Hi
12 yeas ago I met a man who was separating from his partner.
I had known him 26 years previously - we had a brief affair. We both had partners and I had two children.
cut a long story short, we were going to leave our partners but one of my boys has Cerebral Palsy and my Ex threatened to financially cut me off if I left him (he ran his own business)
so we stopped the affair and that was that. The man I had the affair with had told his partner and, naturally she was furious. I actually wrote her a letter apologising and explained my feelings. She blamed me 100%.
They went on to have two daughters.
i tried to leave my husband many times as I was so unhappy but he was coercive, controlling and had a level of passive aggression you could not fathom.
Bear with me.
I eventually left my husband who I will refer to as S.
The man I had the affair with found out - I will call him B.
B came looking for me and tried and tried to get me to meet with him as he and his partner had agreed to split.
i kept refusing - I guess I was scared of getting back into a relationship.
eventually I gave in, we met up and it was as though no time had passed and we fell straight back in love.
B’s daughters were 4 and 11 at the time. Mine were grown up.
B moved in with me. His Ex kept asking who his new partner was. He avoided telling her for a while but when she found out it was me she was apoplectic and decided she wanted him back. There was a lot of manipulation and he kept going back to her because of the children and then couldn’t bear to be without me so would move back in with me. This went on a bit.
Meanwhile I had met his girls and we got on really well, particularly the older one. She could be a bit of a diva and was a little histrionic like her mother but she was clever, funny and came to our wedding when B and I married. She moved in with us and refused to speak to her mother for six months. No idea why.
Part of her drama was pretending to be afraid of dogs. I had one at the time and she got used to her and would walk her in the lead.
one day she decided to go back and live with her mother and sister (I had encouraged her continuously to try and keep contact - you only have one mum, blah blah)
B and I bought a brand new house together. My dog had got run over a couple of years previously, it was devastating. The girls continued to visit on weekends.
We decided to get a puppy and B sent pictures of it to his girls.
All Hell let loose. I began getting viscous texts from the older daughter which began with “well you got your new house and now you have a dog which is the cherry in the cake” she went on to bombard me with horrible messages stating that I knew she did not like dogs and basically she would never forgive me. Arguments went on between her and her father and for two years they did not speak until one day her mother phoned B and said she had enough of this division and that she felt they should reconcile. Reconcile they did. However I was still the bad guy and she would not speak to me for a further 9 years.
meanwhile, whilst living at home with a mother who supposedly hated dogs and with a supposed dog phobia that had caused such a massive rift, she bought herself a puppy.
Now this made me quite angry and I told B this.
However he continued as if nothing had happened (although he did agree that they had made themselves look rather stupid) and he and the girls met up regularly.
When B turned 50 I arranged a huge family get together with his family. I texted the elder daughter and asked if she would come. She replied she would come “purely for his sake”. Ok. The day went well but despite me trying to make conversation with her this daughter made Zero effort. She is now 21.
i have heard nothing since.
The crux of my issues with this is that I can’t stop being angry that B and his daughter carry on as if in parallel worlds. He has never pulled her up on the hypocrisy of getting a dog, her previous behaviour and how badly she treated me.
When she lived with us I completely went out of my way to support her, help her with homework, projects etc. Pick her up from school. Take her clothes shopping. She even started her period when she was estranged from her mother and I bought her a “happy grown up present” of some Gucci perfume and looked after her.
I want to know how to stop being angry - couple counselling helped a bit but I feel unsupported by B for playing happy families after the huge hurt she caused me.
He says I overreact- maybe I do?
I know he loves me to bits and I adore him but I just want this angry upset to go away.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Sorry for the long post but this was a quarter of a century in the making!