My baby's father is an amputee and he was't comfortable being alone with her till she was about 2 and after that he took her by himself, About a year ago she started asking me to stay and "let's eat together" and even though neither her dad nor I really wanted to, I'd stay and eat. Yesterday he called to see her (it isn't his usual day) and we had lunch together and it really didn't make much sense for where we were for me to drop off and pick up. I have eliminated the routine Monday night get-togethers. For a while, we all thought it was a good thing for "family time", and my therapist thought it would be good for my daughter to see her parents getting along. I disagree with him on that, since I am trying to detach and move on, but we will be talking about that next session.

I am still in a transitional period. I am not an option to her dad anymore, I'm still a little sad but I think it will get better with time. I don't know that he gets ANYTHING from me. We don't "shag" he never needs a "shoulder" and although I always appreciate what he does, I don't admire him anymore. The thing he has gotten from me not being available for other men is that he had security in knowing there would not be another man in his daughter's life. I really think that is ALL he wants. But he says he doesn't even want that.

I don't expect to switch gears instantaneously and i am so prone to say whatever is on my mind at the moment and when I have conflicting feelings, i acknowledge them. I think there is a grieving process when relationships of any kind end. I know the direction I need to go in and I am on the right path, I think, i just keep looking back, but it is just been about 3 months since I have really been working on detaching. That, to me, isn't such a long time.

These are very wise words. I hope that tnmom66 will heed the advice.

Had a counseling session today with my therapist. I am going to have another session tomorrow.

I am really confused.

He is encouraging me to respond in a positive manner to my little girl's father when he reaches out to me. He encourages "hang out as a family time" because he thinks it is good for my daughter. I think what is best for my daughter is for her parents to be together and love each other, but since that isn't going to happen, I personally think the best thing for us to do is just go our separate ways. Avoid contact as much as possible.
Isn't that what most divorced/never married and "no longer interested in a relationship" parents do? That is what I do with my exH since he got a new wife. After they split up, I have accepted some invitations to hang out with him, but I don't know how common that is.

There is no doubt in my mind that IF his (ex BF, not ex H) heart was turned towards me and if we could restore the mutual attraction and affection we had for each other and he made a lifelong commitment, he would absolutely be the one person in the world who could BEST meet my needs. That's a whole bunch of "Ifs". Nothing matters, his "potential" to meet my needs and my ability to meet his, if he isn't willing.

This is a very unnatural situation. Children are supposed to be conceived in and brought up in a family where the parents are married and love each other.

I have lots of reasons for not wanting to hang out with my little one's dad. I need to be detached from him. That is what he said wanted, wasn't it? Why would I want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with me? Or rather, who ONLY wants to be with me for the child's sake? If I do get married, I would expect that my husband would discourage me from "hanging out" with an ex-lover. I am afraid that if I hang out with him and get "friendly" with him, I will again start to have feelings for him and hopes that we could work out something for the long term that would be mutually satisfying.


I know it concerns my therapist that I am largely driven by spite and anger. Basically, I have told my exBF that since I tried for 3 years to get him to sit and talk with me and build a rapport with me and be open and honest so we can have a friendly and trusting relationship and he wouldn't do things MY way, now that the co-parenting relationship has deteriorated, I am not interested in talking to him or hanging out with him one-on-one, nor am I comfortable sharing a meal with him and my daughter. I have sat down twice since I meant not to, and I didn't enjoy either time. It just felt WRONG. I would rather be sitting by myself and reading a book than sitting across from the table from him. I am glad that I did have those 2 meals, just to confirm that it isn't something I want or need to do.

My therapist says I am not acting in my child's best interest. I guess he knows that I have had a good arrangement, or rather, one that met our needs pretty well for a while. I was willing to maintain it, but he was not willing to if I was looking for or getting involved with another man.

My therapist is 66 and I think he has seen a lot, but I don't think he's ever seen anything quite like my situation. There are certainly dysfunctional components that he has seen before, but we seem to be an interesting case study.

I don't know what my exBF is doing in his therapy sessions. I do know that he is still maintaining that he is my friend and wants a good co-parenting relationship and that he is not interested in being a "couple". As lately as a week ago, he seemed to think that I still wanted him to marry me.

He is calling me on days that I don't see him. I am not sure why.
He's not sure why. It is very easy for me to get caught up in conversation when I don't keep my guard up. We are talking more about the child because she is having some health issues and I am having some of my own that might require some changes in our usual schedule.

I am so glad that he is so actively involved in her life. I want that to continue.

