Abandonment

[Richard49]

As I have shared
much of what I ask and post on these boards have to do
with my struggle as to weather I will continue in the lifestyle
(which also addresses weather I will try to have any relationship again)

Anyway the other day I was talking to a couple of vanilla freinds
and said something about R abanding me. The female freind said something to the effect that we are adults therefore can not be adandoned or suffer abandonment


IMHO when people make committments to each other
and one of the people walks away without any real explaination or support for the other ... it's abandonment

What are your thoughts?

 

[sub princess]

As I have shared
much of what I ask and post on these boards have to do
with my struggle as to weather I will continue in the lifestyle
(which also addresses weather I will try to have any relationship again)

Anyway the other day I was talking to a couple of vanilla freinds
and said something about R abanding me. The female freind said something to the effect that we are adults therefore can not be adandoned or suffer abandonment


IMHO when people make committments to each other
and one of the people walks away without any real explaination or support for the other ... it's abandonment

What are your thoughts?

i completely agree with You Richard. When a commitment is made, whether by agreement, understanding or contract it is still a commitment. i live in a no fault divorce state, but abandonment is still recognized as a grounds for divorce here.

Just because W/we are adults it should not diminish that W/we have feelings, and are hurt when W/we are left all alone, especially if it is without real reason of explaination.

Why is it that society expects U/us as adults to "deal with it?" Does that mean that as adults W/we should not ever feel the security and serenity of relying on S/someone to be at least honest with U/us?

ImHo it seems to me that W/we as a culture makes it to easy for P/people to just "walk away" from T/their commitments... Now i am not saying that O/one should stay at all costs, of course that would be unfair to B/both involved, but if the communication was there at the point the commitment was made, then communication should at least be there through the disolution or breaking of that commitment.

i do not really know Your situation to well Richard, but i myself recently went through a divorce, and though he did not abandon me in the physical sense... he abandoned me emotionally years ago.

God Bless,

s.p.

 

[Shadowsdream]

As I have shared
much of what I ask and post on these boards have to do
with my struggle as to weather I will continue in the lifestyle
(which also addresses weather I will try to have any relationship again)

Anyway the other day I was talking to a couple of vanilla freinds
and said something about R abanding me. The female freind said something to the effect that we are adults therefore can not be adandoned or suffer abandonment


IMHO when people make committments to each other
and one of the people walks away without any real explaination or support for the other ... it's abandonment

What are your thoughts?

The question is difficult to answer as it really has been posed from a personal point of view using You and R as an example...
separating that fact I will still try to answer generically.
...To answer one would really need to know what the committment was in reality and not just in perception.
...Was there no explanation at all or was the explanation seen as inadequate?
...Should a relationship that is unfullfilling to one of the partners be continued out of obligation?
...Would continuing a relationship that was only satisying to one of the partners bring any real joy to either?
For Myself to keep a relationship that only I wanted would trap the other in obligation...it would weaken Me and anger him/her.
I cannot see abandonment as a word that I would use...IF I were to apply this same scenerio to Myself.
We all see life through different glasses at different times in our lives.
I hope that You will find Yourself back in the joy of the D/s world Richard and not allow yesterday to cloud tomorrow.

 

[Johnny Mayberry]

Hmmmm...I have been 'abandoned' (in a vanilla relationship) and it destroyed my sense of self for over a year. When you commit, and depend on the commitment of another, and they leave you abruptly, it is like the world falls away from you, and you are floating in a void. I was lost for so long, and it took me FOREVER to find myself again. I felt unworthy, unloved, and unlovable.

 

[Richard49]

Let me try to clearfy the question .... maybe personal example was not best but it had to do with conversation.......

What was said was
"as adults we can not be adandoned"
This was a nilla stating this

In D/s if sudeenly the sub or Dom who has made a committmet
to the other is no longer there .. they disappeared...or ... no longer respond to communications ...... is that not abandment?

 

[Richard49]

Hmmmm...I have been 'abandoned' (in a vanilla relationship) and it destroyed my sense of self for over a year. When you commit, and depend on the commitment of another, and they leave you abruptly, it is like the world falls away from you, and you are floating in a void. I was lost for so long, and it took me FOREVER to find myself again. I felt unworthy, unloved, and unlovable.

I wish I did not understand

now look at the committment that we in D/s make to each other even if it is marginal ............

 

[Richard49]

Re: Re: Abandonment

I hope that You will find Yourself back in the joy of the D/s world Richard and not allow yesterday to cloud tomorrow.

With what I would condence to call
limited resourses and opprotunities"

I lean more everyday
to leaving the idea of any relationship behind

 

[Johnny Mayberry]

Re: Re: Re: Abandonment

With what I would condence to call
limited resourses and opprotunities"

I lean more everyday
to leaving the idea of any relationship behind

I think that is absolutely your best bet...no one wants you, Richard, not the way you are now...learn to be happy within yourself, and happiness from others will happen on its own.

 

[Shadowsdream]

Let me try to clearfy the question .... maybe personal example was not best but it had to do with conversation.......

