justwantpeace's story

My therapist said this is great therapy to just sit and write out my story. she said it helps to get it all out.

I had been with my ex for 19 years. I met him when i was a senior in high school. Oh he did all the nice stuff at first. I really thought he was just the greatest and had found the greatest boyfriend. I had even heard the story of how he had been engaged before and the other girl broke it off. I was told she was the awful one and did him wrong. he was so depressed that they thought he was going to kill himself.

We married two years later. I was 19 and he was 24. i wish i had known then what i know now. at first his mother would always try to make him chose between her and me. she would do that with his brother to. She was always very demanding. He is the youngest of 3 kids. he has an older sister from his moms first marriage. his mom had her own horrible upbringing. there is a mental illness that runs in their family. his grandmother was told she was a paranoid schizophrenia. Now its believed she was bipolar with delusions. so his mother has her own issues from growing up in a bad childhood.

i know that growing up there was times she would leave and not be there and i feel now he was emotionally abused as a child from what i learned over the years and have read now. when we married he seemed to distance himself from her for a long time. things went great. but he always was hard to reason with and talk to at times. i look back now and he fits the N trait so well. i couldnt get him to do things. he basically dumped everything in my lap to take care of. he always worried about his appearance and how he dressed. he never worried that son and i didnt have clothes or our needs were met. he has always been self centered and self absorbed. i had worked 2 jobs to put him thru school and he never appreciated that and says now he regrets even going.

then he takes a job that i wasnt comfortable with and this is how he met the ow. she reminded him of me. he made a comment that she told him if she had known he was married she would have never pursued him. this is a woman who has never been married and never had kids and never been in a long term relationship. he would even tell me about the dreams she had about them. he said she told him one day i would thank her. she was wrong there. he said to me he thought he had lost me and wasnt looking for someone new but someone like me. yes someone he could control. he was always talking about her houe and her money. he told us both she looked like me and even had the same mannerisms i did. the part i hate the most is she has the same birthday as my son.

the first time i met her was on their birthday 2 years ago. she found out where we were taking son to eat and decided to celebrate her birthday there. when she came up to our table. i was nice and told her happy birthday. that was when it hit me and i knew. ex couldnt look at her and she couldnt look at me. i knew in my gut what was going on. he finally came out in april 08 and told me that he had cheated on me. i knew deep down.

later he he would try to use suicide as a ploy to keep both of us in a relationship with him. i have to say he got really good at manipulating us both. i use to want to blame her but she was really a victim like i was. it doesnt mean i forgive her for her part in what she did but i do recognize her as a victim to. ex wanted her as his friend and me as his wife. some nerve! he made comments to me about wanting to do things with her as friends but i wasnt included. he told me things such as finding excuses just to go to her office to talk to her. he talked about wanting to include both of us in his life. i wont go into those details they are actually disturbing.

for a year i let him hurt and play son and i. he would go back and forth between me and the ow. the first time i pulled away was when he tried the suicide threat with a shotgun. it just got his family called in and him a trip to a mental facility to be assessed for suicide. he wasnt. i was seeing my therapist at the time and she said it was just to manipulate me into staying in the relationship. i later found out he was doing the same thing to the ow and using suicide with her to. what started this was he was restless wanting to go see the ow and needed a way to get out of the house. he told me that he was thinking of going back to his moms and i was livid. i told him he had to tell son. up til then i had been protecting him in sons eyes. no more! he couldnt tell son and sat on the couch and cried like a baby. i had to tell son. the look that came across his face enraged me. i called him an sob and told him that i never wanted to see him again and have his stuff and be gone in 30 minutes. i left and came back and he was sitting in the floor with a shotgun. i walked by him and he said dont you see me. i turned around and saw the gun. i called his brother and mother. he played it up crying to his brother but as soon as his mother got there he changed into my hyde blaming me. after that i said it was over and he did everything he could to fix it and draw me back in. thats when i was seeing my therapist and getting stronger and pulling away. he was doing all he could to keep me there.

during all this while living with his mom, she knew all this was going on. he would tell me things about what he enjoyed with the ow. his mother had even started having a relationship with the ow. but during all this my son was being pushed aside by his dad and his grandmother.

i think the hardest thing for me was i grew so angry at what i watched him go thru. he is 14 now and at the age he needs that male role model to teach him to be a man. his dad wasnt there for him. he would go several days without seeing son or talking to him. during this time i was trying to keep their relationship going. i found out now that i shouldnt have done that. basically i needed to let ex and exNmil hang theirself. that son had to learn. I watched my child withdraw, grieve, and hurt. it was like someone ripped my heart out and shredded it to pieces. his and his mom didnt care what happened to son. but his brother did. his brother was there for son from day 1. he loved his brother but he loved his nephew to. he and son got really close. to this day son is closer to his uncle than he is with his dad.

the 2nd suicide attempt he came to me. this was after he took a trip with his gf. i found that out this year. he couldnt take it and just wanted it all to end. he wanted to come home. i took him to the hospital and made the mistake of calling his mother. she sat there and made it all about her. she downed her other son who had done nothing to her. he was always there for her doing what she needed, it wasnt my ex doing that. he didnt do anything for anyone unless he got something from it. she downed him so bad that i know my jaw dropped. she saw my reaction and shut up. now she is doing him the way my ex is doing me. she has gone to devaluing her middle son. its done so much damage with him now that eventually he may sever all ties with them. the trips she takes with my ex, she doesnt invite him. she doesnt do for his bday like she does my ex. i feel sad and partly responsible because he took up for his wife because she and i were close. he didnt turn on me because he didnt agree with his brother. he just tried to stay neutral because of my son. my son is the only grandchild in that family. i just felt bad for him.

ex filed for divorce in december 08 and had me served with son at home. which i thought was crappy. he could have warned me so i could have had son out of the house. then he did nothing. he said he was pushed into filing. i believe by either the ow or his mom. im leaning more towards mom. because if he really wanted it or to keep me for his supply he wouldnt have done it. he kept trying to come back around, wanting to be at the house. basically he was giving me false hope. he watched fireproof with me. was questioning me was i like that. wanting to do things around the house and just be there. two months later after filing for divorce still nothing. i kept questioning him on it. i think he did it to appease the ow, his mom, and keep me in line.

i finally had it. i couldnt take it anymore and told my lawyer to start pushing it thru. mediation was a joke. he had the mediator feeling sorry for him. she kept saying he may have had the affair on you but not on your son. yes but what he did was hurt son and he didnt just leave me he walked out on son. i had told him to leave numerous times after trying to come back. each time it was because of the ow.

i could have posted so much on my story but this is just a condensed version. one thing i try to use to keep me from getting sucked in is i remember what my son went thru and i wont have a relationship with these people because of this. there has been so much damage done and ex and his mom cant even see it. we had tried to reconcile 3 times and it always fell apart, the ow was always still there.

my therapist believes that his mother is just estatic that we are divorced now. she probably is but she lost alot. they just dont see it and they feel like they are the victim. that we did them wrong.

i think the part i love the most is how ex rewrote our history. he never remembers the good just the bad and what i could have done and should have done to save our marriage and family. he reminds me of that alot.

now my hard part is i was told by my therapist and my therapist in training friend that i cant protect son from this. they said he has to see this for himself and make his own decision. they believe before to long he will get to the point that he has had enough and say im done and want nothing to do with them. basically i have ot let them hang themselves.