Missing Ex H and being a family

[Awakeandscrambled]

I left my marriage with my DD(6) 2 years ago. The marriage ended for many reasons and for the better since the relationship had died and was at rock bottom. I won't go into too much detail, the marriage broke down completely. It was hell and we could not longer be a happy family for DD.

I made the decision to leave after countless rounds of marriage counselling failed. He stopped talking to me altogether for the 6 months before I moved out with DD. We have never discussed the end of the separation. It just happened and hangs on a thread now what happens next.

Fast forward 2 years, we are co parenting as best we can. We are amicable. He does his fair share and is amenable. We have started to things like spending days out together. DD is a happy child and doing well at school. She mainly accepts the situation but sometimes asks why we don't live together.

I am grateful that we coparent in harmony but I still cannot shake the guilt and the wish to be a family. I don't doubt that things were terrible and this separation was necessary. I felt very neglected and ignored, left to do everything most of the time. But I was not a great communicator and behaved awfully at times. Now I don't have a life as it is anyway, I work and look after DD mainly. When I am not working or looking after DD, I'm merely existing and fighting to keep myself out of the depression zone. I'm anxious 90% of my waking hours. I know Ex H's silent treatment and unwillingness to talk about the separation is driving me nuts too. He carries on like nothing and has never talked to me heart to heart about the situation. Some friends have said this is a form of abuse in itself.

I've had a lot of therapy to get to this stage but I feel like the world's biggest failure. I don't know what to do anymore. I wish I could go back in time and fix the marriage.

Sorry that's a long post. I just need to get this off my chest and hoping for a handhold.

Hi

I think you should try to seek counselling because you are grieving for a future lost. It can and will get better but you need time to process.

Thanks I was seeing a counsellor but have had to stop the sessions recently because it was so exhausting and made me feel even worse. I understand what you mean about grieving, it feels like that. I feel like I'm losing sense of what has happened and what to do now. It all feels like a bad dream.

You're not really missing your marriage. You're missing the same thing you were missing when you were with your husband. Which is someone who loves you and makes you happy and respects you. The sentence that stood out to me was " It was hell and we could not longer be a happy family for DD". I'd suggest you don't need your husband to talk to you about why you separated. You made the right decision. You need to look forward instead ok.

Days out together ca be nice but also very very confusing for a child.

Look forward to a future without him. You don't miss him, you're just lonely. This will pass, but you need to look forward to do that.

I wouldn’t recommend days out together. It must muddies the waters. You did try. You went to counselling many times and it failed.

My ex H and I never really communicated very well. I tried hard and occasionally I think could I have tried harder. The answer is always yes but do you know, he could have too and the same is true for your expartner.

But these days out aren't helping you. I'd try and box it up and label it "learning curve"

Take care of yourself

You're dragging this out for yourself. You're separated. Separate. Set up a routine where your ex has the child in his own. Be proactive in instigating a separation agreement and divorce. Use the time he has your dd to decide what you want from your own life and go get it. I'm exhausted at the thought of this setup, if you volunteer to remain in this, you'll feel like this indefinitely. Freedom back is but you have to make the hard moves before it get better.

It sounds like you made a good decision but it has naturally led to you feeling lonely. That does not make it a bad decision or mean you should have worked harder on your marriage.

I think you should stop days out together, good co-parenting means sharing responsibility, it doesn’t mean joint trips out. I also do not really blame him for not wanting to talk about why a relationship broke down two years ago, you need to let this go.

When you look back on a marriage and think of all the ‘ maybe if’ then you get into a never ending cycle. Very sadly my youngest son and his wife separated 2 years ago. They co-parent brilliantly. The children have adapted but, like your DD, they don’t understand the reasons.

I love my son and my DiL and I am supporting them as much as I can, as is my other son and my daughter. I can see how hard it is for my DiL, so much harder than it is for my son. We are a very close and quite large family, and she misses out so many times when we have family things.

There was nobody else involved in their break up and I really don’t know the details. I knew there were problems as I baby-sat when they went to Marriage Guidance. I think she too would like to turn the clock back. I honestly think that if some magic it did happen, they would end up exactly the same. Most likely, you know that would be the same for you.

Please don’t feel guilty. The decision you made at the time was the only path open to you. Your husband won’t change, please don’t let him continue to punish you. I have seen a side to my son, that I would not have believed.