u/bpexhusband

So today my ex's lawyer asked me to change the exchange location of our son to hand him off to her, specifically a movie theater. I replied to the lawyers request with a clear refusal to do so.

This lawyer is and has been high conflict she turns everything into an argument, she has accused me of lying about things that were easily shown to be true etc etc etc.

When my ex was 45 minutes late to pick up our son she finally called and asked why I had not dropped him off at the theatre as I had agreed to do, apparently she had waited 45 minutes under the belief I had agreed. I told her I had not agreed. She seemed to be sure I had. My son was upset so I did drop him off he shouldn't have to miss out just so an adult can win an argument

There seems to be only two conclusions to draw from this, her lawyer lied to her to cause friction or my ex is lying (which I don't think is the case) why would she wait 45 minutes unless she actually believed I was going to show up

I've demanded an explanation from her lawyer but I don't think I'll get one.

I no longer believe my communication is being honestly relayed to my ex so the lawyer can increase conflict.

What do I do?

So it's just over 100 days since she just up and left.

Finally I'm feeling better, I sleep, I eat, I workout. I'm good. I've got peace for the first time in 6 years, silence in the first time for 12. I caught myself singing in the car.

I talked to her the other day when she came to pick up our son for her visit (her visists are three hours bullshit performatige parenting). She's been screwing up badly with him, pressuring him to goto her apartment where she lives with Shrek who was her affair partner. But our son won't go there, it's been 4 months and he's been clear about it. I know he's never going to shift on this she thinks he will. She doesn't know her son very well. Which is no surprise since she spent most of his life face in her phone talking to one or another of her 8 affair partners. This makes her life very difficult but it's her own fault she introduced out son to this idiot while she was having her manic affair with him then told our son directly that she was leaving, she was never coming back, and she was going to live with Shrek. So that shits on her. But she's been up to the usual shit that shitty parents do, trying to alienate me from my son, he sees right through it, trying to get dirt on me, he sees right through that as well. She shows up late, she leaves early, it's gross.

So anyways I wanted to explain to her she needed to stop. I'm kinda stuck because she's doing some real psychological damage to our son, emotional harm. He says he feels like he's going to puke before she picks him up, he comes home angry after most visists, she called him a terrorist, she blames him for all their problems, it's unreal. I wish I could cut her off.

I talked to her and she looks like shit, worse I've ever seen. She's pale as a ghost her eyes were darting everywhere. Her skin is bad, acne dried out, terrible.

I asked her if she was stable and she got that manic smile on her face that gives it away every time. Jesus she's been unstable for a year and a half now. I suspect she's been drinking, maybe some weed, her car stinks with some sort of terrible air freshener that she's using to cover up something, though it could just be Shrek's BO.

What struck me was I didn't care. I didn't want to help her, I didn't want to ask about her meds, how she was feeling, nothing, the caretaker gene has been spliced out of me. It was clear this person is not someone I know.

Then I asked her why she's dragging out the separation...and it hit me. I asked her if she thought she was coming back and she turned beat red her chest all the way to top of her head. I could not believe it. She is actually holding onto that. I asked her a few more time if that's what she was thinking she wouldn't answer and finally like a child she said " I don't want to come back". Ugh. I told her that's never happening. Then of course she didn't want to talk anymore.

Not shocking it's the summer solstice which means the official start of mania season. I don't think she holds it together over the summer. But I don't have to deal with it's what a gift!

So I've decided I'm never going to communicate with her ever again. I'm sending everything through her lawyer. She's clearly not getting the picture.

Anyways what's the point of this post? Well it connects to all my other posts.

But here it is....you can get better you can move on you can get yourself back together. I wouldn't say I'm 100% maybe 75% but 100-80 days ago I had some seriously dark thoughts not gonna lie.

Your exbpso is going to do what they are going to do, the mental illness freight train is not something you need to stand in front of as it flys off the rails.

Walk away action hero style don't stop don't look back to watch the explosion.

12 years in 10 weeks out, I am so tired. 10 weeks of stress. 10 weeks of 6 hours of sleep being a good night, and just when I was getting over it, just when I felt I was getting over it…. I got the letter from her lawyer. 

No more support payments, financially cut off. I should just go get a job. I know their play, we got separated 6 years ago, try and drain my bank account, make me break, not this time. I’ve been keeping the receipts, the notes, the call logs, the texts, and the videos for the past 6 years. I learned. She didn’t. 

Her lawyer has “noted my tone” with which I speak to her client. Yeah, well, that tone is from 12 years of increasing abuse, physical, emotional, suicide threats almost daily at the end, a suicide attempt with our son in the home she barely survived, 8 affair partners, and abortion of our child so she could continue with guy number 7. I'll take any tone I want.

She's checked out, she lets her rich dad pay the lawyer, wants to avoid any accountability and any responsibility to me, as if the 12 years that I spent keeping her on the rails, keeping her employed, keeping her healthy, keeping her from destoying herself, our lives and family, from ending up with a loser in a shitty apartment,  taking care of our son, raising him, don’t count for anything.

