Angry and sad

[cloudedview]

H left quite suddenly just over a year ago. I found out I was pregnant a week after he walked out and my second DC is now 4 months old. Our DD is 3. Over the last 13 months since leaving (according to him 'we're just not compatible. our relationship is flawed' etc) he has claimed to want to make it work a couple of times but has never seemed totally committed despite claiming he loves me etc. We have given it a go and he has run for the hills both times after a couple of weeks - generally blaming it on me. It's now over and I am on my own with my 2 wonderful lovely children - and he is in their lives at weekends etc.

What I am struggling with is my anger towards him . A year on and I am in a far better place than I was this time last year thankfully. I am coping (just about!) with 2 children, I have lots of supportive friends, I am in therapy and I really can see that there were lots of problems in our marriage BUT.. I am so so angry with him for leaving me when I thought we would always be together. Yes I see there were problems but he did not tell me he was unhappy - we could have worked through them if we had talked. Whilst he is a good Dad (the fun stuff) he has chosen to walk away from the day to day responsibility and our DC's will miss out on so much because of him my DS will have never even lived with his own Dad and I really worry about their relationship.He has NO idea how hard it is bringing up 2 young children by myself and I just feel that this was too important to throw away without any warning.

He admitted he had got 'too close' to someone from work before he left but has always maintained he did not leave me for her - that he called it off around Christmas last year as it was not making him happy - but I have no idea if he is with anyone now.

He is starting to make noises about not being able to keep up his half of the mortgage payments and, after seeing a solicitor It turns out we may have to sell the property.

I just feel that it's so unfair. He decided to walk out - so as a result of that I am am left by myself facing divorce whilst on maternity leave, trying to hold down a stressful job, keeping the house running which I may have to sell and move out of the area, looking after 2 children and still having to be civil towards and nice and positive about Daddy when he's there.

I see threads on here all the time of inspirational women who seem to have got over their anger and bitterness towards their exH and I just wondered how you manage to do this when your life has been shot to pieces by the man that made so many promises. I am actually ok day to day - as in keeping it together, out of victim mode, having plenty of laughs with girlfriends and my DCs are amazing but it's the HUGE sense of anger and resentment I feel in general that I feel will never leave me. or will it ? I don't want this to eat me up forever..Any advice very welcome.thanks

clouded I don't have much in the way of advice, but understand how you feel as 2.5 years on I still struggle with feelings of anger. Like you I have made efforts and have to a large part succeeded in getting on with my life day to day. I still feel angry at the unfairness of it all though - and of the fact that my ex of 20 years has just walked away with barely a backward glance and is moving on with his life.
His contact with the DC is inconsistent and his needs always come first.
I realised a while back that part of the problem for me was that if I feeling better and he saw that, it somehow made it OK that he did what he did. Whilst this is true, the fatal flaw in that way of thinking is that I have to stay sad and angry to prove how badly he treated me.
Knowing that hasn't helped me to let go of those feelings though.

anger towards a partner is a terrible thing...it eats you up inside and affects your every day.
You just have to keep moving forward. If you are in therapy that should be helping by now surely?
If not, then you are seeing the wrong therapist!
Being left with children to sort out their lives as well as yours is a huge responsibility...you are bound to be angry.
Sorry i cant offer much in terms of advice but am also in throes of anger at my DH, so can't really see the exit myself yet.
Chin up and keep going for sake of DCs.

I hate the way that feeling angry takes up so much of my energy - I know that it is self destructive and serves no real purpose. Like clouded I put on a positive face whenevr possible around the ex when my DC are there, so the only person that is affected is me....wanting to move on from these feelings and being able to do it seem like 2 such very different things.

exactly. wanting to move on is one thing...doing it is another

You're not wrong to be angry - he has behaved very badly, not so much in deciding to leave a relationship but in doing so little to care for his DC and now pleading poverty. Unfortunately, hangiing on to anger does hurt you more than anyone else. It might help to make a list of all the things about him that got on your tits while he was living with you (farting, laziness, putting empty milk bottles back in the fridge, horrible taste in music... you'll have your own examples) that you no longer have to put up with.

Yes.I totally identify with feeling that if you show or even feel like you are ok with things then it's a sign of approval for his actions (which of course it's not) .I did read somewhere that when someone has done something wrong or hurtful towards someone else they will still feel crap and guilty about what they have done regardless of the 'victim's' behaviour.wish I could believe that.

Yes therapy is helping me with identifying my patterns ofbehaviour and family of origin stuff but not so much with the anger towards him-maybe because therapy is once a week and the reality and huge responsibility of life is there all the time and is a constant reminder of his actions.

