My Ruby Wedding

Plan a nice day for tomorrow. Today it might be spoiled by sad thoughts. Don't spend day alone try to distract yourself.

My husband left me after 34 years and a few years ago there seemed to be a spate of golden weddings locally and I did feel deprived and bitter for some time.

However when my still married friends talk about their husbands who must have meat and two veg everyday or watch sport on the television or go into sulks when their wives go out, I count my blessings. And this is without mentioning those friends who have to visit their husbands daily in unsatisfactory care homes or care for them themselves. Chin up. The sun is shining. Federer won Wimbledon (at his great age!!!) and Dr Who is a woman.

I think something people don't know what to say. I tend to just say thinking of you today.
I found your post really ready sad, it's one thing when you have lost your husband to death but yours is quite a different situation and just as painful.
I hope you got through the day, maybe start focusing on you and plan how you can focus on not missing him so much from now on. Easier said then done I do know but just small steps forward.

I am so sorry. Lift a glass of bubbly and pay tribute to you! Perhaps a turning point in your life to make something different of it.

I wish you well and all good thoughts xx

Joining in with things luluaugust I also feel is important. Use this next year to start some new friendships. Recently there was a forum on that problem with lots of ideas and there are many people in the same situation so maybe next year you will have a new friend or met up with an old friend who you could go out with.

Not easy, but you can do it and gransnet can help.

Slutygran I will look out for a toyboy.....watch this space ?

Kacee just maybe 2 1/2 years on you could start to think about joining in with things again , I do hope so, how about a Gransnet meet up.

So sorry for your pain and upset, it really is so hard.
Do go out and treat yourselves, find a toy boy, spend all your cash on some nice clothes - whatever makes you feel good.
No husband = no rules, I realised, so it's not all bad. Big loves all round.

Radicalnan.........beautiful quote...so much truth in it.

Kacee, sending you a virtual hug too.

When love goes sour, when you are rejected that pain does linger. When it doesn't hurt as much there are still those significant dates that remind you of happier times. Poignant moments and yes, the end of the dream of how it was supposed to be.

Many of us don't get our happy-ever-afters as far as love is concerned, unfortunately. I am glad your feelings for him are fading but when you are the one left alone after your partner moves on there is a painful void.

Be good to yourself and try to see the rest of your life as a grand adventure. We don't know what is waiting around the corner for us. I hope good things await, but in the meantime, make plans for yourself. You deserve a treat, so do something enjoyable for yourself soon.

Tessa you have got it all exactly right.
I don't have any friends to go out with so yes surviving not living is what I do

Feel sad for you. But already you are saying "ah well till next year" this suggests to me that you are far from over him and spend your time thinking and wishing.Of course you are hurting you were together along time, but do you feel that you may benefit from talking to someone as it feels like you are grieving for someone you've lost, and it sounds like you are just surviving instead of living. Hope you don't feel I'm being harsh but I have abit of experience with this feeling.

I do hope your day went well, sending a huge hug, good luck in the future.

I wish I had written this, sums it all up for me at least.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

The words of the incomparable Louise Erdrich

You have known love and marriage, it may not have ended as you hoped but it was in your life, celebrate that anniversary, it is yours to keep and you are certainly not alone with the disappointment. Love is a stinker, one of you leaves or one of you dies.........that alone is what makes it so precious when it happens.

Hope you got through yesterday ok. Look towards future, and plan good things based on the love this page has sent you. Good luck x

We are acknowledging it right here. I would be crass to say "happy anniversary" but we can congratulate you on firstly having sustained a presumably good marriage for 37 years and secondly surviving being abandoned. Give yourself a very nice day of coffee/lunch with friends,shop for clothes, do something just for yourself, like reading in the sun, taking a boat trip, going to a film or whatever you enjoy. And maybe even get drunk if that's what you feel like. Acknowledge the happiness and the sadness. Life's rich pattern.

A wee break maybe? A bus tour for a couple of days is good for folk on their own, or with a friend? A spa day? Anything u fancy, celebrate the good parts then celebrate the fact u r moving on!

life never does turn out how we expect it to does it. Poor you - sun is shining today (well it is where I am) so enjoy the lovely weather and I hope you will look after yourself for a few days - as the others have said, go on - spoil yourself!

We split up just after 25th anniversary. Would have been Ruby last year. I so regretted getting married on Valentines Day....just can't forget it...hahaha. I have moved on and have a totally new life now. As said take your self out for the day with a friend. Treat yourself to something nice...you deserve it. x

I feel for you Kacee, you had a lot of good years together, but start to plan what you want out of life, no one else, just you and make it happen, something to look forward to. You can have a very good life, albeit different.

With him since you were 13? Maybe you outgrew each other? Or perhaps, rather, you matured and he didn't, which is why he went for a "younger model?"

I bet there's a lot you haven't done/would like to do that you couldn't because he didn't want to, etc. Now you can. You still have a lot of living ahead of you. You might even find a new love, for all you know. Onward and upward!

As Kitty says maybe your sadness is as much about the loss of what might have been the hopes and dreams you started out with 40 years ago as the loss of the man himself. Wishing you happy times in the year to come ?

Thank you all for your kind words.
The day is nearly over an on the whole I have been OK.
Let's see what the next year brings ]

I'm sorry kacee. Most of us go into marriage with high expectations and that must be sad for you even if you aren't so bothered about the man himself.

The day will soon be over.Hugs xx