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Viewing 15 posts - 841 through 855 (of 870 total)
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  • #339174
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Lindsey:

    “he is extremely insensitive and does not think that hurting me will have an effect on his children”- can you explain to him that hurting a child’s mother is the same as hurting the child (a hurt mother will be a lesser mother to her children)?

    “This all  makes me feel bad about myself and I’m not sure why”- here are a few possibilities in the form of a multiple choice question, read them when you are calm, and answer best you can:

    Q: It hurts me that my soon-to-be ex husband is having a serious relationship with a woman so soon because of one or more of the following:

    a. I feel like a loser because I don’t have any relationship with a man and the couple that I did have were far from stable and serious.

    b. My children will get attached to the other woman in their life and they will love her more- and love me less.

    c. Him being able to have a seeming solid long term relationship, when I don’t, means that  he is mentally healthy and I am messed up.

    d. He is trying to hurt me but I can’t prove it, similar to my mother who tried to hurt me, but I wasn’t able to be sure that she did, or to prove it to her, or to anyone else.

    f. Him being able to have what seems to be a healthy, loving relationship, means that the troubles in my marriage to him were my fault, not his, that I was/ am unhealthy and made terrible mistakes in that marriage.

    g. He is spending money on another woman instead of on my children.

    h. Something else: ___________________________________.

    anita

     

    #339184
    lindsey
    Participant

    Anita,

    Before I answer, I continue to get into texting arguments with him and they get really ugly.  I want to stop  this immediately but I get sucked into them.  It’s almost like an addiction.  I’m thinking of blocking his number and just sending emails.

    My answer would be :

    a. I feel like a loser because I don’t have any relationship with a man and the couple that I did have were far from stable and serious.

    d. He is trying to hurt me but I can’t prove it, similar to my mother who tried to hurt me, but I wasn’t able to be sure that she did, or to prove it to her, or to anyone else.

    My own: It’s unfair.  He has set up a new life/new family with a new person in 2 months.  I’m also afraid it will effect the kids even though it doesn’t seem to effect them now.  She is not me and it’s not the same.  He’s moving things along with her at “warp speed.”  What does this say about her?

    Lindsey

     

    #339188
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Lindsey:

    It is an excellent idea to communicate over email instead of texting, I recommend you do that, do what it takes so to no longer use texting with him.

    It would help me understand better if I could read the texting exchange between him and you. Can you send me a he says/ she says exchange?

    *I will soon write you more.

    anita

     

    #339190
    lindsey
    Participant

    Lindsey: I will not continue these conversations with you.  I get sucked in and it just keeps going and gets ugly.  No more.  I’m ready to block you number and email because the entire thing is unhealthy and sick.   I’m blocking your number. Send me emails from now on.

    Jon: No

    Lindsey: if you need me send a email

    Jon: just stop texting

    Lindsey: No

    Jon: Emergencies etc could happen.  And I don’t look at email.  Just stop texting negative sh*t and stick to the plan.

    Lindsey: You start it half the time Jon.  This is a 2 way street here.

    Jon: Just Stop!!

    Lindsey: blocking. I’ve had it. Start checking your emails now.

    Jon: That is a very bad decision. I won’t review emails. I’m done texting you.

    Lindsey: check emails

    Jon: not doing it.  Bye. Plus we FaceTime the kids and that is in our divorce decree.  I’m not texting you anymore or responding to anything unless it’s about the kids.

    #339194
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Lindsey:

    That doesn’t tell me much. If you have texts before what you sent, texts about his girlfriend- that may be useful to me.  I looked at your posts March-April 2019 in the last half an hour or so, to help me understand better, and will post you later about that. (I may take a nap next, so tired!).

    anita

    #339196
    lindsey
    Participant

    Anita,

    Sorry, I deleted the old texts prior.  Please take your time, no hurry.  Naps are always good:)

    Lindsey

    #339202
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Lindsey:

    Thank you. If I don’t feel fresh later this afternoon, after a walk outside maybe, I will post you again Fri morning. I want to be focused when I do.

    There is a better way for you to deal with this man, the father of your two children, so that you experience way less distress, set a few rules of behavior in regard to him, so that you keep your calm.

    For the rest of the day, relax best you can. I know that you worry a lot about people (ex included), thinking you are crazy or desperate or unstable (“My worry is I don’t want anyone to think I’m crazy or desperate or unstable”, March 2019), but I want to tell you that over 50 pages of your thread, you appear to me consistently and exceptionally (!) sane, sensible and gracious in your communication with me. So really, you are not crazy or desperate or unstable, is what I think.

    anita

    #339344
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Lindsey:

    The following requires reading (or re-reading) at a place and time when you are calm and comfortable:

    When you were a child, your mother paid a lot of positive attention to you. For a whole decade you were her only child. Then when you were a preteen and a teenager she had a second child and a third child.

