I see you have been through several storms in the past couple of months. And as usual you seem to have weathered all of them with great strength. Jeez....are you sure you werent a marine drill sargeant in your previous life? Stay tough....
UD
The 3 laws of DBing:
1. PMA is critical to DBing.
2. Since drop in WAW's PMA leads to drop in LBS's PMA and vice-versa detachment is critical.
3. Validate to raise WAW's PMA and GAL to raise LBS's.
Long time no see! Sorry you're not any nearer to your XW. How's your little girl?
Thanks for the compliment on my constitution, made iron-like through suffering and experience, lol. Maybe I was in the Marines in a previous life My brother is a RAF pilot
My update: Andy's dad is still the same as last time I posted.
My health: I am still getting on/off abdominal pain and today have been fighting nausea all day. Can't decide if that's because I'm ill or morning sickness. Basically don't have a clue whether I am pregnant or not. Atm I am assuming not and that I will bleed like the dr's say, so I am just taking it that I'm ill.
If I end up giving birth in the supermarket, I shall sue the clinic
GAL Work: Went to a management committee meeting this morning for voluntary sector groups and the local council, and tried to sell my photocopier to raise more income. Don't know if I've got any takers yet. I don't need it anymore since I use a printer. DD4 went in a creche downstairs and had fun.
I've taken up cooking again (real food, not stuff out of the freezer section) after a 3 year break from it. I used to cook all our meals from scratch, just make stuff myself, and I used to bake really nice cakes and biscuits, but when he left I just stopped.
I took up baking again a few months ago and now I've just started on main courses again, so I am quite proud of my culinary triumphs!
It does take about 2 hours in the kitchen, though, and loads of washing up, but I love it anyway.
Ha! Just like a woman - throwing a guy an anchor when he's drowning!! I can just picture my XW reaching out to me that way! j/k!
Jo, I love your GAL work. I'll be doing more cooking/baking as well, now that I'm back in the house. Got 1 of 2 cookbooks in the mail the other day: " A Man, a Can, and a Plan!.
When I said sink, I actually meant 'drift' - I had this image of him just kinda wondering out to sea in a state over his dad, but then I said 'sink' instead and of course if I threw him an anchor when he was sinking, that would definitely do it, LOL.
The only problem is, how to make it look like an accident
Well, he can officially forget me helping him now. The man has not learnt anything from these past nearly 4 years, and what's more, he's not even sorry for it - even some of the downright low things he did, he can't be human enough to feel sorry for the pain it caused me.
He's still justifying his actions all the time, still controlling etc etc, and we're not even together. I just tried to be helpful in a time of need. That will teach me not to show him any empathy.
We agreed that I would go to his place on Sunday so I could look after the kids and do some of his housework while he went to the hospital (please bear in mind I haven't been well myself so this was a big thing for me to offer).
He accepted, told me what time he wanted to leave for the hospital and I reminded him I have no access to a bathroom (really steep stairs in his house; cannot climb them without help) so I asked to not to be longer than a few hours so my bladder would hold, LOL.
We agreed on all the above and then he launched into this speech about how he doesn't want me to tell the girls I might still be pregnant.
I tried to make a joke out of it and said 'what shall I do if we have one? hide it in my chest of drawers!?'
Instead of laughing, he just started going on about how the girls are really worried about their grandad (as if I didn't know that) and they don't need me adding to it (not in those exact words but that was the implication).
I started getting upset so I snapped at him 'well they don't know me anymore anyway, so I don't suppose we will be having any meaningful conversations.'
He changed the subject to my book which was a really bad move as he hates my book and makes no effort to disguise the fact. He asked when it would be out. I said 'Why?' He said he was just asking, so I told him they were done and I would get my copy in the next 7-14 days. He said he should read the contents. I said why, so you can send me another letter from your lawyer?
He said the court thing was private and now I've made it public. I laughed at him and said tons of agencies knew about it, all our friends, his OW, everyone and that I had to read these 50 pages reports about what a [censored] mother I am and he thought that was private!? I reminded him that they even discussed our sex life in court.