I do acknowledge how lucky I am to have two wonderful children and so many other great things going for mebut it's just so hard-particularly when surrounded by so many happily married friends. I wouldn't wish this on any of them and am not a bitter person but it is tough

sparkling I was able to list the things that I was glad to be free of quite soon after we split - they weren't difficult to find. It had been a terrible emotionally abusive relationship for a number of years. So like you clouded I know that in many ways I am so lucky and I feel proud of a lot of what I have done with DC (not everything, but have made huge efforts to improve things in recent months)...but like you clouded I feel so angry about what he did, and part of the problem is that he continues to behave really badly, thinking only of himself and always leaving me to pick up the pieces when he lets the Dc down.
You say that you are having therapy - is that private or through the GP...I am starting to think that i maybe need to explore that but would have to pay for it and on top of everything I am really struggling financially now.

cloudedview did you post at the time all this trauma was going on? Your story sounds very familiar and if so, I remember that thread well.

Given that you have had a baby so recently, I can imagine why you are still so angry and I think perhaps you are being too hard on yourself in thinking that this should have gone by now. If yours was the thread I'm thinking of, you wasted weeks on pointless counselling from a therapist who didn't want to talk about the OW or the suspected infidelity and you had to suffer the yo-yo effects of a vacillating H when you had just found out you were pregnant.

That's a lot to deal with in the past year and yet you have moved on to a degree and have not just coped, but have improved your life and how you feel about it. Rather than worry about your anger, I would use it productively to galvanise further efforts to improve your life and constantly tell yourself that you and the DCs deserve better than this man had to offer.

Have you tried writing a journal about your angry thoughts? This often helps and you have a written document too to chart your progress. If you look at the progress you have made in one year, imagine how much better it will be in a year or two's time?

Don't expect to recover too soon, you are doing just fine from what you say .

thanks for your responses.

SolidGoldBrass yes I have done that a few times. Annoyingly there are not loads of things that annoyed me about him . It's funny because I don't want him back anymore... It took a year for me to get to that stage but that still doesn't remove the rage I feel towards him for messing up what we once had.

The him that I have seen over the last year has put so much distance between us so I feel no connection to him anymore and could never see it working now..

Witchety: Therapist is private but I was originally seeing one thru GP and she was great. I got to see one very quickly but not sure if that was because they could see what a complete mess I was in as had just found out I was pregnant.I understand money is an issue but if you can;t get one through GP find a local one and talk to them about their rates. Mine was reduced recently as I was just honest and said I couldn't afford it. It's proving invaluable - so do if you can

WWIFN-Yes - it's me - I did post and got some very valuable advice from you and others on here. Yes maybe I can't expect to get over the anger this quickly. I think there are a few things at work here....

The first is that he gave so little consideration to our DD and the impact on her life before he just decided one day he wanted out.

Two is that I still have no idea if this is all about an OW or not. Friends question how it can be if he has physically moved back in here as recently as September claiming to want to make it work - but he was only here for a couple of weeks or so and then was off again. He has only moved 5/10 mins walk round the corner so I question if he would be so stupid to be with an OW knowing we could bump into each other so easily. Anyway my point is that if there was an OW that he is with now - the whole jigsaw of the last year somehow falls into place - so much odd behaviour makes sense and in a strange way it would make me feel better. He claims this is mainly to do with 'our' dysfunctional childhoods (he may be right to a certain extent) - he is in therapy twice a week and does have a lot of sh*t to deal with but have I been letting this cloud things whilst he conveniently uses this - and my issues as a smoke screen ?

Thirdly I really want him to know how f*cking hard it is doing what I am doing. He will never know as I am sure many single parents will testify as, even when he has both of them - a trip to the park with all the essentials packed by me is no big deal - its the nights when the baby is up 3 times and then my 3 year old wakes up too and I'm paranoid that her upset is all about Daddy leaving, its the fear of going back to a stressful job in a couple of months and just being so tired I can't hold it down, Its trying to look to the future and not feeling so scared about what it holds, is the prospect of leaving our lovely home (nothing special but it's home and stability).. all because he didn't fancy being married anymore

grrrrrrrr anyway rambling on. I guess this will all work itself out in time.. and that's what I need time.

WWIFN-I do keep a journal but I really like your idea of charting the progress because despite my rage - I can honestly say I am a million times stronger than I was this time last year

Well if the last time he left was in September, you are actually only two months on from the loss of your relationship, so no wonder you are still angry.

I thought it was you. I well understand your need to make sense of what has happened to you and you're right, knowing without doubt there was an OW would help you to move on, because whenever something awful happens in our life, we need to make sense of it.

