Brandon Posted July 29, 2014 Posted July 29, 2014 Quick back story before I get to my current issues. I spent most of my life alone until my senior year of high school. I met a girl whos self esteem was about as low as mine. The whole fusion thing happened and before I knew it I was 20 and we were getting married. We got drunk on my 21st birtday and she got pregnant. When my son was about a year old she dumped me. "You're boring and I'm miserable. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go shave my legs, I have a date tonight." We didn't talk much after that. 4 or 5 years later circumstances brought us geographically closer together and we started talking more. We had both grown quite a bit. I had told her about freedomain radio and peacful parenting and she loved it. We decided to take another chance on being a family and moved in together. Its been about 3 years and shes ready to dump me again. This is getting hard to write. I need to take a little break.
J. D. Stembal Posted July 29, 2014 Posted July 29, 2014 Tell us about what kind of feelings you are experiencing, being betrayed twice by someone you loved. You don't need to shut down on us. Following your story, your son should be 9 now. How does he feel about all this turbulence invited into his life by his mother? Have you discussed it with him?
Pepin Posted July 30, 2014 Posted July 30, 2014 I'm so sorry about your situation. I can't imagine what that is like.
Brandon Posted July 30, 2014 Author Posted July 30, 2014 Sorry for leaving everyone hanging. A lot happened yesterday and then I had to go to work. So, back to the story. Our relationship was good. We are both resonable people. But it was based on a desire to give our son a stable family, not based on compatablilty. Deep down I knew we were't going to grow old together, but I thought we were happy enough to give our son. We loved spending time together, sex was great, we made a good team as far as running a household. I couldn't really ask for anything more. So, then she got this great job oppertunity in Denver. The place I was working had just shut down and moved to another state so we had nothing holding us to California. We didn't have much money at the time but luckily her boss was willing to rent her a room for the first month. In the meantime we saved money and soon enough my son and I were on our way to join her. I was misserable for that month and a half without her, and what I found when I got to Colorado was that she realized how much happier she was on her own.Without me. She kept telling me everything was fine. But I knew it wasn't. Eventually I got her to tell me about her experiance being alone in denver, making new friends and all. It was pretty upsetting to hear how much happier she was without me. But I didn't assume she was going to break up a family over it. That didn't come out for another month or so. When we had that coversation she said she was willing to get some counciling or somthing first. I didn't believe her. She said the same thing the first time she dumped me and then continued to date other people. So I asked her if she was serious about wanting to get proffesional help first. She assured me she was. I still didn't belive her. So it was supposed to be bussiness as usual until we got some help and figured things out, but I knew it was really just until it was more convienaint for her to leave. I have been working nights part time so I can hang out with my son during the day. I need to start making money so I'm going to be switching to full time soon. My (ex)wife and I are going to be seeing a lot less of each other. If we were going to get help for our relationship we had to commit to it now. I knew how that coversation was going to end so I was kinda freaking out. That's when I stared this thread. My ex got home from work shortly after I wrote the first part of the story. The conversation pretty much went just like this. "If you have any amount of respect for me you will be completely honest. Do you have any interest in working out our relationship?" "No." "I need you to find somewhere else to live" To be honest I felt a lot better afterwords. I've never doughted myself more than I have over the past few months. I believed her when she told me everything was fine. I thought I was being paranoid. "I must be more fucked up in the head than I thought". I guess I'll just call it a lesson in trusting myself more. Tell us about what kind of feelings you are experiencing, being betrayed twice by someone you loved. You don't need to shut down on us. Following your story, your son should be 9 now. How does he feel about all this turbulence invited into his life by his mother? Have you discussed it with him? I've always had a hard time making friends. I have a hard time believing people like being around me. I remember my first few days in kindergarden when we had recess the teacher would leave the classroom door open so she could still keep an eye on the kids if she was in the classroom. When no one was looking i would slip into the space between the door and the wall and wait for recess to be over. My current situation has been bringing up a lot of those old feelings and memories. Its like its confirming my oldest and strongest fear. That I'm just not very likable. As for my son, he'll be 9 in november. I can't place all the blame on his mother for the past. We were two broken people who had no bussiness having kids in the first place. As for the current situation, we haven't had that conversation yet.
DavidWebb Posted July 31, 2014 Posted July 31, 2014 I'm so sorry to hear what you're going through, Brandon. This must feel terrible. You say that you feel like hiding away. But how do you feel towards your (ex) wife nowadays? Are you angry with her, for example? It sounds like you're excusing her and blaming yourself, for some reason.
