Looking for a some help.

[Darknightsahead]

Hi all,

I need to keep this very generic as my ex is known to frequent these boards.

Myself and ex broke up about a year ago(married, child)
Spent the last year seeing if things would work out, ex finally said(out the blue as I thought things were going well) it was over and that was that.

I feel so lost and hopeless and I’m not even so sure it’s about the marriage breakdown, it’s more that going forward it’s not the life I had imagined for my child and the guilt that comes with that.

Every single day I wake up and see everyone else living happy families, getting on with life and I feel stuck in a complete nightmare. Everyday I look at my child and think you deserve better than what I can give you(ex earns more and has a good job)
I worry I’m going to struggle forever more and that’s not what I wanted for my child.

I’ve had thoughts about it ending it all at down points in my life before but it was also fleeting and never for as long as this before. I think about it pretty much all day everyday.

I’ve got a counsellor who helps me so much but I only go ever few weeks so inbetween I start to dip. I’ve got a great support network and plenty of friends but no matter what they say(and I haven’t told them this) I can’t seem to shake it.

Thanks if you have got this far in reading this, just felt like I had to get it all down.

I hope writing it down helped, even a little.

If you've been on MN for any length of time you'll know that everyone else living happy families is skin deep, at best.

Every single day there are threads about relationships breaking up, parents feeling guilt about their children and people not coming anywhere close to living the lives they imagined they would lead.

When it comes to dealing with loss (bereavement, the end of a relationship, the loss of our job etc) our mind can conclude
that the thing we have lost was so integral to our idea of what happiness is that we can never be happy again. This can lead to depression, as it has with you.

Have a think about this analogy.

When we want to weigh out ingredients to cook something we place a bowl on the scales and hit the zero button so that the weight of the bowl does not confuse our calculations. Then we add the ingredients and the numbers go up; were we to remove the bowl the scales would read a minus number. To continue weighing anything accurately we must hit the button to zero the scales once more, now the bowl isn’t there.

When we have a tragedy in our life we can be plunged into depression because our happiness levels now read a minus. Any attempt to improve our life would result in slightly less of a minus... but a minus all the same.

Depression is when we don’t see any way of getting back to zero. A person’s ability to move on from tragedy depends entirely on their ability to adapt to where they are now and to effectively ‘zero the scales’.

If we can accept where we are today (minus that loved one, or that relationship, or that job) then we can start to once again build on our happiness levels. Human beings are in fact excellent at resetting the scales and adapting to new circumstances (we do it every time we improve our situation, but we very quickly take that for granted).

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent but the most responsive to change”
Charles Darwin.

HTH.

Wow, just wow.

When you put it like that it’s a little more easy to understand. Thank you for taking the time write all that and respond and yes it was fairly therapeutic to write it all down.

It’s strange because yes I’m sad about the marriage breakup but I feel more guilt to my child that we couldn’t work it out. I know that it’s better to be in two houses than a house were parents aren’t getting on. But it’s just not the life I had imagined for my child.

Im going between just pull your socks up and get on with it and unbearable sadness and guilt. Maybe that’s all normal and will fade with time.

Sadness is normal and will fade, as you say. Guilt is a worthless and destructive emotion (unless there's actually something to be truly guilty about - which you haven't).

Your daughter will have a different life to the one you imagined. Not better, not worse, just different. It's not something she will have thought about so you haven't taken anything from her - it's simply a new reality and children are incredibly adaptable. Anytime you start musing about the mythical future that might have been (and there are no guarantees of what that may have held, we don't even know what tomorrow will bring) do something silly or indulgent with your daughter and see how her face lights up...