I am 39 (F) with 3DC under 7. I am divorced with a exH who sees the DC every other week. The DC live with me. I work full time in a stressful job and am the main bread winner of the family unit. ExH and I have been divorced for 2 years, things were difficult between us but have slowly improved, mainly due to me starting a new relationship and experiencing joy again. ExH has had some issues, addictions and PTSD from childhood which have meant he has struggled over the years.
I started a relationship with a new man a few months before the divorce came through. He is 56, very successful, also divorced with two grown up children he spends a lot of time with and who go to his at weekends with their partners. He and I have had lots of fun together over the last couple of years and it's been a breath of fresh air.
Something has happened recently which has compromised my mental health in ways I had not thought were possible. I too have a history of bad experiences, probably would be diagnosed as complex post traumatic stress disorder, linked to a cancer I had when I went to hospital at age 3 and was separated from my parents for three weeks while enduring a prolonged period of painful treatment and tests. I was also very ill for the next couple of years but was mostly ignored. I endured a lot of physical pain and sickness. I do not know why they did not visit me in hospital, whether it was the hospital or it was them: it's just something they will not talk about even now, and is glossed over, minimised to the point I've been conditioned not to mention it growing up and certainly not now. As a result of this, and going on to marry an addict with a backstory (exH grew up in extreme poverty), I naturally put my own bad experiences to one side and focused on ExH's much worse childhood and trying to "save" him.
A month ago, my own three year old became so seriously ill (not with cancer) that she had to go to hospital for a week. It was touch and go at certain points, ExH completely disappeared, citing his own childhood issues, despite me begging him to help and just cover me for a couple of hours. I also begged my parents who did not come either. I do not think I slept for a week, I worked from the hospital and I'd say there were some points I felt so much despair from being triggered I could have thrown myself out of the hospital window. Were it not for my DC and drinking alcohol until I passed out every night and physically couldn't, I think I would have done it.
During this time my boyfriend was supportive, on the end of the phone, willing to talk, but did not visit at my request as I did not want to upset DD who was very clingy and emotional with me while we were in hospital. I did not think at the time to describe how this was triggering me because I felt so paralysed by the feeling and couldn't put it into words, but even when I have broached it since getting myself together, he has acknowledged what I am saying, but he just doesn't, or doesn't want (?) to understand the level of despair I felt and still feel.
My daughter came home three weeks ago, recovered for a week, and is now absolutely fine. When it was ExH's turn to take the DC last weekend, my boyfriend rented a house in Spain and we went for a long weekend. He pulled out all the stops, it was bliss. But I couldn't help feeling so alone, so isolated from anyone who understands me. The food and wine and sunsets were just so discordant with what feels like a dark cloud over my life. I have started having sleep paralysis along with nightmares where I either dream of demons taking my daughter away while I was strapped to a hospital bed, or being held down on a hospital bed as a child.
My boyfriends attitude of celebration or "relief" that she is better and "the problems are over" is striking the wrong chord with me to the point I have become moody and needy. It's culminated in us having a week of arguing where I have tried to get him to commit to me in the long term or "show his commitment." He has responded with astonishment and annoyance that I do not value what we have, and that I would want to rush him into another commitment like marriage. I have responded by being moody and cutting him off, deciding he "doesn't care about us," but then feeling a huge sense of fear and despair again as soon as I let him go. I know this has echoes of attachment disorder (which would make sense.)
I don't know where to go from here. I feel like I am at the bottom of a deep, dark well where there is no one who can pull me out. I don't know what to do next, I don't know what order to do things. Can anyone help?