This Is Your Brain on Hopium

Omg this is me to a tee. Hopium and I stayed for 4 years after the first dday. Complete with Re-wedding in Central Park(he was all into the big snowy gestures). No post nup I’m such a dummy. He spent 4 years systematically stealing my retirement savings in the form of “investing” in his business which was failing in a way he hid from me. He also had me using money from my business to pay off his business debts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and when he left 4 years later to run to second schmoopie( that I knew of), I had no retirement savings left( at 56). He continued to try to do financial scorched earth throughout the divorce process. Evil.. he cared not a whit that it was also our children’s inheritance. He just wanted me to have nothing. Schmoopie has money so now he’s using hers.. so little in consequences for blowing up the family and my financial security.

Am I the Hopium Queen here? 31 years and I still cant divorce. I’m separated and living in a different state, and just sent him legal separation papers to sign, but I timidly didn’t ask for alimony and only 25% of his pension even though I stayed at home and didn’t work for 25 of those years. I’m just afraid of backlash. He could easily drag things out in court and I dont have the money.

I could tell you so many stories of my stupidity. I found a condom in his wallet (remember, I was a stay at home mom and had my tubes tied). I asked him why he had it and he said he would never cheat on me, because he is a “coward.” I never again questioned it! STUPID STUPID STUPID.

He confessed to having many “close calls” and “fantasies” where he and his co-worker would escape off to a side room or discuss sexual perversions they would do on each other in a hotel room (I was 29 with four kids during these times). But when he made a dr appt for a rash “down there,” he said the doc said it was from too much mb-ing and just prescribed Desitin. And i said OK! Ughhhhhhhh. STUPID STUPID STUPID.

So many more stories…. sigh.

I havent completely dismissed CN’s advice. I am slowly coming around. I created a list “Trust That He Sucks,” I have gone Grey Rock, I dont play the Pick Me Dance anymore. But I still find it hard to stick to my boundaries and he happily acts like nothing is wrong.

🙁 I never wanted this kind of life. Lots of regrets.

I believed my wife that nothing happened between her and her emotional affair partner. The day after she said she wanted to leave me, she got doubts. I off course took that hopium pipe and started puffing away. Convinced that she would wake up from her ‘fog’.
She panicked when I wanted to leave the house for her to make up her mind, which I interpreted off course that she couldn’t live without me. In hindsight she didn’t want to take care of the kids all on her own for that period. I helped with the kids everyday and left when we put them in bed. At which time she would cry when saying goodbye. In her mind of course because she was definitively saying goodbye, but didn’t want it until het AP threw out his girlfriend. In my mind because she missed me and didn’t want me to leave.
Still to this day angry with myself that I didn’t leave her that first day. All she did was use me.
After she told me the second time she was leaving mwe, we had sex a couple of days in a row. I hoped to rekindle things. Te her off course it was cake AND if I was having sex with her, I wasn’t thinking of her as a bad person who wrecked our family.
Again thinking she would wake up out of the fog. Except… there was no fog. She became cold and distant. Sweet and charming when she needed something. I didn’t matter to her.
so so angry..

After the last D-Day, my ex-wife decided she needed to separate because of my “volatile emotions”. Only when she moved out did she give me a detailed confession. She barely talked for more than a few minutes on her prior confessions. This time she answered everything and it seemed more honest than she ever had been.

I told her I’d consider reconciliation if she could be completely honest with me. For the first time it seemed like she was. There was books, therapy, videos, and discussion. Everything seemed to be going really good.

However, the thing that bugged me was that she refused to move back home until her apartment lease was up. If I was in the least bit upset about something, she’d mention she might need to sign a new lease. I started to doubt her commitment and remorse.

She moved back home and went from active partner in the reconciliation to a wheelbarrow; she’d participate, but only if I pushed. She never refused. She just had the attitude of “I thought that when I moved back we could just start all over again”. Uh, no. This is going to be years of work. Then she started worrying that I’d “never be able to get over it”. Kept saying she couldn’t live her life “under a microscope”.

Hopium had an easy job when we were separated and actively “working on the marriage”. That sudden drop in participation made it a lot less potent. It was around there I read Chump Lady’s book. It took several reads to sink in. I finally understood the signs of fake remorse and my ex-wife had them all.

My cheater had been through horrific throat cancer and they radiated him right down to Freddy Kruegar. I believed that the radiation had made it’s way to his brain. Until I talked to my mother-in-law (his stepmother) and she told me, ‘Nah, this is what he DOES.’ That she had known him for 35 years and this was a pattern in ALL of his relationships.

Just a bad case of assholism.

Hope Chump Nation is having a happy, healthy mighty weekend! Thank you for all the sage advice, thoughtful sharing of experiences, and all the other wonderful things you do for the world! I really appreciate your thoughtful and kind feedback over the years I’ve been here. Many of you have kept me afloat.

Presenting a question (at bottom of message). I hope that by doing so, some readers will provide ideas that might help many.

