After divorce, trying to move on is like doing a square dance with both feet tied together. Update.

[Wisedupwoman]

First came to MN (a life-saver) in March:

Then DH, now XH (very quick divorce) was into second OW which I found out through his deceitful, sloppy and disgusting attempts to take the cowards way out. Could not believe the man I loved for 20 years had spent 4 years lying and cheating his way through life and who then went on to try and manipulate all our DC's (and still is, divorce doesn't change anything).

We are now into mediation, I have a sol who is waiting in the wings to advise on settlements. I have, despite all the turmoil, secured a better job on higher salary and our DD has a place at 6th form. XH has been living with OW since he left, and I went no contact within 2 weeks of his leaving. He hates this as he is unable to control the situation so interrogates DC's - my adult DS's have cut him out, yet XH still tries with eldest DS, who finds it hard not to feel sorry for XH despite his awful behaviour. All our friends have cut XH out, none of them liked him it turns out and his colleagues have long called XH 'the artful dodger'. So this was a man who led a double life and I have been trying to come to terms with this and move on.

This thread is about that - trying to move on and deal with the reality that whilst I am trying to hold my chin up and tits out, XH is going to be a part of my life through our DD whether I like it or not.

I want to give my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to everyone who has thus far been so wonderful and unstinting in their MN support for me - who have walked the journey with me even in the midst of their own sadness.

Hi Wisey et al, you are right about PTM. He is definitely acting like a little petulant spoilt child that is not getting his own way and throwing his dummy out of the pram. Unfortunately, like many men in the same circumstances, this is par for the course.

If it was going to take him 3 hours to drive there and back why did he not just plan to spend some time around your area with DD and just save himself the double journey. How is your DD keeping now?

You are right about the way absent fathers start off with enthusiasm re access and at the first hurdle and other hurdles thereafter fall and the contact gets less and less. Ive seen it happen like this in so many cases.

It happened with my children slowly although they are older now but sometimes I wish he would make more effort being the father, for he is missing out on lovely times with gorgeous grandchildren.

Hope everyone is having a nice bank holiday weekend.

Oh, I'm enjoying the whole piles / germaloid metaphor.

So to combine weddings and piles, here's an ancient joke: "Did you hear about Ernie Er? He married Emma Roid." Sorry, couldn't resist. Not sure it works in writing ... OK, not sure it works at all ...

The wedding sounded lovely; I love a good wedding and what an honour to be singing the bride up the aisle.

Now I'm a bit confused about old PTM Wisey. He cannot drive 3 hours to see DD but he can drive to yours in an unsuitably small saloon to empty the shed, necessitating a return journey? I was going to him "credit" for playing games but I'm not even sure he's playing a game, if he is it's not a terribly well thought out game. His behaviour just seems to be very selfish and thoughtless.

So this week I nominate PTM for the Twuntiest Twunt award. I think this should be a weekly honour bestowed upon our Hs/XHs. The non-exhuastive list of criteria for qualification are: a) abject selfishness, crassness, desparate attempts to cling on to youth, thoughtlessness, being a tight wad, being a self-centred D ...

So what would the TT award look like? Something penis-shaped to indicate a dick-head? How about two balls, each broken in half, to indicate that we've broken their balls?

Gosh, I knew there was a Twunt's Handbook, but it seems they even have their own dictionary now. Their definition of "integrity" would no doubt make fascinating reading.

you should see the entries under 'self-pity' and 'denial'.....

Is there an entry for "adultery", or doesn't that exist in Twuntdom?

I think there's only one entry under A. It's arsehole, defined as 'where the truly top twunt lives and breathes the air he deserves. Reserved for the few' .

Top Twunt. I like that. Sadly there'll be someone along soon who we'll have to find another nickname for. TT should do it.

You know, this is the only place I've ever discovered where satire holds hands with sadness, fury keeps company with humour, comedy is a friend to pain.

Yeah PTM could've arranged something to make it worth his while coming down. But he didn't. Truth is, he'd have no-one else here who'd answer their door to him now. Not a single person. He wasn't joking when he said he'd burned his bridges here. So selfish yes, sugar and B&A.

And if I hear a single word of blame aimed at my DD in mediation, I will leap across the large conference table, picking up the china teapot full of hot tea on my way, and smash it into his face. And then I'll sit back down and tell the mediator to get on with it because I'm just about ready to walk. I'm not only the woman I was 20 years ago I'm more than now. He simply does not know who he is dealing with any more. Those who predicted in the early days that I would come out of this a different and stronger person were right. I love who I am. A feisty, stronger and decent woman who won't take any shit from anyone any more.

But me and DD went to see the Inbetweeners this afternoon. Pressie from me. We had a great time together. I could not imagine myself leaving her, or any of my children in the way he did. And he wonders how my DS could've sent him a text asking PTM how he manages to sleep at night. Beggars belief really.

I don't care that I'm 51. I feel 31. Ready to start the best years of my life. Truly.
Thank you all. You're like the sisters I never had.

We love you too, Wisey! Your courage and humour shine through every post :)

I will leap across the large conference table, picking up the china teapot full of hot tea on my way, and smash it into his face.

I would actually pay loads of cash to see that Now, Wisey, violence isn't always the answer

I love who I am And I love that

OK. I'm back on the naughty step.

Uh..more like a platform now, really..step too small for our collective bad asses...

Wisey..sorry, petal, to hear about all the shite PTM is giving out (what is PTM stand for btw?)

