Hi
I'm going through an horrendous time at the moment and I need some strength to get me through.
Back story.. I'm 40 single mum to 6 years old little girl. 2.5 years ago I met who I thought was an amazing man who made me feel special and amazing. He lived an hour away and had 3 boys, 2 from one mum and the youngest from another.
When I met him he wasn't seeing his youngest because the ex uses the boy as a weapon and they'd recently ended their on off relationship.
We had an amazing time, our sex life was brilliant and he couldn't keep his hands off me. We went on lots of trips and we connected in a way I've never felt before. We have the same sense of humour and we talked about everything and anything. My daughter loved him and I met his two older boys and we all got on so well and done lots of stuff together.
The only thing that bothered me was the inconsistencies with his last ex... she would be on and off the scene letting him see his boy and then trying to control the situation. She would be flirty and say inappropriate things and put me down. One particular time we bumped into her in a shop and immediately after she left, she messaged my partner to say she was way better looking than me etc. He hates any sort of conflict so would have happily ignored this but I wanted him to stand up for me so he called her to say it wasn't OK.
Last Christmas, he asked me to marry him. He'd planned it for 2 months and bought a beautiful ring and proposed on the beach while we were watching the sunrise. Once the ex found out, she stopped him seeing the boy again.
In April this year my partner moved from his home town (hour away) and we set up a new home together in my hometown. He runs his own business but most of his work is back where he's from and he has the kids there too so there was a lot of back and forth. This started to really get him down, and come August I'd brought up thinking about getting married. I wasn't bothered about a big wedding, I was happy just to go away and do it low key. But when I mentioned it, he said he didn't know how he felt about marriage now and that he didn't really think he believed in it. He said he asked me because he wanted me to know how much he loved me but when it become real and I talked about it, he got scared. I felt devastated but tried to understand. Things were strained for a while and then one of his boys started a new football team which meant every weekend he would have to go back to watch him play (he has the boys every other weekend) but he then didn't know what to do with them after the football match because it would mean driving them back and forth and back again every day of the weekend. And at the same time.as all this happening... he had now started seeing the youngest one again after 10 months. My partner got so depressed by everything going on around him, he just shut down emotionally. I felt like I was invisible to him and didn't know what was happening with us because he kept saying he thought he'd need to move back to make life easier. So last week, he moved back and me and my little girl moved to another little house because I didn't want to stay at the shared house. He's moved 10 minutes down the road from the ex which makes me feel so uncomfortable knowing what she's like.
And apparently we're going to try and get back to how it was before. When we first met.
Even writing this feels ridiculous. I'm not asking for advice on how to make it work, I want to find some strength from somewhere to let go of what I thought it was, not what it's turned out to be.
Be kind xxxx