Hello again,
Thanks for your replies... Hope you are all okay.
I had quite a nice weekend.... I didn't do much apart from knitting (a pair of socks for my daughter) and watching crap TV lol... I watched I'm a celeb and the Justin Timberlake concert... It was really relaxing! I didn't feel too bad about having time to myself after all. I think the anticipation of it is always worse than once you have the time and you get some time to do what you want..
A came back from her nannies with a terible cough and high temperature so she is poorly again poor thing. Last night she woke up at 2.45am and climbed into bed with us. Needless to say I don't think any of us got any sleep with her coughing and poor her feeling poorly!! Nevertheless I made it into work - despite the fact I don't think I am actually going to be doing much today.
I have been thinking a lot about my past relationship with A's dad. I think maybe getting it out on here will help me to make sense of things... I don't know. I don't even know whats making me think about him anyway, maybe just that shes been with him this weekend. Someone at work has been to a wedding this weekend where the bride's first marriage (this was her second) was quite abusive and controlling - which sounds a lot like mine but its strange that you only see it for what it is when someone else hands you a mirror so to speak.
I met ex when I was 18 and had my first ever job working part time in my local pub while I was at college doing my A levels. The first time I ever saw him was totally one of those moments you hear about in films where I looked at him and felt like I had met him in a previous life (!) I looked at him and knew I was going to have a child with him or get married or whatever. We hadn't even spoken at that point. I can't even say that I thought he was amazingly handsome or anything like that - I just felt like I was destined to have some sort of thing with him.
We flirted with each other for a few weeks on and off before we ended up going out on a few dates. We kissed and I was madly in love with him (he was 23 at the time and my first ever boyfriend). However one day he wouldn't return my calls etc and when I turned up to the pub to work he told me he didn't want to see me anymore and he thought of me as just a friend. I was completely distraught and in floods of tears. He followed me out of the pub and I remember he was saying he was at least going to walk me home (it was about 10pm) and I said don't bother and I walked off saying I would never be able to work in the pub again.
However the next day I remember thinking I wasn't going to let him ruin my job which I liked, so I went into work at 3pm armed with a book to read in case it was quiet and I didn't want to talk to him (he was in the pub with his friends all the time then). At the end of my shift, which was easier to do than I thought, we ended up sitting and chatting again and I remember thinking how easy and relaxed it was to be around him and I couldn't understand what on earth had happened to make him finish with me but I was happy to have him as a friend.
We were apart for 6 months.. During which time I had a very sexual based fling with the bar manager (losing my virginity in a very drunken state... cringe) and then I finished with him - without ever being completely involved- and started a very silly but head over heels affair with a married man (another regular) with 3 kids and pregnant wife. Ouch. God knows what on earth I was thinking, but I do know I was drinking very heavily - about 5 or 6 pints a night (!) and I suppose I was trying out a different way of life ... I had always been the posh girl from college going to uni etc.. I wanted to know how bad I could be I guess.
The married guy was a fantastic time for me.. even though I know it was wrong and all that I just loved being with him. The secretiveness of it was amazing and I used to love coming into work when he was in the pub with his friends and family etc and acting as if I didn't know him at all when at the end of the night he would be waiting in the car park for me in his car and we would drive off to Hampton Court or wherever and have rampant sex in the back of his car. We once got pulled over by the police at 3am because we were driving fast and they stopped us and made him get out and took his name etc. What a nightmare.
I really loved him, although I couldn't really see it at the time. I thought maybe we could have a future, but at the same time I knew deep down it was all about the sex and I was happy to have what time I could have with him - usually 4 nights a week. Looking back now being married myself I think his wife must've known he was up to something.
Anyway, don't ask me why but me and the ex were still friends - close friends - during this time and I desperately needed someone to confide in about my married affair so guess what I did? Yep stupid me I told him. He was completely shocked and disgusted with me - of course partly due to the fact that he still liked me I think but I didn't realise that at the time! - and gave me a good telling off. This of course made me drink even more and carry on seeing the married guy.
So at some point me and the ex started up again and I, I am ashamed to say, carried on seeing the married guy (who was 35) as well... I don't know why I couldn't finish it - I genuinely liked him. He made me feel wicked and naughty and even though I thought I would have a better future with S I wasn't able to let it go.
8 months passed with me seeing both of them... (Married guy affair lasting well over a year by now). I never got caught out. I saw one one night and the other the other. I kept my mobile carefully and made sure married guy was stored under a different name. I don't know how I got away with it but I did.
One night however I knew me and S were getting very serious and I couldn't take it anymore, I didn't want to hurt myself anymore. I think actually I loved the married guy more but I knew he would never leave his wife and he always went on about how young I was and how I would get fed up with him etc... So one night I sat in married guys car and told him it was over. I was crying my heart out because it was such a hard thing for me to do- esp knowing that I would have to leave my job in the pub because I knew if I stayed I would end up sleeping with him after work again. I shut the door behind me and that was the last time we spoke - apart from seeing each other in the pub from a distance sometimes.