If I recall, the problems starting surfacing in your marriage at the point when he had met someone else, which put paid to the counsellor's lazy notion that he wouldn't have been unfaithful if everything was basically sound in the marriage. So the problems were caused by the infidelity, not the other way around. Hence you were being urged to focus on non-existent problems and not talk about the OW, because she was seen as incidental to the fact. I remember being outraged on your behalf.

Just because he lives around the corner doesn't mean there is no OW, or several of them. He met the last one at his new job didn't he? Since you won't get any truth from him, he would undoubtedly cover his tracks so that he didn't bring one home, that's all.

Can I suggest you raise this in your own therapy? I only know your story from what you've posted on here, but I'd bet a sizeable sum that it was infidelity that caused him to leave the first time and that the moment it hits home that he doesn't want a monogamous relationship with you any longer, he exits stage left again. I think this is at the heart of the problem.

Would it help you to "know" this, without ever getting the evidence? Would it help you to settle on it as a truth and decide that yes, your relationship did unravel because of his infidelity (and of course, all the selfishness that permitted that infidelity)?
Have a think about why you need incontrovertible proof, when the evidence has been staring you in the face all along.

thanks WWIFN

I think I need to know for 2 reasons - firstly if he is now with this one specific person - then that means this WHOLE thing has been about her. His feelings for her, his too-ing and fro-ing, his saying one thing then doing another , his blaming me etc and to me it makes a big difference - I guess because it's then about him and his inability to remain in a monogamous relationship with me (or anyone) and lss about my shortcomings

If it's not about her and he is speaking the truth then somehow it makes it worse... I guess because I now recognise that I suffer from low self esteem. This does not come out in my female friendships of which I have many but with men - and nowhere has it manifested itself more clearly than in my relationship with him. So when talking about the problems in our relationship and how the marriage broke down I can end up blaming myself a lot ie I wasn't interesting enough, sexy enough, didn't understand him in a way my friends seem to understand their husbands, didn't know what I wanted out of life - his musical interests became my musical interests etc and I just wasn't enough for him.

I guess if it's not about her then he has chosen a life away from his children (which IS a big thing for him) in a flat by himself with little money - which is still seemingly better than being married to me - which - if he is to be believed is the case. SO if its just about another woman then all of his reasons for no longer wanting to be with me fly out of the window and make me feel better about myself.

I know on a certain level this is probably crazy as there is a lot more to it than that. Maybe its just an indication of how crap I feel about myself and how I have allowed him and his opinions to become my 'higher power' Whereas actually he has loads and loads of issues of his own that may be playing a very big part in this whether he is with someone or not.

Does this sound mad ? I do need to raise it in my therapy -I have been trying to talk about things that I am feeling away from him recently as it was all about him for a long time but I guess this is one of the things that will help me move on so I do need to get my head round it more.

THe thing it, it's pretty unlikely that he will ever give you the answers that you feel you need to get any kind of closure - becasue the answer is, really, that he treated you unkindly because he chose to do so, he considered his wishes more important than your needs or that of his child. Not many people like admitting to themselves that this is what they did, so they blame the other person.

Sadly I suppose that you are right. He is so careless in every other aspect of his life that i suspect it's only a matter of time before he gives himself away if there is someone else anyway. Actually there is nothing I can do about him meeting someone new now... It's just if it's this one original woman who was on the scene before our marriage broke up that really matters so much to me in a piecing the jigsaw together kind of way as it will explain so much oddness and blame for the past year.

The sooner he starts actually looking after his children in his own place so you actually get a break and some headspace the better! He so has you running around after him I'm not surprised you're furious with him!

OP This is why I wish your original counsellor had been better. If you had instead been encouraged to talk about the OW and his feelings for her, you would have had some closure a long time ago.

Short of doing some digging with his work colleagues, setting a PI on him, or seeing them together, I don't think you'll get the truth about whether it was the same woman all along.

Did I remember correctly that your H turned into a bit of a therapy junkie? And that he'd said that after he started to unravel in therapy, it had caused him to question everything, including whether he wanted a wife and family? Now, I suspect some of that is a new take on the old chestnut of "I'm depressed" as a ruse to deflect attention from the not insignificant fact that he was having an affair, but I wonder whether this has happened:

He's someone who takes himself far too seriously and the counselling served only to remind him that he was The Most Important Person On the Planet. He then started to recapture his singledom by socialising with a younger crowd at his new job, forgetting that he had a wife and child at home. He started an affair with a woman at work and lied throughout that this was over.

He managed to persuade a dozy counsellor that this was a red herring and that she shouldn't be mentioned and instead you should trust him to end it and re-commit to your marriage.

Now, either he continued that affair, or it was a bit on/off for months OR he is one of these self-absorbed arses who felt that the first infidelity was a woo-like sign from a higher power that he was in the wrong relationship and should actually be a free spirit to pursue alternative relationships.