I don't see how any child could be well adjusted seeing their father only every other weekend and 2 weeks in the summer. And you really don't know how well-adjusted someone really is until they marry and are parents themselves and see how their kids and marriages turn out. If the "traditional nuclear family" started disappearing in the 1960's, and you look at the mess this country is in now, it seems to me that there is a pretty clear "cause and effect" that has been going on. You can't really have any other situation that provides the stability that marriage does for the children.

I have so much hope after reading "His needs,Her Needs" and "Love Busters" that my own kids will be able to have happy marriages. My teenaged daughter is afraid to get married, but I have told her that if she chooses wisely and they meet each other's emotional needs and avoid "love busters", that they can have a blissful life together.

I am more and more excited about Marriage Builders as I watch the videos on youtube and read the books. There are so many sad stories, but there are also successes. I have so many friends who aren't happy in their marriages. I am recommending Marriage Builders to everyone.

In my opinion, your therapist is an idiot. Why do you even know that your xBF is seeing a therapist? Is he seeing the same one you're seeing? If so, that is a conflict of interest. If I were you, I'd change to a different counselor who is interested in helping you recover from this messed up relationship.

My xBF told me his therapist told him that I should not let my kids meet any man I might be seeing until we are in a committed relationship. He also told me that he told his therapist that I wanted to work things out with him and his therapist asked him if he wanted to, he said, "no" and his therapist told him he should't if he didn't want to.

I went with him to see his therapist and he came to see my therapist last week. I think everybody knows that neither me nor my exBF are crazy or posing a threat to the child.

We just need to get on the same page regarding our parenting relationship, which is going through a transition now that I am no longer willing to try to force myself to be happy being single and celibate for the sake of our child. I am not sorry I did try. If I didn't try to do all I could, I would have felt like I had failed my child. I have enough guilt as it is.

I am eager to see what my therapist has to say today. I don't think he is an "idiot", I just think I haven't understood him yet. He is the one who encouraged me to stop hanging on to the exBF and to see other people.

He married a girl he got pregnant when he was very young and they had 2 kids, then he married later and I think has been with her for almost 25 years and has 2 kids with her. I don't know how his co-parenting relationship was with his first wife. I don't know if he is advising me from his own experience or from what has worked best for other families, or "textbook" advice, or what.

I have been seeing him almost weekly since May and he knows me and my situation well.

His advice for me to stop trying to wait around hoping things would get better in this relationship did not sit well with me at first. I still don't know how things are going to play out, but at least I'm not in limbo.

I hate all of this.

No. You really don't.

You weren't even married to the father of your child. He has no authority over you. You have no authority over him.

I think it's wonderful that you want your child's father to be a big part of her life, but he does not need to be in your life. It's emotionally unhealthy for you. You need to look into parallel parenting.

I had the exact same thought.




You already have those feelings and hopes. That's the problem.

AGG

You expressed some good intuition regarding NOT seeing your child's father, listen to it instead of your whacked out therapist. You don't need to understand your therapist, stop trying to understand everyone else and listen to your inner voice that is already giving you the answers you need.

You situation is not that uncommon.

Your child most certainly can be well-adjusted. Some children do not have both parents in their lives at ALL (one's dead or one doesn't show an interest) and still grow up well adjusted. A lot has to do with your parenting and the support of your family and friends in your child's life.

In defense of my therapist (I canceled my appointment today because I am not feeling well), I think he is seeing some things that I am not. He thinks it is better for me to deal with the conflict and "work through" it, rather than avoid it. He thinks avoiding it will delay my emotional healing. We all know that I am not emotionally "healed" from getting dumped when I was pregnant almost 4 years ago.

I have enough insight to know what is going on between me and exbf. He is emotionally unable to commit to me and as far as I can see, does not want it and has no plans to overcome his commitment/intimacy issues enough to have a healthy relationship with me. He does want to continue to have the involvement in and control over my life that he has enjoyed all these years. I do think he is getting help to overcome his concerns about not being comfortable with this transition. I am glad he is getting support. It still isn't easy for him.

I am getting support to help me with this transition, myself. It isn't easy for me, and the fact is that if I could sacrifice my desire for emotional intimacy, companionship, and sexual fulfillment, I would be very happy maintaining the status quo and we would both be "on the same page". Since I can not sacrifice those things for the next 15 years (and even though I am willing to find someone else to meet those needs, there is no guarantee that I will), we need to write a new page together.

I just came across this in an article http://parentingoffthegrid.com/tag/co-parenting/

"High-conflict parenting is damaging to kids whether parents are married or divorced. In family law circles, it�s a basic principle that parents who remain in conflict with one another after divorce are actually maintaining their connection�albeit in a negative, hurtful way. Recently, I heard a statistic that said about 25% of co-parents have cooperative relationships, about 25% are in high-conflict, non-cooperative relationships, and the rest are somewhere in between. That high-conflict 25% are people who really do still have feelings for one another but aren�t able to acknowledge that and respectfully, lovingly separate."

