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Am I a bad person? Was it all me? Am I a bad mother?

20 replies

trustissues75 · 01/03/2013 14:24

Sorry, this is going to be long. It's my own fault really or engaging but yet again, after 7 years of hell with my Ex, I'm back at square one questioning my perceptions of who I am, what the past was like and whether I'm basically a good person or if there is something seriously wrong with me.

Basically, back in January 2011 my Ex-H left me and son here in the UK at the end o a holiday we had taken to visit my relatives. We were stationed in South Korea at the time. Our marriage had been very rocky for a long time. It's difficult to go into because most of the time I can't pinpoint what was wrong but basically things started to go wrong after I got married to the man...he wouldnt' let me into our finances, had a separate bank account made where he put money in every two weeks as an allowance for me. Shortly after I fell pregnant...I wanted a home birth, especially since we were moving to the States where pregnancy and birth is treated as a disease to be managed. One evening he blew up at me over that, saying I was making a big fuss and hospitals were good enough for everyone else. We moved to the states. The debacle over me trying to get a home birth escslated. He spent the money we had put on one side for a midwife on a car for me and then when I complained he acted like I was being ungrateful; that was the end of the home birth. When I didnt' want to use the hospital his riends wife had used because of what she had told me about the place I remember him punching the driving wheel and asking me what the hell was wrong with me. When I tried to learn to drive he would shout, scream and swear at me until I was so nervous |I would get out of the car and refuse to drive anymore...then he would make out I was making a big fuss and being silly. Anyway, our son was born, he was basically useless at the birth because he'd refused to do any reading "I dont' do books" he'd said...this was the man who when we first met quoted Shakespear to me and then said (now looking back at it rather pompously) "I read, you see."

So, I was in the states, couldnt' drive, new baby, no friends, and DS decides to get horrific reflux with incessant screaming and my body decided that no matter how tired it is I don't need sleep. Depression, exhaustion and short temperdness sets in. Basically, \I turn into a bitch - I do not understand where the man I met went to, I can't sleep, he's often short with me and talking to me like I'm an idiout or and overprotective mother....coupled with other times where he's overly supportive, and adoring, and caring and concerned. Fast forward a few years and many arguments, hours of crying, dragging myself through mis-diagnoses o bi-polar, awful meds etc...By this point my favourite saying is "So long as I keep my mouth shut, everything is fine." No matter what way I try to phrase my requests/concerns, no matter how delicate I am, Im just treated as a complaining witch....and I do morph into one. My requests/concerns over him repeatedly applying for jobs here there and everywhere and keeping us in a near constant state of "we might be moving" and that I ind it extremely unsettling and I just need time to try to settle are ignored...nearly everyitng I say is thrown in my face, or ignored, or eye-rolled at or "Okayed" in a hen-pecked downtrodden poor husband voice. I hate who I have turned into and I hate that the only time he has any respect for me is either in front of others or when I'm going through a "good phase".

Fast forward antoher few years and we''ve moved house several times and now live in \South Korea...against my psychiatrist's recommendations, my pleading and beggin goes ignored..I'm told if I don't let him do this I'm letting my family down and haven't I already done that enough? After all, I'm the one who's ill, I'm the one who can't get a regular sleep pattern, I'm the one who has thrown meds down the sink because of how they made me feel (meds that were given to me as part of a mis-diagnosis) and I'm still living with this man who some how, no matter how hard I try to talk with, always ends up twisitn my words or the situation until I don't know which way is up and |I| end up screaming and shouting and turning into this horrible witch. I start to have huge panic attacks - one lands me in hospital.

August, South Korea - we go out one night, we get drunk. Ex decides to go home, I stay out with friends. One of the single men we are out with buys me a drink. We get talking, we go to another bar. It's South Korea, the bars dont' close and I suddenly realise the time. I need to go, we go to get a cab. He kisses me and I kiss him back. Wrong wrong wrong and I tell him I need to go home. |He gets in the cab with me and somehow we end up outside his hotel. |I freak out tell him I need to go home and to get me a cab now, he tries to kiss me again and to relax. I finally talk him into letting me go after he's taken me up to what I thought was the lobby to call for a cab and turns out to be a hotel hall way and I turn round and get back into the lift. He gets back in with me, but I hit the lobby button and I make it to the lobby, get to a cab and get home. I tell ExH what happened...he's devastated, obviously, and I do what \I can to tell him how sorry I am and that whatever he wants to ask/know I will answer him. He refuses to talk aobut it. I hate myself for the next few months. We got back to the UK for a holiday. A plan is hatched while we are there for me and son to stay behind, he decides we need to settle down and the best way for us to do that is for me to set up my photography business here, get a house sorted out and then wait for him to join us by either getting a 7 year transfer or by quitting his job. He leaves me with £200 and a promise to send my equipment over and to start sending our belongings.

