At rock bottom- 2 years thrown away on a text

[yestocarrots]

Just hoping for a bit of a hand hold. Sorry this is so long. I'm feeling very bleak right now and have no one to talk to. Please, someone, sanity check me. I am reeling from a turn of events that has put me into a depression worse than any I've experienced in a while.

My ex partner was an army guy. We lived quite separate lives because he was posted the other side of the country to my city, but we saw each other most weekends. He has known my dd since she was tiny (she's now 2). Been a dad to her in every way, it was like we were a family. We argued quite a lot always about the same things- he didn't communicate much at all during the week, often would only text, and would get angry and belligerent if I expressed a wish for this to change. I wasn't perfect- I had bad PND and would get very emotional in conflicts which seemed to frustrate him. I was working full time in a demanding job and running a home and being a single parent and I know I took shit out on him. But I also loved him deeply. Showed it in any ways I could. Keeping the house lovely for when he came, making plans for days out and little holidays, putting on Xmas for him including a stocking and a sack of gifts, sending him packages, kept myself available for him basically every weekend and never asked for more than just more contact in the week (which frankly he never made the effort to change.) Earlier this year he was posted abroad at very short notice. I was devastated and scared but we both mutually agreed we would not let it break us. Both of us were in bits the day he left.
Then it all fell apart. While he was away I got so used to us not being able to communicate at all, I just sort of shut down. But my eating disorder and depression came back with a vengeance. My periods stopped entirely and I nearly lost my job through stress. I found it impossible coping with work, health and my toddler, I missed my best friend and partner so much. I sent him packages but it was all I could do. I had bought him special notepaper to write to me and he never did, when I asked him to once he snapped and ridiculed me as he thought it was such a trivial thing for me to want. When I finally confessed I wasn't coping and didn't know how to deal, told him my health was deteriorating and I just needed to know a rough time of when he would be back, or needed some more support (I don't really have any IRL and I didn't get support from the army as we weren't married.) he was furious when I said all this. Accused me of breaking up with him, saying I had no empathy for the stressful situation he was in, was so angry it shocked and hurt me to the core. It was like the more upset I was the more angry he was. After a week or so of this I suggested we go on a break til he got back as the miscommunication seemed tto be so damaging (I now deeply regret this as feel it was selfish but literally at the time I couldn't stand this anger coming from him and the fact that in fact he had no empathy for me.)
Within a month he had a date to return to the UK. I asked how/when I could come and meet him off the plane at the base. He never got round to letting me know- he was too busy apparently. He didn't let me know he was back in the UK til he had been there almost a week. He then asked on the Wednesday if I was free on the Friday to meet and talk. I had a work commitment I couldn't get out of and said I couldn't, but asked how he was and how the journey was. His response- "Are you serious?! All that bullshit about priorities and you won't meet me. Bye then". I immediately replied asking why we couldn't do the weekend instead. He simply replied "don't bother contacting me again." All by text. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe he did that. A month later he still hadnt come to his sense. I was missing him terribly but so hurt from his text I hadn't contacted him. Finally got up the courage and texted him. He responded so furiously and verbally abusively and yet we ended up sleeping together twice, him telling me one minute that I had hurt him so much and was a shit person with no empathy, then next that he loved me and was sorry i suffered so much when he was away. I was so confused about how he twisted it into me having done something unforgivable by not being able to see him when he decided I should. After 2 weeks of hell he texted me to tel me he would be no worse off if he ever saw me again. I've been bereft all over again. Calling him in tears- sometimes he answers and is reassuring, sometimes he won't answer but sends angry texts. Texting him how much I love and miss him, how sorry I am for what I did and begging him to see me. He has stopped responding altogether. I just don't know what to do. My dd calls him daddy- he said in a year it would be like he had never existed to her. I miss him so much, I can't bear how this has played out. I feel racked with guilt. I just want him to understand why I shut him out. I'm still having tests for my lack of periods, I'm still suffering terribly with my bulimia but he just accuses me of having no empathy and making his life hell. I feel so guilty I want to just hurt myself.

Sorry- I know it was long. I just need someone to tell me I didn't deserve this. He slept with me and told me he loved me just 2 weeks ago. I just want to curl up and cry. 2 years meant nothing to him in the end.

The main reason for him getting back in contact with you every few days isn't that he plans to rekindle the relationship, it is that it does his ego good to hear what a wreck you are without him, it makes him feel that he was right to dump you. He is a cruel nasty man.

