The following statements are in no way endorsed by anyone other than myself and may anger the reader. I am only offering my outsiders perspective. This being said I want nothing but happiness for you Jo and do not want to see you hurt as you derserve better.
Let me see if I follow?
A now almost 31 year old male leaves his wife and four daughters and becomes involved with another woman. Considerable emotional and court battles ensue, with the mother of the children losing custody of three of the girls.
A considerable time later then ex-husband professes his confusion, doubt and love to the ex-wife and they start moving closer, but the girlfriend (ex or otherwise) and family continue to live in his house.
Ex-husband then takes up with second girlfriend. More arguments and anger with ex-wife and he one day bullies her with the car.
Time passes. Ex-husband begins to spend more time with daughters at ex-wife's house, no doubt with the knowledge of current girlfriend.
Ex-husband proclaims his single status while failing to tell this to girlfriend or break off the relationship. Continues to spend inordinate amount of time with ex-wife, I suspect without girlfriends knowledge. Ex-wife and ex-husband engage in physical activity again I suspect without the girlfriend's knowing.
Ex-husband becomes very nervous talking about the future, even only a week ahead.
Yes he has behaved/is behaving badly. Of that I have no doubt.
He did not cause me to lose custody of DD1 or DD2 - I voluntarily surrendered them because I was mentally ill at the time and couldn't look after them.
He did cause me to lose custody of DD3, though, and I admit that wasn't fair, as I was 'together' mentally by that stage.
I didn't care about EX-OW living in the house because her bf was also there. It did piss me off that she was hijacking my mother role, though.
The car incident was awful; everyone knows that and I know there was no excuse for it. So does he. He wants to put it in the past and I don't want to use it as a beating stick against him forever.
Yes he hasn't told OW2 but he has told me he's not sleeping with her anymore so their physical R is obviously over. She will get the message even if he doesn't tell her. And if he doesn't, I will. I happen to be looking forward to that part
No she isn't aware of it, but everyone else is (and he knows that my friends know so obviously she will end up knowing). He doesn't mind that my friends know.
Andy always was nervous of having R talks, before this even happened and even during the M. Discussion of R issues is not his strong point. He's very male in that respect and keeps his feelings in a lot.
I also feel if I continually bring up bad stuff that has happened, I will be re-living the pain all the time and not actually enjoying my life at all. I did bad stuff to him also, like when he first left I tried to stab myself in front of him (he stopped me), I took 3 OD's and slashed myself across the stomach when I was pregnant with his child.
He has been really badly hurt by this and it's taken him a long time to get these images out of his head. I was on EEG etc in hospital at risk of possible heart failure, while he was left with the kids.
I stopped my last pregnancy without his approval; I slept with people straight afterwards, including his brother - when we had been house hunting prior to that. He had to cope with losing his baby and me being unfaithful with his brother, of all people. I even divorced him without his approval or signiture.
That's why he moved EX-OW into his house. I pushed them together by my actions at that time.
I am not blameless in all of this, and he has treated me badly, but things always happen for a reason. It takes looking at it from both sides to see why someone reacts the way they do.
But as for OW2 - you're right, I will not put up with her.
You are absolutely right, there are always two people involved. And we are responsible for our own actions and they do affect people.
I just don't want to see him still going back and forth between you and her. If he wants to be with you, great, wonderful, he needs to tell and move on.
I've never bought the excuse people are not able to break up with or move away from the OP. Strange how easy they could move away from a marriage, but not from a girlfriend or boyrfriend?
Take care. You deserve someone who wants to be with you.
And no, it is rarely a good idea to dwell on events in the past.
He was in an absolutely foul mood tonight as a result.
I have got to admit, I am a tad disappointed that I didn't tell her myself. I really wanted to see her response. That's really bitchy, isn't it?
He was sitting there writing poetry about his emotions and I made the mistake of suggesting I look after the kids for a few days while he got over it. He got really angry and said they don't know me and I can't just expect to walk back in and have the same authority as I had before.
I agreed with him and said it was just a suggestion, but said that maybe having a mother around might help them if they were upset about OW2. I said he raised them, not me, so I didn't expect to have any authority.
He rounded on me that I always make everything about me. I just said no, I was trying to compliment you because I don't even pretend to have been there.
He said he was too emotional to talk.
I hugged him via computer and said goodnight and he said he'd see me at 11.
We were going to meet for a coffee at this cafe before he went to the home ed meeting but I think I'm not going to do that. I'll wait until he's in a better mood.
