Reader Question:
I’ve been married for 29 years but was blindsided by my wife’s announcement that she met someone, doesn’t love me anymore and is leaving. For a sensitive gentleman (I’m 66), I am kind of lost. My wife was everything. I never socialized much before and am now in a city with no friends.
Do you have any advice for me about how to be single besides being positive and confident?
-Daniel (Arizona)
Dr. Wendy Walsh’s Answer:
I’ll tell you this. If your wife was able to blindside you, there was clearly something missing in your relationship. And that’s what I’d focus on as you embark on this unscheduled life change.
Look at this crisis as an opportunity for personal growth. If you aren’t ready to “buck up” and be confident and positive, I’d say you are still grieving about the loss. This is normal.
But in order to not get stuck in the grief, you might want to enter personal therapy to sort out your feelings. There is information in your crisis that you can unlock to find freedom.
And, before you embark on a love relationship, make some platonic friends through your work or hobbies. You need to rally the troops and create a life for yourself. Don’t expect a woman to automatically do that for you.
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I feel kinda bad for you Daniel
Wendy’s right though, why were you blindsided? Didn’t you notice something different in the way she was acting? There’s not way you couldn’t tell if she was seeing someone…unless she’s good at deceiving people!
In retrospect, and with seriously looking at it, it was likely, like mine of 12 years, that there were signs that you refused to see. Love is not just blind, but for a sensitive man, the visible is sometimes ignored cause we just do not want to believe it’s happening (again for me). If you are like me, and pput all you got into a relationship, and signs appear. They are subtle and so get ignored easily cause after all, love IS “blind”, right? Didn’t happen in a few hours to get into another relationship for her, and there is no way it could have if she had been honorable and stood by her promises as apparently he(you) did. So that the idea of “blindsided” as with me, was as much my fault(your) for ignoring the signs and changes in attitude and interaction which change immediately. The one thing that I hve different than you is I was with an unmedicated Bi-Polar for 9 years,of hell, and 12 with a medicated(but the meds quit, or reduced in effectiveness for the last five), and can honestly tell you if it was that , then you got away lucky. I just didn’t learn the first time around and was fooled by the promises of chemistry that failed, mostly.So if you are one of those guys like me that throws his all into a relationship “part and parcel” and are worried, don’t. There are fewer of us than there are them who are looking for just that. I’m sorry for ya, and I know the change that comes with it is a bitch, but try it being disabled physically and then come back and tell me how much fun today was. It’s all in what you make of it. If she left you, then she left a good man for what? Karma?
And if she left you to “be by herself”(read nonfunctional in today’s society on any real solid level, but only superficially), then it’s worth being rid of her to begin with. You CAN do better and have better if for no other reason than that you are better than that. So hang in there and try to enjoy your newfound freedom and what you want will come to you eventually on it’s own, or you can speed up that process by looking on line at dating sites and even craigs list! You WILL, be fine! It’s just got a hell of a learning curve, faster climb the more they used to actually do for you when there. It’s kind of tough cause we don’t think like we did at 20. And I get blown away by how young some of the women who look in my age range(mid 50′s)for partners are! Some guys need that I suppose. But most(I hope) of us have grown up and those who actually have done LTR’s are better at being with someone than alone cause it’s what we were habituated to and have to learn to do for ourselves, and feel inept at worst at those things. For me, it happens to be cooking.And apparently laundry cause I never was “allowed” to touch their clothes! LOL! Good luck. Attitude is all the difference between an adventure and a disaster. Take care.
Bruce, it’s so nice of you to open up and offer such kind words of advice. Hopefully our reader, Daniel, is off on a better start as he takes on dating in a big city!