I didn't realise that I had been living his life and shelving mine. His friends not mine.

It was not until I left him that I realised that all the time with him I had been living his life, his choices, his rules and his friends. I suppose deep inside I must have known but ignored it, like you do. I thought they were our friends yet if I had chosen them they would not be the people I would have picked to spend time with. But you just accept things sometimes. You also make wrong things fit right and put all the things you want or all the things you don't want into a box. After all you are a couple and compromises have to be made.

Whenever I made friends he dissaproved of them or ignored them if they came to stay. So I stopped inviting them. One after the other I let them go. He dissaproved of my family so I stopped inviting them. Yet his family came every xmas and most weekends. He invited work mates and clients who I did not know but had to get on with. I was blind to what was happening.

The days after I left him I saw with blinding clarity that I was totally alone in  the world and I mean alone. I had already lost all my family of origin after disclosing child abuse and now I was leaving him and his life and included in that, his friends. Because not one of them were my friend and I did not realise what that would mean. The only person I knew in the world was my therapist. But it was all worth it to be set free from an emotionally abusive relationship from which I had wasted much of my youth.

It takes time away from them to see how much of yourself you gave away, bit by bit. By then time has passed. I had to begin again from scratch while he just carried on as life was and exchanged me for another. I left financially with nothing. Anything I had brought to the relationship was discounted as worthless and any money invested was deemed pennies. Having lived his life I had neglected mine and so had built up little in finances while he had built up a small empire. He had nothing when I first met him. Now he had money he could buy women and friends. I was superflous. I didn't really fit into his new life. I tried to ignore that he was seeing other women.

I made the mistake of staying friends with him. I did so because to me him and his family had became my family and that is how I saw them. What I did not see was that I had swapped my dysfunctional family for yet another one. So in staying friends with him and his family I continued to be their scapegoat. I believed they cared about me even though everything indicated they didn't. The way he and his family now treated me was even worse than before. I put up with it too long. Told myself lies. Yet I saw how he looked at me, just as when we were together, that look of hate and disdain.

It was a big wake up call and one that is even to this day revealing the truth about how bad it was. I was lucky to escape from it and find a caring partner to share my life with. A man who shows me every day the real meaning of love and friendship. This relationship alone has magnified how bad life with my ex was because I know what good is now. I lost so very much in being with my ex, so much time and more but now I live in peace and each day is a gain. I know what it feels like to love and be loved, every single day and
it is marvelous.