I never worked in the pub again. I think I cried solidly for about 6 months after that, even though I was with S and I did love him. Looking back now I think maybe the fact I was pining after someone else stopped me from seeing a lot of the flaws in S during the first two years of our relationship - I so badly wanted it to work and to believe that I had made the right choice.
We got engaged.. I was soooo proud to be engaged. He was a cracking looking guy and owned his own business and I was so excited about it all. We were like royalty in our local pub - he was really popular and I was well looked after having been the only barmaid in there for a long time.
However the longer after I left work things started going wrong. He would want to go out on his own boys nights - something he hadn't been able to do before since I would be working - and he wouldn't want me to come. He would argue with me about anything and everything and we would often end up shouting at each other. He was very secretive about money and would never tell me how much he earned,always accusing me of being after his money - which honest to God I wasn't!!
He was completely jealous of the relationship I had with my mum and Gran (who lived with me and mum) and he would often fly of the handle about it. My mum was very seriously ill one year in the beginning and he wouldn't hardly let me talk about it while she was in hospital. I was doing it all on my own.
We started trying for a baby.. I don't know why. My Gran was ill - dying of cancer - and me and mum were looking after her at home and I suppose I wanted to give mum something to look forward to - and I knew he wanted a child. I don't think thinking about myself and what I wanted came into it! I seriously felt that if my mum didn't have a baby to look forward to she would commit suicide... So off we went baby making. We weren't even living together or making plans to (or get married despite being engaged- I think it was all about show with him).
I got pregnant. Everyone was so excited. He said he didn't want to move in until the house was done up (he was always so critical of the housework etc etc) so we spent months doing it up - it still wasn't done by the time she was born.
I will miss the birth because thats a whole nother chapter altogether!!!
After the birth things really started to go downhill. He moved in but not very happily at all. He would constantly nag me about everything. He thought the PNI didn't exist and wouldn't lift a finger to help. Many nights I would go to bed crying and he would just say to me "Whats the matter with you??!" really aggressively and go to sleep.
Boys night out became every night and he would often finish work at 3, go straight to the pub and stay there till close coming home expecting dinner on the table. - which embarassingly enough I did because I so wanted it to work. I was desperate. He once went out for the whole weekend (to Brighton) without so much as a phonecall and when I asked why he didn't tell me where he was he hung up on me telling me to shut up.
He would constantly push me into sleeping with him. 6 weeks after the birth when I was still very sore we had a wedding to go to and he made it very clear that he wanted to sleep with me then. He booked a room in the hotel and pestered me into going back on the pill. I wasn't very happy about it but again I wanted to be a good woman to him - how sad does that sound! So I did and we had sex, which was excruiciatingly painful but even though I said so he still did it anyway. I feel really angry about that now but I don't think of it as assault as such because I suppose I did go along with it but you would think he would stop realising that I was in pain but there you go. Of course after that once we were back home he would be pressurising me to sleep with him every single night and if I didn't he would be saying I didn't love him etc etc. I realise now how unreasonable he was being - 6 weeks after the birth is soon for anyone yet alone after such a traumatic birth with an episiotomy and PNI!!
Things got worse and worse. He was never violent as such but he would punch doors and walls. He once put his hand through the glass front of a fruit machine when we were out together because I was upset / depressed whatever and he was cross with me.
My Gran slowly died of cancer - so I had the PNI to cope with, him and my Gran who I loved dearly dying at home. It was heartbreaking. He didn't seem to have any sympathy or understanding of how emotional it all was for me, once making a comment that the house smelt bad (because her bowel had ruptured through the cancer and she had messed herself). She would often call me in the night and so as well as looking after A I would be going down to help Gran in and out of bed etc. At the end of course she was bed ridden and on a morphine drip. We had some home help in at the end but we tried not to because she was very afraid of doctors and hospitals etc.
In the middle of all this I had a terrible falling out with my mum... the worst I had ever had. She was completely angry with me about the fact that me and S were still trying to do up the house - I think a lot of it was stress with Gran too - and she would hardly talk to me at all. She thought I was being selfish because I was so depressed and despite having mental health probs herself I think she thought I was putting it on. We had a huge screaming row in the kitchen one day where she told me, "Whats wrong with you? You have everything to look forward to - you have YOUR baby upstairs. I am so angry with you, I don't think we can ever get on with each other again the way we did". She then told me to get back upstairs to 'YOUR' baby and we both left in floods of tears- me also because I didnt even want the baby and I felt that the one reason I had for having her - to make my mum happy - had been thrown back in my face. I seriously contemplated sucidie or killing my baby, not that I have ever shared that before. I was at the end of the world. We have since talked about it and she said she didn't realise how seriously down I was and that things were on top of her, she felt that I had abandonned her in my search to be a good partner to S and that I wasn't pulling my weight.. Maybe I wasn't in hindsight. I had a lot on my mind.