Have a read of Natalie Lue's website Baggage Reclaim It will hopefully open your eyes.

Allalone- Why does it make him feel like he was right to dump me? His number 1 complaint was that I didn't appreciate or care about him enough. Thr amount of times I've said I miss him and apologised (now I wish I hadn't) I don't know why this wasn't enough. I am so confused by the whole trajectory I know there's more to it than meets the eye as it's so crazy making.
Thanks for all of your support again. Like queenliz has said it's incredibly hard to break the thought patterns. He makes me come out in dread and panic. It's been like that for a long time I just don't know how things got that way.

It was just an excuse to blame you and get off with it. My ex did the same. Blamed it on me for a silly comment I made then convincing me it was all my fault.

he had been cheating and blamed me and made up stories as he just wasnt man enough to be honest and admit he was a lying cheating bastard.

Another way of thinking about it Carrot is that we all have an emotional bank of energy. During the good times you save up energy so that when the bad times hit you have some energy saved up so that you don't go overdrawn. Right now you are massively overdrawn. You are wasting your precious energy on someone who doesn't care for you.

This means that you have little energy left for you and your daughter. Or, put another way, you are wasting your emotional energy that you should be spending on your daughter on him, the one that doesn't care for you.

Time to stop wasting your emotional energy on him and start saving for you and your daughter. Choose her not him.

That you continually tell him how much you miss him, apologize to him (though for what I don't know), all strokes his ego, he can tell himself how wonderful he must be since you are missing him so much, begging to see him.

It all shows him how much he is in control of your responses, actions, in control of your very life.

But, your relationship seems to have been based very much on you facilitating a carefree pleasant life for him, somewhere to stay in town, someone who didn't mind being left behind when he went out with his mates.

He doesn't want a crying wailing woman to be responsible for, he doesn't want responsibility at all, so in his mind he was right to dump you. Now he can get on with his carefree life.
And when he's a bit bored he can phone you up jerk your chain and remind himself how wonderful he is.

Carrots Have you ever heard the comment that the best revenge is a life lived well?
In time to come, in the not too distant future, I hope you live that better life with your little daughter.

I've just seen this thread for the first time today, I notice you started it on the 11th December, I read the first 10 or so comments and skipped to the final comments in the thread hoping that something had progressed, it was disappointing to see you don't seem to have started to move on at all. You are giving this waste of space man far too much of your time. He treated you and your daughter like shit and clearly has no respect for you. As a PP said you need to pull yourself together and for your daughters sake. When you find a decent man who treats you like you deserve and loves you, you will wonder why you spent so much time on this loser

Carrots, your last post made my heart sink. You're really not interested in cutting him off for good, you're still hopeful and still wanting to leap on any tiny crumb of 'comfort' that he misses you or wants you. He doesn't.

He doesn't need to make it any clearer than he has - according to you. All of this is according to you and I'm wondering if there's actually more than you've posted, more damning indictment of his lack of love and care for you - and you can't bear to post it because you know that posters won't let you keep lying to yourself.

There's no point reminding you of your daughter because she isn't number one priority in your head... it's still him. Even though you think/know that he has someone else, you're still wishing and hoping and happy to do anything for him. He must be laughing his head off at you - for now, anyway, if you keep initiating contact/replying to his game playing he is likely to hate you - and hurt you in every way that he can.

Where is the point at which you will finally say, "Enough now" and mean it?

There's no point reminding you of your daughter because she isn't number one priority in your head... it's still him.

I am watching a friend go through this. She is a single parent. She found a man she is besotted with and he only shags her occasionally as he doesn't want to take her on with a 4 yo child. So she is good for sex but doesn't want to be a step dad.

My friend is losing her shit over him and wishing she hadn't had children to her ex partner so she could have had this guy.

It is painful to watch with her and you. Prioritising a sad excuse for a man over your own child.

There is nothing more to be said. He has even said your Dd will never remember him. Which is true. So she will be fine. but he has effectively said he doesnt want you and doesnt care about your DD either as she is young enough to forget him too. he has no feelings for you or your child and he has told you this.

Carrots - get back in touch with your family, tell them that your ex-prick is history and that you were wrong to side with him and not them and that you are sorry. Ask them for support in ending this one sided 'relationship', tell them you are struggling and ask them to help you, please!

