How do/did you deal with feeling bitter?

[SeahorsesSwim]

I've got two young dc and ex decided he didn't want me/family life. He skipped away and carried on his career whilst mine faltered, I've got sole custody of the kids, had to move from a nice family home to a smallish flat as that's what I can afford etc.

When I see happily married couples, parents getting help from grandparents etc I get jealous and bitter. I have no help and recently ex forgot our dc birthday which tipped me over to real bitterness.

He does see the dc and isn't all terrible (he helped me get my car motd) but I'm bitter about the life I could've had. I'd never have chosen the life I've got. I'm guessing some of the resentment fades as dc get older and more independent.

How do you deal with bitterness? It's been two years for me, though only really arose recently due to dc starting school.

Hello SeahorsesSwim,

I do understood your pain, I have been seperated for two years too, my ex left me too with a little boy and like you, He is still present in his boy's life and occasionally heps me too. I feel betterness too as I keep on thonking about my life could have been if he had stayed instead of taking the easy exit.... I wish I could tell you the answer but unfortunately I feel the same.....I just pass on my sympathy.

I sometimes feel better though, I am constantly up and down, sometimes I feel down and wish he would come back and we could be happy if we work together and other times, I feel I have to be strong and optimistic and I am lucky I have my son and I can rebuild my life without him. I organise plenty of things to do with my son and try to focus on him and me and it sometimes helps and I feel proud of myself. I am also trying to be friends with the mums at school, which is not alwasy easy as they have their own life, but I try to emjoy the times we meet up and hope that in time I will make proper friends with them. I have no family to help either and I understand how you feel about seeing others happy and getting help.

I realised at some point that being bitter would only hurt me and the DC. But in the end I think the only thing that really dealt with it was time and the acknowledgement that actually i'm pretty lucky, we're all alive/healthy/housed/fed etc.

I'm not a single parent but have certainly had experience of feeling bitter about the hand life has dealt me. I wouldn't ever have 'chosen' the life I have now and certainly didn't plan it.

I won't elaborate on my woes as the combination of the various things and difficulties I have are too identifying and I'd probably get accused of making it up!

I've had quite a lot of therapy. That has helped tremendously. I was very 'stuck' in a certain way of thinking and I feel like I've been able to move on from this stuck thinking/ behaviour. If you are able to access something like that (mine is through a charity) I would hugely recommend.

It's also the realisation that there are ways in which I am lucky and that there are always people going through worse. The saddest way in which I finally grasped this was that a friend's beloved child died suddenly.

I have a child who has profound learning difficulties and SN and both their life and mine are often intolerably hard (zero family help etc).

In that sense I would swap for your financially straitened circumstances and challenges in a heartbeat. I'm not saying that to play misery Olympics but just to say about how there will always be someone in a better/ worse situation than you.

Sorry you are feeling bitter and finding everything hard going. I hope things turn around for you and life takes a turn for the better.

I found seeing all the couples hard when dd1 started school too. Hope you have other lone parents to hang out with?