I know what you mean about how these bastards can just leave their children. I look at my beloved children: so beautiful and lovely, funny, clever, charming and just beloved and wonder how he can just effectively abandon them. How? I do not understand and never will. But his loss. Too bad, so sad.

And again, yes this is the place for humour, friendship, support, rage and fury.

I am Fury personified. Fucking cuntknob better beware.

Oh DD said she thinks he is scared of me. He fucking should be. No one hurts my babies...

Chin up Wisey (chill yer tits as DD said to me ) and we are here for you.

PTM = purple trouser man. He has taken to wearing purple trousers. I haven't seen them yet, DD reports on them. He won't wear them to see me, he knows I'd be in hysterics!!!!

What does your one stand for, drfaywray? ABCKM was it?

Adulterous Bastard Cunt Knob of a Fuckarse or the more pithy ABCKF

giggle..a bit wordy but describes all actions rather well.

Hi - wedding sounds lovely, and I love the strength coming from your recent posts Wisey.

I remember when I spoke to a counsellor I work with about how Twunt was so angry with me, and I didn't know why, because I should have been the angry one, and she said it was because I'd taken away his Plan B. By filing so quickly for divorce, his safety net was blown away, and Plan B - i.e. go back to little grateful forgiving wifey if life in Twuntdom doesn't work out - vanished.

I wonder if something similar is going on with PTM - perhaps he's playing all these silly stupid games for a similar reason.

I let my kids decide for themselves when/if they want to see Twunt. I never run him done in front of them (have developed a sort of code that I talk to friends in, if we're discussing him, and they're within earshot - I sound like I should be in Torchwood!) And if they moan about him (which they do) I stay neutral, and certainly don't add fuel to the fire.

The bottom line for us is that I put up with a lot of shit, for the kids. I didn't kick him out when I should have done, for the kids. He professes to have a lot of love for the kids. Yet he left them. I could no sooner walk out on my kids than fly to the moon in a dust cart. They know this. I know this. He knows this. And it's not about mums loving their kids more than dads - I know of couples where the dad is the stronger more loving parent, and that's fine. So I just think it's him - his love isn't very deep, strong or very real. He is incapable of loving anyone else fully, because he's so in love with himself. Everyone else is fitted in around himself. He puts himself first all the time, and always has done. Realising this has been a real eye-opener for me.

He is incapable of loving anyone else fully, because he's so in love with himself.

Saff this hits the nail on the head. My eyes were well and truly opened when this dawned on me in the last couple of weeks helped by the comments of others.

DSD1 said this to me about her own D, old friend of TCH said this to me the other day and said he never wants to see TCH again because he only gets in contact when he wants something.

What a sad way of living one's life.

Sad - and ultimately lonely. Superficial people tend to have superficial relationships, despite how hard they work to make them appear 'real'.

Saff, whatever PTM's plan B may have been, I like you have in many ways thrown him together with OW (who I guess I should really call his NP now). At the moment he has no choice but to live with her - he has no capacity to rent or buy a place as so much is still in the air in every way for him. She's an easy option and ready made. I wonder (but don't care) how much crap sex he's had to engage in/she's had to endure to appear like he's there for the long haul. Ewwww!!!!

Message to lurkers not as far down the line - yes it really is possible to imagine your stbx's in the act and see it as rather pathetic really.

God, do you know I wish WWIFN were still here. I'd love for her to see how well I'm doing, and you too Saff. Miss her.

Very insightful post catsrus. Of course they're angry. Anger is easy to generate when you really have very little else to justify what you are doing.

But the anger is projected - it's anger at themselves which is far too risky to acknowledge since that would burst the bubble, the dream, the rationalisations. I'm angry with myself too. For not standing up for myself, truly standing up for myself, when I first realised he was beginning an affair/browsing the internet for porn/avoiding true intimacy. I can't blame him for me not bursting my own bubble - I have to make peace with myself for that.

And the DC's are right, they have said exactly what DD said, it's not so much the leaving - there will be a kind of relationship between her and PTM - but it's the lies which she'll never forget, and yes, have coloured her view of people far too early in her life. She's seeing him today actually, he's taking her out for the afternoon and dinner this evening. I can only wait and see what the fall-out will be. And, as her cynicism rises to the surface, she has said "I won't let him interrogate me about you, that has not changed".

Good, she won't suffer fools gladly. For PTM is indeed a fool. Not for leaving, but for being a weak and cowardly, cruel man. Some marriages just don't work, they come to an end. So be it. The end of mine, in the way it happened has brought out my formidable side. He will 'get away' with nothing, absolutely nothing.

catsrus - totally agree about the defense mechanism thing - I got a lot of anger before twunt left because he could justify leaving by making me the person to blame. But it was after he left - so got exactly what he wanted that I still got this rage from him, hence my friend's comment about Plan B.

B&A - it is an eye-opener isn't it? I spent some time this weekend with a long term friend (we went to see Wham together at Wembley in the 80's so I'm talking looooonnnng time friend!) and she's known twunt almost as long as I have. And I always thought they were friends, and she was really fond of him. She told me that she always thought him a selfish, self-absorbed shallow man. It was amazing seeing him through her eyes - and then realising how stupid I was not to see him that way too.

Wisey - hope you and DD are ok? How's job going?

Catch up later, have a load of mud from Reading in the mountain of washing/sleeping bags/empty beer cans (why bring them home FGS?). Thank god for Vanish and Pre wash on the Hotpoint!

X

I really wish that I'd had the benefit of WWIFN's wise words. I like to think I'd absorbed them from your early posts and the other posts I read.

I am sure she is reading and following everything though, so she knows Wisey, she knows.