After I was left, I spent a couple of years carrying around a burden of my own creation. Without consciously realizing it, I was carrying around a List of Outrages about my Ex. Something about this subconscious list felt very valuable to me. It was my proof that his unkind and sneaky behavior caused the breakup. His public put-downs and his complete inability to cop to any of it. That infuriated me, further justifying holding on to The List…
What I couldn’t see then, as I consciously added to the tally, was that what I thought was empowering me proved to be holding me hostage.
I became tethered to the past behavior of someone who had left me at least two years before. Moving past what he did to me wasn’t my focus.
I try not to psychoanalyze the behaviors of Newly Left Diane Who Had Just Turned Fifty. It was an avalanche of life upheavals amidst entering a decade of life that held its own scary imagining of what the era ahead would hold.
After a quarter century of knowing what my day-to-day life was, I was stepping into completely unknown territory. Not just for the next few years, but the following decades. I had never even considered this happening to me in all of that time with him. Now, I was forced to deal with it. Truly, I had no idea how to do that. Normally, in your fifties, you are rarely perplexed about your daily activities. They fit into a pattern of birthday dinners, holidays, anniversaries, and all of the typical relationship stuff.
Suddenly, I was not on that boat anymore.
I was flailing around on my own, looking for an island to find respite for the first time in many years. Part of my psychological activity during this stressful time was to keep adding to my List of Outrages. Oh, how I loved coming up with new horrible things he’d done or not done, or said. “And that’s another thing! I’d happily think to myself as I “wrote down” the crappy memory of the day. I couldn’t stop replaying the breakup lists.
Part of the attraction of this activity was that I never got to “have it out” with him. He left one day and never came back—no meeting at an attorney’s office together or any of that. The attorney would call me on his own, announce the terms bit by bit, and suddenly, all the terms were done with. The house was sold, the many things donated, and the deed signed by the new owners. Nothing more to be done.
Clearly, the time had arrived to get on with the rest of my life.
The fear of what that really would entail is probably part of loving that List of Outrages. It was twenty-five years of my life, over in a finger snap. I felt entitled to return time and again to all of his awfulness. Partly because I still couldn’t believe the massive life change that had happened. He had actually dumped me and walked completely out of my life in one, fell, cowardly swoop. I froze, not moving past the things he did.
There was no yelling, no door slamming. Merely the silence of his indifference. To his actions, to our past… all of it. That hurt me even more. I see that now. Oh, that lovely list of outrages somehow kept me justified in staying in the muck. At least for a while. I believed it was my right. And in some ways, it was my Super Power.
That List kept me feeling like the dumped fifty-year-old. Because that was too sad a way to see myself. I mean, really? Is this my actual life right now? A life I must figure out minute by minute, all by my lonesome self? “I have a right to my list! It’s the least I can do for myself.”
But after a couple of years carrying my list around with me, it started to lose its satisfaction.
First of all, not a single soul wanted to hear about it. “Can’t you just move on?” one girlfriend, whom I wanted to punch, said to me one day. Um, “No, I can’t,” I wanted to scream into the phone. “He betrayed me. Ended my career. And is doing just fine. I am left with a big house full of nothing.”
At this point, no one seemed to care about my side of that story anymore. I couldn’t stop keeping score in my heartbreak. Too much time had passed, and I guess they decided I should be over it.
My public persona was now one of the Jilted Woman Who Cannot Move On.
I was livid that he got off with no public humiliation and no one, not one single person, took my side. Boy, do I get it. I mean, what was the point? He left me, remarried; it was a moot point. I had to accept the unfairness of the entire year of events. The ones I was holding onto, deciphering in unhealthy ways.
Finally, I knew not one person who knew both of us as a couple was going to call me up and acknowledge any of his hurtful behavior.
That’s not what people are comfortable doing. It was a subject that was off limits. If I kept bringing up the off-limits subject, no one was going to want to socialize with me.
I felt like my Betrayer had won! Then I decided that this was all too unhealthy for my mental health. The best thing for me was to accept what was. It was time to start over after the relationship ended. All of our mutual friends attended his wedding to the 25-year-old. No one was going to cop to it to my face, and I had to be okay with it. Or I had to let them go and no longer be friends with them.
After a long, hard look at what I could and could not have in my life, I decided to let them all go. Every mutual friend who went to his wedding and no longer wanted to talk to me, well, they’d already made their choice through their actions. I had to let them go.
That’s how I lost 99% of my friends in my fifties.
It felt unimaginable, but it was real. This was clearly the decade of my life that I had to look at the reality of who was my true support system and who was not. Without malice, I let all of them go. I’m guessing it was around 300 people who had once played a huge part in my life. Who were there for Thanksgiving dinners at my house, birthdays, and New Year’s Eves. None of that meant anything now.
They chose him, I had to accept it and find new friends. I cannot live in their lie. I want an authentic life now. Especially after living with a Cheater for so long. This was my line in the sand, and even if it left me with no friends, I had to draw it. For my own sanity.
We all go through major life transitions when relationships end… Through the Leftat50.com website, I will share my thoughts as I walk the path of “New-Self” discovery. It doesn’t matter which side of 50 you are on. The real question is, ‘Are you ready to live life? To forge a Path of Your Own Making (For a change!)?’ Then stop dwelling over the What-Might-Have-Beens and join me. Share your thoughts here, comment on mine, and let’s do this together! And check out my book, “Restarting Your Life When You Are. No Longer A Wife,” I wrote it just for you!