I'm back for a while

[ClingingToHope]

I was posting here extensively in 2009, 2010 and 2011. It was my lifeline to sanity and then ... I guess I didn't need this place for a while.

Well, this has been a strange week and it's bringing me back for a bit. The divorce is two years and a few months old. In 2009, after I moved out (by request, I left thinking she'd beg me back in a month, life's big mistake) XW started seeing this Harley riding guy from a small town about 30 minutes away. Her best friend, who I considered a friend, set them up. It ended in 2010 and 2011 then they started dating again in Feb. 2012.

Yesterday, my 11-year-old told me XW is pregnant. She said XW told her she was on birth control and it wasn't planned. Today, 14-year-old filled me in on rest of plans. Harley guy is moving into my old house and they plan on getting married after the baby is born. She is 42. He is 43.

The old house is big enough that everyone gets their own room. It is good for me in a way because I live five minutes from there and I see the kids a lot. Every Wednesday after school. Every Thursday and every other weekend -- Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

We'd had a fight in the summer where she threatened to move in with the boyfriend in the small town. I told her I regretted not fighting for custody in 2010, 2011 and if she moved it would mean far less time with my daughters and I'd spend every penny fighting for custody this time.

I don't know if that scared her. I think instead it was my 14-year-old, who is a freshman in high school, telling her that if she moved to the small town then she'd come live with me.

So now, D14 says the plan is the new couple will stay in my area -- in my old house -- until D14 goes to college. D11 will then either be in 8th or 9th grade -- there's issues there -- and Dll will be old enough to decide whether she'll move to new small town with mom, Harley guy, and the toddler or she can stay with me and stay in the school district she's grown up in.

The bright side is that at least for a couple of years none of these arrangements change.

My head is all over the place on all of this. If anyone remembers my old posts, I'm one of those 1 percenters. I never wanted the divorce and no matter what I've tried, there's 1 percent of me who still believes she'll wake up someday and realize this was all a mid-life crisis and she made a mistake.

So I've been tremendously sad at times. I was thinking about the pregnancies of my girls. I love being a father. I loved it when she was pregnant. It was tiring, but those are some of the greatest moments of my life. The fact she'll be sharing that experience with someone else brings back a lot of hurt.

Plus, it complicates things in the future. Christmas. Vacations. Graduations. Weddings. There'll be this other kid involved who is not mine. I wasn't prepared for this one. I thought at her age this wasn't going to happen.

I burned up a lot of minutes the past two nights with friends and family and I hear what they are saying and my head knows they are right. This is a train wreck and I should feel lucky it's not my child.

XW was at least 40 pounds overweight before this pregnancy. Harley guy is a janitor at a company and makes OK money. He's the proverbial bad boy. He owns a car, truck and motorcycle and heads to the bar or out with the boys during the week and then bangs my XW on the weekends before going out to work on his truck. So he hasn't exactly been good for her. She looks awful, but keeps telling the girls how she's going to get back into shape.

Now, he's moving into a house with one teenage girl, an ADHD child hitting puberty, a dog, a cat, a bunny and a moody woman who wasn't a very energetic mother when she was in her 20s and a size 2 who also works 50 to 60 hours a week.

One thing I know. It's easy to be a boyfriend/girlfriend. No strings. You see each other when it's convenient. It's damn hard to be a husband and a father. I may be mediocre at a lot of things, but I'm a very good father. So now the rubber will hit the road in this MLC.

I've always thought D14 would end up with me at least half the time. When she was 9 and this happened she asked to live with me and I said I wanted to keep her and her sister together. She knows that at 16 she can decide her own arrangements. This situation might speed up that timeline.

D11? I don't know. She always wanted a baby brother or sister. So she's going to be extremely excited for a while. Of course, one this guy is there every day (they only see him four or five days a month now) maybe that changes.

Time will tell.

It's weird how life works because up until this week things were going pretty swimmingly in 2013.

I've been on dates with eight different women since the split up. Several through Match. One through DateHookup and another through OK Cupid. I've dated -- multiple dates -- three. The first was just a couple of dates and I ran away scared. She was crazy. But it was 2010 and I needed to get on with things.

