Hi Velvet,
In my opinion, trust is important in a relationship and I don’t hear trust for your ex in any of your posts and I also don’t hear any reason for him to deserve your trust.
– yes, I agree to this. This is the main reason I chose to leave in the first place, because I told him I could accept the gambling and help him through it because none of us wanted this. But I can never deal with another woman, and while i can give you the benefit of the doubt, hiding gambling from me for over a year makes it impossible for me to believe you. And when I talked to him a month ago, he turned it into my fault. Although he would never admit to cheating (because who would), he never told me to stay and even went as far as saying he doesn’t know if he loves me or not. That kills me because I love him so much and I’m willing to work through the relationship if he can meet me halfway.
I suggest you ask yourself why ‘you’ feel guilty about leaving him alone?, by detaching and allowing him to face his demons and determine what he wants to do with his life is, in my opinion, the best thing for both of you. If he abuses his freedom then it is down to him, not you.
– I feel guilty mostly because I know I could’ve done more. I decided out of emotions to leave to save myself and ended up regretting it. That when I asked for him back, he wouldnt take me because I left him alone, and he cant trust me not to leave again if we get back together and things get difficult again. It doesn’t make sense, really, this is why I’m so confused. I get where hes coming from, but i am devastated that i am willing to forgive him for far more mistakes than he is. What he is not forgiving me for is a technicality of breaking up vs asking for time to think about things (when I already did). I know I did the right thing logically, but my heart tells me otherwise. I’m just at this point of being stuck between 2 hard decisions–moving on or letting go. If I get the dog, there will definitely be no future for us. If I don’t, it will be harder for me to move on because I’m constantly worried, but the door for reconciliation will be open if he chooses to go that route. I just know that if i want to start the process of healing in a more efficient way, my brain has to be focused on me so I have to get the dog so I stop worrying about his well being, and finally take a big step towards healing. If the dog were a human child of ours, I wouldn’t have left him with my ex no matter what he said. Whether he chooses to forgive me for that or not, I hope I’ll be in a better place by then to not care.
Ask yourself why “I am stuck in a very desperate and unhealthy spiral of wanting to move on and wanting him back” when you are exhausted from ‘his’ indecision.
– maybe it’s hope that when he gets better, he will want to come back? I don’t know. I’m just so confused. Sorry for rambling and seemingly repetitive issues. It’s just an extremely difficult place to be in. My last breakup that was close to being this difficult was in 2008 and even that is nothing compared to the heartbreak I’m going through now. I honestly never thought I’d be here again, and it never even crossed my mind that he would be the one to bring me back here. It was an amazing 3 or so years, until 2021 where all of the problems came out. I want to piece it together but I know that its just going to be wasted energy since I won’t know for sure and nothing will change the outcome anyway.
Thanks again for reading and taking the time to reply.