How do you stop feeling hurt, angry and betrayed?

hi everybody,
i am a new kid on the block in the separation and divorce game. My husband dumped me unceremoniously after a weekend away with friends at the end of June and it was so traumatic and such a huge shock that I had to move out of the family home, leaving my 15 year old daughter to finish her GCSE course which is really painful but better for her.

I have taken back control of my life by initiating divorce proceedings so that although hurt and betrayed by the rejection, I have decided that I want a Clean Break, so that I can start my new life properly.

At times I feel rage and hatred that I have never felt for anyone before and at other times huge sadness. I never knew you could literally have a broken heart but when my husband told me he no longer loved me and wanted out of our 16 year marriage I felt my heart break and there is still an intense pain there. Despite all the hurtful things he said to force the separation and being emotionally distant for some years I still really miss him and his love and company. It hurts that he wants nothing to do with me and when he drops our daughter off he treats like a stranger or at best an acquaintance.

The timing of the rejection is particularly cruel as I had just recovered from having breast cancer for the second time and having to have chemo, surgery and radiotherapy, the full works and undergoing an early menopause from taking Tamoxifen. I got depressed after that as my husband couldn't cope with the recurrence and his business failed at the same time, so I had to go for my second half of chemo on my own. I am severely needle phobic so each cycle was a huge ordeal for me. That was when I realised that I was stronger than I gave myself credit for and that actually I didn't need him and I couldn't trust him to be there for me when I needed him most. His abandonment came as a real shock and I cannot forget or forgive him.

What I want to know from all you veterans of divorce out there is how did you get over the hurt and the pain and remove the ache from your heart?

Hi Clear Cloud,
Welcome to wiki, although sorry that you have need of us here.
There are a fair few similarities in our stories, I was married for 16 years, then out of the blue he told me he was going, no discussion etc etc. I was 18 months out of chemo, cancer which relapsed and a stem cell transplant, early menopause etc. Cruel just doesnt sum it up really.
I was replaced by someone 20 yrs younger, she even helped us to move house 6 months earlier wearing a live strong wrist band.
I've been told that the guilt they feel in these circumstances means they cannot bring themselves to be civil or fair, they say what goes around comes around.....
Its just over 2 years for me now, I work full time in a job I love, been promoted twice- and best of all nearly 4 years cancer free. I have a lovely boyfriend, but the pain is still there sometimes, largely due to his behaviour towards our children, and lack of contact.
I did see a counsellor because I found it difficult to come to terms with - which helped.
Daisygreen x

Hi Clear Cloud

Welcome to Wiki

You have been having a tough time of it recently, not just with your marriage coming to an end, but also having suffered with breast cancer, and an early meno.

I will try to answer your question - but everyone has different recovery methods and times.

I too was angry, damned angry, dispointed in myself for having been such a mug, scared of what the future held, and scared of how I was going to cope on my own, esp with money as my ex controlled the purse strings.

For me, time and the support I have received on here have been the two most important elements of recovering. Time is wonderful, it numbs the pain, makes you realise that in hindsight, things werent as glossy as one once thought, it might be a cliche to say that time is a great healer, but it is. Its now been a year for me since the ex left (he chose drink over the marriage), and I can honestly say that I am now in a far better, ahppier, hopeful place than I could ever wished for.

The support on here - well, dont know where to start, really. From the wide-ranging advice and help in the forums, reading other's thoughts, comments and experiences made me realise that I wasnt the only one going through this. Blogging helped a great deal - I was unable to articuate verbally how I felt most of the time, and writing it down meant I wasnt bottling it all up inside me. The chatroom has been my lifeline - in the early days, I was regualry asked what I had eaten that day, and told to eat/sleep/bathe if I hadnt already done so that day - simple daily things that helped me to function on an almost human level. Just having the unreleting support of others on here, unconditional support, someone to listen to me when I was so low, or annoyed, or just completely lost - having and knowing that there was someone to talk to meant I didnt drown, but kept my head above water.

There is a happy ending to my story - I have met someone else who is my very heartbeat - proof that there is hope in all this sorry mess.

Dont rush yourself, think that you must be "sorted" emotionally within 6 months, there is no timelimit,take the time you need, talk to others (pop into the chatroom), dont bottle things up so they fester inside you -keep a journal or try blogging, and take baby steps, one at a time on your road to recovery.

Take Care

Ruby

Hi Daisy green
Thanks for your reply and kind words. I am sorry to hear that you have had a similar experience to me, it is tough and shit happens and life is unfair and terribly cruel. I thought we had weathered the storm and turned the corner and then came the bombshell. Now my husband's family don't want to know me at all as I was only important as a wife and mother and I got depressed because I lost myself and my way and spent my time taking care of the family and creating a home with all my love and energy and now I feel I am thrown away like a piece of rubbish that is no longer needed. Sixteen years of my life and now I am no longer there everything is carrying on as if I am dead and that really hurts, including my daughter not minding that her dad has a photo of his new girlfriend on the mantelpiece where our wedding photo used to be. I know it is unfair to be angry with her but I do feel she is being disloyal to me, not minding that someone else has replaced her mum and I think it is particularly insensitive on my husband's part.

