I just found out my ex got married, I'm hurt, why do I feel down?

April 14, 2013 10:07 AM

Over the past 5 months I've posted three questions here on how to get over my ex. I've tried all the advice people have given on here and it has helped. Recently I thought I was almost over things and in a good enough place to work on being genuinely friends. Then she tells me she just got married. I don't know if I'm more shocked that she got married to someone in less than 5 months or just that she's just married. Either way, she doesn't want to communicate anymore, which I can respect. So is the reason I'm feeling down is because I feel rejected again? I know this should conclude things for me but I still think about it and I know I shouldn't. Why can't I just leave it and move on?
posted by kser333 to Human Relations (26 answers total)

Then she tells me she just got married.

You know a really fast and easy way to get over your ex?

Stop talking to her.
posted by Sara C. at 10:09 AM on April 14, 2013 [59 favorites]

You're down because you probably held out hope that you could still be with her and you're probably trying to figure out why she wanted to get married to that person and not you. Totally normal. Painfully normal.

But I've found that when my ex's have gotten married, I've been able to truly move on more so than before. Because holding out hope and comparing yourself to new partners slows down that process. Accepting a marriage means accepting that you'll never have them again and that you'll also never know the answer to 'why him/her and not me?', so you can move on.
posted by greta simone at 10:11 AM on April 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

I'm sorry to hear that, and completely understand how much it can hurt. Unfortunately, I don't think you should try to be friends with her (perhaps ever), as it will just be hard for you.
posted by three_red_balloons at 10:11 AM on April 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Time heals all wounds. It's trite, it's cliche, but it's trite and cliche because it's often true. Corollary: like Sara C. says: stop talking to her. If you aren't talking to her, you'll end up thinking about her less. This gives you time to heal and move on. Yeah, she chose someone else. Sucks. It'll probably always suck somewhere in the back of your mind, but it'll be a small little place you rarely visit, especially if you stop picking at the emotional scab and find happy things to fill your life with.
posted by Alterscape at 10:20 AM on April 14, 2013

You're going to have to go no contact. Defriend, block her number, have her emails go to spam.

There's nothing you can do now except get on with your life. For now, concentrate on doing things, you'll find yourself absorbed in activites and soon, you won't be thinking about a person from whom you are divorced and who has moved on herself in rather a large and splashy way.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 10:23 AM on April 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

Time heals all wounds. It's trite, it's cliche, but it's trite and cliche because it's often true.

I agree, providing you don't keep replaying the wound in your head, keeping it fresh and alive. So, get on with your life, do things you enjoy, and focus on that rather than mourning a relationship which is not only gone but buried.

...which is easier to say than do, but it's pretty much the only way.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:25 AM on April 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

It's only been 5 months, man. I still get pangs over women I dated 10 years ago. I think it's perfectly natural. It gets better.
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:50 AM on April 14, 2013 [11 favorites]

Five months is an extremely short time to get over a serious relationship. You need more time -- almost certainly more time than you might think you "should" need -- and you need to have no contact with her for a long period, possibly years. These are the absolutely necessary preconditions for getting over a broken heart, and for having any possibility of being friends in the future (which is not actually something you should be worrying about now; just saying that long-term no-contact has to happen FIRST before renewing a friendship can even become a theoretical possibility). I know it's incredibly difficult to do, but it's pretty much the only way.
posted by scody at 10:51 AM on April 14, 2013

long-term no-contact has to happen FIRST before renewing a friendship can even become a theoretical possibility.

Just wanted to echo this, too. At this point, the first woman I ever seriously dated is someone I'd consider a good platonic friend. It took the both of us about seven years of living our own lives with no contact to be in a place where we could communicate with each other in a context that wasn't just about the debris of our romantic relationship. There are other people I've dated who I just don't have any desire to communicate with anymore. I think it depends a lot on why there was a relationship, and why there was a breakup, but nobody can sort that out but you. Anyway, point is, years. Don't talk with her, don't go out of your way to think about her, work on moving on, and then once you've moved on, maybe you can come back and re-open the friendship door.
posted by Alterscape at 11:02 AM on April 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

If this is the ex who left you for another person a few weeks before your first AskMe in mid-December and she's getting married already... I may be conservative on these things, but that's a pretty scary fast turnaround from serious relationship to marriage to an entirely different person. Those kind of potential issues are yet another another perfectly good reason to avoid her entirely.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:02 AM on April 14, 2013 [14 favorites]

I think it is very easy to feel down after an ex has seemed to move on. Whether it is from marriage or just having a new boyfriend or generally a good life. Everyone will react to these things differently, but I know that I tend to compare myself to them and basically feel that maybe I was not good since their life is better now. Although this is not necessarily true.