I have feelings for exBF and he has feelings for me. We just don't want the same thing, so I guess I see the wisdom in working out things. When he sees that he has upset me and wants me to sit and talk with him, when he is trying to resolve the conflict and I just refuse to speak to him, or else I respond with "disrespectful judgements" and "angry outbursts", I am not acting in a very mature or productive manner. Actually, it burns me up when he does that to me, and here I am doing the same thing.

I do think we need to work on our "conflict resolution" skills. The trick will be doing that in a way that does not encourage the unhealthy co-dependent aspects of our relationship. It is all about learning new skills, I guess.

The more I think about this, the more I am starting to see things from my therapist's perspective.

And really, I cannot trust my feelings all the time. All any of us can do is what we think is right, based on the information we have at the time. I am glad I have health coverage so I can get professional advice and I am pretty sure he knows better than I do what direction I should go in to be mentally healthy and have a satisfying life.

ExBF has not started any new arguments. I think he did that at first just to have a reason to talk to me, since he had already told me he didn't want to talk to me or spend time with me if i was seeing other men. If all our emotions are calmed down, maybe it would be a good thing for us to talk sometime.

In the article referenced above, it goes on to say:
"So when I see my fianc� and his ex-wife chatting over tea, I�m really proud. The two of them must have done a lot of internal work to heal their wounds to be so kind to each other through one of the hardest jobs known to mankind�raising another human being."

Really, this situation is unnatural and far less than ideal. It will never be ideal. All we can do is make the best of what we have to work with.

We are pretty much doing parallel parenting, but I am not fully convinced that my therapist is "an idiot".

You are not in a relationship with your child's father so you do not need to be on the same page, understand each other, etc. The reason we think you don't need to see him has nothing to do with avoiding issues or healing, it has to do with triggering yourself, putting yourself in a vulnerable situation, etc. If you go back and look at your previous posts you can see how susceptible you are. In my opinion, your therapist is off base in suggesting anything of the kind. You can listen to us or not, but you came here for advice and we gave it to you, do what you want with it, I won't argue the point.

I agree that I am very susceptible. I think at least in the short term avoidance will serve me well. You can't rush through these things,but I do see the value in coming to a resolution. It may be that he is thinking that I don't need to be in this mode indefinitely. Even the parallel parenting articles I read say that co-parenting is better and it is good if it can be worked into over time. It isn't right for me at the moment.

I really think things have worked out pretty well with my exH for the past 10 years or so. It is probably more parallel than cooperative, but we are both comfortable with it. ExBF and I aren't comfortable YET, but I think we will work it out.

At any rate, I need to get control of my bad behavior.

Being completely honest with yourself, isn't it possible the reason you keep hanging on and doing things with him is because you're secretly hoping he'll see what a great Mom you are, what a great catch you are and he'll have a light bulb moment that you've been right all along and that he does want to commit to you?

That's not going to happen....This ain't a fairy tale and you're not the princess and he is a frog who is NOT going to turn into a knight in shining armor. This is real life. When he says he doesn't want a relationship with you and doesn't want to commit to you, you have to take him at face value. He means what he says. NOTHING you say or do is going to cause the light bulb to go on. You need to let go.

BTW, take it from someone who has been in counseling with many many counselors....your counselor is off his rocker and giving you VERY bad advice.

I have no secret hopes that he will ever WANT to commit to me, much less actually be able to DO it. I have spoken my desire for that to happen, but it isn't going to. I know that better than anybody. There are many things in my life I WISH were different, but I don't plan my life around the expectations that they will actually come to pass. So many things are so totally out of my control. My health, for example. I struggle with chronic illness that I will never overcome, although I manage my symptoms as best as I can. A diabetic may wish to be relieved of her illness, but that doesn't mean that even with the best of care, she is guaranteed to not suffer some loss. Again, all we can do is the best we can with what we have and what we have control over. I cannot control another person and I have a hard enough time controlling myself.

What I have a secret hope for that I am trying to give up is that I might be able to be satisfied with what he offers. He tells me often what a good mother he thinks I am , BTW.

The time I have spent with him and my daughter has often been very pleasant and enjoyed by all. I have no regrets for spending time with my child and her father in the past. I just don't think it is right for now. And I do think it is healthy to end a relationship on good terms. I need to find my "Mars and Venus" book...I remember John Gray talking about it. At this point, exBF wants to be "friends" and he keeps telling me how much he needs me and cares for me as a "friend" and the mother of his child. If that is all I needed (as it has been for a while), I would be happy to have stayed in the relationship indefinitely.

