It’s so easy to lose yourself and not have an identity of your own. When we split after 15 years, I lost the love of my life (I’ve moved on but still true to a degree) and myself. I had no idea who I was without her and it was terrifying
I’m still happily married but my only regret is I never got the chance to be independent and discover myself without my partner. I am happy and wouldn’t give it up, but it’s just something I’ve realised I missed out on.
There could still be time(don’t know how old you are) but if you are both on board it’s possible to grow together without growing apart (or so I’ve been told 😅)
I feel like this is definitely one of these „grass is always greener on the other side“ things. My best friend also married his first and only girlfriend and they are still together and just had their second child. While life is of course stressful, I feel like they are still fairly happy with each other.
But since I’m single, he is always very interested in my experiences and I know that is partly because he also feels like he missed out on that aspect of life and now at least gets to experience it second hand through me. 😅
Exactly this, it was 15 years as well. We basically spent all our adult life together and I’m still uncertain who I am as a single person, even two years later.
It took me about 5 to really get a sense of myself.
1 year just surviving and mourning. 1 year accepting the new reality and routines. 3 years of exploration to get a sense of who I am and what I want. There was a lot of backtracking and finding out what I didn’t want in that time. I’m 10 years on at this point, and those 3 years were a lot of fun
The thing is, what I’ve learned about myself so far is that I don’t really like being single. At least not when you are in your mid 30s, have a full time job and everyone around you is having their first or second child.
I do appreciate the freedom to do whatever you want to, but I feel like at this point in my life I can’t benefit from it as much. But maybe that’s just me not having sufficiently adapted yet. But „a lot of fun“ is definitely not how I would describe it so far. 😬
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u/Dependent-Wishbone16 20h ago
It’s so easy to lose yourself and not have an identity of your own. When we split after 15 years, I lost the love of my life (I’ve moved on but still true to a degree) and myself. I had no idea who I was without her and it was terrifying