The second lasted for three months in 2011-2012 and I broke that off right before I found out that XW and Harley guy were back together. She was just pushing for more than I was prepared to give.

This last one has been going on since November 2012. She's an English professor at the local community college. She has a D11. A very nice house and doesn't need fixing of any kind. And she's working tremendously hard to make me happy.

And I just don't feel for her what I felt for XW and I feel guilty that I let it go on. I enjoy my time with her. I've had more sex in this past near year than the last 5 combined with XW. And she rarely pushes me for anything.

I wanted to stop seeing her after two dates but the friend who set us up said that the list of must haves I had was so unrealistic that I could either resign myself to being alone for the rest of my life or I could give in on a couple of things.

And then there's the fact that I've made poor decisions when I let my heart lead the way instead of my head. This woman is perfect for me. Educated. XW barely passed high school and stopped going to my company functions after a couple of years because she said she felt intimidated by the conversation.

In shape. She's a vegetarian trying to go full vegan. She runs. Does yoga. Rides bikes. She's active.

She's a very good mother. Her D11 wants to go to an Ivy League school. I'm using the math tutor she has for Dll for my girls because math is their weakness.

Her family is very happy. All successful. No black sheep. XW's is a mess. They just drain the life out of people.

The girls have met her and really like her.

So what's the holdup? She's not a cheerleader/pom pon girl.

Honestly. When I trace it all the way back, that's it. I was a basketball/baseball player growing up. I was so into sports though that I was well behind on the social scene. I didn't have my first kiss until I was 16 and my first girlfriend until I was 17.

Being on the basketball team, I was always around cheerleaders and had crushes on several. But they were usually already taken and I was too shy.

I met XW when I was 17 and she was 15. She went to another school. I was at a party and became friends with a group of girls from the school. XW was one of them. But she was so quiet while I was outgoing that I scared her. She was gorgeous and I always wanted to ask her out, but I was intimidated because she never talked to me.

Fast forward. I go away to college. Come back and I was no longer scarecrow skinny. We ran into each other one night and afterward she pursued me. The night I found out she wanted to go out with me will remain burned in my memory forever - probably through Alzheimers. It so FED MY EGO that I ignored red flag after red flag and married her.

At my wedding reception a friend came up to me and said "you did a lot better for yourself than I thought you would."

I was mad at the statement and proud. I married the cheerleader, the beauty queen. I thought with my lower half. So when you ask why am I continuing the relationship with the professor I guess I'm waiting to see if I'll ever grow up and let my past go.

Money wise. It's still a struggle. I work for a newspaper so I haven't gotten a raise in five years. I'm very lucky to still have a job and to have risen high enough before the recession that I make OK money.

It's not enough to live well on with child support so I've carved out a schedule where I keep score at a high school for about $1,200 to $1,500 in December, January and February. I make about $2,000 a year umpiring youth baseball in April, May, June and July. I do the books for my sister's business in Minnesota and she pays me $100 a month. And I'm writing the autobiography of a bigwig in town. He pays me quarterly. I've made $1,500 this year doing that. I have another year to go on the project.

It's enough to allow me in April to move from a tiny house (1,000 square feet) to a 1,500 square foot one owned by a friend for just $100 more a month. He wanted to move to Fla. and he didn't want to sell in this real estate market. So again, I got lucky. Still, it's a stretch. But the neighborhood is beautiful. The girls and I have room to stretch out. It's actually a better house and better living situation than XW's. D14 said she wants me to never leave this house.

I got a settlement in the summer from a 2011 car accident that allowed me to buy a time share -- a small one, I didn't get rich - so I can take the girls to many of the places we dreamed about pre divorce. We did Disney in April. Next year, D.C. The year after New York. The year after that Texas. Then hopefully California.

I will work, work, work and work some more to make that a reality. I have $22k for D14's college and $19k for D11. That's pretty good considering everything. The girls are old enough now to see how much work I put into making sure their lives are limited as little as possible by this divorce. But they also are old enough now to know when and why their dad is hurting and to wonder if I'll ever completely get over this.

I was in a church group in 2010 and 2011 and I admitted something that I have to remember now.

I'm a mess. I'll always be a mess. I just need to become less of a mess every day.

How's that for a welcome back post.