It sucks that an ex has gotten married and so quickly! The best that you can do now is try not to think about it and look forward into the future for your own life. Figure our what your goals are and what you want and work towards that. Be happy for your ex that she is happy and try to focus on yourself and how great of a life you have ahead of you. Of course as everyone has said it all takes time to make it better, but looking optimistically towards the future can help.
posted by Jaelma24 at 11:03 AM on April 14, 2013

TBH I think anybody in your position would be feeling the same way. I think your biggest problem is that you're expecting to feel all right about this too quickly. The fact is you're just going to have to feel bad for a while, like, months.

And yes, anybody would be weirded out to hear that their ex of five months ago was ALREADY married. You feel weird about that because it is weird. It is generally weird to marry someone you've been with for five months or less [1], and it's even more weird to do that right after breaking up with your long-term partner, and it's most weird of all if you are the long-term partner who got dumped for all this and has now just been told.

So, yes, and it does annihilate that last bit of hope that maybe you could be friends and will eventually get back together. You can't (not for years, if ever) and you won't (never, out of the question, not gonna happen).

Hurts, doesn't it? Sorry, it sucks. Go 100% no contact and accept that it will feel lousy for the foreseeable future. Eventually you will get over it.






[1] dear MeFite who's reading this and got married after knowing their spouse for less than five months: YOUR marriage is enviable, healthy, correct, and not weird in the least. I was not referring to you.
posted by tel3path at 11:12 AM on April 14, 2013 [18 favorites]

So is the reason I'm feeling down is because I feel rejected again?

Sounds like you're internalising it. You're getting over her, and maybe you thought she was doing the same. You are both mourning a significant relationship, separately. Maybe that's what you feel gives the relationship its significance. "I feel really bad, therefore, it must have been really good."

Then you find out that she's married after a few months. First, it may now feel like a referendum on your loneliness. That this is something that is just happening to you – you're the one that feels bad – because she is fine. Now, you are not each apart and going through the same thing. She is going through a time you perceive as being joyful, and that may sting quite a lot.

Secondly, the mind may be playing all manner of tricks on you, creating shadows for you to box. Maybe you are doubting the importance of your relationship to her. Or feeling worse for the fact that she has moved on, and you are not moving as quickly. Or rejecting yourself as potentially unlovable, because obviously relationships are easy... for everyone but you. These are all things that quite a few people have said in situations not altogether different from yours.

What if I give you a few counter-arguments? Maybe your ex is incapable of being alone, and leapt into something she sees as being secure. Maybe your ex married for a reason outside of love. Immigration. Money. Status. Position. Maybe it's an old flame from middle school and they reconnected at an ice cream parlour and it was like no time had passed. Maybe she was forced to get married at gunpoint. Maybe it was a rough night in Vegas.

The point being that there are endless reasons people get married. Who knows why she did it. Maybe she will be blissfully happy forever – perhaps that what we can hope for her. Maybe this is the greatest mistake of her life, and a decision she made Britney Spears-style and will have a crap result for her.

There is one commonality to all of these reasons: None of them have anything to do with you. Her marriage has absolutely nothing to do with you, with one very small exception. Whether she was married or not, you feel bad. So continue to feel bad, until you are done feeling bad. She can get married and divorced 18 times in the next six months, it's not going to change your own personal healing process.

The one exception is if you were secretly harbouring the fantasy that you might get back together, which this probably nails shut. If that was the case, she has done you a favour by really setting you free. You were free before, but now you are really free.

So continue to feel bad until you no longer feel bad. And cutting off communication with her is a great idea.
posted by nickrussell at 11:12 AM on April 14, 2013 [8 favorites]

I know a person who can't get over their ex. He is such a nice, good-looking, smart person but is hung up on his ex. It gets old and it's sad. It's a waste of time. There is so much life to live and so much fun to be had. You get to choose if you're going to dwell on your ex. Don't be one of those guys who can't get over it, and compares all the people to her, and uses the love for the ex as an excuse not to date and appreciate.

