How do I get over my ex in a practical way? What do I have to do? Or say? Or think?! It’s driving me crazy. We got married about 20 years ago and divorced about three years ago. We have two boys together, and they still see him regularly. Things hadn’t been right for a long time. I know that I was fighting the temptation to browse dating apps during the last few months we were still together. I know that he never left his home office until I’d made dinner. I know his inability to clean up after himself drove me insane. And I know that his more laissez-faire approach to risk set my anxiety racing. I know that he didn’t really want me (I think he married me because I was pregnant, and I think he tried to do the “right” thing). He never made any effort to do anything with me. And I think this fed into me becoming depressed, irritable, and generally a pain to live with. I didn’t like the version of me that I became, so no wonder he didn’t either.
But now I feel so stuck. I am old, grey, and overweight. I don’t make enough money to pay the bills (he sends child support) and I feel like that’s because I took just over a decade out of work to care for the kids, whereas he worked his way up in the financial industry. But that’s not actually his fault. I didn’t have the education that he did, so I probably wouldn’t ever have earned as much. We could have looked into a nanny or daycare. I blame him for so much. 1) My lack of conversational skills because every time we tried to talk I felt like he told me I was wrong, so I learned to shut up. But am I re-writing the past? 2) Ending up in this backwater town. I miss the big city but the kids like that we only live a very short drive apart. 3) My looks and my pelvic floor, which really is just my youth.
He’s been nicer to me these last few months than he was while we were together. Sometimes I’ll text him an update about the kids and his reply mentions my feelings, which never happened before. He’s still incredibly closed off about his life. For example, I heard from a mutual friend that his dad had died. He had no reason to tell me now, but it made me realize that he never really would have told me how he felt about it anyway. He never let me be an emotional partner to him. He’d wake up from nightmares and never tell me what they were about. Or act generally stressed but never tell me what was going on. I hated how much he didn’t talk to me. So, why do I still want to be with him? And how do I stop it?! I can go from thinking it would be easier if he just dropped dead and viscerally hating him one second, to then realizing he still feels like family somewhere in my heart and daydreaming about getting back together. I saw his dating app profile recently. It’s exactly the kind of guy I’d want! But he doesn’t want me.
—Can’t Seem to Move On