Help me understand my ex and when/how to move on

[Isanotherday]

Hi

I would really appreciate if some of the ?elders? of this board could give me some insights into my ex husband. I was with him for most of my twenties. When I left him about 3 years ago I very quickly met my current partner who is ?brilliantly normal?. We now have a baby and continue to be a fantastic team.
BUT I still find that I spend a lot of time thinking about how awful things were with my ex.

There were so many horrible events that different things trigger memories that I?d forgotten. E.g. We drove past a venue recently and I remembered that we attended a wedding there. I?d asked ex to slow down his drinking because he was causing a scene and embarrassing me. In front of everybody he threw a full pint down on the floor in front of me and obviously the glass smashed everywhere. How could I forget that?

The better the life gets the more surreal my past seems. I had a few counselling sessions but have had to stop as couldn?t afford to continue at the moment. My counsellor thought that I had PTSD.

Should I try and avoid thinking about the past and enjoy my current life?
Do I still need to process all the awful stuff with my ex?
How long is it likely to take to be able to fully put the past in the past?

I?d also really like to post some more details about my ex to give a better snapshot of him and ask your opinions on what may have been wrong with him. It will also give you an idea of what I?ve been through and maybe help you to advise me how I can put the past in the past.
I?ll add a separate post though or this one will be too long.

Thanks for any insights you can give.

Here is one of the message he sent me when we split up. I?ve put some examples of what actually happened in bold text. I think!

Dear Isanotherday

I am awake, 4 am. cannot sleep, cannot work.

do accept its over but am still in love with you.

there are several things I want to get straight with you.

1. i love you and will never hate you.

2. the relationship with Mrs X was a joke that went too far

I found emails between him and another woman. He had tried to arrange to meet her but don?t know if this happened. He also had responded to sexual adverts on gumtree to both men and women!! He refused to let me see his phone even when I said I would leave him if he wouldn?t let me see it. He deleted all the texts on it before handing it over

3. The online shit started the weekend you did not come home and you stayed in X. am not trying to blame you or anything.

He was working abroad then, that weekend I was supposed to see him on the Friday and my friends on the Saturday. He didn?t come home at all on the Friday night and turned his phone off. He did this a lot. However, on this occasion despite staying up all Friday night and driving round his friend?s houses on Sat morning looking for him I decided I wouldn?t stay in crying but would stick to my original plan

4. you think i kept you you in the house. When you moved to X, even before the drama, you were always in the house, you refused to do anything, you use the drama as an excuse. count the number of times we have been to a pub together or done anything together since we moved in together.

you wanted to be in the house all the time. ~I supported you through that.

Before I met him I was VERY sociable and had loads of friends. I didn?t like going out with him for several reasons:-
He would get so drunk he couldn?t stand
He would get us thrown out of venues
He would spend my money buying rounds of drinks/bottles of champagne we couldn?t afford
He would humiliate me by buying drinks for other girls
He would grope at me in public
He would pick fights in taxis/kebab shops

The "drama" included
Getting attacked with baseball bats twice. Once outside a club someone got out the passenger side of a car hit him round the head before driving off. He was in a coma and I was told he may not wake up. The person was never found and he claimed not to know the motive. Obviously I was very scared.
He also tried to commit suicide (walked into a police station and demanded to see a Dr cause he was going to hang himself). Now think was to pretend to try and evade a prison sentence. At the time I spent an hour with a police Dr being interviewed. He told me he thought ex had PTSD!!! I believed this and spent weeks worrying I?d find him hanging.

He resigned from his job without telling me so we had no money. He had debts he didn?t tell me about so I had to get out lots of credit cards to try and pay off several bailiffs.

He crashed our car whilst drink driving and abandoned it upside down on the street. He faced prison as had done this several times before. But he denied it was him and concocted a story that his car had been stolen. He believed he could fool the police even though his DNA was all over the air bag. He got away with a suspended sentence cause I got my Father to be a character witness and persuaded him to plead guilty.

He later blamed me for this and said he?d rather have gone to jail than done community service.
However, at the time he had told me that he would kill himself
in prison.

I even encouraged you to go out, even with your friends and not be stuck with me all the time. I think you are learning this freedom today, which was well encouraged all the time. I think you missed out on doing girly things all the time. Do not blame me for that. you never wanted to go out, you stopped me from seeing my friends. You cut short my social circles.
I am glad for you to have found yourself!

there is limits though!
know what you want.

I even suggested a break about five months ago so you explore life a bit.

