Losing The Love Of My Life Due To Internet Addiction

Matthew Gates 8m 1,943

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

One of the hardest things I have to write about, that I never thought I would write about, written with a very heavy heart, is the fact that I was once married, and now I am not. The “red pill” men would call it “oneitis” or “obsession” but it is not. In fact, it is far from such a situation. When you are a with a woman, you know her, and you accept her for all her glory and also all her flaws. And today, I admit, I lost the love of my life due to my Internet addiction.

As a matter of respect to her, I will only call her Jo. She and I met 10 years ago in 2012 when I was just 26 years old and she was 35 years old. She had tattoos, she was a smoker, and she had two teenage children. I must admit, at first, I didn’t even acknowledge her, though she ‘saw’ me when I touched her hand, in order to ask to use her phone, after a job interview. She spent the next few months getting me to notice her, and finally, I realized how gorgeous she was.

I’d been scared of workplace harassment, but soon realized she wanted to message me and be around me all the time. It was an amazing time in my life, although the job at the time came with a tyrant boss. We both trauma bonded and got through each workday and held several more jobs together since then. Even today, as my ex-wife, she is currently working with me, though she is just a stranger and I am nobody to her. It is the most painful existence imaginable. Yet, I did this to myself. I was the cause of it.

But we’ll get there. I spent a lot of our relationship on my laptop, as we worked on computers, and even off them. What I hadn’t realized was I should have been spending more time looking at her, face-to-face, and loving her in every way I could. This is not to say we didn’t spend time together, but not the time we should have been spending. Everywhere we went, I always needed to have my laptop with me, just in case I got bored, and wanted to hop on the computer. As a programmer, I was always working on code. To this day, I’m still working on code.

However, it would be this flaw, this hobby of mine, that would be a major cause to the downfall of my marriage. Jo and I got along in almost every way possible. Though she could have a temper and would use the silent treatment on me if she was mad. The recipe for disaster was realized later on when I realized, my communication habits were equally as bad, when I would stonewall her, shut down, and we’d avoid the topic as usual. These mountain of red flags continued to build up and build up over the years, until it came crashing down.

I felt unappreciated, unloved, undeserving, and yet this woman, who I called my wife, I loved, still loved me. But our treatment of each other was not so good, and I had a lot of mental issues building up that I should have addressed with her or a therapist, just as she should have. She suggested marriage counseling, and at the time, I turned it down. A fatal mistake that I should have gone through, to fix out problems and show I was commited to her. Unfortunately, by the time I did want marriage counseling, she was checking out, and said no to it.

We survived COVID-19 and did so without her now-adult children around, as they would reside at another house we shared. However, I had wishes for them to grow up and move on, while she wanted to keep them around. Little did I know, I wished I’d accepted them into our lives more, as they would prove valuable, even if I hadn’t realized so at the time. While I cannot share every single detail of my story, I had gone to care for my dad, and she was upset with me and asked me not to return. I didn’t. And that would be the last time I saw her physical presence in person.

To this day, I am devastated by the way we ended it. Once I was done caring for my dad, she called me to tell me she missed me. I was still filled with rage and sadness. Upon returning home, the house she left was a mess, and this only triggered me into a worse state of being. I told her never to return as I shipped all her belongings to our other house to her. It was during our separation process that I went into a deep dark depression, making choices I should have never made, and rather than bring her closer to me, or work on our marriage, I kept making wrong and bad choices that drew me further away.

It was over the next 3 years during our separation that she tried to get me back, tried to tell me to come home. Not once did I think to pick up the phone and have a real conversation with her about our love for each other, why we met, why we deserved each other, why we needed to be together, and why we needed to work on our marriage. After all, we had a history of 10 years of ‘being together’. She enticed me to come see her, offers of cruises, etc. I missed the warning signs. As I was busy focused on a ‘new single life’ that I never even wanted to live. By the time I realized everything, it was too late. I bought two condos and turned our home into an investment property with renters.

