There’s Nothing Worse than Feeling Replaceable

Being in a long-term relationship of any kind is, in theory, supposed to be the most fulfilling part of anyone’s life. In truth, no relationship between two people is easy. In fact, it’s a lot of hard work. Overall, it should sustain you through the bad times and accentuate the good.

That’s what makes feeling replaceable in a long-term relationship so incredibly heart-wrenching. When it ends and you see that person move on so quickly, it’s devastating. The worst part? The other side will never understand how much hurts unless it happens to them.

Being Replaced

I’m a cisgender man who was in a nearly 20-year-long monogamous relationship with a cisgender woman. Well, it was monogamous for me, at least. What I didn’t know for years was that I had been replaced. A few times. The only reason she was still with me was because she didn’t have the heart to officially end it, even though she basically had.

I tell you this because that is the perspective I see relationships from. I don’t claim to know what it’s like to be a woman married to a man or in a same sex marriage. Still, it’s not hard to imagine that it’s just as painful when one side casually replaces the other regardless of who is involved.

Replaced can mean a lot of things in this context. A relationship comes to an end but one party moves on quicker, finding a new partner within months or weeks. That can leave the other side lonely and broken, wondering what happened and what was wrong with them.

There are also situations where one party finds out the other has been done with the relationship long before it ended. You find out they moved on and started building a new life without you while you were still at home building the life you thought you had. That’s a special kind of pain.

What They Don’t Get

In the case of my wife and her choices, there are a lot of aspects to the damage that was done on her way out she doesn’t understand. To be more precise, she doesn’t want to understand them. There’s a reason she hid and ran rather than talking though our problems. And there were a few.

My wife has a luxury I don’t. Simply put, she knows what was real and what wasn’t. I don’t know when the cheating started. I don’t know why. I don’t know if she ever actually loved me or not. I don’t know which parts of our almost 20 years together were real and which parts were lies.

I don’t know, but she does. She won’t tell me, either, though it’s not like I’d trust her if she did. This is a person who has lied to me about a myriad of topics, so much so that the cheating might not be the worst of it all. If she told me she always loved me, I couldn’t believe her.

For the partner left behind after a relationship ends, some version of this reality is often true. Regardless of the exact scenario, you’ve been replaced. I was. And I have never felt lower in my life. There’s an emptiness rimmed with agony like salt on a margarita glass that gets served to you whether you want it or not. Fortunately, there’s a way through it all.

Time is Your Friend

Yeah, this is going to be a huge cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason. Time heals all wounds. It honestly does. If you had asked me how I was feeling after I found out a portion of the truth even two years ago, I would have sobbed uncontrollably until I was so dehydrated that I blacked out. Years later, it’s a different game.

I know my wife’s choices reflect poorly on her, not me. I know I didn’t matter to her, but I matter to me. I know she didn’t see any value in our relationship, but I did and I am proud of the work I put in. I may never know if she loved me or not, but I loved her with everything I had.

The person who moves on the fastest isn’t the winner. No one wins in these situations. It just is what it is. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust enough to find myself in another relationship. At the same time, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Regardless, I am comfortable and content with who I am.

Honestly, the biggest and most profound realization that you, as the one who has been replaced, can have is that you can’t be replaced. There’s only one of you. Their new partner isn’t you, and their lives are worse for not having you in it. So, move on, whatever that looks like for you, and live.