Hey Pandas, How Did You Turn Your Greatest Failure Into A Learning Experience? (Closed)

Staying with an abusive boyfriend for 7 years. Because of him I ended up dropping out of school and worked part-time in retail. Isolated from my friends and family…missed out on a lot of family occasions and moments I’ll never get back because of him. My mental health wasn’t good either. I was depressed and felt like my life was going no where. I wanted to die. I finally worked up the courage to leave him.
I did a complete 180. I worked on my mental health, improved my relationship with my family and I went back to school! I even started dating someone who treats me like a queen. I am much happier now!

Relationships. Always been difficult, but I'm genuinely trying to do my best. However, I often fail.

i smacked my nuts on a steel pole, never going near one again.

I had a boyfriend once. September of 4th grade, leaned in for my first kiss, with TOUNGE. Then he SHOVED ME AWAY and said “We’re over, be more athletic if you want someone like me.” So I planned my revenge, as one does. I got all my friends who had their own crushes on the stupid boys. That March brought our own mini Olympics. Guess who came in dead last, my ex.

Looking back he probably just wanted an excuse to breakup and wasn’t ready for love. I was an idiot for just leaning in to kiss him knowing how reluctant he was to even call us bf/gf. I’ve learned a lot more about love since, like maybe not kiss with tongue the first time,

After postponing marriage for several years, I finally married at 31. I thought he was my best friend. One of the reasons I married him was because his parents AND his grandparents were still married, something I could never imagine, as I grew up with a single mom. Everything was wonderful for almost three years, and then things started to get strange. I had always been the organizer and financial planner, but he suddenly said that he wanted to take on those responsibilities because it was "the man's job" in his culture. I was VERY reluctant, but I thought I had double checks on everything... we had one checkbook, a desk model, (it was all checks back in the day) so that either of us could look at the finances at any time, no checks could be written in secret, etc. Then, things started happening... the power was cut off because he "forgot" to pay the bill, things like that. When I would question him, he'd have some plausible excuse. Then a friend came to me at work and said "I just saw in the public record, your house is in foreclosure". I was scheduled to be in the hospital in two days for breast cancer surgery. I called my ex and said we needed to talk... he disappeared. I was frantic, I had no idea what was going on or what had happened. I had to get his mom to take me to the hospital. A few hours after I got home from surgery, detectives were knocking at my door, looking for him. They even searched the house for him, as though I was hiding him. I hired a private detective, who found him and repossessed the car he was driving, it was in my name. When I opened the trunk, every bill I had ever paid, every check I had written, was in the trunk of the car... in the envelopes, with stamps on them, to be mailed. He would hide the bills, and then use the ATM to remove that same amount of money from the bank so it always looked right. I found myself in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, overnight. I lost my house, my car, pretty much everything. When I questioned his parents, they said "yeah, he's done this before, but we thought you'd cured him of that". Though they were well off, they refused to help me in any way. I was at my lowest, when I decided that I needed therapy to help deal with all of this. It took me a couple of years, but I pulled everything back upright. I called all the creditors, and told them what happened, and that I would pay them back, as long as they didn't mess with me, because if they did, I was going to do what my attorneys advised, and declare bankruptcy, and they'd get nothing. Almost every creditor worked with me; forgave part of the debt, reduced the interest, extended terms, to help me out. I found a lovely old couple who agreed to give me a mortgage on a little house. I worked long hours for a long time, but everything is paid for, and I was even able to retire early. I was so miserable and fragile when this all happened, but honestly, adversity has a way of making us stronger, more compassionate, more determined. I was even able to forgive my sociopathic ex-husband, because anger corrodes the vessel that hold it. It's been a long trip, but I don't know that I would change anything. I still sometimes think it would be nice to have had the kind of marriage his parents and grandparents had, but I guess we play the hand we're dealt.

Greatest failure...Hmmmm...
Well, I lost at least three friends that I'd tried to be nice to because they were new and I knew how they felt, not belonging, and they all stabbed me in the back and so now I know not to make friends or trust people. :)
But now I have one good person in my life and so I hope that never backfires on me ehheh....

Trust no one and "love" is indeed conditional.
You can only count on yourself.