to leave her out of this?

[BrittBritt]

Okay please be kind, I'm genuinely not sure what to do here.

I have a DD, with my ex girlfriend. I am also female, if that is important at all. For reasons which are complicated, my girlfriend was not around for the first couple of years of DD's life, unavoidable on her part but I moved on thinking that she wouldn't be back.

So, I did move on..and now I live with my new partner. My new partner has never been referred to as my DD's mummy, and she has always been shown photos of ex and talks about her other mama.

Well, unbelievably my ex is back which is wonderful and she is building a beautiful relationship with DD which I'm so happy about. She's bought a house nearby and things are going really well.

Now DD & I have Ice Cream Mondays, where we go out for ice cream after school at a place in the next town. This has always been mummy and DD time, and my new partner has always respected this and understood that it is my alone time to bond with DD.

But yesterday I was held up at work and called ex to see if she could collect DD from the Childminders for me. She did as luckily it was her day off. DD asked could her other mummy come along for ice cream Monday, and I said yes, despite never having 'allowed' my partner to join us.

This has really upset my partner, she can't understand that it is different with ex, that she is DD's mama. She feels like her place has disappeared and I find this confusing as she has never 'been' DD's other mummy.

Sorry that this is so long. AIBU?

I said I wasn't going to come back to this thread, but I foolishly read the rest of the replies and I can't not. I am not comfortable with being pushed to give more information, and so you will just have to trust me on the following.

• I didn't leave her to die. And it wasn't as though I had left after a couple of days. I had been by her side for more than a year. I had to go back to work, maternity leave was up and I had to support our daughter. I moved back to where my parents live, as with a full time job I could no longer cope completely alone with no family support. I still went up to visit ex on the weekends, despite the fact that she was oblivious to my presence. No, I don't deserve a medal for this and I wish that I had managed to just persevere but her family were dismissive of me and the doctors thought it hopeless.

• Maybe I didn't try hard enough to find creative ways to bond DD with ex. To be honest I didn't know how, aside from putting her on my knee and saying 'there's mama! say hi to mama!'. That is my fault, absolutely. I was already struggling to cope and I just didn't have creativity to know what to do. The staff didn't offer advice on that and nor did the health visitor. I should have tried harder, but it wasn't through lack of care - I did try, I showed her pictures every day. I read her my ex's own favourite childhood books and explained. On her birthday we took her a cake and gave her a mummy card. I tried.

• It seems to have come across as though my current partner has been on the scene for a long time. For DD, it's been months only. And of course I will put some kind of transition in place, but DD knows ex and loves her - she is already comfortable staying at her house, something which she won't even do with my own parents who she has 'known' for longer. Last time I went to collect her, she was lying on a little chaise lounge in her new yellow bedroom at mama's house watching The Little Mermaid and delighting at how happy she was, saying that I should stay too and we could all have a sleepover together.

• The moment ex was coherent again, I was back up there. I took annual leave to try and be at as many rehabilitation sessions as possible. My partner has known all along that I still love ex, she knew that's why I didn't want to 'commit' and that if ex ever woke up I would not be shutting her out. She knew all of this, how I felt, how I loved her and she chose to risk being with me anyway. I never once asked her for anything - no, she has never done childcare for me or anything like that. She's been here of her own accord the whole time.

What I can get from the responses on this thread is that apparently I have been very mentally weak. I've got it all wrong which is so disappointing because with every waking moment I was so desperately trying to do the right thing by everyone.

Please, please no more posts implying that I did wrong by my ex. However true you might think this is, I tried. I love her, she loves me, she understands and wants us to be together again. So if she doesn't hate me for it, why post and tell me how awful I am?

Sound childish and selfish.
You dont leave the person yiu love, your life partner just because it gets hard.

sexypants - have you actually read what I have just posted?

Britt are you very young?

I think if you are hoping to get universal agreement that everyone would do the same if their life partner and parent of their child was critically ill, you will probably be disappointed.

I'll go further and say that anyone responding with 'yes quite understandable you had a baby and had to work of course you left your partner and started a new relationship' has absorbed some societal lesbophobia and is treating your love life as carelessly as you are.

