My ex-husband and I had a very messy breakup seven years ago. Our children were one and four years old at the time. He left not even a year after I had been diagnosed and treated for thyroid cancer, as he had realised that he had fallen in love with a woman in her twenties who was his subordinate at work at the time.
I was already unwell then, my hormones were all over the place following the removal of my thyroid. The last time I breastfed was on the morning before my operation, which further added to the imbalance. Blood tests revealed that the dosage of my thyroid medication was way too high, meaning I was experiencing extreme hyperthyroidism (including anxiety, insomnia, brain fog, etc. as well as various physical symptoms).
When my ex-husband left, I found myself on my own with my two young children with all my family and friends I grew up with living abroad. What's more is that we were in the middle of some major building works being done and our house was mostly uninhabitable, my father was in the final stages of losing his battle to dementia, and I had only just started a new job three months prior.
I couldn't cope with the grief and the pressure and had a breakdown, so I was prescribed antidepressants (SSRIs) to help me cope. I did not get along with the medication as it made me feel extremely sick, meaning I could not eat for weeks, making me lose about 2 stones. They also made my insomnia worse, and I started self-harming, which is something I had never done in my life... at the time it was the only thing I could do to find release from the extreme pressure and stress I was experiencing. (I still wonder if it was something in those pills that exasperated these feelings.) I eventually even ended up in hospital following an overdose on sleeping pills. It wasn't an attempt to take my life, I was just exhausted and desperate to sleep and not feel anything for a little while.
I nearly lost my job, my kids, and my sanity, and it took me a good couple of years to get to a place where things felt more stable.
Getting better has been extremely hard, but I am now in a place where I feel I'm a half-decent mother, I get recognition at work, and my ex and I manage to co-parent mostly frictionless.
Things are still difficult at times, especially dealing with the loneliness and the financial challenges of being a sole earner in the house.
I still haven't managed to bring myself to meet his partner, which is still the same woman he left for. They are still together, and from all I hear, the children get on well with her.
I haven't always done a good job of hiding my dislike for her, and I know that this has caused a lot of stress for my children. They won't talk about her at my house for fear it might upset me.
I don't want the kids to have to live like this anymore, and I have decided it is time to agree to meet her in the new year to finally get some peace. I do hope that I am now well enough to be able to deal with it and all the memories this may bring up.
My question is: how do you go about meeting with a new partner that played a major part in a traumatic break-up? Where do we meet? What do we talk about? How do I prepare? And how do I make sure I won't relapse into feeling the way I did then?
My support network is quite limited these days... I am either at work, or at home with my kids, which makes socialising with friends difficult. I will have to largely rely on myself to cope, so any guidance on how to do so would be much appreciated!