I Didn’t Expect My Ex To Move On So Quickly With Someone New

It felt like having my heart broken all over again

I wish I could say when I decided a divorce was the only way out of a situation that had run out of all nine lives and second chances, that I was over my ex.

I wasn’t.

But I had to plow forward with it or resign myself to getting wreaked, emotionally and mentally on a daily basis.

I also wish I could say I have stopped loving him despite what happened. But the truth is, I still retained feelings for him in a little alcove of my mind despite what he put me through.

The way each of us perceives love is certainly complicated indeed.

Some may label this codependency or signs of a toxic relationship, but my response would be how can you just up and forget your first love just like that? How can you discard the memories of the good times you once shared, how he took care of you when you were sick, how he taught you driving and patiently took you to drive tests despite running down the front cones and back cones 3 times in a row while trying to parallel park due to a sudden attack of nerves?

I still don’t get how it is easy for some people to move on without seemingly a second thought while others spend months if not years cycling through the 7 stages of grief.

It’s impossible for me to unlove a person I’ve shared my life with just like that.

My ex’s new girlfriend is named Ana. She appears to be a slim, pretty woman, Latina gauging from her features. How do I know? No, I did not creep on my ex’s social media to find out but her photograph popped up on a device he had left behind.

This happened even before our divorce was finalized. And along with it were the messages he sent her.

Now, one could wonder if this happened on purpose. That he made sure I would come across it. I wouldn’t say he is not beyond this sort of manipulative games but still, I recall feeling this weird clammy sensation all over and the ground moving from underneath me.

Surprisingly, I didn’t fall apart then from the shock. It was more of a slow onset over a period of days.

Yes, he was my ex and it is natural for people to move on and find happiness as my friends were quick to remind me.

True, however, they were missing the point.

The point being, was I so unimportant, so unmemorable to him to be able to pursue another relationship even before the ink on the divorce decree had dried?

Here I was mourning the end of our relationship, while over there he was comparing weekend schedules with Ana. Although I knew something like this was inevitable after a breakup, the pain of knowing my ex had quickly found happiness with someone else felt like bandaids being ripped off wounds that had barely started to heal.

It was almost as if he was waiting for a starting pistol to sound in order to hop on dating apps full throttle. And he hit the mother lode early in the game or so I presumed.

My first instinct was to block him on all social media and go no contact for I certainly didn’t want to know what he was up to with Ana. Neither did I want my feed to be flooded with pictures of the ‘happy couple.’

Instead, what I did was look Ana up, trying to see what she had (that I didn’t)for him to be so taken with her. Sleuthing on my ex’s new girlfriend wasn’t one of my finest moments and rather than help alleviate my curiosity, it only served to further exacerbate my pain.

The mind can do strange things when you are grieving especially late at night when you have only your thoughts for company. I won’t deny the thought of reaching out to him did not cross my mind especially when the loneliness gets to you.

I even did truth be told. But not begging him to take me back. More like trying to pick a fight with him over minor post-divorce housekeeping issues. The thing is we would exchange upwards of a hundred texts a day, setting aside all our work-life priorities, just so we could bicker via the constant back and forths.

In hindsight, it’s clear that we were both not over each other. If we were, we would be indifferent not hate or whatever toxicity it was that we were engaged in.

Did he hold out hope that I’d be the first to cave and beg him to come back?

I don’t know.

Meanwhile, I chose to join a support group. I recall one of the first tearful questions I asked was how can someone who has spent years with you, kept telling you he loved you till the very end, move on so quickly. Our group coordinator said something profound that has stuck with me till today and that was — we don’t know the reasons why your ex chose to move on so quickly and remember the only person you can control is yourself, not your ex.

It made me realize that people deal with change and emotional pain in different ways and not necessarily about how they feel or don’t feel about you. Tindering or Bumbling their way forward could be one way of distracting themselves from things they’d rather not think about.

I think it was at that point that I took stock of my situation and reasserted control of my feelings and decision to separate from him. I was just hung on feelings of what could have been, not what really was.

Understanding it is normal to feel this way and acknowledging these feelings was probably the first step towards acceptance that the relationship is over and the only way is to move forward.

I still communicate with my ex whenever I have to but now it is more businesslike and to the point. I would like to say we have arrived at a point of indifference with the passage of time and the fact that we are in separate relationships.

However, that would not be the complete truth.

He still comes around to take care of my house and repairs pertaining to it. I always leave when he comes around, something we mutually agreed to, however when I return, I can smell his cologne lingering in the air and it brings forth a deluge of feelings, some good, some bad, some utterly heartbreaking.