I graduated and joined a workplace last year. I am the only child of a single mother, always been very quiet and silent-the perfect child of the family, very calm. I developed extreme anxiety issues while growing up in a joint family, went through an eating disorder and depression, but recovered.
At my workplace, I met a guy when I was almost recovering from my issues and focusing on myself. A charming, stable, and ideal man entered my life. I ignored him in the beginning because I wasn’t looking for anyone, but he slowly got me involved. Even after I initially ignored him, we began to grow closer over time. I started opening up to him, seeing how protective he was of me. He finally got all my weak points in his hands-everything I had been deprived of.
Even though I knew he was married, we got into a relationship because he told me his wife wanted a divorce and that they were already separated. I felt like I got everything I ever needed in him. I felt safe with him, protected, happy, so in love-I felt at home (a feeling unfamiliar to me). I became blind to everything else.
As things moved forward, I kept asking him to get married, but he kept telling me to trust him and that he would sort out things in his life. I kept trusting his words. I felt like I was running and running after something, and often felt like I would fall, but he told me every time that he would never let me fall, that he would always protect me. I was ready to leave everything and do anything for him. He assured me that his wife wanted a divorce and that it would happen soon.
Slowly, his mask started coming off. He turned out to be a completely different person-manipulative, judgmental, and controlling-but at this point, he was my only safe place, my only home. I gave my heart, soul, body-everything to him.
As time went on, he promised to marry me before my next birthday. Then, I found out he was cheating on me with another friend of his, someone who had been in his life before me. That girl called me and told me everything that night, and I collapsed on the road outside my workplace. I went through hell. I cried and screamed for days; everything crashed in front of me. His words haunted my mind, and I couldn’t accept reality.
Later, I found out his wife had been living with him all this time. He had been cheating with another girl as well-someone he had also promised to marry. He manipulated me again. I got sick. One night, something happened that made my mom very angry, and she told me to ask him to marry me ASAP. I kept texting him all night, alone and scared, in pain, dying inside, but he blocked me that night from everywhere, leaving me to die, abandoning me, leaving me alone with my thoughts every day.
I tried contacting him, but he disappeared from everywhere. I blame myself every day now-for being with a married man, for trusting his words, for giving him everything I had, for letting him ruin me. His words stay in my mind 24/7-his promises, my perfect world, my broken pieces.
Question: How do I move on and stop blaming myself for everything? I am still in denial.
Option 1: Focus on my career and myself.
Option 2: Get married to someone.
Focus on yourself and your life. Get therapy. Heal. And when you have recovered and ready, marry someone good and be good and loyal to him. You aren’t ready to marry yet. If you do marry right now, you’ll ruin an innocent man’s life.
First, focus on your work, that is the only thing that will keep you and your children safe.
As the days go by, the pain and suffering will subside. After a few days, you will also get it, even if not for yourself, for your child.
Whatever you lose, be happy and confident, it will make you progress.