Feeling humiliated - or am I getting things out of perspective?

[ThinkingItThrough]

Hi is there anyone around who can help me to work out how to cope with something. I feel really alone tonight and worrying over something stupid and people here have helped lift my spirits a bit in the past. I posted a couple of weeks ago as my ex-partner was taking his new partner to our local church and I felt betrayed and embarrassed by it.

I tried to stay strong and not mention it, but yesterday I did email him about something to do with the children and added a couple of lines on this issue to try to politely say how awkward I felt about it and did he realise? I said that I felt I cound't go any more. He has sent back a furious email and says I have no right to ask this of him and to even ask is an attempt to control and manipulate him and his new partner. He has shown my email to the new partner and she is furious too and has told him I am trying to control them. Reading between the lines it seems she is staying with him this weekend, meeting my seven year old daughter for the first time (my son and daughter are staying with him this weekend).

From other comments, it appears likely that he and the new partner are taking my children to the church together on Sunday. This is where we all used to go as a family and it feels as if he is making a huge point. They have already been together as a couple which I found hard but now to take my children and appear as a 'family' themselves seems really cruel. Or am I making too much of this? Is it totally normal behaviour and me that is over sensitive? I can't ask them not to go, I can't even ask them to use another church in another village as he says that would be an infringement of their freedom. I've just got to get over it somehow. I just feel sick and as if I'm being publically replaced and humiliated, even to my children. Am I over-reacting?

[Episkopos]

It is well. I can only imagine how you must be feeling now. Stay strong and don't be too hard on yourself. Like Sassh said, I also think you can still go to the church and make yourself useful. However if it is too much to bear, seeing the two of them together then join another branch of the church if it is easy to reach from your home. Don't allow the hurt and irritation to keep you from fellowshiping. Also you can pray for them that God will help you to love them (they are your neighbours). Stay blessed.