Submitted on Friday, November 28, 2008
By Goodbyegal, 53, from Florida:

My man of 10 years just started fighting with me and putting me down out of the blue.We "never" had bad words to each other, no arguments in the entire relationship .Things were great .I became only a of shell of myself I lost all self esteem. I soon found out that he met a woman who had "just" been released from a Federal Prison and was in a federal Half Way House.She had spent 6 years for trafficking Crack through 3 States, has an extensive record that also includes Violence, got pregnant while in Prison. She still has 5 more years Probation to do. He got her a house, furnished it, paid all her fines and Probation Fee's.Got her custody of her child, had her teeth all fixed, bought her a car and lives with her now.Let me add that this man is anti drug! I just don't understand.She isn't any Beauty Queen,she is actually pretty scary looking.He's 65, she is 44.The child is 6 and he used to get upset when the my or his Grandchildren used to be around for too long.What happened here? I am so confused! I can't seem to get over this! For some reason I worry about him.This is so out of character. He was the Love of My Life!

VictorM's advice:

This has nothing to do with my answer but I noticed that you seldom put a space after a period. Interesting punctuation peculiarity.

Sounds like he got tired of the life he had and went in a different direction. Maybe his current behavior is not out of character; maybe 10 years without arguments and bad words was the anomaly. He may have been the love of your life but maybe you weren't his. Maybe he got tired of comfortable and was lured by passion.

You say you worry about him but maybe he got tired of that motherly instinct and instead of being a "son" to you, he wants to be a "father" to someone else and helped her, guide her, heal her. Maybe he feels more useful, more alive, this way.

Maybe his bad language and arguments with you lately are similar to a teenage boy who comes to an age when he feels the need to rebel against his mother. Your continued worrying about him is exactly the one thing that he rejects the most about you. The more you do it, the more he's driven away from you.

Let him go! Stop protecting him. Be mad. Tell him to go fuck himself. Stop being his mom... if you even can.

I have no idea if there is anything that will bring him back or if you two could even be happy, but right now he wants a fun, free-wheeling, dangerous, vulnerable, wilder partner to bring back the excitement he associates with youth and/or passion at a time when old age is taking a firmer grasp of his body.

Please don't read anything I said as to mean that there's anything wrong with you, but that's not what he's after. And remember one more thing: there is nothing that says only one man can be the love of your life.