I Loved Someone That Didn't Love Me

There is nothing rewarding or romantic about unrequited love. Several close members of my own family, including a former wife, have deliberately lied to and cheated me at one time and then afterwards sought my help in times of personal difficulty. It is difficult to come to terms with the fact that someone you love is mistreating you, but the longer you put up with it the worse you feel about yourself. Their treatment of me was unconscionable and I ended up feeling angry not at them, but at myself for putting up with it. When I finally took back control of my own life by saying no to them about certain behaviours, those relationships ended badly. They didn't have to end at all. I did not want to exclude them from my life, I simply had to draw the line on some of these dishonest behaviours and the unreasonable excuses they gave me when they bothered to offer any excuse at all. When I started saying no to them about certain particular things they excluded themselves by breaking off all contact proving conclusively that they knew their expectations were unreasonable. I divided our assets fairly and gave her a generous share of the house I bought, saw my children at weekends and paid child support until they both left school and became able to support themselves. All of this must have been terrible for our two children, it wasn't that great for me either. Why do people do it? As I've said elsewhere on Similar Worlds real winners don't cheat and cheats don't win.