Is this as wrong as it feels?

[mark clemson]

3 hours ago, Ruby Slippers said:

It may take a long time to get over this kind of trauma. Once you do, you should be able to talk about it in terms of the facts, without it bringing up strong emotions. Until you can do that, you haven't healed and it's going to be an issue. Your romantic partner is not and should not be your therapist.

Agree. And if if it does bring up the strong emotions, they should be transitory and not affect your behavior or be projected onto your current partner. I.e. processable and not interfering. I think some things are always going to bring up some emotion. It's just that emotion shouldn't negatively affect your current relationship and/or your life in other ways. Maybe that means they're not fully processed,  but I don't think it's realistic to ask people to wait, e.g. a decade between relationships. They just have to be able to handle the new one effectively.

(And I do agree that varies among people and so some folks still CAN'T handle things after a decade, etc, but that will only be some folks.)

[Ruby Slippers]

4 minutes ago, mark clemson said:

I don't think it's realistic to ask people to wait, e.g. a decade between relationships

I've never done that and wouldn't recommend it. It doesn't have to take a long time to vent and release negative emotions. The problem is that a lot of people don't know how to do it, so it just festers for years and rears its ugly head much later.

One of the best ways to release emotions is to let yourself have a good cry when it wells up, let it ALL out. Just like throwing up when you're sick, it's a somewhat involuntary process you just have to surrender to, it doesn't feel good while it's happening, but you feel so much better the moment it's done.

You also have to learn to eventually forgive people for their mistakes and injuries against you, even really big ones. You don't ever have to communicate your forgiveness to them. It's not FOR them. It's for you. It was very hard to figure out how to forgive my dad for his abuse, but a few people explained to me that if he COULD have done better, he WOULD have done better. He was lacking and that was his own shortcoming. To forgive, I had to find compassion for this limited man, who was probably just passing on the type of parenting he was subjected to.

With a romantic partner, you have to accept that you picked this person, you overlooked their shortcomings and made the conscious choice to get involved with this person, so in most cases you're not just a hapless victim, you likely contributed to the dysfunction in some way, if only by putting up with more nonsense than you should.

[Watercolors]

12 hours ago, schlumpy said:

Your relationship with him sounds like you are a rebound.

I was thinking the same exact thing. 7 months in and it comes across as the Jayne is this guy's rebound. Jayne you deserve to be with a guy who is 100% healed from his previous marriage/relationship. This guy definitely isn't healed and he's using it to keep his distance from you. Sure, you two share a laugh and supposedly rarely argue. Does that mean he is 100% emotionally invested in you? Not necessarily. 

He does not sound like he's on stable ground emotionally and he's dragging you along for the ride. You're not a priority in his life -- or it seems to come across that way if he's ranting about his ex-wife still. Men who do that are not emotionally healed and detached from their ex. If you want to continue to bare the brunt of that, stay with him. But understand he may not come around on your timeline. If ever. 

[simpycurious]

On 6/13/2020 at 2:32 AM, CaliforniaGirl said:

Me too. But that's something he needs to work out and none of it is the stepdaughter's fault.

Hate is difficult to overcome

 

On 6/13/2020 at 2:24 AM, Cookiesandough said:

I had an ex who got mad at me for wanting out of the relationship, so he stole my puppy. Took a long time to not tell ppl who stood still long enough  about the douche who stole my dog. The only feelings I had were incandescent hate . He made my skin crawl. But Letting go of that anger was an ordeal and we were only together a handful months 

That is awful and is nothing more than being hateful .........there are stronger words than douche

[lonelyplanetmoon]

This is a great thread with really good advice that can be applied to life.  

I have finally figured out that a relationship is only worth staying in when I (capital I) can stay grounded and happy.  If I start to become unstable and unhappy (after communicating of course) then either I am  having problems internally I need to address or the dynamic of the relationship is unhealthy.  That is when it is time to step back and work on myself or leave.  After all the only person I can and should control is myself.

I agree with all the advice given so far. 

 

[FMW]

We have to take people where they are at. If we don't like things about them - talking about past relationships, who they choose to spend time with in this case - then it saves everyone a lot of time and energy to just move along.  Nobody wants to have to "fix" someone, and no one wants to be fixed.  

[Miss Spider]

On 6/13/2020 at 1:37 PM, smackie9 said:

I always had a rule.....never date a man that still carries bitterness for their ex and talks very negatively about them. To me that’s a big red flag. Most of the time it’s not the ex that had the issues. I agree the if a man can own his mistakes, learn from them and move on to be a better person earns my respect. This guy’s integrity comes into question with his behaviour. 