I didn?t cut short his social life. Even when we had no money and I could barely afford to eat. I would drive him to meet mates in a bar every Thursday and give him money for 2 pints. I?d go and collect him at 1am even though I had work the next morning. He?d often refuse to leave at that time so I?d be standing there in front of everyone trying to persuade him to come home. I didn?t know what he?d do if I didn?t wait. I was worried about him getting in trouble whilst on a suspended sentence. He also liked gambling away our money in casinos. I knew that if I left he would just not come home at all to punish me. He once stayed out all night and admitted he?d done that to punish me for not driving him to his friends house to collect a trivial item

5. Do not make stupid mistakes.

6. You have all the time to decide until maybe i settle down with someone else.

7. I was stupid and sorry and would appreciate forgiveness.

8. if we move on , I would prefer you found someone first and soon because i will feel guilty if i dated someone before you did and i know that will fuck you up mentally. I do not want that.

He often tried to convince me that I was vulnerable and lacking in confidence and that he ahd helped me with this!

9. I know that we are not compatible (as you say) and I?m not good enough for you, but surely there should be one thing i could change and we could be happy ever after.

10. I will ask you for the last time this when we meet. After that you have to make a move.

11. I hope you find a man who loves you a lot. One who will not buy you presents because they love you but one who would appreciate ant treaty you better than i did.

He made a point of not getting me presents at Christmas and Birthdays after the first few years. He would smirk at my disappointment

12. will always be here for you. have always been there for you.

I have had friends and accomplices and i have learnt not to trust them
even more i lost my best friend , my wife my so called best friend.

I have my priorities right. you too need some

Am off to town, and straight to the airport at mid day.

I miss talking to you.

Sorry so long but it's hard to summarise everything that happened. Oh and he had a degree and worked for the NHS!

work on it with counsellor or ask counsellot to refer you on to someone who can do more work on this eg CBT, PTSD counselling etc.

I sunderstand how you feel, I think.

I had a bf in my twenties who did a lot of the same type of stuff:

Drinking himself into oblivion every weekend.
Drink and driving and crashing the car.
Drinking himself out of jobs.
Staying out all night without a word, turnign the phone off.
Gambling all his money.
Making a show of me in front of others.
Getting atttacked outside a nightclub by some bloke he'd wronged in the past and I had to physically defend him.
Doing these things to punish and control me and because he felt entitled to do whatever he wanted.

What was wrong with him? Well, aside from a drink problem, a dreadful personality, no idea how to behave with respect for himself or others, a deep sense of insecurity, an overblown sense of entitlement - and a total inability to put anyone else before himself? absolutely nothing. Nothing diagnosable, certainly.

Put simply, he was a c*nt.

Same as your ex, I imagine.

The world is full of blokes like this. The activities of many of their number are catalogued on these very threads.

Like you I finally saw the light and dumped him forever. He very smugly thought we would get back together because we always had in the past. He thought I was an idiot - but then I was an idiot for a long time. I moved to the other side of the country to get away from him, found someone kind and decent, had a baby, got happy.

But I did go through a period of "processing" the bad stuff - when my son was a baby, because, I think, rather than being occupied with just "surviving" life I now had the luxury of time and mental space to contemplate it all. I think a baby tends to bring the madness of it all back too.

My main emotion, I think is anger at myself for being so stupid, for putting up with stuff I shouldn't have for so long. Why didn't I walk away at the first red flag? Why did I undervalue myself so much? Why did I waste so many years? And why was I wasting my happy time thinking back on it now?

It's the reason I post on these threads - to try to stop other women from making the mistake of thinking that a screwed up, fucked up b*stard can ever come good if you just hang in there long enough. They won't.

Anyway I decided not to waste too much time thinking about it because I think what you have to accept in the end is that it was your choice to remain with him for as long as you did, you subjected yourself to it, you didn't walk away when your inner voice was screaming at you to, it was a mistake. But it is a mistake which has helped to get you where you are today:

A happy person with a decent man that I bet you appreciate like nothing on earth. Someone who appreciates life when it is good and who understands that she deserves kindness and respect and who wouldn't make the same mistakes again.

So give yourself a timebound look back if you must - but make it quick and then leave the horrible specimen in the past where he belongs. He never loved you and he didn't really care about making you happy - only himself, but he didn't even know how to do that.

Don't give him any more of your time than he deserves.

My xh was abusive (physically and mentally) and when I finally mustered up the courage to leave him I spent a lot of time in counselling!!

There were so many things I couldn't remember, and even now, 9 years later happily married to a wonderful man, there are still things that suddenly pop into my head that I'd previously forgotten.

I firmly believe that your brain doesn't allow you to remember any more than you can actually cope with.

When I remembered something, it used to knock me off kilter and I'd fret about it for ages. Now I'm more likely to think "oh yes, I'd forgotten that!! What a twat he really is!".

That old addage that time is a great healer really has been true in my case. You have to have time to remember these things, but don't live your life in the past.