How to forget ones past?

Lots of good advice here. I'm sure my 2 cents won't count for any more than what, 2 cents?

If you still dwell on this ten years later, after being married, having children, etc. etc. then you need to put this behind you. Count your blessings, make new memories. Stop wallowing in whatever it is you're wallowing in (self-pity? She dumped you, after all.) and get over it. Maybe therapy will accelerate this process.

Make Christmas a happy time for your wife and kids and forget about the one that got away. It's happened to (nearly) all of us, I'm sure.

^^^^^^^^ This.

You won when the cheater bailed on you 10 years ago. What if you had married her and then she cheated and left. Go hug your wife and rock the kid to sleep.

I really don't like Christmas anymore and have been a Grinch for years. Then we got this sweet grandson who inspired me pull out the outside decorations before any one even talked about decorating.

Zero contact is the way to go. I have a girl in my past like that too, though not quite as serious. I am friends with her on Facetube (for some reason), but block her stuff from showing up on the Home page, and don't ever contact her. It's better that way. She is engaged, I'm married. Talking to her would only create huge problems, and even if there were feelings, I remember what happened the first time I was interested in her. Girls are crazy- end of story.

I wouldn't say forget the past entirely. Sometimes reconnecting can be a good thing. There's someone who I reconnected with after my divorce, unlike your situation we split many years ago because she had a golden opportunity to better herself which involved her moving 1500 miles away. I didn't stand in her way; if I had, at some point she probably would have hit me over the head and said 'you SOB I could have been something'. I have never forgotten her and unless galloping senility sets in I won't. But while I was married I made no attempts to contact this girl. It was pretty obvious even to somone as dense as me that to do so would have probably destroyed my marriage and I wasn't going to take that chance. (As it turned out, that wasn't needed to wreck my marriage. But that's another story.)

Back to ths girl: we have both moved on with our lives, she's done very well for herself and I'm proud of her. We stay in email contact, just keeping up. I don't see anything happening other than friendship, but that's not the point, ya know?

Along the way I also caught up with her mom and sister, who I always got along with very well. It's been nice.

But there's a couple of girls out there where the breakup was, to say the least, stormy and if one of them were to pop up on my (admittedly not very often visited) FB page I'd just have to block them or ?? From your description, this sounds like that type.

When struggling with loss and self doubt, it helps to remember that with loss comes opportunity. When you choose a new path you gain a new perspective. If she had not left you, you would not have the wonderful supportive family that you have now. You now have the strength to know that you can survive adversity and you can demonstrate that to your child, so that they may have that strength inside them as well.

Ultimately if you have found happiness, and she has found happiness, then as painful as that situation was, it was the best thing that could have happened. Don't keep looking for a failure within yourself to explain why she left, remember that sometimes bad stuff happens to good people for no good reason. But you have made lemonade now and damn if it isn't tasty.

Never forget your past, it's what makes you who you are today.

The guy says he can't forget about it. Everybody says just forget about it and move on. I think he should try to get some closure with the woman. If that doesn't work, maybe professional help is in order.

Graefin10 wrote: I think there's one thing you haven't considered. You are very lucky that she did this before you got serious enough to ask her to marry you. Face it, you didn't loose a thing. This person that you loved didn't exist. The real person revealed herself to you when she bailed. I speak from experience. I was married to a woman for 23 years when she pulled that on me. Believe me, you are very fortunate.

There it is in a nutshell, other than misspelling "lose."

What you're going through right now has nothing to do with love. You're experiencing what my friend Randy calls "warm feelings of inadequacy."

It's not really about her anyway. It's something you're feeling about yourself and she's like the poster girl for that feeling. A lot of folks are giving you great advice about seeking counseling. Take it. You may be dealing with a constant low level depression (I think it's called dystemia). Drugs and /or self-medication are not effective against it. You gotta take the "talking cure" and find yourself a good therapist.

You owe it to your wife and child to be the best husband / dad you can be. In this case, helping yourself is helping them. Take one for the team and go find out what's really at the root of it. You'll be glad you did.

Good luck. This is my 1,000th post and I can't think of a better way to enter Dorkdom.

N Sperlo wrote: You don't need to forget. You just need to know you're better off. You're happy with your wife and child, right? You're better off without your ex and you probably know that.

I agree with the above. I'd have to agree with the chorus of those who recommend a therapist as well.

Graefin10 wrote: I think there's one thing you haven't considered. You are very lucky that she did this before you got serious enough to ask her to marry you. Face it, you didn't loose a thing. This person that you loved didn't exist. The real person revealed herself to you when she bailed. I speak from experience. I was married to a woman for 23 years when she pulled that on me. Believe me, you are very fortunate.

This is also true. I was lucky myself that I didn't marry a woman I almost did marry. I'm far happier with my wife than I was with my previous fiancee.

Asking for advice was a great first step, but asking for advice here probably wasn't the best idea. While everyone here has great intentions and really want to help you through this, we're just random people on the internet with various opinions who aren't properly trained to help you with your issues.

Speaking of opinions, here's mine: After 10 years, "power through it" or "time heals all wounds" isn't going to help. "Just forget about her" or "count your blessings" isn't going to help. "Block her on Facebook" isn't going to help because she isn't trying to contact you - it will only add one more way for something to remind you about her when you log in and look at your 'blocked people list'. You need to seek professional help. If you have medical insurance chances are there's some kind of anonymous Employee Help Line or Employee Assistance Line you can call and they will either talk to you over the phone about your problem or direct you to someone local who can help you. If you don't have have insurance, talk to your parish priest (if you go to church) as he may be able to direct you to a low cost or free therapist. Your local health authority probably has some kind of community mental health office that can help you. If you can't talk to anyone there, try contacting a local suicide hotline using their non-emergency number (if they have an emergency and non-emergency number). Explain that you always get depressed around the holidays because of a past relationship and ask if there are any local resources you can you can contact.

Distracting yourself with a car project may help in the short term, but it's not a long term solution. Pinching my nipple with pliers distracts me from the nail stuck through my foot, but when I stop squeezing my nipple I've still got a nail in my foot. Once you're done with the car, you've still got this long standing issue that you need to deal with.

Good luck.

Bob

Schmidlap wrote: Pinching my nipple with pliers distracts me from the nail stuck through my foot, but when I stop squeezing my nipple I've still got a nail in my foot. Bob

This^^^^ needs to be published in next month's issue or I cancel my subscription.

Heh, I work for health insurance. My specialty is mental health and substance abuse claims. I know most of the psych docs in the state. That is both a blessing and a curse. I know them all, and I know how they treat me when i'm on the phone with them. It's been suggested I go before, and I have a couple times, various years. Never works out well.