Yep. The exes that I got with that talked crap about their exes and about all the atrocities they committed (they never did anything wrong). Guess what? When I left the relationship I became the “evil ex“  ... and they played victim hard...(to the point they could justify stealing my dog) haha

Edited June 14, 2020 by Cookiesandough

[simpycurious]

Nothing justifies stealing a person's pet nor does anything justify hurting someone's pet..........seriously not cool

When it's OVER, it's over MOVE ON.......lick your wounds, learn from it, be better moving forward and stop dwelling

in the past and trying to place blame...........sometimes NOBODY is too blame, it just doesn't work

[MsJayne]

So, once we had it out, he admitted that he enjoyed the fact that his relationship with the stepdaughter annoys his ex, and also that the stepdaughter gets a kick out of this aspect as well.  Altogether unhealthy. So we had a ripping big argument about it and he said he'd stay away from the stepdaughter, and I said go hang out with her as much as you like. Anyways, I came to the conclusion that I correctly perceived was going on and that's why it was bugging me, it's a relationship built on false sentiment. For the record, I would never tell someone who they can associate with, so for anyone who misunderstood my post and accused me of that...pffft to you  

[CaliforniaGirl]

4 hours ago, MsJayne said:

So, once we had it out, he admitted that he enjoyed the fact that his relationship with the stepdaughter annoys his ex, and also that the stepdaughter gets a kick out of this aspect as well.  Altogether unhealthy. So we had a ripping big argument about it and he said he'd stay away from the stepdaughter, and I said go hang out with her as much as you like. Anyways, I came to the conclusion that I correctly perceived was going on and that's why it was bugging me, it's a relationship built on false sentiment. For the record, I would never tell someone who they can associate with, so for anyone who misunderstood my post and accused me of that...pffft to you  

Um...great? I guess?

So, I hope it all works out. Good luck.

P.s. You never clarified the wanting to sleep with the stepdaughter thing...but okay.

[SincereOnlineGuy]

On 6/11/2020 at 10:07 PM, MsJayne said:

OK everyone…..input please.  I have been seeing my current guy for 7 months, and I adore him, and I know he adores me back.  I’m not ‘insecure’ in the relationship. Up to this point, the only thing we’ve ever bickered about is backgammon. However, we had our first disagreement yesterday, and it’s left me a bit confused.  He’s 5 years divorced from his second wife, and it was a volatile marriage full of jealousy, which degenerated into fighting and a lot of nastiness, and the divorce was as ugly as they get.

 He claims she took him for a huge amount of money when they divorced, and he still has a lot of anger over that. I think I’ve been very understanding, but he’s brought it up so often that I have three times recently asked him to stop talking about it. I’d heard more than enough when he told me he stopped seeing his biological kids because she was so jealous of his first wife that every time he saw his kids there was a massive fight.  He is now trying to rebuild his relationships with his bio kids, and I’m fully supportive.  When we first met he told me that he still had a relationship with his step-daughter from the second marriage, and he has more than once referred to her children as his grandchildren. 

At first I was OK with this,  but this far down the track I’ve come to the belief that keeping the ‘ex-stepdaughter’ in his life is actually a constant reminder of the relationship with her mother, and I feel this is part of the reason why he’s not properly moving on and keeps bringing up his ex, (like two or three times a week!).  We’d talked about this and he agreed that maybe it was time to let go and fade the relationship, especially since the stepdaughter has reconciled with her bio father in recent years. On Tuesday night he brought up the ex yet again, and after 7 months of it I finally cracked the s--ts.

Then on Wednesday night he rings me and during the conversation slips in that he’s going for dinner with the ex step-daughter the following week. So I got angry again and let him know that I felt it had reached the point where he was undermining our relationship by constantly bringing up the ex, and reminded him that he’d acknowledged it was time to let go of the past, wind down the relationship with the ex step-daughter, etc.  So, he tells me he loves me and doesn’t want to lose me so he’ll fix it, and he cancels the dinner.

But then later he accuses me of telling him who he can associate with, denies that he’s spoken about his ex step as if he’s still her stepfather and says “she’s only a friend”, (changes the whole context of their relationship in four words).  Then he accuses me of talking about my exes all the time, and I do mention them occasionally, but I really don’t think I speak of them frequently, and I certainly don’t repeat ad nauseam the same stories about how badly they treated me.

The thing is, if he’d had an amicable split with his second wife, I wouldn’t have a problem with him maintaining a relationship with her daughter because there wouldn’t be the anger there, and I would probably even go meet her, etc. But because there’s so much hostility about her mother, I don’t think it’s particularly healthy for him to still be hovering on the periphery of her life by maintaining contact with her daughter.

And now, because I’ve spoken up, I feel it’s damaged our relationship because he accused me of telling him who he can associate with, and then took it further and accused me of suggesting he was attracted to the stepdaughter, and of trying to get back together with his ex. I didn’t tell him he couldn’t associate with her, nor did I tell him he must cancel the dinner, I just let him know I felt it was undermining our relationship because I see it as clinging on to the past and pushing his anger buttons. I also suspect from his exes point of view it must be a real thorn in her side that her daughter keeps up contact with this ex-husband who she had such a nasty break from.

I feel I’ve been cast in the role of jealous control freak and I feel more resentful of that than I do about him crapping on about his ex-wife all the time.

Should I just let this go or is it as damaging as it feels? 

While I get  why the dynamics of this are impacting you...  

 

you are completely NOT showing any respect for societal (evolution) such that societal evolution exists where it is in 2020.

