Wedding drama - need advice/a good talking to!

[dollfin]

Hi All

I really need someone to give me their honest opinion on something.

My OH has gone abroad today, to his cousins wedding. All his family have gone, including his sister, her partner and her 3 kids (14, 10, 7).

My OH and I have been together for 3.5 years and although my son (3 years old) is not his, he brings him up as his own.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, my son wasn't invited to the wedding and because I never have any childcare, i couldn;t go either. So I am at home and OH is off in Italy with all his family.

Maybe I should be ok with this but I'm not, he said it was no kids but why are his sisters older ones going. I feel really hurt and really upset, basically like his family dont like me or my son. He has had a massive go at me before he went as he says I'm being ridiculous. I just can't help it, I want to cry and just feel so hurt.

Please someone tell me I'm being stupid. I don't want to feel like this :(

Dollfin x

I agree with the other posters that you really sound like a lovely person OP.

In all honesty I think the reason you feel panicked at the thought of not being with him, and have a low self esteem, is because you have started to become overly dependent on your partner. It's quite common when the other person in the relationship is deliberately hot/cold, which is a way of trying to 'hook' their partner onto them, and have them constantly chasing the "lovely" side of them. It's like a carrot on a stick - you know the nice stuff is in there somewhere, so you become obsessed with trying to bring it out, and then blame yourself when it doesn't work.

I don't get the impression that you are at the stage of actively leaving the relationship yet. But what you can do as a first step (and which will help) is to get some independence and self confidence back. You need to find activities that you can do without your partner, so you can realise that people like you for just being yourself, without you feeling under pressure to "please". You need an atmosphere where you can genuinely relax, and start to build up your confidence without him being there to undermine it. As you start to pull away slightly, he will no doubt go into super affection mode - but you really really need to resist the urge to dump all your new activities and wallow in the new affection, because it will be incredibly short lived if you do. It's just a way of making sure you stay dependent on him.

This man is not the only person in the world who will accept you for who you are (and in reality he isn't even doing that) - but I think you need to get some confidence in yourself before you realise that.

The thing is, you can't make a relationship work all on your own. Good for you for trying, but you really can't turn a prick into a prince.