shiwan8

8.7.2014 16:52

She left without explanation? Unless you did beat her, had sex with other people without her consent or she is mentally very ill and/or found some other man or maybe a few men.

Seriously, just forget it and go forward. The past will not give you anything in a situation like this. If she even liked you she would have not done this to you. What ever happens do not take her back. She left you and that means she hoped to achieve something more with someone else. Now if she begs to get back together with you it would only mean that you are a safe harbor for her from where to start looking for another man or other men.

Dia

10.7.2014 00:41

You ask for any help or suggestions what to do. I think "what to do" depends on what is it that you want. To me it seems like you do not know how to ease the sharp pain from fresh break up. The unpleasant thing about stressful situations is that they are best handled by confrontation than by avoidance, and confronting the problems and feelings may be hard for some people so they choose avoidance and waste lots of time but still end up miserable.

First of all, I suggest you do not stay alone all the times. Turn to your family (only if they will support you and not blame or hurt you more), turn to friends and people you can trust, and/or seek counselling. Maybe some of your close friends of family members could even stay with you for a while, or maybe you could stay with them. Your situation sounds like a deep crisis and you need support and maybe even professional help to live through this period in your life with minimum damage.

Do more of what makes you happy but does not damage you. For example, some people turn to excessive eating or drinking to drown their problems and they only distract themselves for a short while but gain new problems such as obesity and alcoholism. If there is something that usually soothes you and relieves your stress in everyday life, try it, or try new things that may bring healthy distraction and even develop some of your skills or highlight your strong sides. Meditation and yoga, for example, help you achieve spiritual balance. Search for something that might help you, something that you will feel is "your own thing". Sports may be a good outlet if you have lots of tension and energy due to stress: try to work out to relax your body, and then your mind will follow to relax.

Often close circle (family, fiends) tries to make you feel better by blaming the other party but I suggest you keep in mind that it takes two to tango, and if your wife was a bad person it's doubtful you would have stayed with her for 12 years. Sometimes it helps your own well-being a lot if you look at things objectively or even from other person's point of view, without adding any pluses or minuses or emotions or labels to them, and see some neglected or missed details and chain reactions that grew into bigger things with time. Maybe looking at your marriage through stranger's or your wife's eyes could highlight some details that will help you understand some whys of this outcome. This way there will be less questions and more facts to analyze the big picture.

I also warmly suggest that you only take advice that you personally like and find helpful also in a long run. Simple expressions such as "just forget it and move on" do sound logical or a good idea but is easier said than done and the thing is, if you do not untie those spiritual and emotional knots and heal the wounds now, they will follow you and may negatively affect your other or new relationships. Studies show it's more typical to men not to explore their feelings but instead to replace the lost object with something new. That is one coping mechanism and it's up to you to decide how you want to deal with your pain.

It's easy to become more cynical and harsh and blame the other or see yourself as a victim but maybe you could also analyze your own role and influence on how things turned out. Seeing your own actions and taking responsibility actually eases the pain because you can see clearly how much power you had and still can have and that things do not just happen to you but also are consequences of your own actions. By looking deep into details you may find a way to fix the things that you did poorly, or you might learn from this experience to know how to act more wisely in future.

By "taking responsibility" I do not mean to place the blame on you. Blaming, just as name calling and speculations about someone's motives without knowledge or facts, are signs of weak-minded behavior. Personal growth starts when person sees own actions and choices and their influence, and thus sees how s/he has actually participated in building the entity that either succeeded or collapsed, and learns form those insights.

It's very seldom that people who are happily together just get up and leave. Usually there are strong signs. Maybe there were some issues you and your wife had but did not work on, and then leaving it all started to seem easier than staying. People see things differently and sometimes either do not communicate or communicate poorly. However, instead of wasting time on guessing your wife's motives I'd rather focus on what you actually know and can influence: your own well-being and future.

Oh, and one more thing: keep loving. Your wife may have left you without explanation and she may never come back but you could forgive her and yourself for not making this marriage work out, and you can still save the love for her - not to wait for her to come back but to protect your own health. Studies show that hating hurts haters most: their organisms' stress levels are constantly high and cause health problems. Instead of repeating other people's mistake you could find reasons to be grateful for what you had

So if you feel you still love your wife, let it be as it is. With time you could notice that love faded from strong into a melancholic memory or changed to just a vaguely good feeling, but at least you will avoid hurting yourself by trying to kill the love.

I cannot say I know what you are going through but from personal experience I know what it is to cope with break up stress. Hopefully something of what I wrote will help you, and if it did not, hopefully you will find your own constructive way of healing.

You will smile again and pain will fade. Allow yourself to experience this demanding lesson of life and gain as much wisdom from it as you only can. Crisis is also a chance.

Good luck!