Hi AS. That is awful about your dad’s stuff being gone. So sorry to hear that.
Thank you! It's a bummer, but there are still a few cool items that will be nice momentos. There's a large pencil caricature a friend of dad's had done of him in Mexico in the 60's that I've always loved, I'm going to grab it if my brother doesn't want it. And there's a pirate cap gun that was his when he was a boy that miraculously is still there. Neither have any monetary value, but have a lot of memories attached to them.
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Re: your (X)GF. TBH...I am sure there are some good things about her but it really does sound like the bad may be outweighing the good here.
Well I don't want to pretend I'm a perfect angel and it's 100% her fault. You are just hearing my side of the story. She says that I say mean things that are hurtful and that she can't forget, and my XW told me much the same. I do tend to get really angry when I feel attacked and say things in the heat of the moment that I regret later. I mean she does it to me too, but I chalk it up to her being mad and pretty much purge them from my mind after a fight whereas her memory lasts FOREVER. She'll bring up stuff I said years ago that I have absolutely no recollection of. So I can forgive and forget, but she can't. At least not easily.
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I’m a mental health therapist... I have all the empathy in the world for people with mental health issues. However, it sounds as if there is also a personality issue...and a character issue. You deserve better AS. You really do.
She has two very different sides to her. I'm not saying she has MPD but when she's sweet she absolutely gushes about our R and how happy she is and how much she loves me and such. When she's mean, just... holy cow watch out. The mean version will push every last button over and over again until I explode, then switch into victim mode. Often after one of her tirades she will be very apologetic and talk about how bad she was and doesn't deserve me and won't do it again. But the cycle will eventually repeat.
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but do the fun times really outweigh the bad times?
In the last couple of years the mean side of her has been coming out far more frequently and staying longer than ever before. This is what led me to finally break up, I just can't take the abuse anymore.
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You give others on here such fantastic advice...what would you say to someone else in your situation?
Do you know the analogy about boiling a frog? If you turn the heat up really fast he'll jump out, but if you turn it up very slowly he'll just sit there. That's kind of the situation, it didn't happen overnight. So while it's easy now to look at it and say "wow this is really toxic" it wasn't at all evident 5 years ago, or even a year ago. So yes I see it now and have jumped out of the pot, LOL! Thank you for your thoughts!
Originally Posted by kml
Agreed - depressed people can still have empathy for you in your loss. Heck, even my batchit crazy ex-boyfriend with manic episodes would be there for me in an instant in a situation like that. This is a character issue and I'd stop communicating if I were you.
Yes I do really think that was the wakeup call. I didn't know her until after my D, and nothing really serious has happened to me between then and now. I have a close friend that I talk to about her and I have said several times before that it seemed like she was unable to feel empathy, but this time, there's just no "seems like" about it. She obviously can't, and that's a pretty big deal for sure.
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I'm sorry about your dad's stuff. Doesn't sound like there's any money in the estate so you don't have to worry about those bills, you're not responsible for them.
Thank you! Yes we are considering just taking what we can from inside the house (not much at all) and walking away. I've looked at comps and feel pretty strongly the house is not worth the debt owed plus realtor fees. We are having a realtor look at it this week and based on that will determine whether we walk away or try to sell it. I'm an architect and have done a lot of remodel work, but it needs a good 70k of renovation and renovated homes in the area only sell for 325-350 so that would be a break-even proposition. Not to mention the challenges of trying to flip a home that's 250 miles away.
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However the things I value aren't things of monetary value. After my mom died I discovered a box with my father's things from when he died in 1969 - his wallet, his belt. That was great to have.
I really wanted his cat's eye ring because I was always fascinated by it when I was a kid and he always had it on when I was growing up. It was just so "him". I doubt it was worth much. But that too is gone. -sigh- Dad really didn't save much so there are hardly any things there from when we were little. He did keep a lot of art I made as a kid which is cool, but that's memories of me rather than him, you know? But like I said above his Mexico caricature is still there and I do like that. It's the silly things I latch onto. When my grandmother passed I took her toothpick dispenser because she loved toothpicks and used it daily, and used the same dispenser from as long as I could remember. When my other grandmother died I took a plastic water container she kept in her fridge for much the same reasons. It's those little things I look at in my house and remember them by.