What happens instead is that 6 weeks later he tells me he is going on exercise to the north off South Korea and disappears for a week. He actually bought himself a ticket to Florida, where he is from. A week later he returns and I find out from his sister's facebook page where he's actually been. He tells me the next day that he wants a divorce, he wont' fight for custody even though he feels I am an unstable and unsuitable parent, and all he wants me to do is agree to an internet divorce and to send our son to South Korea for a holiday.

Obviously, alarm bells go of in my head, I say I'll consult a solicitor and he goes ballistic at me.

The next day a woman who I've never seen before appears on his acebook page and over the next few weeks, while I speak to solicitors and lawyers, try to persuade ExH to come over here to at least talk and deal with some truly horrible things from him such as "I should have had you sectioned while I had the chance" and him trying to convince me that I tried to commit suicide and I don't remember it and I'm obviously a danger to our child, she becomes a really regular fface on his facebook page. 4 weeks later, without me knowing, he quits his job and moves back to Florida. I subsequently find out that he has moved in with this woman and that he husband died suddenly and unexpectedly just 16 days previous to my ExH moving in. And thus has followed 2 long years of backwards and forwards blaming and games, ExH lying about me hiding our child from him, accusations of me being an awful parent for not sending our son to live with him in the states because financially I'm having to rely on benefits and a part time job, ExH re-writing history (and I know I haven't imagined the circumstances under which this happened because I have it in facebook converstaions and have actually gone back and re-read things to make sure his re-writing of the truth isn't actually true and I am actually insane), a lot of fear, and lot o anxiety, a lot of trying to find a way to safely allow our son to visit the states with all lawyers and solicitors saying absoloutely not without a court order in place. ExH brings a complaint against me in the US courts but it is, of course, dismissed because America has no jurisdiction and ExH reuses to get involved with the british courts.

SO, yesterday, we had a skirmish via e-mail when he tried to invite this woman to our son's and his soon to be sister's christening. For me that was just a step too far and told him politely that a woman who did what she did, knowlingly having an affair with a man who has a child and that that man has left that child and his mother without a home to live in, without financial support, and without any of their belingings, is not the kind of woman \I want any where near our son nor my daughter.

Here was his reply:

"Let's end this. The marriage is over, finally. While your comments are clever, they abondon the truth; they blatantly overlook the reality that was a miserable life with you. A horrible existence with your daily if not hourly 'woe is me' attitude, your depression, your unwillingness to cope with your illness. You made decisions, choices and remarks that lead to the consequences you subjected XXXX to. I'm not the one, who after having put up with all your untolerable attitude, called to ask for cab fare back from the hotel with another.

As you clearly put it, it was my choice. My choice to end a hopeless eternity straddled by you. No one "took me away" from my son other than you. Don't share your burden, its not welcome anymore. But again, it is your choice for witholding XXXX from coming here. He will grow up, he will know. My answers to him will be for a later time...I'm sure you'll be getting more questions yourself.

Not having spoken with you, by phone, email or otherwise has been a cathartic event that I wish to continue. I'll call XXXX tonight 3:30 my time. Please don't email me again but for to inform me of something pertaining directly towards DS. I'll do the same."

And now I've spent the past 18 hours going over and over the past, looking at how I could have done things differently, wondering if it really is all my fault and I actually do have something really wrong with me. I asked my partner last night if he was happy with me, if I was a good partner and he looked at me as if I had gone completely mad...but I just don't know anymore. If I were my ExH I would say something I I thought I'd done wrong....I'd admit to my faults and have my part in the mess...but he doesn't....so maybe it is me? Maybe I am just this completely unreasonable, manipulative horrible person who has no insight and is selfish and doesn't have her child's' best interests at heart. Maybe I've done it all wrong?

Sorry, that's really long...but after months of soul searching and counselling and getting stronger and not being weighted down by guilt and sleeping again and not relying on antidepressants I'm asking myself what if it's me whos perspective is shot to bits...what if it's me with a personality disorder incapable of empathy and insight?

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Lemonylemon · 01/03/2013 14:36

He has been and continues to gaslight you. I think that that is at the root of your mental distress, to be honest.

Where are you now? (Sorry, but your post was a bit hard to read).