Jeni - One Year Later

"The past year has been a bumpy road to say the least but I feel like things are finally starting to get back on track. After much convincing on his behalf, I agreed to marry the man that I told the Wildflowers about. I loved him very much and I was convinced that if I could just remove him from the circumstances he had surrounded himself with and offer him a fresh start, we would be alright.

Two weeks before our wedding date and the night before he was supposed to move from Utah to California into our new house, he called everything off because he had met a new man. Naturally, I was beyond devastated - but this time something new happened to me that hadn't happened all the other times that I had been mistreated, used and deceived by him - I got angry. Anger proved to be the cure to my blindness and gullibility and the key to my self-empowerment.

I am dating somebody new now that is a wonderfully honest and patient man. He suffers a lot for the damage I received from the five years I spent in my previous relationship, but he is good and loving and willing to wait for time to heal me. I have seen my ex once since we broke up but now that I am happy with somebody new, he of course has tried to break back into my life anyway he can - making promises and more promises that now I know he will never keep. He claims he has been in therapy and getting help for his SSA and the damage that has been inflicted on him but I also know that he is still unwilling to give up his old life and his old connections.

I never got the chance to thank you and the Wildflowers for the support that you provided me. Compared to many of the stories I heard from fellow Wildflower women, I know that I am relatively lucky that I got out when I did. It was still, however, the darkest period in my life. I cannot express to you how comforting it was just to know that there were other women out there going through the same thing I was experiencing."