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This whole "co parenting" thing is such rubbish some days.

Does anyone else have a hard time taking their WS seriously, with co parenting, that is?

This stems from hearing STBX lecture DD about...lying!

Of all people in this giant universe, for this man to stand in the house he abandoned and lecture about lying? He lectures about truth and about "rules".

He told me I'm too hard on DD -because of my "rules"-and then tried to say that I read his message wrong when he didn't support me?

It was very clearly written that he thinks I ask too much of her, when in reality, all I ask is respect and truth-it's all I've asked of anyone I've ever known, but is very rare for me to be given.

I almost have to leave the room when he speaks of lying and especially to our daughter, who doesn't know the real truth about what he's done to us.

And then, on the way home from my dinner out, there is a car locally that resembles OW's car with license plates that match the state, but I don't know the numbers.

I had to leave the room to not say anything about that-it was not far from our house and would be very brazen of him to do, but he's talked of having her at local places before and this emotionally kills me.

What if I am out and have to come in contact with it or them? I think I would collapse.

And then, I know you are all probably sick of my questions and complaints, but the things this man spews...

He says "it's not easy for me to just walk out that door!" But...he did. He does, time and time again, right back...there.

I am having a hard time giving him any respect lately and keeping my mouth shut. I am trying to be graceful when I'm not and have trouble seeing this shadow of the person I loved for so long.

He asked me once, "Is that other man I was dead now?" and I told him, "you have a choice: to be the man you were here or let him die."

I guess we have the answer.

Even though this is not someone I can tolerate very long, I still grieve and mourn and feel at a stand still in life.

My father is very frustrated with me because he is trying to be a support but doesn't have a lot of patience.

I feel like I can't please anyone and like everyone is angry at me and I continue to let people down who I love.

Is this from the stuff he did that's just kind of reflecting onto others?

I learned today that my whole town and church where I work are going to have a baby shower for us. They invited people from my other work place and it's very surreal to think that all these people have care for me (and DD), but one man who was supposed to be our main support...just up and left.

How can it be?

It made me feel so nice I cried all the way home, but for once it was good tears.

Any show of kindness to me brings me to my knees right now and I hate it. I don't know why this is? I hate the pity I crave, I hate the lonesomeness I have, I just hate...all of this.

I think I just question life right now, because it's so empty if I dare to look ahead or out the window too long.

STBX is always out at stores, apparently, going to activities, out on the town, while we suffer emotionally and sometimes don't have enough to eat... and have so little money we can't go to a movie.

I'm not writing that to complain, but to voice wonder at being left behind and the things he gave and then ripped away.

I keep asking myself, "how can this be?" "Where did our life go?: we've been left this mess and shell of an existence to try to make something of, but so many things hold us back.

How do you move on, when you cannot yet move forward?

How do you make a new life, when you live on a shoestring?

When do the memories, ghosts and voices stop haunting and following

I guess I'm struggling to find what this life means anymore and how to make it mean something again?

Where to go from here?

How do you make a new life, when you live on a shoestring?

Ashland,

I am living on that shoestring also. I wish I had answers for you. I am 10 year out from my divorce and a year out from XSO... I don't trigger very much anymore... That takes time.

Soak in the love that this baby shower will bring. If people did not care about you, your baby or DD they would not be going. You are loved.... and if it brings you to your knees... then say a prayer of thanks. You are loved... soak it in... bath in it... All those people can't be wrong about who you are... concentrate on the majority and let the opinions of the minority go.

Keep the cards in a special place... look at that often.. and feel the love. I do that with my SI Christmas cards.... The love is evident in the cards... and can be felt for along time after.

Hugs,

K

Which is worse, for him to be a hypocrite when it comes to teaching your daughter about values, or for him to teach her values that are consistent with his actions?

They are both pretty terrible, but at least he's saying the right words. When it comes to teaching by example, that may have to fall to you.

Frankly, my biggest fear is that my DD will imbibe from her mother the values that led to our divorce. Not that I think she'll teach her that lying and cheating is okay, but there are more subtle ways I could see her being influenced.

The other day, our daughter was babbling to herself. Her mother scolded her (not harshly) for talking nonsense. "She's three, let her make up words!" I shouted from the other room. "Don't tell me what to do!" she shouted back.

Yeah. Co-parenting feels like rubbish sometimes. I have to somehow balance the feeling that my daughter would be better off without her mother in her life with the feeling that she'd be incalculably worse off without her mother in her life, and of course to balance both of those with the fact that I don't have a choice in the matter. I have to share my daughter with this ridiculous woman. I have to do my best for my part, and hope for the best on her end.

I'm afraid that's the only one of these questions I have any thoughts on so far.

I wish I could give you the biggest hug Ashland. I can't express enough how despicable I think your Perv is for what he has done to you, especially while pregnant. He's gas lighting and lying and blame shifting onto you, while you're carrying his child!! What a complete dick!!