Anyone posting all this about hetero relationships would have been flamed.

Abandon the thread. Go and sort your life out. Good luck.

I feel sorry for your current partner. You don't 'allow' her to join your ice cream mondays?

I think I get you op. No one is perfect and you did your imperfect best in a very difficult situation.

But, don't get carried away with the drama now. If you want to get back with your ex, do so in a responsible manner. Leave your current partner gently, then slowly rebuild with ex - There doesn't need to be a nail biting climax over an 'impossible' decision. Just get on with your lives, causing the minimum hurt to you all.

All the best

Yes I have.
And you did leave when it got hard. You can't say any different.
Your partner got I'll.
You waited a few months thought she wouldn't get better and left her.
Which part did I get wrong?

I feel for you, you must have been to hell and back thinking that your ex would never wake up and the future you thought that you had had gone. It must have been heartbreaking to have to make the decision to move on while she was still alive. I think everyone reading and judging this thread should be grateful they have never had to make such a heartbreaking decision.

From what you've written it's quite obvious that you still love your ex, and that had things turned out differently you would still be together and DD's family would be as you planned. I also feel for your current partner, she must be feeling very threatened and hurt right now.

Unfortunately the only person who can fix this is you, are you sure that your ex wants to get back with you? If she does and you are sure that you are still in love with her, you need to be fair to your current partner and let her go, even though this will hurt her its fairer in the long term than letting her think she is second best.

The point is Fideliney nobody knows what they would do until they were in the situation. I would have spouted endless amounts of Notebook inspired crap before it all happened, but life just doesn't always go that way.

I am in my mid/late 20s, so whether that is 'very young' is objective.

I told my partner last night that things are over. She didn't seem surprised.

The point is Fideliney nobody knows what they would do until they were in the situation. I would have spouted endless amounts of Notebook inspired crap before it all happened, but life just doesn't always go that way.

Now you sound much younger than 20s. How sad to view commitment as 'Notebook inspired crap'. And I take issue with the assertion that nobody knows. Some of us know. What would you do if it was your DD? Do you know that? Same thing.

Yes stole she still loves me and wants to be with me.

sexypants I didn't just 'wait a few months to see if she got better', we lived in an area away from family and the hospital she was in was there. When I had to go back to work, to pay bills etc I was struggling with working all day, heading straight to the hospital with DD and found that her entire life was between a room in a hospital and the childminders. I had nobody to look after her, who was family. Since ex woke up, she has said that she's glad I moved back to be with my family who were able to help me with DD. She doesn't hold any of this against me, so why do you?

DP and I have a 5 month old DD together. I've been reading your updates and trying to think what I would do if I found myself in the incredibly difficult situation you found yourself in.

After giving it some thought I really feel that if he was left in a coma after an accident there's just no way I would ever leave him and start a relationship with someone else. Even if I had to move away from him to the other end of the country, I'd make sure DD and I could be with him as much as possible for as long as it was necessary.

He's my life partner and the father of my child. Unless he dies or cheats on me our family will always be together, regardless of circumstance.

I'm afraid that whichever way you tell it, it does rather sound like it all just got a bit too hard and became too much effort so you found someone else - your current DP - to plug the gap.

It's amazing that your ex has recovered and I do hope you get your family back together, but I think you also need to make some amends.

Commitment? It's not about commitment. I originally would have thought that I would have sat loyally by her bed, every waking moment of every single day - but then reality came knocking, and I had to work and I had to give DD a life outside of a hospital ward. The sitting by her bed every minute of every day, that's the Notebook version. And believe me, I wish it could have been that simple.

Brittbritt I am not going to discuss your actions regarding your partner or ex. I think your actions were selfish here.

However what you have done to your dd is wrong you do not get to choose who she considers family that is her choice. You have attempted to stop your child forging a bond with her step mother. This is wrong. Your child is not your possession she is a breathing living being and should have been given the chance to choose whether your partner is her step mum. You made every effort to sabotage that bond.

As for your partner if you were still in love with another woman you should never have started a new relationship while you were still in love with another woman that was selfish.