    What happened during that first decade, when it was just you and her?

    Imagine the following- you are small and you can’t sit by yourself, you are hungry. You cry a bit,  she picks you up, her warm, strong hands holding your small, weak body, and she takes you close to her chest, feeding you. You don’t have words so you don’t think- you just feel. What is it that you are feeling toward those hands and that chest your face is touching as your hunger for food gets satisfied?

    You are lying there,  uncomfortable, wet and itchy, you cry. She comes to you, and those same warm, strong hands pick you up and remove that itchy thing from you, the wet diaper, cleaning you and placing you in a dry, comfortable diaper- what a relief! She talks to  you a bit, you don’t know what she is saying, but her voice sounds gentle and kind. What is that baby feeling about those hands and that voice?

    The baby grows up, what does her mother mean to  her? Food, and warmth, comfort, help, everything.

    An then came the other child and you watch her taking care of someone else, it is no longer you and her. You feel jealous because someone is taking away from you what was only yours, before. Then there is a third child, and soon after—

    — game-over: “she pretty much said you are on your own now and they moved into a new house without a room for me. She emotionally cut herself off from me overnight”- they moved to a new house, meaning your mother and her other two young children. How did it feel?

    This is what I believe you felt and thought when the above happened: “I feel sick to my stomach… Everything about that situation.. makes me feel sick to my stomach.. I get upset all over again.. (She) probably does not think of me at all..  glad (she) doesn’t see me anymore… I feel like someone is punching me in the stomach.. I feel hurt.. I feel betrayed besides hurt…I feel like (she) it trying to hurt me… It’s unfair. (She) has set up a new life/ new family.. moving things along.. at ‘warp speed'”.

    The quotes in the above paragraph are taken from what you shared in March-April 2019 regarding M, a co-worker you were involved with for a short time who bought a drink at a bar for “a tall blonde female at  our office”, and from what you wrote Feb 2020 regarding the father of your children having a girlfriend. (I changed the pronoun he to she in the quotes above).

    The reason you felt so very jealous, so very upset about the blonde woman in M’s life and about the girlfriend in your ex husband’s life, is not because you were wanted either one so badly, not because the relationship with either one was great, but because the two women in the lives of these two men activated your great jealousy and distress over your mother abandoning you and betraying your trust in her- for her new family, a family that didn’t include you.

    You are re-experiencing the same upset that you experienced in your second decade of life. If you understand this thoroughly, you will no longer be so reactive to your ex husband, and so upset about him having a girlfriend. You will be way less upset, and at one point on, not upset at all, because your awareness will take all that upset and place it where it belongs, where it originated, in that life changing, real life experience of abandonment and betrayal.

    anita

    #339350
    lindsey
    Participant

    Anita,

    I agree with what you are saying.  It is the same type of feeling in my stomach with M and with my mother.  However, is it that simple? I feel like there are some other reasons too.  We were married for 11 years and together 12.  I’ve also been thinking this: he was so adamant that I was cheating on him during our marriage or looking at men.  He was very angry when we separated and said I better not bring any man around the kids.  Even at Christmas lunch, he was trying to look at my phone to see who I was texting and would try and sneak behind my shoulder.   And he’s found the love of his life after 2 months?

    I feel like I am sitting here surrounded by…..seagulls.  And I have to use an umbrella because they are flying and the poop keeps raining down on my head.  All the things he has done and said to me are still raining down on me.  I have to deal with the aftermath.

    Am I coming up with excuses for  my feelings?  I don’t know.  I do know that I’ve done some additional research.  And what I’m doing without knowing it is “parallel parenting.”  Lots of people do that when the ex spouse is a narcissist and they just can’t get along.  I’ve blocked his number, blocked him on social media, only talk now through email.  No contact at all if possible.

    Lindsey

    #339358
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Lindsey:

    Here is what I am not saying: I am not saying that there are no valid reasons for you to be angry at your ex.

    What I am saying is that your intense upset over him replacing you with another woman is not about the kind of relationship you had with him for 12 years or so. After all, you experienced the same upset about M replacing you with another woman even though you had a very short relationship with M, a couple of months or so, a relationship that wasn’t even public.

    Your mother replaced you with her two younger children and then moved to a place where there was enough space for the younger two, but none for you.

    The hurt, the anger, the feeling of being punched in the stomach that you experienced with your mother is like hot magma underground. The feelings you experienced regarding M buying a drink for another woman/  regarding ex husband having a girlfriend is like that magma erupting above ground as lava.