I know I need to block him.
I know nothing good can come out of seeing him. I will end up crying, being sucked in by seeing him again. But he will still leave. And then what will I do?
I know the reason I'm so devastated is the idea of what we could have been. I know I probably wanted to feel like a proper family with a good man for me and my daughter. I was so traumatised by my experience with my ex, her dad. And i thought I knew this guy so well. I am completely confused and hurt by his treatment of me and dd. but you are all right- what it means is that he didn't want us and he doesn't want us. I don't know what he wants. I'll never know whether it was my behaviour, or another woman, or my daughter starting to call him daddy that scared him off and made him discard and devalue us.
I feel like there's so much more I want to say both in anger and sadness to him but there is NO FUCKING POINT. like you all say it is fuel to his ego. I don't have to apologise or explain to him. Has he done that for me? No. He's fucked off for a new woman/new life like he always has in his 31 years.
I know I need to block him today.
The harsh words I have received on here have helped a hell of a lot. I'm embarrassed of myself. I don't want to be like my mum who at the age of 60 is emotionally a 15 year old. I don't want to be a shit role model for my dd. I want to be there for her so much.

So do it then, right now, block him now, sorry but he won't notice or care, get it done then take your dd out to the park or wherever and start giving her her the life you say you want to, in doing so you will start living your life with some normality. Don't waste any more of your time or energy on that idiot, work on yourself, your confidence and self esteem. See your gp about getting some therapy to help with this and with the baggage you've got surrounding your mum and your dd's father. Make today the start of your life improving and don't look back. Good luck!

You will get there. I don't think anything you or your daughter said or did has caused his behaviour. It's something in him and nothing you could have changed or controlled. He might have been a great friend but he clearly has a problem with more intimate relationships. You can't fix that.

He doesnt want to be a 'couple', OP. He doesn't want to be a 'father'. He doesn't want to be anything to you, other than you being an occasional Fuckbuddy.

Sorry.

You cry and angst over him - he is never going to be what you want him to be!

You say he goes and stays with EX, or EX-EX - and that is the best you can hope to ever be, to him. An ex, somewhere he can stay, a nice warm bed with no ties. He is busy building a network of exs, so that he always has a nice warm bed, someone to cook for him. He doesn't WANT to care for someone, or to love someone! He is happy as a pig in shit with what he;s got. It suits him perfectly, and he DOESN'T CARE whether you get anything from it! Why is everyone an EX? Because he doesn't want any more than that!

And FGS stop beating yourself up about 'blowing him off' - you have and should have a life that you need to live. And anyway, even if you had tied yourself in knots to be able to see him - he'd have cancelled, or used you for sex/food/comfort/money, and then left. OR he'd be now beating you over the head with something ELSE he'd made up so as to keep you dangling.

BLOCK
BLOCK
BLOCK.

And thank you lucky stars he is out of your precious life, and away from your precious dd.

I know the reason I'm so devastated is the idea of what we could have been. I know I probably wanted to feel like a proper family with a good man for me and my daughter. He is NOT a good man! It was not, and will never be a 'proper family unit' with this 'man'! This is YOUR imagination.

I'll never know whether it was my behaviour, or another woman, or my daughter starting to call him daddy that scared him off and made him discard and devalue us. Neither, or Both, or more likely that is was NEVER HIS AGENDA! He doesn't want to be 'daddy', or in a cosy couple. He never did. He is jsut stringing you, and all his Exs, along, for his own purposes (a nice life!)

FGS we can't tell you enough. He is NOT your boyfriend, or even a friend. He is a slimy grasping uncaring toad, and you are letting him string you along by giving him so much POWER over you! He doesn't care - and neither should you; he's not worth the shit on your loopaper. He will NEVE care, no matter what you do. nomatter whether you drop everything every time he clicks his fingers. Every time he says what you WANT him to say. He doesn't mean it - he is saying it to keep you sweet, keep you available should he wish it, or need a bed.

I'm trying not to be harsh, but stop giving him so much power. He won't care if you block him. He might not even notice, until he needs a bed.

I'll never know whether it was my behaviour, or another woman, or my daughter starting to call him daddy that scared him off and made him discard and devalue us

It was none of those things. The reality is that he just didn't ever want a commitment with you or anyone. Nothing you could have done or said could ever have changed that. The fault lay with him, not with you.

You didn't know him so well. You saw what you wanted to see and that hope was what blinded you. You see the real him now, but the hope is still pulling you back. I said this earlier on in this thread but I don't think you can move on until you seek professional support for what is really underlying and driving this - this man is a symptom of your low self esteem and low self worth. You need him to almost plug you back into those feelings you had of contentment and happiness that you were a girlfriend, someone wanted you, you could be part of a couple. He's no longer supplying that power supply - apart in little short bursts. The key is not to try to work out why he is doing it but why YOU are doing it to yourself.