But its not as if the OP 'abandoned' her ex within a couple of months, she clearly says that my girlfriend was not around for the first couple of years of DD's life and that the new partner has only been in hers and her DD's life recently.

If her partner had died would people still be complaining that she had found someone so quickly, I know she hadn't died - but nobody expected her to ever wake up. I can't imagine that anyone would expect a someone in their early twenties to wait forever for the person in a coma to die, people need love, companionship and happiness (which unfortunately you can't get from someone who is unconscious).

OP, I understand your POV and that this is very difficult for you, I think you have done the right thing in letting your partner go as you know she isn't the one for you.

If it happened how the OP said it happened I would have probably done the same as her but possibly not involved in another relationship. That was a bit daft but you must have been going through a tough time and sometimes people help you heal, rightly or wrongly, sometimes people need someone to help them get over such a traumatic event.

OP needed to put her child, her very young child first and offer her a life that was full of joy and not hospitals. Well done for putting your child first in regards to going back where your family live and maintaining a decent life for your daughter.

Bit daft to get involved with someone but you live and learn and you have now been honest with her. EVERYONE fucks up now and then.

My personal feelings on this are that you were/are wrong for getting into another relationship, when you clearly don't feel strongly enough about your current p.

Your heart was never available for someone else, so why build up someone hopes of a long and loving relationship when you couldn't give it to them? If it was for a physical relationship rather than an emotional one, you should have been honest and quite forthright about that. No moving in with each other, no introduction to any dc's just explicit in the fact that the relationship was for sex alone.

If this wasn't the case, I feel that you have been cruel in leading on someone new, letting them become involved with dd and thinking that you had a future together. You weren't ready to do that, regardless of if it was months or years of xp being incapacitated and not able to be a family with you, you have played with the feelings of another person and only you can now put that right.

sat loyally by her bed, every waking moment of every single day - but then reality came knocking, and I had to work

That bit makes sense. Most of us would have to work and take care of the baby in that situation. But personally I would not be sleeping with other people or in any way giving up on my partner.

Why this melodramatic choice of every moment by bed or go off with someone else?

It's understandable that you moved to be near family for help with your daughter & that you had to work so that you couldn't be permanently be at ypur exes bedside.

The new relationship, maybe harder to understand, from both your pov & your partner's tbh.

Still that's of no relevance now that your partner is your ex & I'm assuming things are underway for you, your daughter & her other mum to be together.

Hope all works out for the three of you.

Oh come on, you don't go from being in a coma to being able to live independently in a couple of weeks. The OP's ex must have undergone months, possibly years of rehab. The OP has basically been conducting two relationships for all that time.

A cynical person would suggest the OP was hedging her bets as to how complete the ex's recovery would be.

Surely no one could be that cold?

I know that I was wrong to get involved with somebody else. I never loved her, she loved me and wanted to be with us and so I wasn't strong enough to say no - this is my failing, I know that and it's something I feel absolutely terrible about for many, many reasons. It was a bad decision, in a long line of questionable decisions.

These past few years, have been dark - my DD the one little shining light. And yes, I did whatever I could to make mine and her lives easier because I was going through hell and just wanted to be a good mum because there was nothing else I felt able to do at that point. And it's made a mess.

But since she came back, I don't even want to call her my ex - since she came back, my body has woke up. She is my home, we have known each other since we were 13 and we have been through so much. And when I see her I can't believe that I never thought I'd even speak to her again, and now she's back and mostly exactly the same - knocking on the door with her long glossy hair and impractically small handbags and it's like she's never been away. And for the first time in years I recognise the person I see in the mirror, my hair looks blonde again instead of colourless, my eyes are shining again and I've gone from a size 6 to a size 8 (which is good - I did not look good without that weight) and I have a rested feeling in my stomach which hasn't been there since before her accident.

I know that I have made mistakes, I know that. But please, please - even though it doesn't matter because you don't know me and I don't know any of you - please don't doubt how much I have always loved her

Yes, she has Tinkly and all of that time I have been trying to find a way to be kind. And i haven't been kind, letting this woman stay without loving her - hoping that she would leave. I have behaved badly, I know.