Some people in his position completely lose their perspective about a meaningless fling and assume it is a bad portent for their marriage and must therefore mean that the primary relationship is doomed, or else they wouldn't have been unfaithful.

The counsellor could have really helped you by pointing out that this had bugger all to do with you, or even your relationship and everything to do with your H and his wankerish self-absorption. Except I'm sure a counsellor wouldn't use those words

The aim now is for you to reverse your thinking and reframe it that he simply wasn't good enough for you. That this wasn't about you at all.

I love wwifn's comment that it was a woolike sign from a higher power regarding the affair, seriously you will see throughout life people who have had when you look back, and have affairs, they are in a personal crisis of their own making and handle it in a very destructive selfish way and don't want to take responsibility for their actions... very sad...

I totally agree years down the line from my dh leaving me for ow that in time and with help you do see that they are not good enough for you if they behave the way they do, and it was all about them... please don't listen to him and others who try and transfer blame to you, the mistake I feel i made was choosing him as a partner and I looked into that side of things, and looked into myself to look at why I chose a partner like that or wanted someone like that in my life...

WWIFN - I love your posts - yes I think you are right about the taking himself far too seriously after therapy.

His initial therapist was female and even the (questionable) relate counsellor said that once him and his therapist starting talking regularly about our relationship a 'triangle' would have been created. He was using her to vent his (newly unearthed) frustrations about our marriage and by the time he arrived home after his sessions he was done talking and felt as if he had dealt with the issues - and I was then on the outside. This co-incided with us having our first DD ... where I became very immersed in motherhood leaving him to take a back seat for a while.

He was left by his own mother for about 3 years when he was about 11 - and so has his own 'women' issues too - His dad bought him up in that time and was a serial philanderer.... so I guess there's plenty of stuff there that could have affected our relationship - including his wankerish self-absorption - I love that expression - even more so as it's totally accurate.

Either way you are right when you say that I need to change my way of thinking as on a bad day it drives me nuts and makes me feel like I just wasn't good enough - whereas actually you are right. It's him that wasn't good enough for me. On a good day now I can (thankfully) not think about it too much - although my daughter did come home after a weekend at his on Sunday and tell me that Daddy has fairy lights in his flat..hmmmm - That's the kind of thing that sets me off down the 'is he isn't he ?' path.

Mummiehunnie- Yes I agree far more productive to focus on me and question why I was happy to be in a relationship with someone like that rather than spend ££s and hours discussing his self destructive tendencies.

Clouded, I am right with you, although H left me at 40 weeks pregnant in July. Turns out their was OW after all - a friend of mine.
Only found out after recently snooping, only got a wall of silence from H. Still getting the same treatment since confronting him about it too. Right now, have taken some steps back but as its all become clear I hope this will propell me forward in time and I can stop the questions.
Am very angry right now too, left to look after a baby, had to move town, move in with my parents (!!!!), sell my house that we'd just finished rennovating, leave my friends etc etc.
Not got much useful advice, just wanted you to know you are not alone!!! And its good to know I am not either.

Oh Wilkoa that's awful.I suppose I knew from the start I'd probably be going through my pregnancy alone but him leaving at 40 weeks must have been very tough.you have had a lot to deal with if you have also had to move out.

My nail in coffin moment would be if I had to sell the house after everything else he's put us through so am going to do whatever I can to stay here.I guess you were faced with the same problem that I would have-no hope of buying a suitable property in the area I love with the money and mortgage I'd be entitled to so yes I would think about relocating like you too.that's the kind of thing that makes my blood boil-they just bugger off with no thought for the trail of destruction they leave behind ggggggrrr.how are you coping?

Well the last 5 months have been tough to be honest. If it wasn't for my family, I don't know how I would have coped. Also good I have bonded with DS, was pretty scared I wouldn't as my pregnancy was horrendous with the emotional torture he put me through.

Now its all come to light, H is still silent. Amazing, its like the OW never happened if he doesn't admit it.

When I found out, I felt rage like never before. I would love to shout and scream at H and OW (as we were good friends) but instead I write it down, exercise (to combat the panic attacks) and write gratitude lists to remember what's good in my life. Try this book The inventories are very good.

Could you rent instead of buying somewhere if you really want to stay in the area? You should also get a bigger proportion of the profit from the sale as you also have the kids. I put my house up for sale immediately as it was more important to me to cut ties where possible.

They don't think about the trail of destruction as they can't cope with the guilt of what they've done. So its easier to ignore it. As H said to me on the phone when he dumped me "My happiness is most important". I am taking his advice, its all about me and DS now. You do the same!!

Good luck with everything, keep telling yourself it WILL get better. I don't believe it myself sometimes...