I spent most of my time on a computer, looking up condos, and things to distract myself, rather than looking up articles about reconciling a marriage, rekindling, etc. I hadn’t even looked up how hard divorce was going to be. Becuase without her, I am suffering while she has moved on and is living her best life, the life I should have had with her, a life we had spent the past 7 years building up to be together and grow old together. Unfortunately, too little too late as she had said. Nothing I could say or do was going to change it, as she had moved on at least a year before our divorce.

Once she had filed for divorce, she refused to reverse it. By the time I called her a month later, she had rekindled with a high school sweetheart and told me it was over, and she had no feelings for me anymore, that we would go no contact. I miss her everyday. She was the love of my life. My first love. My everything. I know I have to man up and get back out into the dating world, but I really wish it was her.

Jo was present during the creation of confessionsoftheprofessions.com and notetoservices.com. She has been a huge part of my life, as I was for her. Although our marriage had a ton of issues and every website would have the red flags checked with everything on the list, as we were toxic for each other, I still loved that woman so much and would’ve spent my life working to get us out of our toxic situation. By the time I matured enough to realize all this, she is no longer with me, no longer wants to be with me, no longer wants anything to do with me.

I am the one who sabotaged our marriage to the point of no return. Despite almost all of it, she still stuck by my side, even through our separation, trying to get me to ‘come home’ to her. I was in the process of taking care of my sick grandfather, who eventually passed away. Once he was gone, I realized I needed her, wanted her, missed her, and wanted to care for her.

My separation mistakes:

• I immediately thought of her as my “ex-wife” despite her not being my ex
• I involved family in my problems who should have never been there at all
• I wasn’t 100% wanting to be commited to her
• I didn’t make her a priority when she should have been #1
• I didn’t return to her right away after taking care of my father
• I didn’t call her at all during my time taking care of my father to let her know I still loved her and wanted to make our marriage work
• I went to our other home and saw a dirty house and judged her, wanted to punish her and my stepkids
• I cleaned up fiercly and shipped all of her belongings to her, albeit taking several months
• I invited my ex-convict childhood friend to live with me and he refused to pay rent
• I began looking at condos to buy to keep myself distracted
• I never bothered to call her to rekindle or talk about issues or just remind her of why I was in her life
• I spent more time on my laptop working with her — but still never even talking about our real issues and why we fell in love in the first place
• I spent more time causing her emotional trauma the longer I stayed away, abandoning a woman with abandonment issues and the longer I stayed away, the less she felt I loved her, even though I did
• I should have purchased a flight immediately to her upon leaving my father’s home
• I made her wait 3 years for me, which was uncalled for, and I should have let her know how much I loved her and didn’t want a divorce far sooner than later
• I didn’t return to take care of her when she had COVID-19
• I didn’t realize how addicted to the Internet I was, in order to avoid reality, and talking to her

She is moved on. She is finding happiness again. She is loving again. She is in love again. It just happens to not be with me. I am learning to accept my mistakes so I can move on and find my own happiness without her. It is going to be hard, as she was one of a kind. My Jo. My wife. My now ex-wife. She has also given up the Internet, social media, and is very rarely seen anywhere.

I am so sorry for the pain I caused you Jo. I will always love you and hope for a chance again in the future to never make these mistakes again and be the man you’ve always wanted. I cannot even begin to make up for the mistakes I made, and know that the only way I can “make up” for anything is to let her go and have the perfect life she’s always wanted. And I know she’s found happiness and has everything she’s ever wanted.

It is wishful thinking and the hope is now gone. I will always love her, but know that life does have to go on. It is not easy for me as my heart breaks. I had ample opportunity to get her back. And I blew it. My marriage is done and over. Although our marriage wasn’t perfect, I was the cause of the final breakdown, the divorce. I admit it. I have to live with it. There is nothing more I can do about it.

I will still be running confessionsoftheprofessions.com as best as I can.

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