Complicated scenario: my ex-husband with whom I have two young children (usually 50:50 care) has terminal cancer with months to live. As you can imagine it’s extremely sad and stressful.
I’m currently seeing someone who was a friend before. We got together a month before my ex’s news about the cancer. We’ve been together 3 months now, see each other a couple of times a week and he phones me every day. I have strong feelings for him. It’s nice, the time we spend, but I feel it’s me who looks for the windows of time to see each other when neither of us has the kids, and that there is little in the way of romantic words or gestures from him. It was him who first initiated the relationship, though. He has said he loves me, and has told his close friends we’re together now and that he loves me. He also says he finds it hard to express love in words. He can be distant and says that part of why his previous marriage failed is that his ex didn’t give him enough space. He has traumatised background— suffered a lot of child abuse and was taken into care: grew up in children’s homes and foster homes. Having received little love as a child he finds love hard to express. He has occasionally said he’s in love with me, I’m beautiful, seeing me makes him want to see me more, but these comments are very few and far between. He can express love in practical, caring actions. But I can’t imagine him suggesting something romantic, like a night away. He often says, if I imagine something in the future like meeting each other’s friends, “we’re not there yet”. I do appreciate we’re both having a hard time with life events, it’s sensible to take it slow and it might have been better to have longer between his last relationship and this one.
I find myself hungry for quite a lot more, though, but telling myself I need to wait and shouldn’t blame him because obviously our life circumstances are really exceptionally difficult at the moment.
Intellectually, I think perhaps we would have been better waiting, and that it’s still theoretically an option to pull back and say let’s wait until he’s come through his divorce and I’ve come out the other side with the impending bereavement. But I think we’re too close to manage that, and I know in practice we’d both feel that we’ve come too far to go back, and the connection and pull between us is strong.
I find myself feeling muddled about what I feel I can or can’t reasonably expect. I feel angry about it at times but I think I’m prone to anger at the moment due to what my kids are facing and the grief connected with that. I am in therapy for everything I’m going through on the family front.
Sorry for long post. Thoughts welcome — please be gentle.