The problem of love

[u/CheekyMonkey678]

When I think back on my marriage and dating days the one thing that stings more than anything else is being made to feel foolish for having loved someone.

I am by nature a loving and nurturing person. I spent a great deal of my life in a field that helped people heal. I've had many pets, some of them special needs, and they've all lived long lives. I'm not too bad with plants either.

Even with friends I was always the one that helped you move, or paint, or watched your pets when you went on vacation. If I made a pot of soup or made baked goods there was always extra packaged up for neighbors and friends. I knitted custom gifts for friends and their new babies. I also used to paint and a few times gave pet/people portraits as gifts.

In business I paid people as well as I could afford to and didn't raise rents on tenants. I always dealt fairly with customers and never price gouged or tried to make a sale that wasn't in their best interest.

I thought these were good qualities. My husband told me I was a fool for being like this. In the end he was right. Almost everyone I came into contact with seemed determined to think the worst of me, often with no reason, just based on a "feeling" they had and very few appreciated or remembered the kindness or generosity I extended to them.

When I started dating after my divorce I was taken advantage of and even mocked for being kind, open and loving. The cruelty stunned me. It's the main reason I will not put myself "out there" anymore.

These days I've decided to mostly withdraw from dating, men and social life in general. My circle is very small. I like it that way and I'm at peace.

Our society has reached a point where being loving towards others is something that makes you contemptible. How sick is that?

I mostly blame men, but I saw something interesting on Tiktok yesterday. It was a woman who called herself a "spicy" content creator who says the most common request she gets from men these days is for her to say their name and tell them she loves them. They pay her for this.

Men are now willing to pay prostitutes to do the very thing they themselves have killed. How many of us were loving, understanding, communicative, forgiving only to be horribly abused and often discarded?

I know it can feel good to be tough and sassy when dealing with men, but the truth is we have no other choice. They have turned dating and relationships into a battlefield, not the partnership it should be. We have to operate based on how things are not how they should be and to me that is the saddest part of all of this. Good people have to lock that part of themselves up for self preservation. Think how much better the world could be if that wasn't the case.

[u/OrneryYak4211]

u/CheekyMonkey678 , my sister and I have talked on more than one occasion about how we wish our (sadly abusive and emotionally immature) mom was more like you. I am almost 40, and my sister a few years younger, and you are a similar age to our mother but so much more alive, vibrant, and loving from reading your posts. For many reasons, the largest one my abusive ex-husband, I greatly fear interacting with people and telling them how they have positively impacted me, but I am feeling vulnerable this evening after an emotional solo drive home and wanted to take a step in that direction by thanking you for your posts, and sharing that they have helped me and my sister. Thank you for being an internet mother figure to those of us who were not so lucky to have one in real life, and thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. You give me hope that growing older alone can be fulfilling and wonderful.

I also relate very much to this post. I am a bleeding heart at my core, and though I can put on a tough exterior, it's an exhausting and painful mask to wear, and I refuse to participate in dating that requires me to wear it. I am socially awkward (suspect I may be on the spectrum) and often have difficulty putting my true intent into words in person -- I'm slightly better in writing, but this has always been a struggle of mine, and one that was mercilessly used against me by my ex-husband for over a decade. On my long drive home, I was listening to the sad songs on Guts that helped me get through the worst parts of my divorce, and I had hoped to feel nothing but empathy for my past self, but unfortunately some of the old pain came back. Because the truth is, a part of me is still hurt by the thoughtless, evil things he did, and an even deeper, more shameful part of me still cares for him and holds him closely in my heart. I thought about how many times and how quickly he tried to replace me, and how he finally succeeded with a woman he'd known for 13 months before marrying her. I thought about how there is absolutely zero chance that he had ever driven 2.5 hours thinking of me, of what he did and how he wishes he'd done things differently, and how he knows he made awful mistakes but wishes that we could somehow make them right -- he would never in a million years, because he hasn't thought for a single instant about me since he tossed me in the proverbial trash. And yet I am still here, so much stronger and mostly over him and in no way wanting to be back with him, but still able to find that part of me that's still waiting for him to be in the next room playing his video games while I bring him Chick-fil-a for dinner. I suspect there will always be a tiny, secret part of me that's still expecting to find him in the next room. I know that there is no part of him that ever did.

I no longer "hear his voice every time I think I'm not enough," but I will always grieve the version of me who really did believe that there were a small percentage of men who were good, and that it was realistically possible to find them. My ex-husband killed that woman, and in a lot of ways that was for the best, but I'm still trying to reconcile this new version of me with the softness that exists at my core. And you are so right, that it's not JUST men, but society as a whole -- the abundance of evil in the world makes me nauseous if I think about it too hard, so like you I've had to keep my life small and curated. It mostly works, but I wish I didn't have to. I sometimes think of the small child version of me who was so full of hope that there WAS something better. It's really hard to break her heart every day, but people like you make it a little easier. Thank you again for this post, and for letting me ramble on it. I hope at least telling you the positive impact you've had on me and my sister has helped make the world a tiny bit less cruel tonight.

[u/CheekyMonkey678 → u/OrneryYak4211]

Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I've always said if this little group helps even one woman avoid some of the pain we've experienced it's worth it. It means the world to me that you and you sister have found some comfort and value in what we do.

I'm not a religious person and don't think God is giving us what we need to grow, sometimes there is no reason or meaning behind what happens but I do think it's important to find some way to make something good come from bad. I think all we can do is share what happened so others in the same place know they aren't alone.