Hi Gabriel

Well I've been on a downer since the first ML didn't work very well and that had me questioning the R and whether or not I was still connected in the emotional sense. We have been sexual partners for 10 years and it's NEVER gone wrong like that before so it shook me up.
It was still physically nice but it was so different it was as if he was someone else.

Then we said we'd wait till he told OW2, and he's told her now but he still doesn't want to so I am now panicking that he doesn't find me attractive anymore and my sexual confidence has taken a nose dive through the floor. When my confidence in that has gone, it goes with every other aspect of my life. It's my feminine prowess that keeps me together, keeps me intact, and right now I am struggling with so many feelings of rejection and self-doubt that it makes it difficult to facilitate a friendship with him.

He has mentioned just leaving OW2 as a reason for not wanting physical contact and that worries me because he was never bothered when he dumped OW1, and I am now getting an inferiority complex, wondering if he doesn't want me because he secretly would rather sleep with her. Maybe she was better at it than me, etc etc.

He doesn't seem to realise that while he needs time, I need him to ease my hurt over OW2 and I need sexual reassurance that I am the one he wants to be with. He's not doing this, so I am thinking there's something suss with what he's saying and maybe he doesn't really love me. Perhaps he just thinks he does, or maybe he doesn't want me to have anyone else.

He has mentioned her a couple of times and my whole chest just goes tight like I can't breathe when he does that. I really don't want reminders of his previous flings - I don't push my OM in his face like that. He said he didn't want to live in the past, but that's all he has talked about since this started : his R's with OW1 and 2, and how he doesn't want us to argue in future. I feel like I can't have a friendship or a R while he keeps doing this.

I don't want to compete with women he is no longer with. Until he gets to a point where he is just concentrating on us and the kids, it hurts me too much to be around him.

The massive sexual rejection I feel is over-riding the progress I was making in a friendship with him. It's all I think about at the moment, and I can't cheer up when I feel so far away from being the goddess I always thought I was.

Then there's the kids. When I asked to have them, he said no again and that I had 'no authority' (that really hurt) - yet a few days later he's asking me to look after them as if he never said that, and it's because he's stuck for a babysitter. I am a babysitter, not a mother, in his eyes, and every time I have them, there's this hurt all the time that he feels that way, and why??
Then whenever I look at them I just remember the court hearings and how he didn't want me to have them, and I can't get the thought out of my head.
I don't know how to look at them and think something happy. This bothers me.
I'm terrified of getting too close to them and then him doing his 'I don't want to know' routine and running off again, which would bugger up the contact routine because he always gets really angry when that happens and becomes impossible to communicate with - so part of me thinks I don't want to agree to anything regular with them until I have a cast iron guarantee that he ISN'T going to run off. He won't obviously guarantee anything and I'm just worn out by his ifs, buts and maybes.

I feel really skeptical, because in my eyes, he hasn't done anything different to all the other times and I need something from him which is different to prove that. With him showing no desire for me, this adds to my sense of something not quite adding up. I just don't trust what he says to me.

Then the kids have fought every single time they've been round, arguing, hitting etc etc and if it's not them, it's those bloody boys next door and 90% of my energy is taken up at the moment, trying to keep my emotions level and my PMA normal and this doesn't leave much reserve for when the kids play up. I have zero patience.

I am a far better parent when I feel happy.

I had all this brewing since the first ML, and I've been doing whatever I can, but the WAW feelings wouldn't go away, and then the last straw was when he made that grumbling remark about my new book cover and I just broke down after he left because I was thinking, wonderful, he's rejected me as a lover, I am rubbish in bed, he dislikes me as a mother, and he can't stand my work either

If there is no physical touch, I need emotional reassurance and compliments to compensate, and him being so 'off' about my work was just confirmation that he doesn't want me.

I tell you, Gabe, you compliment me better than he does Sometimes I feel so upset, and then you've written something really nice about me and my PMA goes up for the rest of the day. I just wish he would get that I need that from him if he expects me to hang around waiting while he has his 'time and space.'

Jo.