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*hris7651
writes:For 20 years, I have carried on an on and off relationshp to a man I was engaged to in 1987. It didn't work out at the time but we always seem to come back together... Well, mostly for sex... which was very good, but then I would not hear from him, he would be dating other people and I did also but there was a huge connection. We developed a very strong friendship. We decided last summer to give it a good try not to see other people and see what happens. I thought it was going okay but he told me last week he has tried so hard and he sees me trying but he cannot get the "spark" back and he is sorry. I am now devastated because I know this is the end. I am in a lot of pain and I do not know how to deal with it. I feel ugly now and unattractive, his opinion has always mattered to me for 20 years, I do not know what to do. I need some help.
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reader, Danielepew  +, writes (10 February 2008):
 I'm sorry to hear this.
You were engaged to this man, and for some reason you didn't marry. Then you kept the contact, mostly for sex, over twenty years.
I understand that each one of you were seeing other people. So I assume you came to a sort of understanding about the sort of relationship you would have. Maybe an unspoken understanding, but an understanding in the end. And then, you two tried to take things to a higher level and it didn't work out. I notice he's not asking you to go back to seeing other people but then returning to you, or keeping you as a friend. He is saying that he will go away. Something changed. This is not that he doesn't want to stay with you in exclusive; he means he doesn't want to be with you at all. You, on the other hand, do want him in exclusive.
It seems to me that now he knows you won't continue to share him, and so he's leaving. You're asking for exclusivity, and that he isn't willing to give. This situation has been on the incubator for twenty years.
Feeling ugly and unattractive is perhaps one mechanism you use to ask yourself whether he is leaving you because you're "ugly and unattractive". I don't think that's the reason. And I'm sure you can at least make a head turn off and on.
I understand it's difficult for you to let go of him, because he's been a part of your life for a long time. But, he isn't giving you a choice. There isn't much you can do, but accept that he's leaving and go on with your life.
See it this way: relationships that come to an end are also new beginnings. Like Leonard said, think that you can give this sort of love to someone else. And then, do. Don't stay paralyzed because he's gone. He was never there all the time anyways, was he?
Take care.
A
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reader, leonard j. Douglas  +, writes (10 February 2008):
I think that if you were me,that I would look at all of those wonderful years of togetherness that the two of you have shared,and count them as a blessing,but them I would get lost in an other relationship with some one else where I could share what I have learned within that other relationship. sorry about your lose, but then who knows,he just may come around to realize the same thing. Just hug yourself and say, "I love me and I can give that love to another too.
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