Only me....

Ugh I swear my life should be a soap opera... If you have read any ofmy other posts you know about the drama with the guy at work thatis making me insaine... now let me go back a lil.. I have been divorced almost 3 years now, we have a son together, and the marraige wasnt great, he isnt a sweet guy and he is mean to be now.. but never the less he is the love of my life and after 3 years I have never moved on and still love him as much as the day I married him although he has made it clear he dislikes me and we will never be anything but parents to our son he has not a drop of feelings left... ok fast forward to xmas .. his parents call begging me and the kids to come over and spend xmas as a family for the kids sake. So I agree.. last minute his on again off again gf whom I cant stand.. (he started dating her less than a month after we seperated) decided to come.. so I spent xmas with my ex whomim still in love with watching him makeout with his love of his life, and his family. by the end of the night im crying cause our son is begging daddy to come home with us and watch him open presents at our house..which he refused, then ended up keeping our son and leaving him at his parents so he can go out with HER. so I didnt get my son on xmas and my daughter cried the whole way home cause she wants us to be a happy family again and not have to split it up.. so I have cried ever since last night... how do you move on when you cant turn love off... and you cant fix it for the kids

My parents divorced when I was 11/12.

It's the roughest thing that I have ever gone through, yet I realize that things are much better now that they are divorced and living their own separate lives. Your children may not be able to recognize the fact that their lives are better that you and your ex are separated, but believe me- one day they will.

It is much better to grow up in two separate, semi-sane households than one insane household- trust me.

first of all : , i want you to know that we care about you, and are glad you came to us (noticing you "only" got 6 posts until now)

of course there is no way to quickly shut love down... that's just how love is
i also had problem getting over my love (not saying that i'm completely through with it), i've tried analyzing what happened to me after i was sure she wouldn't love me back and now hope that what applies to me also applies to you
since i was able to (almost) completely avoid her i had the opportunity to reflect about what happened, something you unfortunatly cannot easily accomplish because you often see him.
i cannot say that my 'findings' are 100% accurate, but i hope they work for you.

since you cannot avoid him completely... following my advise will not be easy for you, because in my opinion, the key is: distraction
what i mean by that is that you have to find joy in other parts of your life, when you are always thinking about him there is absolutley NO WAY you can stop loving him
but these 'distractions' must not mean that you shut yourself out from others, isolating yourself is the worst that could happen to you.
you must do stuff you enjoy, and you must do it with other people, to actually feel joy in living again. i just can't emphazise more how important friends are when dealing with those situations... even when you are not really talking to them about your problems. can you actually do that? can you go out and have fun with people?
you can't turn love on, nor you can turn it off... therefore you need to distract yourself from it.
thinking about him will alway hurt... that's part of the experience, because you remember what happened between you. and the problem when you remember it is you wish those times back, because they were better or could have been better (wishful-thinking) than the present. that big gap between the "might-be" and the present is was causes pain, so you must improve your present in order not to wish back those times that much anymore...
when you don't wish back those times, then you don't feel pain.
love is a very beautiful part in life... there is no feeling that could match it, but still, it isn't necessary for being happy. there are other things that give you joy... "lower" joy, but still joy... and when you have managed to get on with your life somehow, to actually find it worth living and you quit thinking about him all the time, then you can be open for another love. there is no way to force it, it will happen sometime, but only if you are ready for it.
there will always be some hurt left... imagine when a shark attacks you, you'll always be afraid of water... even when you learned to swim again there is always this brief memory of what happened...

again i want to tell you that that's my interpretation of MY OWN experience... but i hope that what i "learned" from my experience can be applied to generally losing someone you love
i would like you to update us what happens to you, meaning that you tell us what your problems are following my advise (i actually failed at the "feeling joy somewhere else" part because i had to abandon my friend when i avoided her...)
and of course you can always pm me if you need help, or post it in the forum (and pm me that you posted it because i don't want to miss it )
at last i want to point out that there are always ups and downs, and you musn't crash down completely when you realise that you are not as progressed as you thought you would, it really takes much time, especially when you see him regulary... i wish you the very best i can
many hugs to you

thank you so much.. yes I have concentrated on the wrongs of our relationship and the hurtful things he says and yes I feel better and at that time dont want him back but last night its like it all came rushing back and crushed me watching him with her. It doesnt help that every relationship that i have tried to have since him has went horribly wrong. I think it is more lonely than anything and when I get this way I do shut down, avoid friends stay in the house and all the other things that make it worse. I just want to be happy again... and Im starting to give up on that. I feel like i have let my kids down all they want is a family , a father figure, to see me happy, and I cant do that for them , everytime I try I fail

you must not pressure youself, that will only make it worse and stop you from showing your feelings (which is very important when you want others to help you)
you must first accept that you have a problem where time is needed to solve it... and you must accept all the side effects of it (including hurting your kids)
pressuring yourself because you don't want to hurt your kids or friends means you will not be accepting help from others, which makes your healing-time actually longer (which is of course not what you want)
or you try to rush into solutions (e.g. other relationships) without really giving it the time it would need to evolve
you really can't force yourself to love someone... nor you can force someone else to love you, that is a field that is out of one's control (you can only tip it a bit but it's too risky in your position to go in there in my opinion)
forcing love will never go right
pressuring yourself won't, either

i want you to think about why you shut and isolate yourself when you are feeling down... and you need to think about if doing so really makes sense or if it only makes it worse. for that you must try to get a bit distance to yourself, to look at how things are in a more neutral, objective way.
you must analyze your feelings to be clear what's going on with you, but disregard them when it comes to making decisions (of course that's REALLY hard to do that perfectly...)
but really... take your time, and accept you have problems where you need help with

Isolating myself makes it worse all I do is sit and cry and dwell on things.. But I think I do it cause people get tired of hearing how sad I am and I get tired of people telling me to suck it up and only I can make myself happy. like everyone thinks that it is so easy to just turn a switch, like I like being miserable and sad. I do not like the person I am now but have been this person so long I dont know how to change it.I miss being happy and care free...seems like those days are so far away I can hardly remember them. Ill admit I am dependant on other people I do feel like I need that other half to complete me.. and it is no where to be found.

first of all:
there is nothing to be ashamed of there, humans are social beings, we are all dependend on others, phisically and emotionally!

I'm very sorry to hear that your friends can't really understand you...
but still, even if your friends can't help you DIRECTLY, they are still valuable for distracting you (which i have mentioned before) and giving you joy.
and often you need to force yourself to do something, to feel joy in some way.
when my friends ask me to come over to a drink, i'm often thinking "baaaah, i don't want to" but i know that i will enjoy the evening when i'm at it.

since your friends can't help your directly, you may consider goingto a therapist. have you already tried it? i'd say that a therapist can help you in coping with your problems much much more than anyone here could, but of course that's a big step to take

everyone needs the other half to be complete, but you don't need it to be happy (at least not for the "lower" stadiums of happiness)
In my opinion love is more a coincidental thing, for true love needs time, and pursuing love means rushing in it so NOT giving it enough time (but maybe my viewings are really too old-school^^)

i'd like to add here that i'm not a native english speaker so the messages tend to being imprecise or may not be very "pleasant to read" (I've just read my previous message again where the sentences start like "you must, you must not, i want you)
that happens because i need lots of time to write this and have forgotten the previous sentences in the process or i'm just too dumb to connect the thoughts together
so i'd like to apologize for my "cold" writing
oh, i forgot...