Dear Lindsey:

Here is what I am not saying: I am not saying that there are no valid reasons for you to be angry at your ex.

What I am saying is that your intense upset over him replacing you with another woman is not about the kind of relationship you had with him for 12 years or so. After all, you experienced the same upset about M replacing you with another woman even though you had a very short relationship with M, a couple of months or so, a relationship that wasn’t even public.

Your mother replaced you with her two younger children and then moved to a place where there was enough space for the younger two, but none for you.

The hurt, the anger, the feeling of being punched in the stomach that you experienced with your mother is like hot magma underground. The feelings you experienced regarding M buying a drink for another woman/  regarding ex husband having a girlfriend is like that magma erupting above ground as lava.

Yes, there are different circumstances to M and ex husband that didn’t exist with your mother, sex is one such thing. Another thing is that your own two children exist now but didn’t exist then- but at the core of your emotional experience is indeed what happened then, your mother abandoning and betraying you.

Remove that core experience from being directed against your ex, and you will be left with the valid reasons to be angry with him, and that would be overall.. way less anger and way less upset.

anita