 

The dynamics of relationships and divorces and things used to balance precisely on just whose genetics were contained  within the various offspring.

(even prior to DNA...  the "who fathered this child?"  consideration was chief with regard to maintaining familial contact and financial responsibility )

 

NOW, and in this day and age of (father's being made by the law to be more responsible  than they used to be   (which, at times, ain't much) )... 

(and resulting largely from the visitation rights and documented fairness  which is seemingly supposed to accompany it all)

 

... when a man marries... and accepts offspring who are not biologically HIS...  it is quite FAIR in present day 2020 that his interest IN that child 

does not automatically CEASE at such moment as when the couple divorces.

 

(now I'm assuming this man is not perving this step-daughter...   and I'm assuming that each of the two of them is very fair to the position of the other, relative to life and (her) mother)

(expecting they get along much like an adult daughter gets along with an adult bio-father)

 

In other words...  IF a guy agrees to marry a woman with kids...  and he is expected to, and DOES throw all of his chips into the pot there...   then in modern times, he is to be afforded just the same rights as a bio father, once he committed.

 

Now clearly IF... this were his BIO-daughter...    and you were at odds like this...   you would recognize in yourself how completely (wrong) you were.

 

I ...   sorta get  the dynamics you're sharing, and how they affect you both in real terms, and in terms of YOUR perception.

 

But it makes the whole world a more fair place IF the step parents of today are allowed to step-in and BE "real, actual PARENTS"  despite no shared DNA.

 

 

Perhaps the most enjoyable female mind I've ever encountered... is someone who was conversationally exciting to me,  while at the same time she often groused about the legal system having granted paternal/parental rights over this woman's bio daughter TO her ex husband, who was merely the step father to the woman's young daughter.

(the mom was 100% wrong as I view it (from merely a 'logical' standpoint, with no emotion invested)... but I never bothered to point out her unfair logic during what was her independent life struggle)

Alas, she was just a friend...   (the daughter, more than a decade later, still has a hyphenated name, which includes that step-father's last name)

 

 

I hope this makes sense, MsJayne.

 

 

 

 

[SincereOnlineGuy]

5 hours ago, MsJayne said:

So, once we had it out, he admitted that he enjoyed the fact that his relationship with the stepdaughter annoys his ex, and also that the stepdaughter gets a kick out of this aspect as well.  Altogether unhealthy. So we had a ripping big argument about it and he said he'd stay away from the stepdaughter, and I said go hang out with her as much as you like. Anyways, I came to the conclusion that I correctly perceived was going on and that's why it was bugging me, it's a relationship built on false sentiment. For the record, I would never tell someone who they can associate with, so for anyone who misunderstood my post and accused me of that...pffft to you  

This adds zero justification to your position (although I understand that it makes you feel better )

 

IF their ONLY bond in life was that they (step father and step daughter) like to get together every Tuesday afternoon and play Cribbage...  that's still ENOUGH (of a reason for them to be allowed their long-ago-established familial relationship).

(you need to alter your perception of this and tryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy to drop your emotional connection to it, and honor the pure logic that was this man once upon a time committing to the whole ball of wax  and still being able to honor SOME of that commitment  {MY not knowing just why that marriage dissolved, nor whether it was his call, or hers} ).

 

That they both get a kick out of her mother's ire over the maintained relationship...  is enough of a bond for it to be authentic.  

Better there be a visible thing they have in common  than for you to see exactly nothing to it (before surely then wondering if they were both amused because it annoys you)

 

Let it go... 

 

[Versacehottie]

12 hours ago, MsJayne said:

So, once we had it out, he admitted that he enjoyed the fact that his relationship with the stepdaughter annoys his ex, and also that the stepdaughter gets a kick out of this aspect as well.  Altogether unhealthy.

well maybe you aren't attracted to someone deep down that is so vindictive?  I mean it should set off alarm bells in your head that you are just a hop, skip and a jump away from being the person he would direct that vindication toward if so provoked or justified in his head.  Not a good stable base on which to build a relationship. And honestly IMO, wholly unattractive.  Who likes a guy who wastes time on this b.s? IMO, a guy with decency would step aside for a little bit from his stepdaughter until things cooled down.  He could explain it to her before doing so.  If she also has care and concern for her mother rather than bad motives like annoying or worse, I can't see why she would have a problem doing so.  Anyway, maybe the mother is a manipulative person and they are digging their heels in--it's still not much of an excuse to ALSO become assh*les.

So did you break up with him or are you still hanging onto this guy (i'm refraining from calling him a loser but it's hard)?

[MsJayne]

On 6/24/2020 at 1:45 AM, Versacehottie said:

So did you break up with him or are you still hanging onto this guy (i'm refraining from calling him a loser but it's hard)?

No, it can just be there in there back of my mind, waving a little red flag while I ponder it all.   

[CaliforniaGirl]

1 hour ago, MsJayne said:

No, it can just be there in there back of my mind, waving a little red flag while I ponder it all.   

What is your response about the attraction accusation? Which of you brought it up and if you believe he wants to have sex with his stepdaughter do you still want to be with him?