your step children. And the love that is now being returned to you by those children is a testament to the life you did build. That bond you did make with each of them, and they with you, that is real. That was not erased. That is the opposite of wasted.

I wonder if the thing you are struggling with is not bitterness, but grief. You are not just grieving the man he used to be or pretended to be, but the version of yourself who stayed. The woman who excused, who tolerated, who tried harder than she should have had to. She deserves some tenderness too. Not blame. She was doing her best. And her best has delivered you to here, a new home, a sense of emerging breath, a future with people who do love and value you. You don’t have to be ashamed of her. Be proud of her. I would rather be a trusting person, who trusted the wrong person, than someone who cannot trust. Because if you cannot trust you cannot love.

It sounds like you feel you are in limbo and not yet moving forward. It has only been a couple of months. You will grow around this grief, it will get smaller and smaller. You are visualising a better, more exciting life, that is a great first step. You say you have done extraordinary things with your life. I believe you. And I think you will do more. And I think creating the bonds you did with those children will, in retrospect, make those seventeen years something you don’t regret. You are not starting over. You are starting forward.

You have got off one bus, you are waiting for the next bus. That wait at the bus stop is always the worse bit.

With best wishes,
Philippa

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