I wish I had the answers to your questions, but just some thoughts on a few of the things you said..

My father is very frustrated with me because he is trying to be a support but doesn't have a lot of patience.

I get the same from my mom and sister. I bitch about my POS, but it's like they want to tell me, "Butterfly, we know he's an ass. Yes, he's proving it again, but we can't do anything about it! We just do the best we can with what we can control.." They knows he's treating me like shit, but they just want me to let it go more often and have some fun and enjoy my life..

I feel like I can't please anyone and like everyone is angry at me and I continue to let people down who I love. Is this from the stuff he did that's just kind of reflecting onto others?

I do see a little bit of reflecting there. I imagine he brings you down all the time, so it's sort of strange to you when someone treats you normally and shows you some caring. Your 110% effort wasn't enough for him, and you were probably accepting 10% effort from him, but normal people will give and take much more equally..

Just wanted to let you know how awesome I think you are. You give people here some of the most thoughtful responses, and I'm so impressed how insightful you are given everything you are going through. It may not mean much to you right now, but I think you are pleasing and helping tons of people here at SI, and I hope you know at least how much I appreciate it..

Big hugs..

Thank you, everyone.

I think part of what's happening is that all the lying STBX did is seeping into my thoughts and wreaking havoc on my self esteem and feelings of self worth. I do understand that this is the goal or purpose behind the les, as well as other things.

There are periods when I'm stronger that I get very angry at myself for it and for letting him get to me all this time later.

I can't help but wish that he ruined his own life and just left alone, but he went to extreme lengths and ruined every single aspect of my life and our daughter's life. Our lives are still changing, while he is out living and enjoying his new life and this wrecks me to think of...yes, try to distract myself and shut the thoughts off, but am not always strong enough.

I think as the summer goes by and changes still happen that I cannot control, it is hard to sort everything out.

DD and I next face losing our house and having to find a new place to live. We will face this without STBX, although have been on our own technically for a year and a half already.

Life and I have proven that day to day, we do not need him, nor is his influence any longer a good one on DD, but somehow the loss still feels very big and alive. His presence is huge, one of those people that fills and dominates a room.

He came to the "relationship" as someone who could fix anything and did not tolerate wrong-doing, so the oppositisms are a lot to handle, combined with the changes.

I remind myself how much less drama there is, though DD is causing stress we don't need just with kids stuff.

I think I am now searching for what this new life holds for me, what kind of mother will I be now, what is meant for me? For us?

How is a new baby going to do without a full time father figure, and one who just wants to be "fun dad"? Though exciting, that's not an easy person to take seriously, "fun dad" or "fun mom".

Thank you everyone. I think SI has become my journaling place and feedback is always welcome.

I think I'm moving towards a lot of acceptance, but it's producing more grief and somehow I thought I had had enough.

It is truly amazing, what the human mind and heart can handle, isn't it?

I think I'm moving towards a lot of acceptance, but it's producing more grief and somehow I thought I had had enough.

^^Absolutely. The acceptance phase was, for me, by far the most painful.

I had hot anger and white rage to help me get through DD. I had tears and shaking my first at the sky to help me get through False R and S.

Acceptance was tough though. It was letting go of everything I had sacrificed so much for. It was letting go of my 'investment' in this man and this marriage. I was letting go of the husband I thought I had and also the woman I thought I was. I was letting go of those last shards of hope that were cutting me up.

Acceptance was so very painful because I realised I had been denying so much for so long. IMO it is also hard because we can't blame anyone else for this part. Yes his broken cheating ways pushed me to this point but I was now choosing this path away from him.

I was accepting that my M was over but I was also accepting that even if he did by some miracle wake up and pull his head out of his arse I was now too far gone to ever be reached by him.

These last little glimmers of hope are the hardest to let go of because we've been holding onto them the longest. I remember being alone one night sitting on my bed just staring into space. I then screamed my lungs out into the mirror. I was shocked at the outburst because I had kind of gone numb for a time.

I promise you it does get easier. Life does get so much better.

I am fucked financially but I will be happy and healthy. In that M I may have been more financially secure in 20 years time but I would have been mind-fucked so badly in that time that I doubt I would even enjoy it.

And I so hear you about the parenting aspect. We are not co-parenting, we're parallel parenting - if you can call what he is doing 'parenting'.

I too find it difficult to take when he is lecturing them on some moral issue or another but I suppose he's saying the right words even if he is modelling the complete opposite.

He recently told my 5 year old that I was a liar because when she asked if we were still married I said "No". So he tells her the 'truth' all whilst imposing OWUmpteen on them. I had to explain 'technically' to a 5 year old.

Each time she lies or does something wrong he lashes out at me. Its the weirdest thing.