I have some great friends, great, polite, responsible roommate (thank goodness), and a good, kind boss and co-workers (I’m working a few hours/week now–better than nothing but nearly enough to support even one person, much less a family. Boss is working hard, doing the best she can to help staff and clients, so it would not be reasonable to ask for a significant raise.) Have sent out hundreds of carefully prepared applications to permanent full-time jobs of many sorts, many levels this year, to no avail. May start looking out of geographical area, even though doing so means giving up a big chunk of custody to scary ex and kids having to change school districts again, which they don’t want to do–I don’t know what else to do as the Court and necessity mandate that I work. What types of employers accept ‘old’ job candidates, especially those who don’t have much-needed advanced skills and knowledge?)

Last partner left 2.5 years ago, riding off into the sunset with Wonder Woman, the love of his life (and mother of his new baby (?), making my last partner, finally, a father at approximately 50). I still dream about my last partner, who I thought was my friend for decades, and am bereft over the loss of him in spite of him often emotionally hurting me for the last several years. People say, ‘Move on’ to people who have been abandoned but don’t say HOW to move on (beyond ‘Keep yourself busy, count your blessings, get therapy/medication (which is ineffective for some of us).’ It’s a bit like saying to an obese person, ‘Just quit overeating’ but not describing how to quit overeating and how to squash the constant urge to overeat. Over the last couple of years, I have been solicited by very few guys, and the few who have are completely inappropriate for me (very uneducated, unhealthy, DUI-getting current/former drug users), mostly guys who want to financially/physically screw me and perhaps others.

Sometimes people say regarding relationships, ‘It’ll happen when you’re not looking.’ I haven’t looked much of my life and haven’t had any luck. Also haven’t had any luck when I looked. (I haven’t won Miss America, but I am far from an ogre, so trying to make myself more beautiful will probably not help anything, and face lifts are very expensive and sometimes don’t look very good/natural.) And yes, I have done a lot of different activities, and no, I have not been picky–mainly just wanted a decent human being who had bit in common with me and wanted a mutually supportive relationship. They (people) also say, ‘You never know, it could happen.’ Yeah, somebody wins the lottery–1 out of 10,000,000. I don’t want to hang my hat on such low odds.

Kids are still fairly young although I am not. One has special needs–sometimes wonder if he has special needs because I bore kids with my own genes so late in life (in my 40’s). Many forms of treatment and accommodations over many years but no real results. Often, people, trying to be supportive, say, ‘Maybe he’ll outgrow them (the conditions, although he’s now a teenager).’ That’s a bit like saying to a paralyzed person, ‘Maybe you’ll outgrow your paralysis (of several years) and be able to walk again.’ (Not realistic, not helpful–actually feels worse than just hearing, ‘I’m sorry that you’re struggling, things went this way, etc.’) Some people say, ‘All you can do is pray.’ I see no evidence of a god/gods. If clouds part, and a god/gods whack(s) me on the nose or say(s), ‘Hello,’ then I’ll be convinced. (One of my friends half-jokingly says, “When the ship goes down, pray, and then start rowing,” which I think is decent advice, but I have lost hope of making it to land.) I try to help my kids but don’t feel as though I do. I offer to tutor them and take them out to visit museums and natural wonders (even minor ones), and play free sports (e.g., frisbee, basketball in the park), but they virtually never want to do those things. I worry that they will not develop ‘survival’ skills, acquire important knowledge, be healthy as opposed to sedentary. I can’t count on them and don’t want to depend upon my one child who does not have special needs to take care of me later in life and his sibling.

I try to help the poor and underprivileged but have virtually no income to help them (or even my own family) and can’t think of anything brilliant enough to help them as these problems stem from complex, widespread problems facing the world.

My spine is degenerating, leading to chronic pain, which has led to several problems. Have tried many treatments over the years. Fortunately, one medical treatment has helped reduce the pain for awhile, but spine will never get better. Ideally, I can stay able to work for a couple more decades in spite of the situation.

People say, ‘Do what you love.’ Good idea, but what if you have no money and virtually no time for those things? Free activities (e.g., reading and walking) can be useful and slightly entertaining, but they feel far from a complete ‘diet.’

I feel curled up in a ball virtually all the time and feel hopeless. Just want to do something useful in the world and not depend on anyone (for more than a very short time, which I already have). I don’t feel entitled to happiness and am not asking for it. (I gave up hope for happiness a long time ago, but I do want to make deserving others happy.)

Question is, ‘How do you feel hopeful when nothing seems to be getting better and you can think of no way to make things better?’

I finally came to my senses and diagnosed him as just a fucked up piece of shit with a fucked up way of thinking. What pisses me off with myself is that I had gotten so beaten down that no matter how shitty and disrespectful he treated me I chose to ignore it because if I said anything it would always be my fault and I would have to listen to his barrage of fuckedupness. My biggest regret is that I let him treat me that way for wat to many years before I finally threw him out like the garbage he was.