Hey McD --

I know just how you feel. Was thinking about this late last night after my sad, withdrawn time in chat with you & others.

A part of me wants to believe that I will have a relationship again someday -- that there will be "zing" for me again someday --

And then, after I flirt with someone, or if I consider how I would respond if someone actually responded to my personal ad (without a photo of course to minimize the chance that anyone will respond) -- I wonder what that might be like --

And I feel a tight thrumming come across my belly that is so uncomfortable, it is almost unbearable.

My whole solar plexus tightens up, and the paralysis starts to enclose around my heart, and I am gripped by a fear that is closer to terror than being afraid . . .

I am about to hijack your thread, I think, not sure -- sorry if I am making this too much about me, McDonald --

Please understand that the man who abandoned me abruptly in 2003, after 15 years together, when I became ill and lost my job, without any preceding fights or signs (at least none that I noticed, being concerned with my health and job and all) --

Was so beloved of my family that my mother (who is 80) cried when she learned he was gone. My brother has taken sides and chosen to stay friendly with my X -- and told me to kill myself when I was suicidal after X left.

X was devoted to making others laugh. He read joke books so that he would always have ammunition to bring laughter wherever he went.

He was so kindhearted to animals it would bring tears to my eyes. He loved my dogs, and me, and did many, many kind things. He cooked and did all the grocery shopping and laundry when I was in graduate school. All of it. Maybe that was part of the problem. He was so heavily invested in me becoming a tenured professor and him being able to quit his job, that when it didn't happen, and when my health suggested that it could never happen -- I ruined the Master Plan and he left. I don't know that for sure, of course. I asked, and he denied it. He eventually screamed that I was so filled with hate and anger and bitterness that he couldn't even go any place with me anymore.

I've had 3 Ts and 1 pdoc tell me that they believe what he did, not what he says. When I told my mom that he said he left bec. I was so filled with hate, she replied, "Well, it sure took him long enough to find out."

"What did you do?" asked my friend Martha. "Were you rude to waiters?" She was impatiently standing in the aisle of a restaurant looking for our wait person, and at this point yelled, "Yoo hoo" at the absentee server. Like she would recognize rudeness to wait staff.

I'd asked if he'd marry me if my health insurance ran out, so that I could afford blood tests that could save my life. He said I was "forcing him into a marriage" that he "didn't want." After 15 years -- his behavior means -- You were good enough to live with for 15 years. But I'd rather that you die than have to marry you.

That diagnosis is now in question, and my health picture is not so bad as it was in 2003. But I've done a lot of research, and 50% of all husbands leave a woman after a diagnosis of lupus. They leave when we get cancer and other bad illnesses. How does one trust again, after one has that experience and takes time to research the statistics on it?

I cried as much because X's final opinion of me was that I am filled with hate, as because he'd left. He'd given no hint that he hated me that much. I'd noticed an occasional caustic putdown, and was surprised by it, but thought it was my low-self-esteem that was causing me to take such remarks the "wrong way." That I needed more reassurance than any one person could provide.

X slept with a little smile on his face. I called him my angel. I trusted him more than I've trusted any other person in my life. And then one day he called and said, "It's over. My feelings have changed." And that was it. No second chances for Wants2Fly. No discussions about what went wrong. No less how to fix it. No couples counseling, not even to help me deal with what happened.

Friends have said -- if you feel like you don't want a relationship after 2 years, give us a call. What you are feeling is natural right now.

22 and a half months have passed. I don't know that it's so much that I don't want another relationship as that I don't see how it could ever be possible.

Because this tight thrumming across my chest -- it hurts so much -- it hurts now even when I write about this, such a long time after it all happened.

A world of compassion and support opened up for me here at the forums, and in the spiritual community I hang with from time to time, but close intimacy with a man again -- I just don't see how I could ever let myself be that vulnerable again. Not with this tightness in my chest like a steel breastplate protecting my heart.

So yeah, I know just how you feel.

sorry, sorry, sorry, McDonald, to steal the thread