I left my ex to find love on a dating site. This is my story and it took me a while to dare to write it. But I realized that many of us are trapped in our old relationships and that it is difficult to love someone else.
I was with my ex for 10 years. We loved each other. We built a family and I had a child with him. I was the one who decided to leave, to end our relationship because I was unhappy.
Not because he was hurting me, but because we had nothing more to say to each other. Our life revolved around our child and we didn't share anything together anymore. However, we spent many evenings talking, looking for solutions so that our story wouldn't turn upside down.
When you have a child, you try to do everything to keep the couple together. We put aside a lot of ourselves. The priority is our child and we end up forgetting about ourselves and each other as a couple.
The evenings where we ruminate, where we smother our sobs in the pillow multiply until the day when without really realizing it, you make the decision to stop everything. It's stronger than anything. You can no longer live this life as a couple which exhausts you and gradually extinguishes you.
That day when my heart knew it was time to leave, I had to take my courage in both hands and tell him the truth. That I didn't love him like before, that I wanted to go my way alone this time without him by my side.
He listened and didn't understand.
The months that followed were painful. I felt guilty about the breakup. Our child was in the middle and heard some arguments even though we tried to preserve him. But the pain is tenacious, the anger too. It strangles you and you find it hard to gain perspective in these painful situations.
Once we were separated and living in our own homes, the bond continued for our child but nothing was shared intimately between him and me anymore. That's when the people you loved so dearly become strangers.
The closeness is gone, the relationship no longer exists. Hearts are cold and the mourning for the relationship begins.
Your days are like wanderings of the spectre of past love. Your ex still haunts you deep inside. During the mourning process, I looked back at all our memories, all our happy moments. It is as if life is sending you a message to go back and sabotage your decision.
The process of acceptance in the separation necessarily passes by these moments of backward glance where you realize that one and the other are attached by a thread of the destiny which it will be necessary to cut one day or the other definitively to continue elsewhere without him or her.
Forgetting was my one and only solution to survive this heartache, to overcome my limits.
No, I do not regret my decision, never in my life. No, I will never go back but leaving a situation that was so dear to your heart is not an easy choice.
Choosing yourself above all else requires courage. It is not selfishness, I assure you, even if many will make you feel guilty for this choice and will also abandon you.
This realization where two paths separate to continue to evolve on their own, requires energy, discernment and resilience.
The only way to move on was to get over my ex. Some would say that's impossible. You never truly forget someone who has been a part of your life intensely and emotionally. On the other hand, if you decide to put this story in a place of your brain and leave room for the present moment then love can present itself to you again. A form of oblivion will settle in a secret drawer that you will finally lock.
I have forgotten my ex in my life, I have decided not to put any more attention and expectation towards this person. I have chosen myself for good and I am ready to find love on a dating site.
I will tell my story to the person I meet if he or she wants to, but I will not allow this past relationship to prevent me from loving someone else.
If I decide to sign up for an online dating platform, it is with the intention of being free in my head, heart and body for this new love.
My heart needs to love again and I will offer my new version of myself to this partner without having this heaviness from my past that today must stay where it is and not get in my way anymore.
It took me a long time to accept, to write these lines. Today, I feel legitimate to have a partner.
