Originally Posted by Ann

You are on the right trail, Snitchcharm, grab your confidence and keep going. You will be fine. One day this won't hurt anymore.

Originally Posted by Angel65

Someone recently introduced me to the term "trauma bonding". Until I started to research, I thought there was something wrong with me that I was so devastated that this abnormal, toxic relationship was over; that I was unable to go more than two weeks without reaching out to make sure he was ok, still worrying and still caring about him after all the grief he caused me. But it is a real thing! We become addicted to this horrible cycle of being loved and "worshipped", and then berated and belittled, over and over again...so much so that when we don't have that in our lives we think we miss these men. But what we are missing is the way we felt at the very beginning when everything was new, romantic and passionate; the stuff that soon subsides once the real person shows himself. We then spend the rest of the relationship making excuses for their behavior, job losses, binges, and think that if we keep supporting them we will eventually find the happiness we had in those very first weeks. This morning I did an exercise that was suggested to help break the bond of trauma. I wrote a letter to him (which I won't send) which details the history of our relationship from beginning to end, and you know what? About two weeks of the three years were "good"....The rest was a series of painful things. I had been fondly remembering our short vacation together, for example, but when I wrote down the facts there was nothing good about it. He drank heavily the whole time, yelled at me for turning the music down in our very nice hotel room, couldn't even function for one of our excursions.....There was nothing fond to remember, but it took me writing it down to realize that. I'm not trying to diminish the fact that we did love them, and we did have a relationship that will be missed, but this exercise certainly helped me to stop romanticizing our very turbulent time together......
I am having a hard time today thinking about him moving on so quickly with someone else, but I was the one that ended our relationship, and I don't want to ever go back to the chaos of that life. I'm trying to stop obsessing about his new relationship, and to focus on what I can control as far as my future. There's no doubt he was never right for me, but he had me hooked from the beginning. He's a handsome charmer who has not one cent in his bank account, very few worldly possessions, has lost his children and his home (before me), and the only way he can have a somewhat normal life and not be on the streets is to draw another unsuspecting woman in and move into her life and home...
Intellectually I know we have dodged a bullet. He's still an active alcoholic, so I know what that means for the new woman once the lustre starts to wear off. So I need to remember to be thankful that I'm not the one dealing with it anymore.....Time will eventually heal, but in the process we have to remember to love ourselves and stop looking back.

Originally Posted by FallenAngelina

There is one thing you have control over and that is how you perceive yourself. It's understandable that your world has shattered, but feeling worthless is something that only you can do to yourself. AND it's something that you can change. I'd work on that part of it and leave the rest of the issue to him. You'll never be able to figure out everything about him, but you can do a lot to not allow his choices (or anyone else's choices) to degrade your own value. Glad to hear that you're reading and participating in AlAnon. That will help you far more that trying to figure him out.

Originally Posted by trailmix

I understand, you had hopes and dreams with this person and they fell apart, why wouldn't you hope. That said, he obviously has a history of jumping from relationship to relationship. Do you really wish, even if he put on a good act, that you had married him? Obviously living with an alcoholic is not the relationship of your dreams, or you would have married him.

He got engaged to her with your old ring!! Right there that speaks volumes about who he is. That is incredibly tacky (and thoughtless). I don't know much about your story but I don't know that you should think that you meant nothing. He no doubt loved you as much as he can love someone, when alcohol always comes first.

You dropped him off at a sober facility. There were some BAD times. I would recommend writing a list of all of those times. Only looking at one side an not the other is not good for you really, although that is usually the default for most of us.

You were protecting yourself, you did the right thing. Is he the man of your dreams, obviously not, but there is someone out there for you, you deserve much better from a relationship don't you think?