Gran died. Mum and I started to get on a bit more and because Mum was able to take more of a role with A (until then I had no help with the baby because of my Gran being so ill etc) I went back to work 3 days a week. Me and S got on worse and worse.. We would constantly fight and there was no love left. I knew I couldn't stay with him anymore.
Being at work gave me myself back again. I felt young and alive and I was able to see that I could still have A and be a person as well as a mum - something which I think you lose sight of when you have PNI. I gradually built up my own bond with her - I would sit and hold her which is something I couldn't do before - I was on auto pilot looking after her but then I would have to put her down again in the cot or bouncy chair - I didn't want to hold her.
Around this time is when I met my now husband. He was the manager in the store I worked in and we became close. He too was living with someone (she had just been through a miscarriage) and we became close, sharing things about our lives. One night after we had been out in a group from work we ended up getting the bus home together (ironically enough he lived only down the street from me- I had never seen him before!!!) and when we went to kiss each other goodnight we ended up passionately kissing on the doorstep of my house!! (With S inside!! Gulp! What was I thinking?
!!)
6 weeks of hell followed. S followed me on a night out and found me in the park holding hands with new man. He shouted and screamed and threatened to run off with our daughter (who was about 9 months old I think) but I didn't care - as far as I was concerned the relationship was dead. I was still suffering badly from PNI so I didn't even care about A that much right then. My new bloke was saying to me, "Go home, stay with your daughter, we can sort it out" and at the time I didn't see that. I just wanted to be with him.
S was in floods of tears, he begged me to reconsider. He couldn't understand how I could seemingly throw away a 6 year relationship for a 6 week one. I said I felt that he was on a different planet to me. He kept saying give him another chance but I just couldn't. He would come and sleep next to me in the bed and cry and say how could I do this to him but I honestly knew it was over. The thought of being close to him again make me recoil in horror. I carried on seeing new man while S was looking for somewhere to live.
I think S thought that if he gave me some space and moved out locally that I would come back and realise how tough things were without him. What he didn't know however was that new man had already agreed to move in - so one out one in. S realised one night when he brought A back from being with him from the afternoon (he used to have her once a week for a few hours - I let him see her whenever he wanted) he saw new man in the bedroom and went mad saying how could I let him move in etc etc.
I was blissfully happy with new man. He encouraged me to do things together as a family which I think brought me through the PNI. He went with me to the doctors and I started on some anti depressants (S would never let me have these since he thought depression was a load of rubbish). Slowly I began to come round. I did have wobbly days when I felt maybe I should have given S another chance - esp since his family saw me as the terrible cheating woman - obivously not knowing what our relationship was like. But the truth was I guess I wanted to hurt him - he had hurt me so terribly I wanted him to feel the pain I had felt. I know that sounds awful but thats really how I felt.
We had months of stinking rows. S went off to Thailand for 6 months at a time saying he was going to move out there - he met some girl out there. (When we were together he was always saying if we ever split up he would sleep with a Thai girl and I guess he got his wish!) When he came back he would demand to see A who was always upset because no doubt she couldn't remember daddy very well. (Which he would say was my fault!!) He blamed me bitterley for everything, saying I had ruined everyones lives and his favourite thing to tell me was that I had "become another single mum. Well done".
I had to be there when he used to see A because as I said she was upset and only a baby really and he didn't know how to interact with her. I think he also thought by me being there we might get back together. He would send me constant texts beginning me to come back, that I didn't love new man, how could I do this to our daughter etc etc. It was a horrible horrible time.
Something changed eventually.
I got attacked on my way home from work at night one day - two men grabbed me, it was horrible. They never caught them and I didn't feel safe where we lived anymore. We decided to move away and put the house up for sale. S said we owed him lots of money (which I doubted) but to keep him happy me and new man got a mortgage and paid him back. I think this joint commitment made him realise things weren't going to change. We put an offer on a house in Norfolk (now our house) and S suddenly decided he didn't want to see me again and he had nothing to say to me. I think his final words to me were something like, "I'm too good for you". Nice.
We moved up here about a year ago, we got married and things are okay. A sees her Dad every other week - he picks her up from my mum on the Friday and his mum and Dad bring her back on the Sunday. We don't see each other much and when we do we don't talk much. We are still very angry about lots of things but I personally make the effort for A. He seems to think by me leaving him I have damaged his relationship with her but I think he has done that all on his own - I always said he can see her when he likes but even when we lived 5 mins away he only ever saw her for 2 hours a week. Pub and drinking were always more important. (When we lived together he never gave me any money at all - not for me or A).
So thats where I am.. Good to get it out anyway. xxx