She’s got the new life (shocker, a shitty apartment and a loser boyfriend), daddy bought her a 40,000$ car and is making sure, like he always has, that she avoids any consequences for her actions. He’s been doing this since she was 16, from what I can tell. He didn’t do her any favours. He dumped her at guy number 8's house, as if a geographical solution could fix a psychological problem. Yes Bill, the problem was me, I caused her bipolar. I shit you not, he believes that, I swear, he has uttered the words “he just tries to control you by taking you to the hospital”. Morons…..

No wonder I can take on the single parent role so easily, I always was a single parent, she always had her face in her phone, or was sick on the couch or in the hospital. She never gave our son a bath, she never said good night to him, she was never affectionate,  she couldn't handle him, and she never attached to him properly. He was just another person who might eventually reject her, so she avoided that possibility by not attaching to him properly. She had a bad blueprint; her mother was the same. But you'd think you'd want to avoid making the same mistakes your parents made, rather than repeat them. But now she wants 50/50 custody…as if. No, I think I’ll take intergenerational trauma off the board, thanks.  

I had no idea how traumatized I am. The totality of the shit I went through.  I had to talk to a legal aid lawyer today. They asked me about abuse, and I completely broke down. When I had to say it out loud, when I had to admit it, I cracked. I don't even know if I ever admitted to myself. I certainly never told anyone. Except you kind strangers on the internet. Now I've got to talk about it, and I don't want to. It's embarrassing. I want to pack my son up and run away. 

12 years, 12 fucking years. I look back now, and honestly, they were shit overall. But the good times were amazing, right, the best partner ever showed up just long enough to hook me, then gone, trauma fucking bond, god damn intermittent reinforcement. I was just a lobster in a pot.
12 years of suffering through the bad times to get to the good (shit it didn’t take much for times to be good, it just meant no cheating, or violence, your standard expectations in a relationship). The good times got shorter, the bad times got longer. 12 years of increasing abuse, betrayal, an illness that just got worse, and the behaviours that went along with it got more extreme. I get sick to my stomach just thinking about the shit she did not just to me but to herself. 

I hate explaining those 12 years to people now. I tried to leave so many times. 6 years ago, she was gone, just like this time, a new apartment, a new man. GONE! Then she started with the lawyers, wearing me down, so I caved when she wanted to come back. So I guess I can’t act surprised now. I can’t act as if I didn’t know exactly what was coming. The lawyer asked me, “Why did you stay?” “Because I knew I’d be sitting in this chair talking to you.” 

Bring on the suffering, bring on the pain, bring on the poverty, the rewritten history, the sleepless nights, the rumination, the stress, the weight loss, the anger, the bargaining, the resentment, the pure fucking hatred that burns in my heart.  

12 years in. 10 weeks out. Only one of those numbers will ever get larger. 

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So like many of you I have had sleepless nights, or very poor sleep since the final discard, 5 hours here if I'm lucky 7 hours.

I've been ruminating for about 7 weeks now, trying to figure out what went wrong, what the EFFFF happened to me, to us, to our family, to everything. We all know mania, but why do I feel the way I do? Sure, we have trauma bonding, love, lust, sex, family, intermittent rewards, all those things suck you in and keep you in until you give up.

Why am I still going on and on in my head about someone who treated me like absolute garbage, someone who treated themselves like garbage, someone who treated their son like garbage and discarded him in the same way? I shouldn't, I should be glad to be rid of them (I am, but you know how it goes, you are you aren't then you are again).

Then I stumbled across this concept called "ambiguous loss" last night, and it just set everything in place for me. I feel calmer, the rumination has gone way down, I slept better, I feel like being active doing things. Maybe it will help you.

Ambiguous loss is a type of grief that happens when a loss is unclear, unresolved, or lacks closure. There are two aspects to this, and I think we feel both in some way if you haven't gone no contact.

1. Physical absence with psychological presence: the person is gone, missing, separated, estranged, or no longer part of daily life, but they remain emotionally present in your mind and life.

2. Physical presence with psychological absence: the person is still physically there, but they are emotionally, cognitively, or psychologically unavailable or changed.

I think this is what many of us struggle with: the person (or the person we knew) is gone and not gone. So it's hard to grieve.

Our minds keep trying to decide whether to mourn, hope, wait, detach, explain, or keep solving it.

Going to bed with this, I woke up different, more at peace, then of course I had to deal with her bullshit about setting up visits, but I handled it differently, I just told her, your problems are not my problems. I am not interested in helping you. For the first time in a long time, I just felt in control of myself and had no desire to step into the caretaker role or fix things for her. That was freeing.

Because now i understand what is happening to me, psychologically, why the suffering is happening, why I can shake it, now I see a path.

There is no clean ending for us; there is just the end.

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