    Yes, there are different circumstances to M and ex husband that didn’t exist with your mother, sex is one such thing. Another thing is that your own two children exist now but didn’t exist then- but at the core of your emotional experience is indeed what happened then, your mother abandoning and betraying you.

    Remove that core experience from being directed against your ex, and you will be left with the valid reasons to be angry with him, and that would be overall.. way less anger and way less upset.

    anita

    #339596
    lindsey
    Participant

    Anita,

    My anger is like a thick fog in the early morning. I can’t think or see right in front of me.  It’s hard to write that I feel like I can’t control it.  It’s hard to say out loud it’s not fair that my ex is happy- he doesn’t deserve to be happy.

    I cannot be around him at all.  We are looking into communicating though an app called family wizard.  I told him this morning no talking at Sunday drop off, no getting out of the vehicle when dropping off the kids.

    I feel ashamed of my behavior.  My daughter talks about his girlfriend a lot to me and I don’t like to hear it.  She’s bought my daughter gifts and is around the kids every weekend.  I don’t know how to move forward.  I don’t know how to fix my anger.

    Lindsey

    #339608
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Lindsey

    You described your anger very well: “like a thick fog in the early morning. I can’t think or see righting front of me”-

    – here is what you do:

    1. Remind yourself that the fog dissipates later in the day, it happened yesterday, it will happen again today.

    2. Make sure that no matter how you feel, you will not abuse anyone. For example: you will not scream at your daughter when she talks about her father’s girlfriend.

    3. Enforce strict rules for minimal contact with your ex and keep those rules yourself- do not communicate with him unless it is absolutely necessary in the context of co-parenting.

    4. “it’s not fair that my ex is happy- he doesn’t deserve to be happy”-

    – reminds me of two lines from the movie The Unforgiven: “deserves got nothing to do with it” and  “we all have it coming, kid”. The first is what Clint Eastwood said before he shot the sheriff who said: “I don’t deserve to die like this”, and the second was in the context of two men, a younger guy and an older (Clint Eastwood), having been hired to kill a guy who cut the face of a woman. After the younger guy killed that man, he felt badly about having killed a person for the first time in his life, so to comfort himself he said: “well, he had it coming”. Eastwood replied: we all have it coming. What he meant by it is that we will all suffer, we will all die: the good, the bad, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, all of us, everyone.

    Your ex, he is not in a happily-ever-after situation. Deserving or not, he has a girlfriend now, and deserving or not, the relationship will have problems soon enough. And your ex sometimes feels that anxiety too, that terrible unease as he thinks once in a while about getting sick and dying, as we all do, and he will get sick.. and die, so he has it coming too, like everyone else.

    When you feel that intense anger at him, reminds yourself that he has it coming too, it will make you feel better. Of course, don’t do anything to harm him, but rest in the knowing that he will suffer like everyone else.

    Did you watch The Unforgiven?

    anita

    #339618
    lindsey
    Participant

    Anita,

    I think I have seen parts of Unforgiven.   I’m going to do some self care Sunday activities lol.  Hope you have a good Sunday. And I will try and focus on what you said; it’s definitely true but hard to grasp in the moment.

    Lindsey

    #339620
    Anonymous
    Guest

    You are welcome, Lindsey, and thank you for wishing me a good Sunday. I wish you a fog-less Sunday. Post again whenever you want to.

    anita

    #341098
    lindsey
    Participant

    Anita,

    So.  I had uploaded a dating app awhile ago and was looking on it while I was so angry at my ex.  I thought it would help talking with someone.   I ended up about a week ago meeting a guy named Derrick.  He lives 3 hours away.  We were talking multiple times a day and everything seemed really great.  We are both divorced with kids.  And somehow my anxiety took over yesterday.  I had posted something sarcastic online about the month of February being awful and March needs to be better.  He responded with February wasn’t awful-it’s turned out pretty great.  I took it as it was because we met.  I responded with a joking “really why  is that?” and he just responded with “It just is lol.”  The rest of the day he was quiet and he didn’t text last night.

    I’m not sure why I got anxious.  Was it the statement? Was it him talking less?  But I feel like here we go again.  And I don’t want to have all these negative feelings.  I don’t understand why my brain is telling me he’s not going to text me again.  I keep saying positive things to myself but I’m exhausted.  I don’t understand why I do this.  I don’t even know if I like this guy.  I’ve never even met him yet!

    On a positive note my kids and I are going home for Easter to Florida to see my parents.  My mother and I continue to be getting along really well.  I close on my new condo next week.

    Lindsey

Viewing 15 posts - 841 through 855 (of 870 total)

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