He said that it was just like that film 'Maybe Baby' where the H writes a book about the couple and then she finds out and leaves him.
I said 'yeah, but you've already left so I don't care, and if you didn't want me to write about it, you shouldn't have done all that to me; you gave me the storyline of my lifetime.'
I told him he just didn't want to see it from my point of view which is why he hates my book.
He started trying to justify himself and said 'any divorced father would have done what I did, I was fighting for my right to have MY children.'
Notice he said 'my' children, not ours. I started crying and said that I know some divorced fathers and none of them have treated the XW like that, and none of them think the children are just 'their' children. All you men on here salute the role of your XW's as mother to your children - even Gabriel who is quite exacting sometimes, recognises the fact that his XW is mother to his son, and wouldn't change that fact.
Even the fathers who have custody wouldn't say 'my' children and only 'mine'. It's unbelieveable. I feel as if I was just a walking womb to grow his babies until they were done but apart from that, I had nothing to do with the process.
I am so disrespected. He says he loves me and all I feel from him is contempt. He can't even recognise the pain he caused me. He has no bloody idea.
I told him this and he said he had to go.
He's coming round this morning to get DD4 and I'm going to tell him I am not going to his house on Sunday. He can do his own chores if that is how he treats me. Honestly, I try to help and that's what I get!?!
I went to bed and had nightmares about murder, then woke up at 4 o clock in the morning feeling really sick and had to get up and deep breathe for a while to get it to go away.
Just when I'd resolved not to help him, my DD2 runs through the door saying how happy she is I'm going to 'her' house
I didn't know what to say to her. DD4 was doing this vocabulary Builder thing so DD2 went off with her to do that, and Andy asked to use my bathroom. I said yes.
After he came out, I said to him that I think he should just bring the kids here to me instead of me going there. After what he said about 'his' children, I just don't want to - but DD2 has been wanting me to go there for the last 2 years and I never will.
In fact, all the kids have and Andy keeps trying to invite me over for a 'cup of tea' - I mean, not recently, but he did do repeatedly in the past. I think recently he has given up the idea that I would go there.
He said to me that he 'didn't mind having me' and started being all reasonable and nice, and offered to pick me up from the bus station, despite last nights argument. Then DD2 was looking at me and saying she wants to see me tomorrow and underneath I was thinking, 'why? Your HIS child.' But of course I didn't say that.
I just smiled at her. It isn't her fault.
Then Andy had the nerve to ask to borrow DD4's Vocabulary Builder as you can change it to Spanish and the other DD's learn Spanish. I said yes but I would get it back tomorrow so he'd have to record it this evening. I think given what he said to me last night, he's got some cheek asking to borrow my stuff.
Then he said 'You look sombre today' (Oh, I wonder why? I'm just the incubator but never mind. I was having nightmares all night and then up with sickness, but yeah, I feel wonderful!).
I just nodded at him and said nothing.
Then DD2 flung her arms around me and said she loved me, and they left.
I wish I hadn't offered to help him, now. I am so angry at what he said to me, I can't get passed it.
Sorry you're so down. You made a sweet gesture to help out. Can I be harsh with you this morning? I've got to anyway. Your children love you and want to be with you, but you are letting the past discolor every interaction. You have so much pain, resentment, and anger built up over the legal battle and such that no one can work their way through it. Is that how you want to live the rest of your life? I have no way of knowing exactly how you feel because I didn't live it, but I really think you need to find a way to let go of some of this.
My other comment is that you are growing resentful in response to minor cues. Maybe when you are talking to the mother of your children you say "our kids", but there are a lot of times that I say my kids. They are mine. They are also my XWs, but that doesn't negate that they are mine also. When I'm talking to some dad or mom at the swim meet, they will point out where "my kid" is. They don't say..."there is my W and my kid". It's just a term. Perhaps given how he's acted that it truly feels that he thinks they are only his, but you are putting a lot of stock and getting all angry and resentful because he chose to say "my". You are giving this word power, perhaps because of all the things in the past it was a major hit to your self-esteem and confidence in your motherhood. You are better than that. You know you are their mother and could be a damn good one to them if he'd just let you in.
