Does anyone remember? Things are pretty crummy now

[wavesandsmiles]

Links to earlier posts

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/1813521-Waves-is-determined-to-keep-winning-now-that-Acrobat-has-arrived

My little acrobat is nearly one. This time last year his MN aunties were cheering him on. I've survived a year but things are tough. I have pnd which has been worsening, and was signed off work a couple of weeks ago.

My new job is very stressful but also Twunt continues to mess with my head. I cannot let go. He clicks his fingers and I'm like a bloody lap dog. I hate myself.

I'm not really eating anymore. I find it hard to smile. It feels like my children would really be better off without me.

Amen to that, Math

Please, Waves, do what math has suggested. That's a start. Then look at Freedom programmes or similar. Glad you're getting some support in rl.

Ok, so I will try to establish some way of a neutral handover. I guess I needed someone else to say that it is really not ok to be called an asshole in front of my baby son and former step sons.

I took the children and my Workaway helper out for tea last night. I didn't eat much but I ate a little which is a start! I'm playing with Acrobat at the moment then I will throw myself I to music practise whilst he naps.

I will burn the little card as well. It is necessary. I think I put some things he bought me as gifts in a bag and return them with the baby. He got me a motivational framed picture which reads "fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and all good things will be yours." The words with the biggest font are whine less. I don't think it's such a loving gift really. Especially the eat less bit when he knows I've had a life time of struggles with eating!

I do like the shoes he got me so I want to keep them. But I don't know whether I should return it all to make it a proper clean break.

I'm so sad that he features in my happy memories. Biggest regret is that I allowed him at acrobats birth - even the midwife (not my main one, the second one who just came for the birth), said she was so angry he was there, totally unsupportive and emotionally absent.

I feel like such a mess. So many bad decisions. I look at me the adult and feel so ashamed. I've messed up so much over and over again. The little girl me is sad about this because she deserved a happy life and I stuffed it right up.

Waves, I have long followed your threads and have such admiration for you - you are a fantastic mother and such a talented woman and you have endured for so long. Don't be so hard on yourself, you have coped with more than many have in a lifetime.

Don't bother giving anything back to Twunt, making an effort like that shows him these things are significant to you. Just put everything in the bin where it belongs. Perhaps stamp on it first.

You're right, that "motivational picture" is cruel and appalling. Burn it with the Marry Me card.

Please stop worrying about your behaviour and how all this reflects on you - if this had happened to someone else would you be saying that the abuse and its fallout was that person's fault? I doubt it - you would want (as the MNers on this thread do) to show some support and make that person feel happier and, more importantly, worthy of better treatment in the future.

I'm so glad that you were able to eat a little last night .

If that was a motivational message, I'm a teapot.

I think I put some things he bought me as gifts in a bag and return them with the baby - ask yourself why you want to return them to him. Why not just throw them away? Is it because you want to provoke a reaction from him? Not worth it. Just chuck them in the bin.

Throw all the crap away (but keep the shoes unless they bring bad thoughts in which case give to a charity shop).

Please tell the little girl that its OK - the past is the past, what's happened is in the past now, and that things can be brighter in the future and that you're going to work hard on making sure that that happens for the little girl and your children.

Agreed - handing them back is an example of how you collude with him against your own best interests. You want the reaction, you want the faux-outrage about 'how could you hurt me with your callous rejection of my gifts' routine, because you think that will prove he still cares. It prolongs the damaging emotion that you're addicted to.

Plus it's a metaphor for how you deal with him. You let him in and then you battle to shut him back out again. Don't let him in. The next gift is refused with a polite 'no thank you'. Alcoholics don't accept gifts of wine and then try to get rid of them again. They say no.

Were they his words or has someone come up with and printed such crap?

You have to accept that the past is the past and you are NEVER going to get the fairy tale with this person.

I know I can't say what I mean but I will try anyway. I went through something horrific as a child. I really don't want to believe it is true but I know it is. I am in the process of getting a kind of justice for this but I am getting it for the child, for her.

I can't say it is for me as I don't want to acknowledge it really happened even though I know it definitely did. You have to make this about you, not her, the little girl you were, but you the woman you are now.

Let this man carry on abusing you then nothing will change and it will be your choice to do so. It is a real case of needing to use your free will. Get some control. Stop doing the same thing over and over when you know you will get the same response and in doing so YOU are hurting yourself as well as allowing him to hurt you. I have also done this. I wanted an end result so bad I kept doing the same thing over and over in the hope I would get the result I wanted. I never did and I was just hurting myself over and over again. Part of me still wants the result but I have a word with myself now, think about the consequences if it did happen and be happy it is over if sad it didn't end well.

One life. Full of hard choices and decisions. Sometimes you have to put others first when you want something for you but when it is bad everyone suffers. Your children are suffering because you won't get away from this abuser. You need some help to work out why or else accept it is just because you want him in your bed.

Acrobat has a huge amount of aunties who care about him but we all care about you as well.

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Don't give them back to him, waves. Just get rid. Throw it all out and let it be what it is - rubbish. You don't need it anymore.

I would really like this thread to be less about him and more about you. Every mention of him is more space you're giving him in your heart and mind and home. Of course it's your thread so you get to decide what to do with it and what you want to talk about. If you need support and want to talk about him, that's ok, of course. But let's see if we can't turn it around a bit.

I think what you need very much is to create your own fairy tale. You, little girl you and your children in your own bubble of happiness, acceptance and love. You don't need anyone else to create that for you. If you work at caring for yourself, just loving that scared and lonely little girl whenever she needs it, you will become stronger and stronger and soon enough you won't feel that immense sadness and grief because you'll have made your own safe haven.