Also, you might be depressed and it has nothing to do with your ex. Maybe you should talk to a therapist to help unstick this idea that you can't get over your ex. And investigate why you are using this untrue thought that you can't get over her to stay sad, mad, depressed, isolated, whatever. It's okay to move on and live your life. You deserve that.
posted by Fairchild at 11:13 AM on April 14, 2013 [6 favorites]

I can relate to some degree. Even though my ex-husband of 17 years ended up becoming increasingly abusive and I finally made him leave, I was really kind of upset when I found out he had IMMEDIATELY taken up with another woman.

I mean, I knew I sure as hell didn't want him. And yet, there was still this ridiculous sense of, "How could he move on so quickly? Didn't our marriage mean anything to him?"

Which as you can read, is completely ridiculous.

But what I figured out was of course he didn't move on; of course he was an emotional idiot and he had some really serious problems. He was just so not right for me.

And that's what I had to keep telling myself while also feeling a certain amount of pity for the new girlfriend.

All in all, it was not a healthy and loving relationship. It ended.

And for you in particular I'd add, stop talking to this person, seriously. You are getting no value in being friendly.
posted by kinetic at 11:22 AM on April 14, 2013 [6 favorites]

I had similar feelings when I heard that my ex had a new serious boyfriend. That was a year later. I was surprised at how I felt. I thought I was over it.

I realized that it's just another stage of grief, of letting go. Maybe you couldn't process the loss all at once, and this is a big event that is making is very real to you.

In my opinion, the best thing to do is not try to communicate with your ex, and just focus on getting on and moving on with your own life. It's hard, good luck!
posted by beau jackson at 11:28 AM on April 14, 2013

Either way, she doesn't want to communicate anymore

Isn't it nice when problems solve themselves?
posted by ook at 12:05 PM on April 14, 2013 [11 favorites]

tl;dr: I don't know that this is uncommon. Marriage of an ex is one point where even whatever stubborn holdout hope for an against-the-odds reunion is hanging around in your heart somewhere has to give against reality. If your experience is like one of mine, that might be the point where really moving on starts.

A while back I found out that an ex got married... five *years* after we'd cut all contact. I was still messed up for at least a week, despite the fact that I'd had no terrible shortage of interesting women in my life since, despite the fact that I'd dated other people, despite being in a relationship with a better match, despite the fact that five years earlier I'd told myself it was time to give up.

Part of it might have been that at the same time I found out her mother had recently died, which brought up a lot of emotions of compassion & sympathy, but I think that the basic truth was that somewhere inside, part of me still wanted that one to work out someday, somehow. I was actually kindof angry at that part of me, too -- it felt ridiculous that relationship could reach out half a decade beyond its protracted, difficult ending and cause me no small amount of grief again.

Then again, the sound of a prop plane can make me remember listening to the same sound on slow quiet afternoons in an elementary school classroom, and the relationships that get close to our hearts & hopes have a bigger long term impact than that. In fact, we get into them for that reason, don't we?

About a year and a half after I found out about the marriage, I found myself looking at some old photos of the ex and other friends from the time when we were together and probably most happy. I didn't feel a sense injury, and only a small bit of loss, probably as much for the passing of a season of life as anything else. And noticing that, I realized I'd really moved on. I think the news of her marriage was probably what had started the process of letting go.

It'll likely work out the same for you, but probably much faster.
posted by weston at 12:06 PM on April 14, 2013 [5 favorites]

Been in a similar situation. I was engaged young and I ended it after 2 years. It was a horrible situation. He begged and pleaded to do anything to keep me. I saw him talking to a girl that same day I ended it. Then 4 days later I saw him dating her! That tore me up!

I couldn't move. I lost 6 pounds (was down to 96lbs ish). I was a wreck. I started drinking. I did many things I regretted. For me I didn't have feelings of inadequacy, but I felt disgusted that they could just do that. I felt that there must have been something going on behind my back.

Could this also be part of your feelings?

Sorry to say, nothing makes it better automatically. I stopped talking to him, and I had support from my dad and friends. Sure, drinking made me feel nothing too, BUT DON'T DO THAT - trust me.

I agree, time will heal, but know that I still think of him and the bad things that happened, and they still hurt! That ended over 4, possibly 5 years ago and I am now happily married and I still think about it. It's normal. Take some time to do things you like and by all means don't get wrapped up in what this person is doing. They are no longer a part of your life.