What was said was
"as adults we can not be adandoned"
This was a nilla stating this

In D/s if sudeenly the sub or Dom who has made a committmet
to the other is no longer there .. they disappeared...or ... no longer respond to communications ...... is that not abandment?

In that context...yes it could easily be seen and felt as abandonment Richard.
I can't see where age (adult) has anything to do with abandonment issues or feelings.

 

[Justina123]

This topic hits a HUGE nerve for me...I came home one day and my husband of 16 years was simply gone, leaving me with the care of five kids, at that time ages 6 months to 15. The marriage had been rocky for a while (and I accept part of the blame), but I had no clue that he would walk out, nothing had ever been said that would indicate that depth of problem. I found out a couple of weeks later he had moved directly in with another woman who, now 10 years later, he is married to.

So yes- abandonment does exist amongst adults and can be devastating. But- life does go on and we can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep going, just because it's the right thing to do. Of course, I had five very good reasons to keep going.

Anyway, I am a big believer in the "silver lining in every cloud" idea and the power of positive thinking...

justina

 

[princess4u]

i fail to see how a person's age discerns his/her ability to be "abandoned" - being left behind by someone who was your life, your love, your heart and soul feels the same whether you are 20 or 60 - the hurt is real - perhaps with age comes experiences which enable us to better deal with those feelings....

 

[lark sparrow]

I agree that adults can be abandoned, but it's rarely a clear cut issue as it's often felt on both sides.

From one of the other examples: Divorce is the formal abandonment and "closure" of the marriage, and in this both may feel abandoned. Someone who has withdrawn from the relationship emotionally, may very well feel abandoned when their former partner initiates divorce.


Another example. I dated a woman for a few months. She decided she wanted an exclusive dating commitment from me. Several days later she confessed she slept with her ex-girlfriend after our commitment, but wanted to continue our relationship. my feeling was that she would keep the drama going for months with the conflicting and erratic behavior which had surfaced so I decided to cut my losses.

We both felt confused and abandoned in our own ways. She had all sorts of problems that she would have liked help with and she wanted her honesty rewarded and her mistake forgiven. my assessment was that her problems were bigger than my ability to help, and the most likely outcome would be being drug down with her, so I abandoned the relationship.


Another example: When Mistress and I first made a commitment to eachother one of Her immediate family members was diagnosed with cancer just a week later in what would have been our "honeymoon phase". The next year was often highlighted by the progressive disease and Her subsequent care-taking, until the family member passed away. Abandonment was a big issue. She was losing someone primary in Her life and it took much of Her time and energy, which would lead to me feeling abandoned (and feeling guilty for having "selfish", personal feelings, period) as well.

This was Her personal ordeal but it also really effected our relationship and me. It was an outside event that neither of us had any control over and we stayed commited. In the end it strengthened our bond, but if things had been just slightly different, like if I had met Her during the illness instead of before, neither one of us may have desired the commitment or if our relationship was already troubled, when illness struck as a top priority, it very well could have been the last straw.


There is no denying that feeling abandonment of one kind or another hurts deeply, and there's no way to get around it - it takes time to get through it. If one has past abandonment issues it will obviously bring up all the old ones too. It's often said we make choices in life partners based on our most challenging personal issues in striving for growth. The growth that comes from the end of a relationship may not even be in the area of how to do our romantic relationships but at it's core, perhaps about our relationship with ourselves.

I too wish you peace, and I think sometimes that can come, at least in small doses, in appreciating the things we do have at present. Making decisions can give us a sense of direction and control, but life still seems to happen in unexpected ways, for better or worse. Final decisions in life seem to be rare in the nature of change. For instance, an old truism; it's not rare that when one decides they are not seeking a relationship, an opportunity will present itself which cannot be passed up. But in the meantime, everyone grieves a bit differently, and has their own set of unique challenges and ways of coping when life gets to feeling exceptionally hard and uncertain.

 

[Justina123]

Lark, what a thoughtful post.

I guess for me the word "abandonment", though, has a different connotation than having someone leave you, whether through divorce or death or a decision to end a relationship. "Abandonment" to me implies lack of communication, or a sudden departure from a commitment with no explanation. (I'll add the word "purposeful" before departure to not include death as abandonment.)

We talk a lot in D/s circles about communication, and I guess that's what it comes down to again, and why abandonment, at least as I define it (and this is just my subjective definition) can be so difficult. When there is no communcation, any break-up or loss is ten times worse and the person left behind may go through all kinds of emotional self-doubt and trials that could be at least lightened through communication.

Don't know if that is on topic, but as I say, this thread hits a nerve for me too. Peace and hugs, Richard.

-justina

 

[Azalea]

I have such limited experience, having been monogamous for decades and never been abandoned. But I have felt emotionally abandoned....and I know that my uhsband felt I had emotionally abandoned him for years, some time ago......
I can't conceive of a harder pain that feeling unwanted, unworthy, uncared for. I see a lot of my students suffering such feelings already, and it is heart-breaking.
I wish I were physically able to wrap my arms around you, Richard, but I must be content with mere words of empathy, which feel so ........useless, really.......

 

[Richard49]

bump