No one can take that away when it's inside yourself.

Also, very importantly, when you feel ashamed and regretful, that's the perfect time to use the visualisation to nurture, protect and love yourself.

You still deserve happiness. Nothing is stuffed up forever, and today is the first day of that happy life you want to build for you and your children.

Best wishes.

You have not stuffed up, waves. You may have made bad choices (or had them made for you ) but we all do that. every single one of us has made a bad choice or two at some stage.

Point is, from now on you can get rid, move on, don't allow him to belittle you or treat you like shit, swear at you, disrespect you, abuse you...

You are worth it. You are worth more. From this point on - your decisions. Not his.

I know this is about my being able to make my decisi

I know this is about my being able to make my decisions, but it doesn't stop the aching feeling of grief and shock. I kept letting him back in, kept putting up with being made to feel terrible, being let down over and over, because I was so determined to have the happy ever after I believed in. To not have stuffed up, and to actually be enough.

God knows what is happening with the posts argh.

I am so pleased to be back here and posting and that there is so much support. I need to plan my own happy ending. My own happy future with my children. I must do that and I must not talk about hideous twunt anymore. I wish I could have him removed from my memory.

It is so painful. It feels like I'm breaking inside. That's why I can't stop thinking about cutting myself. I need the inside of me pain to stop.

Thank you all, I am trying I really am. And have had no contact with twunt since I started this thread....

You will have your happy ever after, you will.

But you will make it for yourself.

You are good enough for you, and for your children. That is all that matters, truly.

Your image of yourself is fatally entwined with this myth of the happy ever after, waves. It's almost childlike, I wonder if it is the damaged child inside you? We believe that if you deserve it the prince will choose you and you will have a happy ending (although this is my idea of a bollocks fairy tale, I have to say). And that therefore if the prince doesn't choose you and there is no happy ending it must be because you don't deserve it.

It's a logical fallacy - the fallacy of the inverse.

The mistakes you have made cannot be unmade. You have stuffed up. You need to accept that and own it. But to suggest that the reason this relationship failed is because you weren't good enough is an act of enormous cruelty. You are in the process of destroying yourself to try and make this relationship work.

You need to write your own fairy tale, in which the princess is an Amazon, who gets offered amazing jobs over Skype practically whilst giving birth. The princess can defend her people against any attack, except Kryptonite (yes I do realise how badly I am mangling the stories!). So the princess locks the Kryptonite out of the kingdom forever and seeks out magic spells to become immune to its effects. How does that story end, waves?

Your knitting of a fairy tail future has got all tangled and mixed up. The only solution to that is to unravel the bits just enough for you to be able to pick up the stitches, but don't go down the same route, this new piece of work is going to take you to a completely different end from the one you had imagined, but it can be just as good - and indeed, it is going to be so much better than the end that twunt was taking you down, now that his mask has truely slipped and shown him to be a very different person from that knight in shining armour you imagined in that fairytale future.

Yes that's true, Mistle -waves, you have actually not married the 'fairytale Prince' at all; you have in fact married the wicked black-hearted evil Vizier, who comes on at the beginning as a lovely goodlooking prince but ends up the baddie who is locked in the dungeon for all eternity.

There will never be a happy ever after ending with this vile, abusive, lying cheater.

The more you stay in contact with him, the more you are denying yourself a happy life. To be free to live happily, you need to stay NC.

The freedom programme can be done online if you can't get to one nearby.

Thing is, waves, you want the happy ever after - you've never got over his rejection of you. You are so tenacious: most people would have said 'OK you loser, you don't know what you're throwing away ' and kicked him to the kerb, but you keep hanging on to him. He must LOVE it, you throwing yourself at his feet, but I guarantee the minute you stop giving him that power, you stop him rejecting you, each and every time. Then you will be amazed at how powerful you really are.
We can all see it in you.

Hi Waves, I definitely remember you and your lovely DCs, we met last summer in London! I'm glad to see you back on MN. I was thinking of you recently while I was listening to your excellent cd...

Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes in life, sometimes repeatedly. I believe you have it in you to overcome any obstacle you come across in life. You are a lovely soul, a strong, vibrant, creative, determined and loving person. I admire you greatly.

Things will get better. Be kind to yourself.

Special waves for Suffragette and Captainmummy who I met last year :-)

Ok, I just texted twunt to say he cannot collect acrobat from me as planned tomorrow morning and that someone independent will be in touch ASAP re neutral place for handovers for access. I also advised I was blocking his number which I've done so he cannot now contact me at all.

I'll be in Weymouth area for a week in early august if anyone wants to meet up! I will be there because I am strong enough and will damn well get through this and get a better life. Not sure how but I'm going to look into the freedom programme online as at starting point.

I want to cry and curl up but I can't. I'm a mum. So off to spend some time sorting a nice dinner for my little tribe

Isn't denying him planned contact tomorrow just likely to lead to him roaring round to your house demanding his child? And/or going out to get another prepaid SIM with a number you haven't blocked? Just like giving the presents back, this seems more calculated to get a reaction from him than genuinely helpful.

Still, I'm glad you have blocked his number, glad you are planning a lovely holiday. Push him out and keep him out this time.

Csn you ask your lodger or a neighbour to walk the baby to the end of the road and hand over there at appointed time? Just as an interim until you sort out some way of formalising neutral contact? I do agree with tribpot that it will just hand him an excuse to kick off.

Your holiday and, more importantly, your twunt-free life sound lovely.