My Girlfriend and my Divorce

[CRW]

It's been a while, and things have obviously changed for me!

I have a pretty complicated situation that I hope you can help me with.

So with that, let’s get started.

I am in the process of divorcing from my wife. We have filed papers, but are at an impasse as it relates to custody of our 3 children, Rowan (2), Ruby (3), and Jaden (15, the hopefully soon to ben ex’s from a previous relationship, I adopted him). We have been separated now for nearly a year, so while we are still legally married, we have both been dating.

About 4 months ago, I met a great girl, athletic, beautiful, funny, etc etc. She has a 7 month old, and just got done with her own nasty divorce / custody situation. She, however, is out of the situation, and building a decent co- parenting relationship with her ex, vs myself whose scenario is very contentious and stressful with my own baby momma.

Regardless, things with this girl started off great. We had instant chemistry, kissing on the first date, and having sex on the second, great wild kinky ****ing awesome sex. We instantly started spending at least half our time together, and within a month or so we were even staying together with all the kids. It is important to note that when we started dating I was pretty optimistic that my own divorce / custody scenario would be done soon. The ‘I love you’s’ were exchanged around this time, and we both meant them. We talked about long term plans, buys a house that all our kids would be in, etc etc. Really then for about 2 months things were great

Then about 3 weeks ago, my baby momma’s proposal came through, and it was clear that they were not serious about getting done with the divorce soon. Things with my girlfriend seemed to change at that point. She started pulling away, and seemed less into me and the relationship. She started cancelling dates and time we were going to spend together with all the kids. Finally, I confronted her about it a week ago. She told me that she felt like my not being divorce was causing her a great deal of stress and she was feeling overwhelmed because she had hope that my divorce would be final right now. My baby momma has said some nasty things about the gf, further adding stress to the situation. While she said she was still in love with me, she said it was clouding her feelings towards me, and felt like we needed to back off and just hang out when it works. Well, over the weekend, neither of us had our kids, and we still didn’t see each other. Needless to say, I didn’t handle it well, and sent her some stupid ‘do you love me?’ type of texts, which just put more pressure on her. She responded and said she just wanted to let some of the drama clear away, but I just kept picking. Then yesterday she asked me if I was calmed down from the weekend, to which I said yes, I was fine, and no worries (this is the truth). We were the kind of couple who texted all the time. Past couple days has been minimal on her part and mine.

My question is this, is it really just my divorce pushing her away, or is it the fact that perhaps the divorce was causing me to exhibit some needy and weak behavior, simply causing her to be attracted to me less? Obviously there are a ton of moving parts here. Part of me feels like if she was attracted to me enough she would deal with the baggage, but part of me gets that she just went through it herself, it’s hard to deal with it all over again.

Do I pull back? Right now I really am just focusing on getting myself in the gym, looking as good as possible, and staying busy, without contacting her. Is that the best play? I see some of the mistakes I have been making, too much phone / text, jumping in too deep too fast. Is it salvageable now? I don’t want to lose her. I’ll be ok, but I would rather not.

Thank you in advance for your advice. I truly appreciate it.