I hate that your interactions with your kids are marred by this past. They still want to see you. They want their mother. You are letting Andy approval or disapproval determine how you interact with your kids or what you take from the time with them. Screw him. You do as you please when you are with them. If he says something to you about it then just say..."F$%^% off, I'm their mom whether you like it or not".
I am sorry you have had such bad interactions, but you can still stand your ground without overreacting.
W
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
Wes, the convo was via text and not in person, and he wrote MY in capital letters in the rest of the sentance composed of small lettering, i.e, he meant to emphasis 'MY' or else he wouldn't have written it like that and he only said that because he was trying to justify his reasons for taking me to court.
I don't want to hear his justifications anymore; why can't he just say he's sorry for hurting me instead of thinking he was right to take the children because they're 'his'? It makes me want to slap him.
And yes it does matter what he thinks. I chose him to be the father of my children. It was very important to me to pick the right person for the job. Even if he didn't turn out to be the right partner, I wanted him and only him to be their father. I thought that he thought the same of me.
All those years I raised them, thinking I was doing a good job, and then all my motherhood amounts to is a 50 page report saying how crap I am? He never once took any of it back, or apologised or said anything to infer he thought I was doing a good job with them and he even said to me once that 'childbirth doesn't matter' - so I was suddenly ashamed of the 24 and a half hours he spent watching me birth our children.
If I had known he felt like that, I would have laboured on my own without his presence. To him it's just a comment, to me it stays there. It's a bloody good job I know it now, because if I am having another baby, he sure as hell isn't going to be there when I'm giving birth.
All I remember is a catalogue of insults and shame regarding them. He never lets me have them when I want, he's always on this power trip over them, and in the last few months he always says 'my children' instead of ours.
In the more distant past, he would say 'my' and then correct himself and say, 'sorry, I meant ours' - now he doesn't do that. Even when he's discussing them with me in person, he will say something like 'I've got to get home now to my rabble'.
Every day I hurt constantly to the point where most people aside from my closest friends, don't know I have 4 children. It's too painful to talk about, so they think DD4 is my only one and people keep asking me when I am going to have baby number 2.
DD1 looks so much like me, I have passed her off as my little sister before, to taxi drivers and such. It's easier than admitting he took her off me because he thought I was unfit.
I don't have any recent photos of them up in the house; all the pictures are pre-court, when I was a proper mother. I just can't look at modern photos. I have a few taken 2 years ago which I sometimes look at because I took the pictures at my place, but that's all.
I get on with my life, I don't cry, I hardly even allow myself to miss them, and then Andy says something like that and I'm in floods of tears for a whole day.
The court battle might be in the past, but the judgements permanently altered my future and the children's futures. You take one judgemental court welfare officer, and that's all it takes to ruin someone's life - and she got paid for destroying my family
Having the one person you loved most in the world, think that about your mothering - well, I will never think as highly of my role in their lives again.
Even if we had got back together, I would have always felt I wasn't doing it up to his standard, and if he had chosen to leave again, there is now always the chance I would lose all my children again, even DD4, now he has done it already.
That's why I told him I'd had enough when I realised my period was late.
I've been in tears all morning since they've gone. I just have to get it out my system today so I can function round there tomorrow.
At least he won't be there. He'll be going to the hospital.
(((Jo))) I wish there was something I could say to stop his ability to upset you like he does. My honest opinion is that he's just plain nuts. He's controlling, vindictive, selfish, lazy and I wonder if the biggest reason he wants the girls is because it provides him with more money that he doesn't have to earn honestly and it also gives him power over you.
You always seem so much happier and at ease when you don't talk to him much. You and Andy have been playing the same game with each other for years. I really wish you would give yourself an honest chance to move on with the thought that he is totally out of your life. I really think he's sucking the life out of you.
I have to admit that your story fascinates me and I probably shouldn't even read your thread because it pisses me off so much that he treats you the way he does. You deserve so much better.
j/k!