I just feel that trying to work him out is continuing to keep you stuck in this obsessive mind set. Getting inside his head into the 'why' is making you feel worse and worse about yourself as it just perpetuates the feelings of 'I have been rejected' and how hopeless this makes you feel.
Working on your self esteem even if you try to do this online, is better than nothing at all will help you solve this horrible puzzle. I have allowed a lot of awful things to happen in my life due to the terror of rejection and facing up to why this is and the root of the feelings has helped me to move on. I got stuck in a shame spiral for about a year. I would feel rejected and awful then find a man to throw myself at, he would later reject me and then round and round.

CBT will help you. I think after almost a month you feel almost exactly the same it's time for a professional approach now.

Maybe it doesn't matter (in fact I know it really doesn't) but completely by chance on an unrelated profile I just found photos of him on a cosy night out in the town he has repeatedly visited the last few months (including a night out there the day after we "got back together"/had sex/said I love you etc at the time I believed he couldn't cancel said night out because he had booked an air b n b with his friend. Yeah as it turns ot that wasn't an army mate. I had noticed him liking her profile pics months ago which he denied (he then would unlike them), and noticed he would often look at her profile, but he always always dismissed her as "his mates ex girlfriend". Which she is, but it looks like they may have been having an affair emotional f not physical since probably before he went on tour and certainly since he came back. I even asked him about her outright because of his odd FB behaviour when we reconciled a month ago and he denied it. But These photos (which he had hidden from his own FB) are of them standing chest to chest, very close looking so happy. He seems to be friends now with all her family and best friends on FB too. The date is a week after I last slept with him. When he was still claiming to be so stressed at work that he couldn't deal with the stress of our relationship. I don't even know if he ever went back to work since coming back off tour. I feel so sick and angry. But angry. So angry because none of this was fucking my fault! It was just a pair of big boobs and an easier journey from his camp to get sex. I can't believe he let me feel so desperately guilty, let me apologise so much. I feel livid.

I know you think you are venting but you are using this thread to continue to obsess about him. Why are you searching so deeply for photos of him online? I am glad you are angry but this behaviour is worrying. It's almost stalking but the only person you are hurting is yourself. You have all the proof in the world he's a total pig yet you still want more... for the sake of your mental health it is essential you take stock of your actions and take responsibility for moving forward, or doing something towards even trying to do that. I'm coming from a place of caring I really do, but you can choose not to be a victim of this man. He does not have to win. You cannot possibly be managing at work and with your daughter while you feel this way - even if you are managing on the surface this obsession is very very damaging to your mental wellbeing and you need to seek help

Exactly what BumDNC said. This thread isn't helping you at all. You just want a venue to talk about him and obsess about him some more in the vain wish that somebody new will join the thread and give you some false hope again.

Honestly, Carrots, I saw your post on the other thread this morning and I really think you aren't well. Get some help. Please.

There is a thing called cognitive dissonance. Where what you know, and what you believe, dont match. It is dreadfully confusing and painful, but it does pass. When all your hopes and dreams have been dashed, its very hard to make sense of anything.

I can't believe he let me feel so desperately guilty, let me apologise so much. I feel livid. He didn't 'let' you beleive anything, OP. You are doing it all to yourself, now.

Step back. He is gone, was never yours, in spite of the 'cosy nights in', the 'I love yous' the 'daddy' - he didn't want it. He probably doesn't want the woman in the photos either; she will be another who is dangled along.

Let him go, FGS. You have built up a whole fantasy around him in which he is your soulmate and partner, daddy to your poor dd, a lovely couple-y life in which you have a partner! Sorry to be harsh, but you need to step back from him. He is NOT IT! You really are so desperate for him/a partner/a father to your daughter that you would ignore the actual 'him'?

No. He probably loves her too. Not just a pair of big boobs. He really loves her.

Give it up Carrots. You're doing it to yourself now.

Carrots ... in the kindest possible way, how is this thread still going? You posted this 3 weeks ago. And you haven't moved on even a single tiny bit?

I thought you told us you would just enjoy Xmas with your DD and put him out of your head?

Why are you still obsessing over this loser? You need to pull yourself together, block him and move on with your life. Look at 2017 as being a fresh start. As cheesy as it sounds. You need to get a grip though, take steps to seeing a counsellor next week and take it from there