Thanks unchien, I always appreciate your thoughtful responses.
It is hard isn’t it, this next layer of things with separate parenting. It’s a whole new layer of struggle, pain, shock and disappointment. I agree; the last thing I want to do is escalate this. I relayed the whole thing to a good friend, and she commented that she thinks what he did was a thoughtless, impulsive thing he didn’t think much of, and since he got caught he’s kind of doubled down on “standing up” to me about it. I think the best thing I can do for myself (and a major 180 on my usual responses to things like this) is to state my feelings plainly and let him know I don’t want to have a big talk about it.
As far as wanting to hand him his things, you’re right and I’m going to hold off. I don’t have the energy or desire for any drama. I guess the driving feeling behind wanting to do that is that I’m wanting to take noticeable action to let him know that this is the line for me. I won’t take disrespect as a parent laying down. And furthermore, I feel so sure that I deserve more than to be gaslighted any time I’m upset about something shi**y HE has done, and that has ALWAYS been the case in our relationship. I’d almost forgotten about that immature, selfish trait of his. The more he feels he’s wrong, the worse he treats ME and acts like I’m doing something wrong. It’s intolerable. And it appears he hasn’t grown past it a bit. I guess I’m feeling fed up and wanting to take action. But I should probably just sit with that feeling for awhile...
