u/CritFail3

Having a moment of rage here. 4 years ago, my (now ex) husband of 10 years started acting different than normal. I unfortunately have enough experience with cheating men that I immediately knew this was what was happening. I confronted him on his behavioral changes and he swore up and down that he wasn’t cheating, but his reasoning for his behavior was even worse. He told me that he was having second thoughts about our marriage and wasn’t sure if he wanted to be married to me anymore because he was “tired of the responsibility of having kids” and no longer wanted to be a father. We have 3 children, at the time they had all just had their birthdays and were 1, 3, and 5. I had just started weaning my baby and so was still breastfeeding. I was disgusted by his comments and how anyone could just decide they didn’t want their kids anymore.

I couldn’t accept that this was truly the reason and kept pressing it. Eventually I uncovered that he had been having an affair for almost 2 months. I told him to leave and immediately hired an attorney to file for divorce. During this process, I found out that the person he was having an affair with was the girl he hired at our family business to help out while I was away from the business at home taking care of our 3 kids. I had never met or seen her, but I was paying her salary. I unfortunately pulled some footage from the security cameras inside our business and found video of them having sex. I saw a lot of things including texts that I wish I could unsee and are unfortunately burned in my brain forever. He proceeded to tell me that me and the kids were ruining his life and getting in the way of his relationship. He became cold and awful. He told me he didn’t want the kids and gave me sole custody. She broke up with him one week later and he fired her. It was messy.

I have struggled as a single mom for these past 4 years. The rug was pulled out from under me, I lost my job and retirement plan (the business that I put my life savings into…the settlement was abysmal), I lost my family, security, and sanity. I have had to deal with kids who have now developed abandonment issues and don’t understand why their dad, who seemed great and like he loved them, suddenly disappeared and wouldn’t see them anymore. My oldest, who was 5 at the time, really had a hard time. It was a truly awful thing to watch my happy little girl turn into an anxiety riddled kid who was sad all the time. I will never forgive him for doing that to her.

In the past year he has started seeing our kids more often, coming to extracurricular activities, picking them up and taking them to school twice a week, and even taking them to stay with him at his parents house where he now lives every other weekend (even though our agreement is that they are with me 100% of the time, I don’t think that is fair for my kids and he agreed to have them some weekends).

The other day he randomly handed me a thick envelope and inside was a handwritten letter 15 page long. He apologized for what he did (this was the first time he apologized to me. When he was caught, he actually told me that he didn’t feel bad for what he did to me or the kids and he would never apologize for it) and told me that the only reason he cheated was that I was always busy taking care of the kids (because he did not help me at all) and this girl reminded him of me when we first started dating and it started as him pretending she was me. He said if I had more time to pay attention to him instead of our kids (like, one was a literal baby, wtf) then he wouldn’t have done it. So in his mind this is some kind of apology letter and in reality he’s blaming me for…being a parent when he refused to pull his weight or be involved in our family. I don’t even know what to think. I’m infuriated all over again. This man literally has zero idea what it entails to raise kids, or like, be a good person. The only thing in the letter that I actually agree with is that he said he believes he’s a psychopath. Yeah buddy, I think so too. Anyways, now he’s around more often so my kids always talk about him and how much they love him and I want to rip my hair out and scream.

Dinner is muddy buddy/puppy chow popcorn and liquid death because I feel sick to my stomach and can’t eat anything else right now.

This amazing frog phone! If it hadn't been $50 I would have gotten it.

This has got to be the BEST planter I’ve ever had! I’m obsessed with these! I have the grumpy man coming on the 17th!

• $12.50 for the pair. Lamps I'm going to deconstruct to make our Samantha Fortune Teller TTRPG prop. For the Dungeon Crawler Carl game. I have a platinum blonde mannequin head I'm cramming in there 😱
• $3.99 each. Soon to be Book 7 Carl and Samantha. I'm going to have so much fun painting his tattoos!! From Dungeon Crawler Carl. NSFW for nekkid doll, I wasn't sure it needed it. Better safe.
• $5.99 Sticker still on hammered copper Ren Faire cup
• $14.99. Dusky blue soft as butter leather satchel with green fringe and HOG patch. I'm not normally a fringe girl, but these are my colors and I'll wear it in Honor of Carl, we all know he's not getting out of that dungeon alive.
• $45 all together (they were priced separately, rude, goodwill) artist signed bowls. The biggest one is HUGE, 18 inches. Possibly Ginger Pottery of West Linn. I couldn't find a match for the signature. But they have the look of her salt glazed pieces.

Saw someone's interpretation of Shayne (lol) in Stardew valley and they used Damien's images. I found it very funny!

Damien is definitely more of a Sebastian btw. Shayne would be Alex.