How do I break my obsession with my toxic ex?
DEAR BEL,
YOU may think I’m pathetic and you’d be right. Eight years ago, my husband declared he was leaving (after 20 years of marriage and two children aged 16 and 19) because he was ‘not happy’ and ‘not getting the kind of sex he wants’.
He swore there was no one else but of course there was — although I didn’t realise this for some weeks. When I confronted him, he didn’t deny it and said there had been several flings over the years when he was away on business.
I cannot describe the pain and hurt this caused me and my children, who didn’t see much of him for a couple of years. Maybe our marriage wasn’t perfect, but I thought we were happy and had no reason to think otherwise.
After six months and some counselling, I met someone lovely, but my ex couldn’t handle it and said he wanted us to try again. I agreed, then found he was still seeing his girlfriend.
To cut a very long story short, this became a pattern: we have reunited for a few months and then after some minor disagreement he goes off in a sulk, then reacquaints with one of his lady friends who are only too willing because he spends money on them.
I always resolve not do it again because I cannot cope with the hurt and jealousy. But my children have left home and although I have lovely friends I am very lonely, so when he pops up it’s too difficult to refuse.
This year has been particularly so. We spent most of the first lockdown together with no problems, but no sooner did normal life begin again, he went into a sulk because I spent an evening with my children and he wasn’t included, although they both saw him on another evening.
Somehow he seems to punish me for what he considers a wrongdoing on my part. He has now taken up with the woman he has been seeing on and off and has cut me off again.
Bel, my question is: how do I stop this destructive pattern? We have now been divorced for five years and during this time I have ventured into online dating but never met anyone I wanted to pursue a relationship with.
What is wrong with me that I wait for this man to beckon, only to find again and again that he has not a shred of integrity and uses me when he feels like it and then leaves sulking?
I am now 60 and he is 54, so he was quite young when we got together. You’d think love should have died by now, but I still feel the same as ever about him.
What shall I do? HILARY
Forgive me, but i have to ask you if the emotion you are feeling truly deserves the name of ‘love’. What you describe (as you well know) is an abject obsession for a man who treats you with a mixture of casual cruelty and horrible sexual exploitation, both of which you accept, like any masochist in an appalling masterslave relationship.
You are quite right (of course) to call the cycle of exploitation and hurt ‘a destructive pattern’ — and yet every time your abuser beckons, you lie down, roll over and offer yourself for another serious kicking.
You may think it over-the-top when i call him an ‘abuser’, but just look at your story.
He left you and his children because he wanted more sex. When counselling gave you the courage to start a new relationship, this selfish man stopped it dead. And you let him.
You allowed him to come and go, even though it must have driven your poor children to despair, watching him pick you up, then put
you down because he was bored again and wanted the kind of sex he craves with another woman. And another. And another.
Now your children have grown up, what do they think?
That their beloved mother is a fool — and still lets them down every time she turns herself (yet again) into an abject minion with no confidence and no dignity. What else is there to think?
But you know all this, and must have written knowing I would tell you the same in no uncertain terms. So what else can you want from me?
Since you are clearly an articulate woman, you must know about ways to get help, from Relate to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
You know you need help to break the destructive pattern and these days there are myriad ways to find it. Perhaps your obsession with this vile man is a form of addiction; whatever the truth, counselling will help you to analyse it.
For now, read advice on womenworking.com/6-ways-tobreakthe- cycle- of- unhealthyrelationships and make up your mind to discover what is really going on.
This man you say you ‘ love’ has ruined what might have been left of your self- esteem and you need to rid your life of his toxic influence.