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Relationship Moving on

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You might want to have a serious think about this one... It sounds like you DID need to be told, because you’re still making a child’s birthday about YOU, and what you want(ed), and how you wanted to focus on your bond, etc.. Rather than innately understanding that birthdays are likely to be difficult for a child who has lost a parent, and that very possibly the best thing for her would be to meet up on a different day for something special. Ditto, that a day that’s difficult for your child, is also going to be a difficult day for your own self, so her mom was likely to be going through a rough time. So, instead of automatically doing whatever it would take to make a hard thing easier on the girls? You got your feelings hurt, and made an already difficult situation even more difficult.

Was that your intent? Sure as hell doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like you very much wanted to be supportive, but in this -like so many other examples- you’re thrashing out? How you wanted to be supportive, and how your ex wanted to BE supported? Were diametrically opposed.

That’s one of those things that ends relationships, and is usually found out in the first 6-12mo. Regardless of whether or not someone has PTSD, it’s a personality thing, where the rubber meets the road. 2 people can talk until the cows come home about supporting each other through this or that, but until situations arise where that’s actually the case? There’s really no way to know how that’s going to shake out. Time and time again in your new relationship? It shook out badly.

So, from experience? That’s what I would look at. Rather than her past, and how things might/could/should have been different if her past wasn’t her past? Both of your presents. As, when I take the focus off the imaginary place where everything is different? And look at the present reality, where the things that make me, me? And the things that make her, her? Just weren’t working. In a lot of different ways.

Some of that was personality, others just bad timing (like the recent bereavement, and yes, 2 years is still recent. Especially when the wound is reopened time and again by also supporting a grieving child, and being eyeballs deep in a financial clusterf*ck). A 5 year relationship can sometimes absorb losing 6 months here and there as one partner struggles with grief (and that’s not an exorbitant amount of time, but very common for a single event to evoke 1/3/6 months worth of f*cked sideways), although 10 & 20 year relationships often still struggle ...but a 5 month relationship hasn’t even been around as long as one of those dips take. There just isn’t the foundation there to even know what they’re like when they’re not grieving vs when they are.

I talk periodically about my Uncle... who had a thing for “broken winged birds”. He was the peeeeeerfect guy for certain kinds of women going through a certain kind of hard time. But once they got better? He wasn’t the partner for them, anymore. They all (but 1) stayed friends... there was a monthly ex-wives dinner at his home I attended more than a few times, that was a rollicking good time. My family does that sort of thing, once you’re a part of the family? You’re always a part of it... although he’s the only one who was married and divorced more times than I can count. He had A LOT of ex wives. Great women. He had excellent taste. Both when he married them, and after. But they were very different women. Because, who a person is? Is often dependent on their circumstances. and people often take years and years to pass from one stage of their life, to the next. I don’t think any of my uncles marriages lasted less than 5 years? <<< My aunties were/are all amazing women, both when they were a hot mess and the best version of themselves. But it gave me a very first hand account of how people change. The person who’s attracted to me when I’m a hot mess? And the person attracted to me when I’m on fire, the world at my feet? Are unlikely to be the same person.

You had a few amazing months with your ex. But you also had problems, up to your eyeballs, almost from the gate (inside the first few months). Learning to recognise those? And give them he weight they deserve? Instead of overweighting what I wish/wanted/of things were different? Is one of the most useful skills I know. PTSD or no.

Yes that was not my intent but understand how was perceived that way.
 
The little one had a sleepover arranged with friends. And I wasn’t going to be there for that. I completely understood that and wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to be there. I did just want her to know her birthday was important to me. Only the week before my ex opened up about the financial problems she had and we sat and talked it through. There weren’t problems between us between that moment. Yes I obviously stuffed up. I never ever ever thought it was easy for her. Not once. I think her grace with others is amazing with what she has been through. It was her message a week before about her insecurities and wanting to know I was there and wasn’t seeing someone else that made me want to make sure the little one knew her birthday was important to me. Went about it entirely the wrong way.
 
Really wasn’t trying to make it about me. Given a week before she was panicking I was seeing someone else I wanted to show that the little one’s birthday was important to me. For her to know that. Both of them have been through so much. We had shared a wonderful Christmas together. I wanted to give her a special present on her birthday and to find five minutes in their day to share that special day with them.
 