I am the one who wanted to find someone else. HE could have stayed in that holding pattern for many more years, I am sure. It isn't like he is going to be cured of his commitmentphobia and get married and live happily ever after. He wanted our daughter to have as much stability as possible and that is why he didn't want either of us getting involved with someone else. I wanted the same thing, except my definition of "as much stability as possible" meant a committed relationship with him that met my most important emotional needs. I have said before, he is committed to a relationship with me but only on a very shallow level. He can experience intimacy OR commitment, but not both at the same time.

He seems willing at this point for us to do the parallel parenting thing. I am thinking his phone calls and invitations to eat are simply gestures of good will. Like I said, he sees himself as my friend and wants me to see him that way.

I have plenty of things to work on and I am having new health problems that are forcing me to put any dating experiences on the back burner.

When I first posted on here, I was kind of upset and so was exBF. I think we are both feeling better now.

Forget Mars Venus - I've never heard such crap in all my life and believe me, I tried.....I even counseled with there Mars Venus counselors and ended up staying in a relationship with an emotionally unavailable man for 4 months after seeing big red flags because they told me oh it's just consistent with the Mars persona.

If you really want sound advice, go to baggage reclaim, click on LIst of Posts on the top right side of the screen. Start with every post under Breaking Up and, then, move on to all the other posts.

Mars and Venus has some good advice for NORMAL people! I thought at the very first that my exBF was just "going into his cave" or was "like a rubber band" and when I first was getting to know him (before we got intimately involved and I was just trying to be friendly and help him with his love life) and he kept insisting that he wasn't "normal". It didn't take me long to realize his was right, and I moved on to the "Men Who Can't Love" book and saw that he really met that profile. Pretty grim prognosis. That was before I got pregnant.

The things that are really hitting home with me on Baggage Reclaim aren't the things that say to give up on hopes that he wil change (because that has been established and accepted), but the ones like this are hitting home:

the ones about being willing to settle for crumbs

the Friend Card "Many men lack the balls to live with the feeling of knowing that they�ve behaved badly, so they throw you The Friend Card so that they feel like less of a sh*t than they really are. It is a gateway into your life and if you haven�t gotten over him and broken the emotional tie, it sets you back and prevents you from getting over him and moving on."

NCR-"the golden rule is that you can only restart or accept contact when you are completely over him and have moved on. I suggest making it permanent for men that add little value to your life." (exBF adds a LOT of value to my life through his involvement with our child through financial support and parenting time. NCR is most definitely more difficult when parenting...parallel parenting is as close as it gets, I think, when a man lives close and is actively involved in his child's life)

"If you're healing, why are you dating?".

"..you should only attempt to be friends with an ex that 1) treated you well and 2) when enough time has passed and you have both gotten over the loss of the relationship." I am most definitely not over the loss of the relationship, and he has treated me well as a PERSON, just not as a BF (which he made clear from the start that he never wanted to be. He just gave me "permission" to call him "BF" after I got pregnant and we were still seeing each other and when I called him "my baby's dad" people would ask, "Why don't you just call him your boyfriend?" )

etc., etc.

Talked with my therapist. He says we need (because of the child) to restructure our relationship and exBF and I both have things to work on before we can have a well-oiled machine as far as a mutually satisfying PARENTING relationship goes. He says that neither of us will change in isolation. Good bi-lateral parenting requires good will and cooperation but does NOT include any "romantic" feelings or behaviors.

I explained to him how I am afraid to be around exBF because when we are having good times, I feel more inclined to try to "settle" for that and it has NEVER been something I could be satisfied with for long. Sooner or later I need more than just pleasant conversation and shared family time.

My therapist seems to have confidence in my ability to maintain appropriate boundaries...I know what to watch out for. Even if I can't do it now, it is a good thing to work towards later when I am really in a different spot--which I don't think will be until either he or I are involved with someone else.

All conversation and contact must be only regarding the child.

This is a process for both of us to get through.

I don't know about the dating....I kind of think it is good for me to go out with anyone who is interested, just for "experience" because I don't think I have much to lose, and I just might happen upon the right one.

I am so incredibly lonely. I hate my situation. I know I would be a good mate for someone, I think there are many people who would be happy with me as a person, but my situation just isn't good. I have been having a bunch of health problems for about 3 weeks that has kept me our of circulation. I do think dating is good for me. I enjoy having fun with someone of the opposite sex. I enjoy getting to meet new people. I enjoy being with someone who wants to be with me.

I hate when I get this lonely, hopeless feeling.