Sure dude, I'm the one modelling deceitful behaviour, I'm the one confusing the fuck out of her, I'm the one who changed her life forever, I'm the reason she has anything to adjust to in the first place. Yep - all me. Because I made you fuck around on your family.

F...T...G...

I guess I'm struggling to find what this life means anymore and how to make it mean something again?

Where to go from here?

Go up.

And leave him down in the muck where he belongs.

When ex-shat left, I had no idea what life meant anymore. I had so completely defined my existence around his, my personality was a shell of who I had been.

I had to fake it for a long time. Tell myself all the things that I wanted to believe would come true...people around me could tell I was just going through the motions.

But with time, I rediscovered myself. I found my parenting groove. I found my financial groove. I accepted the love and help that others wanted to give. I finally figured out that I could love myself!

It takes time and a healthy dose of FTG mojo.

((((Ashland13))))

You are doing so well being a rock for DD. I know this is awful, and hard, and cruel, and unfair. It sucks...

Keep going. One day you will look back with awe at your strength.

My parents did not get it. Breaking up with an NPD is NOT a normal break up. I know I needed a lot of processing and venting time, over and over as he did crappy thing after crappy thing.

They got tired of it. But they weren't detaching from him, they had not walked in my shoes, and they did not have to face the fact that his shit strom was not going to abate soon....it will stop when I die.

I think they just felt helpless and did not like to see me suffer. They did the best they could for me.

So, I got to the point where I stopped telling them the details. I just said it's the same.

I vent here cuz y'all get it!!!

Personal Journal, Continued.

Many realizations are coming at me at once.

It struck me recently how forcefully and completely this man has thrown my love away, thrown it in my face and thrown me and our children away. I was a doting wife who cooked and cleaned daily. I lived for our family life and him coming home at night. I learned to cook to his tastes and our daughter's.

Not only that, but the other humongous insults and lies. He ruined a job for me, he ruined other relationships for me, he is changing where we live, our daughter's school...he is ruining every single aspect of our lives, while he is off in never land, enjoying a new high salary job with OW, while we survive on crumbs.

He is out on the town, out at night, shopping, going to events, while I am up at 5:30 every day and exhausted from chores and parenting.

He questions our expenses and thinks that physical custody should be expense free.

There are the lies. I am still learning of lies sometimes, that he told to deflect the A and make me look bad and him justified and look good.

Oh, the pain of those lies. The pain of losing people I held dear, who he got to first with the lies.

The pain of knowing he is out there-and why. And yet I am so uncomfortable in his presence now, that I can't even look him in the eye.

The pain of knowing all that he likely spewed to OW to convince her to have an affair with him and then not kick him out.

He must've told some very, very bad things about me and I am not doing so well working through this part.

I'm struggling again today, thinking of our daughter a lot and how he basically threw her away, too. I

wretch when I think there is a child in the world who knows him in the capacity that our daughter does and -supposedly-this is not even his child.

But I'm awake now, I'm not naïve and I know that this other child he claims is one age, could be an OC and would be just another lie.

He swore to me during false R that "our children" are his only ones-it struck my like a bat on the head one day, why are we even having to have such a conversation? It's the stuff tv is made of!

Yet some things he said over the course of the A and double life resound in my ears and caused me such anxt that I haven't told more than one person that I know...the possibility that he could have other children somewhere.

Some of his activities he used to share with me are very, very suspicious. They were told to me a long time ago, yet with the start of this thread, the voice resounds in my ears.

As light dawns, other things occur to me.

He also spoke of trying to take our daughter away from me and he was going to take our house away from me, which is going anyway, but none of us will get to stay in it-so long as "It" (OW) doesn't step one foot in my house. He went so far as to learn the legal ramifications if he took her there. This haunts me, for I don't feel that it's over, this part, especially with the NPD aspect of things.

And what would he try with the baby? Or worse, will he have no interest?

Is it worse to hope he has interest in his new son, or to hope he ignores him because it's more peaceful? Mostly I don't think of it at all. It feels emotionally safer.

I'm sorry for my wandering mind and scattered thoughts.

What he did was not only cheating, it was multiple types of cheating over a long period of time.

You know, he never even told me he had no intention of coming back? He never told me himself of the A or OW until he had been outed, never sat and had a conversation face to face until she told me.

I understand many things about him, but my mind is wandering to the extent that he truly hurt me.

To try to understand how anyone could hurt another person so devastatingly, I cannot comprehend...and then he would yell at me.

He called me a liar, he yelled at me and other things when I learned of his double lie.

It's so much to process, will it ever leave my mind?

How will our daughter grow up and what will she believe of men? What will our son believe a daddy should be?

How do I answer?

How does a man continue to waltz in and out the door he built, all the while leaving his family-his very own child-to suffer?

Some people we know say that this is a person with no soul.

I've often wondered if he sold his soul.