Relationship Help Forum: July

The Relationship blog has been running a relationship help forum, assisting women who've been left in a lurch by the men in their lives.

I share a different story each month (I change the name and situation slightly). I also share my advice to that particular woman. The common thread running though all the stories indicates that us women have tied our self-confidence to the men we're with. This of course, means that when they walk out we feel not only a sense of loss, but a total destruction to our own self-worth. Sometimes this phenomenon can have lasting effects, unfortunately.

It's totally natural to feel beaten down when a relationship falls apart. After all, events like these make us question ourselves. However, one thing we always have to keep in mind is, there doesn't have to be anything wrong with us for someone to want to leave. Here's 'Nancy's' question:
How do you get over someone when it was so perfect and you lived everyday knowing he loved you? And then it ended suddenly with so many questions. I need answers but I can’t see him or talk to him because my heart breaks even more, I cry often and have almost lost my will to live because I know I’m doing so without him. I’m so broken I don’t know how or if I can ever be repaired. I was so happy and now I feel like I can never regain that happiness I lived every day.

My answer:

I really do know what you’re going through. I was in your situation once.

It was the most perfect, complete love. He had never felt for someone what he felt for me, and the feeling was mutual. We couldn’t imagine life without each other and when we were away from each other, we spoke constantly on the phone. Then it ended suddenly.

Like with you, I needed answers. I did try to get them, but he won’t tell me. I felt totally lost and alone and thought that life would never be the same again.

I am now happily married to the best man on earth (a different person) and when we laugh about the years which have passed us by, we still can’t believe that it’s been so long. We feel as though we’re still dating.

Now I know that other relationship was doomed to fail (I knew it even when we were blissfully happy, but didn’t want to see it). Even though I hurt so much, I’m happy that it happened then and not after we’d married and had a mortgage and kids, because that would’ve broken me completely.

The fact that it happened when it did, allowed me the chance to regroup, rebuild, and get on with my life - a life which is spent every day in a blissful relationship with my true soul mate.

You don’t feel like hearing this now, but I can only say that time is a great healer, this time next year, you could be dating a fabulous man who is truly right for you. It is perfectly natural to feel this is the end, we all do. However, the end of a relationship is only the beginning of the rest of your life, (a very difficult second birth, I know) but one from which you would emerge wiser and stronger.
Best, Anne

Have you had a relationship end badly, only to meet your true soul mate after it was finished? Please share your story in the comment section.
You can find the rest of the relationship help forum stories on this page. Relationship help forum