RuralRon Posted July 31, 2014 Posted July 31, 2014 The above question is spot on imo. I find it really hard to get angry with women I have any affection towards, otherwise I have no problem standing up for myself. It's exactly what my dad modeled. I do remember how angry I got one time though when my first real girlfriend in my senior year of high school decided she wasn't going to talk to me anymore, but that is the only case I can think of getting angry with a woman I had feelings for. So I'm lead to ask, what was your relationship like with your parents? Are you repeating a pattern you learned from them? If so, how will you overcome that to change your future? How will you become aware of the underlying issues so you don't model this to your son? I have in many ways just begun my journey of self discovery, and can't offer much in the way of advice. You also have the complicating factor of a 9 year old child which needs to be your top concern. He is your future, humanity's future. I'll be honest, there's no quick or easy fix as you probably already know. The good news is you are here, and for me personally I am enormously grateful I've found FDR. It gives me hope for meaningful change as I hope it will for you too. But you will need to be very honest and work hard to cut through your defenses and develop close friendships to work through the challenges. Finding a good therapist is also highly recommended. The tradeoffs you need to make between healing yourself and providing for your son will be tough to make, in terms of time and money resources and how to split them. But FDR is a great resource to helping you figure things like that out. I'm truly sorry you have to go through this Brandon, my heart goes out to you and the pain you are feeling right now.
J. D. Stembal Posted July 31, 2014 Posted July 31, 2014 Our relationship was good. We are both resonable people. But it was based on a desire to give our son a stable family, not based on compatablilty. Deep down I knew we were't going to grow old together, but I thought we were happy enough to give our son. We loved spending time together, sex was great, we made a good team as far as running a household. I couldn't really ask for anything more. There are so many contradictions here. I would argue that you weren't asking for what you, and your son, needed. You can't expect love from your ex-wife when you are settling for less. Did she consult you before she made the move to Denver from California? What were your thoughts and feelings about it? "I'm so much happier without you," is such a manipulative act that it's ridiculous. Happiness comes from within a person. Moving to Denver didn't make her feel happier from within, I can assure you that, having lived there myself for a while. It's a leftist cesspool filled with battalions of tattooed vegan feminists all ready to wage war on men.
Brandon Posted July 31, 2014 Author Posted July 31, 2014 I'm so sorry to hear what you're going through, Brandon. This must feel terrible. You say that you feel like hiding away. But how do you feel towards your (ex) wife nowadays? Are you angry with her, for example? It sounds like you're excusing her and blaming yourself, for some reason. I've deffinetly been feeling a lot of anger towards her over the past few weeks. I do have a tendancy to blame myself. I think a lot of that comes from uncertainty. I guess I'm just not sure how to feel about her decision. I think she is right when she said we aren't good for each other. I think our relationship would worked great when we were just trying to maintain a household, but in terms of personal growth I think we are holding each other back. I think this is why I titled this thread "feeling pretty lost". I've thought about all this so much from so many different perspectives I don't know how to make sense of it all. The above question is spot on imo. I find it really hard to get angry with women I have any affection towards, otherwise I have no problem standing up for myself. It's exactly what my dad modeled. I do remember how angry I got one time though when my first real girlfriend in my senior year of high school decided she wasn't going to talk to me anymore, but that is the only case I can think of getting angry with a woman I had feelings for. So I'm lead to ask, what was your relationship like with your parents? Are you repeating a pattern you learned from them? If so, how will you overcome that to change your future? How will you become aware of the underlying issues so you don't model this to your son? I have in many ways just begun my journey of self discovery, and can't offer much in the way of advice. You also have the complicating factor of a 9 year old child which needs to be your top concern. He is your future, humanity's future. I'll be honest, there's no quick or easy fix as you probably already know. The good news is you are here, and for me personally I am enormously grateful I've found FDR. It gives me hope for meaningful change as I hope it will for you too. But you will need to be very honest and work hard to cut through your defenses and develop close friendships to work through the challenges. Finding a good therapist is also highly recommended. The tradeoffs you need to make between healing yourself and providing for your son will be tough to make, in terms of time and money resources and how to split them. But FDR is a great resource to helping you figure things like that out. I'm truly sorry you have to go through this Brandon, my heart goes out to you and the pain you are feeling right now. My parents have just about the worst relationship I've ever seen. My mother is an aggresive angry woman and my dad barely exists (he's an alcoholic). I deffinetly have a hard time existing in relationships. My ex however is nothing like my mother. My lack of preferences and confidance in our relationship was a problem for her. There are so many contradictions here. I would argue that you weren't asking for what you, and your son, needed. You can't expect love from your ex-wife when you are settling for less. Did she consult you before she made the move to Denver from California? What were your thoughts and feelings about it? "I'm so much happier without you," is such a manipulative act that it's ridiculous. Happiness comes from within a person. Moving to Denver didn't make her feel happier from within, I can assure you that, having lived there myself for a while. It's a leftist cesspool filled with battalions of tattooed vegan feminists all ready to wage war on men. Just to clarify she never said things "I'm so much happier without you," That was more of how I experianced it. Sorry for the confusion.It was actually more like her trying to convince me that I was better off without her. Which really pissed me off because she was just trying not to be the bad guy. As for the moving to denver thing, it was a mutual decision. It was a great opportunity for her and I thought would be best for the family in the long run.
villagewisdom Posted August 20, 2014 Posted August 20, 2014 So sorry to hear that your heart is broken. Sounds like you and she have made some really bad choices. How is your son? And do you have a plan for your next steps?
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