In the hour before that misunderstanding I had been sent a bunch of emails from a client I had tried to help who had lost his and his wife’s life savings from a crook. That email described how my client had tried to take his life. I had had another client also a victim of this person express strong suicidal ideation Despite over 2000 hours of my own time pro bono trying to help people who had been ripped off I had felt like a failure. I had ask after working through the night the night before been yelled at by another client. Trying to help others had taken a toll on me. I was terrified if I abandoned two people who really needed mg help that I would lose them to suicide. Others had let them down. The system, multiple regulators had let them down. I was trying to extract myself from it all and said to my ex partner that I wanted to talk about these things with her. I had reached out to other lawyers, community legal centres etc hoping that someone would step in and help. That weekend was not great for me. I did that work to find some positive purpose in life when I didn’t have a partner and I could never have expected it would be so consuming. Now not only do I feel a complete failure with that - I can do no more - but a failure in life. I need therapy as much as the next person. What I do know is that I gave all of myself to my ex partner and to the people who needed my help.
 
Was one bad day for us both. When she panicked thinking I was seeing someone else did I say our relationship is over and then shut down on her. If I did I would have left her with horrible doubts and pain. She had been through infidelity before. Couldn’t shut out a person like that as I know how utterly soul destroying that is. Some years before I had been in a relationship with someone who i later discovered from a family member of hers that she lived with BPD. Stemming from childhood sexual abuse and a mother who never bonded with her. This person had begged for me to spend Xmas with her when I wanted to go to my home country to see my grandmother whose health was failing. Two days after Xmas was dumped by text. I found out later she had slept with other people throughout our relationship. She had cheated on her 4 previous partners as I was to discover. She wanted me there at Xmas because her next conquest was away and she couldn’t possibly be alone at Xmas. I had used up my holidays taking her on a Christmas market trip to various European cities. So after being dumped I couldn’t just go home. By the time I could sort out my work and get on a plane my grandmother was in a coma. She died the day I landed. I loved my grandmother very much. I was never given honesty about when the last affair started. My ex had been through the infidelity of her partner before me. By pure coincidence I knew him. She found out by going through his phone he had been seeing other people. He had been on dating sites whilst seeing my ex. That must have been shattering after what she had been through before. And we had shared each other’s experiences and promised each other to communicate and to talk. And to work things through. I don’t think she said she got on her knees and thanked god for me flippantly. It’s just really hard to know what is going through her head. Maybe it came across as selfish for wanting to be with her daughter on her birthday even for a short moment. But it genuinely came from a place of wanting that beautiful little angel who captured my heart to know I was there. I had thought my ex was concerned I wasn’t present enough. She has a job where she regularly has to be on her phone when we were together My clients don’t leave me alone on the weekend either. She was worried I turned my phone over. It was to make her feel that I wasn’t distracted by work. Not to hide anything from her. I had been in a relationship where my partner taking her phone to the bathroom or turning it over was because of her affairs. So I completely understood that concern from someone who had been through the pain of infidelity. And again sadly I had hoped to talk to her that weekend about my recognition that stresses at work had led to me being less than my best self. But am in a position where I can’t just walk away from my job. I walked away from the business I built up through hard graft after the years of lies from a previous partner. I moved to the other side of the world back home. I’m trying to cling to being able to function at work at the level required whilst grieving what has just happened. And I’m struggling. I’m really really struggling.
 
Can’t imagine why I am confused

I'm so sorry my love for what you have been through...
My darling, we have both been through so much...

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Hundreds and hundreds of messages like then and then complete emotional shut down. If the messages had been I’m finding things tough and need a bit of time to myself to deal with things I would understand. Not that. Just sudden and complete isolation.
 
And this. And hundreds more messages.
Sorry who wouldn’t be absolutely destroyed after some small misunderstanding resulted in shut down

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Find me the person with a heart who would be absolutely shattered that these messages turned into silence hours after loving messages

Find me the man who gave of himself as I did and not be shattered by being shut out suddenly over s stupid small misstatement.find me the man who can receive messages like this and not feel you are in a relationship with someone who won’t bail at the first hurdle.
 
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