The Good and the Bad
The great news is I got married this past summer! She's beautiful, brilliant, but is emotionally competent. Also a BS, but has done a lot of work on herself to deal with it and worked with her ex to raise a very wonderful daughter. Everything is great and we're doing very well together.
The bad news is, somehow my marriage was some breaking point for my daughter. She has now ceased all communication with me, citing "I'll never forgive you for the things you almost did to me" and "I'm afraid of you!" neither of which make any sense, except that in her mind, I somehow almost committed violence to her mom and to her.
She did reach out once and offered to resume communication, conditional on a series of constraints about what I was allowed to talk about and with whom I was allowed to talk, how often we spoke and constraints on any depth of discussion. I knew it was just a setup for failure, so I responded that I wanted an unconstrained relationship with her. Since then, nothing.
I know my ex has been counseling her on why she should cut off contact. Before my daughter cut things off, she would complain about how her Mom just incessantly railed on me in front of her. My only response was "I'm sorry you had to hear that." A couple months ago, ex sent an email, saying she was sorry about the difficulties between daughter and me. I know her well enough to know this was not heartfelt, but an extra twist of the dagger.
Ex believes that I selfishly focused on my own pain, once I discovered her treachery, rather than seeing it as the "cry for help" that she views her affair as. I abandoned her in her moment of need and she'll never forgive me. Nevermind I gave her an extra chance and she did everything she could to betray me in other ways as well.
So, my life is going really well, except for this smoldering hole in my heart. I hope in the next few years my daughter will grow up enough to see what's really going on, but I'm also prepared for that to never happen.
I cannot express how angry I am at her selfish mother, who so willingly inflicts psychological pain on her own daughter to protect her narcissistic ego. At the same time, I view my disentanglement with her to be an enormous relief. My ex sent a bunch of photographs of me and my now wife, whom I knew socially, from twenty years ago, where we are in a group of people socializing, though not directly with each other. There was no commentary, just a weird implication that somehow I had been involved with this woman back then. I think in my ex's mind, she is the victim and somehow I am the villain in all this.
She's doing everything she can to remain a potent force in my life and I'm strictly NC with her.
10 comments posted: Wednesday, March 9th, 2022
We Got Married!
On Saturday, my girlfriend of five years and I got married. It was a small, but lovely DIY service in our front yeard. Just family and a couple friends were in attendance as we promised forever love and support.
All my kids and grandkids were there, including my youngest daughter who is still struggling with the divorce between her mom and me. Oh well.
Still, it was lovely and my wife and I are very excited to lead our lives together for the final decades of our lives.
Trust can be found. Hope springs eternal!
12 comments posted: Monday, June 21st, 2021
Almost Perfect, But a Rant...
I'm five years out. Never will be fully healed, but things are way way better. I have a new partner who is many wonderful things, but above all else, she is emotionally competent. She is a woman, not a girl and we've found ways to dispassionately discuss problems to hear each other and work them out. We've been living together through COVID, which has been a good test that we're compatible.
We're getting married in June (Woot!), which is the source of great joy, but one enduring frustration.
It will be a deliberately small service, partly because of COVID (although most everyone will be vaccinated by then), partly because we're funding it ourselves and partly because we've each already had a big brouhaha wedding. It will only be our immediate families, including our four children and their kids, our parents and some of our siblings who are within driving range. Maybe 20 people total.
My youngest daughter, 22, suffered immensely from her Mom's misbehavior, which included her affair, her abandoning the family in the guise of supporting friends in AA while squonking the junkie boyfriend, threatening suicide to daughter's face and blaming her, stalking me on this very forum and others, to gather "intel" about what I was saying about her anonymously to anonymous people, and it goes on and on. She continues to talk mad shit about me to our daughter, which causes her great pain.
So, I told daughter I very much wanted her to come, that I would pay for her expenses, etc... She is likely coming, but is very worried that her Mom will have a huge tantrum about it. Daughter can't stay with me, because I got the family home in the settlement and "it has ghosts." So, she insists on staying with Mom, knowing that her Mom will spend the entire weekend, talking mad shit about me for the crime six years ago of putting my pain at having been cheated on ahead of her "cry for help" as she now calls her affair. I don't GAF about her problems (although I wish she'd find a boyfriend and focus on him), but she'll try to tarnish the whole weekend through poisoning our daughter and bringing her down to her level of self-loathing and misery.
Daughter is pretty savvy about all this, thanks to therapy and personal growth. She repeatedly tells me how much she appreciates me never badmouthing her mom (in front of daughter), while being greatly saddened at how her mother talks mad shit about me to her. That's their shit to deal with, I reckon. I just tell daughter "I'm sorry you're dealing with that" and let it go.
My new strategy is to rent a hotel room for daughter as a way to isolate her from Mom in the lead up to the wedding, so daughter can have some peace.
This shit just doesn't let go.
10 comments posted: Thursday, April 8th, 2021
We’re Getting Married
It’s been awhile since I posted, but my girlfriend of four years and I are getting married. I trust her completely and I realize now what an honest relationship is. There are no topics that are out of bounds, no unmentionables. We’ve had disagreements, but no arguments. She is a fully recovered BS and we deeply love each other for who we are.
We’ve told our children, they’re happy for us, next our parents (my Mom is 95!), then siblings. No date yet and COVID likely precludes a ceremony, but we’re excited to spend the rest of our lives together!
How can I trust again? It’s because this woman is really special, her heart is huge, not to mention, she’s Ivy League brilliant, beautiful, a fellow musician and shares my progressive politics.
24 comments posted: Wednesday, August 26th, 2020