I have also been replaced by a woman 10 years younger, a younger model! I do think my husband is going through a mid-life crisis. He has apparently fallen in love with a woman in Bulgarian on business for a few days and is absolutely besotted with her and has even bought Bulgarian language books off ebay and intend to move over there permanently when our house is sold and our daughter goes off to university. And it really hurts because towards the end he wouldn't even talk to me even though he is Dutch and i am Chinese but I was brought up in London since the age of 8 and we both speak Emglish really well. He kept saying leave me alone, give me my space, don't talk to me and that really hurt and sucked. One minute we were a couple and the next we were supposed to be housemates, but I told him I don't have an on/off switch for my love, even though he has.

love and respect
Clear Cloud

Hi CC

It is amazing how a lover, and husband, can turn into a monster virtually overnight!!

Someone you thought you knew, someone you trusted, and someone you shared everything with has transformed into an uncaring, selfish, idiot. Had two children with, supported him through thick and thin.

It does take time to understand exactly what has happened.
I was married for 22 yrs. known him for 25, and bonfire night 1998 wooooooosh out he flew, never to come back.
Two children, a good life, all thrown to the wayside.
Left for a younger model.

I have now remarried and am extremely happy, so things do improve, well at least for me anyway.

I understand through the grapevine, that his new gf, and two children later, things are not going swimmingly.

The hurt does subside, the memories, never go away. You just have to cope with it all, move on and make a better life for yourself.

Be positive and strong.

zara

Hi Ruby
I was very touched by your reply and it actually made me cry. I am a very emotional and sensitive person at the best of times and very touchy feely.

You are right when we are deprived of something we tend to remember it with fondness and make it out to be better than what it was and if I am honest, my husband had been emotionally distant and probably in his head and heart left the marriage a few years back although of course we don't want to face it or admit it. Looking back I know I loved him far more than he ever loved me. He even sent me an email admitting that maybe he should not have got married, that he went with the flow and wasn't ready for it and now he knows what he wants and that hurts, because he knows he doesn't want me but someone else. A stranger that he met for a few days on business in Bulgaria and ten years younger, a younger model and he has a huge photo of her on our mantelpiece where our wedding photo used to be. Midlife crisis or what? What hurts most is he seems far happier without me and looks ten years younger. I didn't realise I made him so unhappy and all that time I loved and trusted him and he had stopped loving me but was going through the motions, staying because of our daughter and made me live a lie. that upsets me most of all. I'd rather he was honest, it would have hurt but it hurts now, so what is the difference? At least it would have been more honest and courageous and I wouldn't have been living a lie, thinking and believing I had a good marriage when I hadn't.

You know I was forever grateful to my husband for sticking by me through depressions which i have struggled with most of my adult life and cancer of course and now I realise that he contributed to the depressions as he was constantly critical without good reason and would put me down in front of friends and family and even privately and although at the time it didn't feel right, you could never put your finger on why. Now I know it has a name and it is called emotional abuse because I read it from the domestic violence leaflet the police sent me when I had to call them because he threatened to kill me. I don't know if he was serious but I was frightened for my own safety and fled the house barefeet and he has come close to hitting me a few times but stopped just in time.

Take care and thank you for your advice and kind words
Clear Cloud

hi zara
it is really comforting to get support from people who have been through it and knows how it feels. It is the same with cancer, nobody who hasn't been through it can ever understand and I get really annoyed when people pretend they do.

Yeah, I had the same experience as you. My husband went away for the weekend on his Harley to see mates of his up north and honestly when he came back on the Monday evening I couldn't recognise him. He looked the same, sounded the same but what he came out with and how he behaved and responded to me, made me think that he was abducted by aliens and given a personality transplant. I am not exaggerating.

The first time I had cancer he was lovely and supportive, even the nurses at the Marsden in London commented on it. They told me horror stores of men who threw their housekeys at their wives while they laid in the hospital bed recovering from cancer surgery and I was horrified and thought my husband would never in a million years do that to me but that is exactly what he did the second time round. I really would never have imagined or believed it and his total lack of concern about how I am surviving that is emotionally and financially is really shocking. All he wanted to know was could I pay half the mortgage or some of the bills even though I had to leave my job because of the stress and trauma of the sudden breakup and being someone who is vulnerable to depression, he knew what it would do to me. I am now living on Income Support due to Incapacity and cannot even claim Incapacity Benefit because I worked for his company and he screwed me over paying my National Insurance contributions so now it appears I don't have enough and can't claim any. There you go, you don't think your husband would screw you over that, when you trust someone you don't double check everything. You'd think you would be able to trust your nearest and dearest, like you say, we shared everything, a daughter, property, two joint bank accounts, open each other's mail ,read each other';s emails ,there was no secret between us. And now he doesn't want to know me or give a damn.

It hurts but I am tough and I know I can go it alone. I had to last year feeling like shit warmed up and if I can go through chemo being severely needle phobic then I can do anything.

Yes I will keep positive but it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. Rejection and being told you are no longer loved always hurts.

Love and Respect
Clear Cloud