It's okay to feel hurt. And I agree that is wayy to soon for someone to get married. I am also not sure why you decided to continue talking with that person, although I'm not sure I read your previous posts.

Take time for yourself. Love yourself again. In time things will get better.
posted by Crystalinne at 12:26 PM on April 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Hey, I was with my ex for seven years, married for four of them. We divorced four years ago. He remarried maybe a year or so ago and it hurt me, even after all the time (and four years of absolutely no contact). So yes, it is absolutely normal to feel hurt where you are right now, compounded by the speed-dating-marriage thing. (How did she even plan a wedding in five months??)

Nthing go no contact. And this might not be the healthiest advice you've ever heard, but find someone who's as emotionally unavailable as you are right now and have tons of rebound sex. Good for the soul.
posted by mibo at 1:45 PM on April 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

It hurts because it's an utterly clear signal that she's happy and has moved on without you and it fucking sucks that she's not devastated and mourning the way you are. It will take a year or more to get over a serious relationship and that's totally normal. You should look at her no-contact injunction as a gift that will keep on giving.

If it makes you feel better, there's a greater than 50% chance they'll get divorced!
posted by DarlingBri at 1:54 PM on April 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

If it makes you feel better, there's a greater than 50% chance they'll get divorced

Um, even if that were true, please don't be tempted to let that thought make you feel better. Even if it seems to work in the short term.
posted by tel3path at 2:52 PM on April 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

In my case there WAS something going on behind my back, because when my ex broke up with me after 5 and a half years, he had already been dating someone else. They were engaged 7 months later and a year after the engagement they had a baby.

I'm going to agree with everyone else about no contact. I found out these facts kindly, from concerned friends, on my own terms, and not from hearing them from him or from seeing them on Facebook. MUCH better for me mentally.

This may not help you much, because maybe you did want to marry her and all that, but although I was sad he was going to marry someone else, I was overWHELMINGLY relieved that I was not the one about to have a baby. Seriously. Good on him and all, but it certainly made the whole thing sting a lot less to know that we just didn't want the same things.
posted by chainsofreedom at 2:57 PM on April 14, 2013

I was off and on for someone for many many years, then suddenly, I met and married my husband 5 years ago after knowing him for 2 months. We're still very happy.

In short, this type of thing happens. You can start getting over this by reminding yourself that her life as NONE of your business - because this is the truth of it!

Honestly, after all of your questions about this ex, and all of the good advice you've gotten, I don't know why you would still be in touch with her such that you now know she has recently gotten married. If you had gone "no contact" this would not be an issue.

I saw from a previous question you were also still in touch with her mom. Are you still keeping up with that? Because truly, keeping in touch is hurting you rather than helping. Trust me. I've been there;)

I know you think this about your ex, but it isn't. This is about you and how you treat yourself. You are torturing yourself by focusing on your ex, plain and simple. When you are choosing yourself and making your happiness a priority, your ex will cease to be a concern. You must make your comfort and happiness a priority. Memail me if you just don't "get it" and I'll explain in more detail, but really, this is the solution.

You can start choosing what's in your best interest by cutting off relations with your ex and her family.

Oh. And that guy that I had been off and on with? Yeah. He became a creepy creepy stalker. Don't be him. Move on with your life.

Align yourself with reality. The reality is that you are available for new and exciting adventures in life with new people! Out with the old, in with the new.

Stop hanging on. Completely. That's my best advice.
posted by jbenben at 4:41 PM on April 14, 2013

A lot of people advised you to go "no contact" in past threads. Usually that means forever, or at least for a year.

So, a few weeks or a mere month of "no contact" is totally inadequate, as you are finding out.

Just in case you misunderstood past threads, yes, we mean you should entirely stop talking to this person and her family.


And BTW, I do NOT think it will take you years to get over this woman or that you have to feel depressed about this breakup for weeks, months, or even years. Hogwash!

However, I do think you will be upset into the forseeable future if you stay in touch with this person and her family. In fact, I guarantee it.
posted by jbenben at 5:15 PM on April 14, 2013

Either way, she doesn't want to communicate anymore, which I can respect. So is the reason I'm feeling down is because I feel rejected again?

No, the reason you're feeling down is because you were rejected again.

Look; she's not interested in a relationship with you. Not romantically, not platonically. Face up to that, let go, and move on with your life.

There are better things out there for you, if you're willing to let yourself go and look for them.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:10 AM on April 15, 2013