Dear Meg:

“I never had a father and was abused growing up in all the ways“- I am sorry that you were abused growing up, and in all the ways that you were abused. I wish that growing up was a different, way better experience for you.

“He had many different examples in his life of healthy relationships; I do not“- from what you shared about him, if he had an example of a healthy relationship, the example didn’t make much of an impression on him.

“I found out when he (son) was 6 months that my body had gone into full blown menopause. Then my husband’s dad fell ill and passed. Then my son was diagnosed with autism and I had changed careers to go back to teaching… When Covid hit it made everything worse because we were stuck in the house together. It got so bad I checked myself into a hospital…When I got out I asked him to leave and he did. Then he got sick and almost died“- a rollercoaster of distressing events with no emotional support for you.

“Fast forward to this past Thanksgiving…  I opened his Facebook and looked at his messages. He had not only been talking to her for years, he was bad mouthing me, telling her all about my female health issues, telling her he didn’t love me, etc… He has been saying less negative things about me to his friends and family, but I cannot stop thinking about everything I read or was told… I want to believe he wants to work on this but his actions say he doesn’t. I want to leave, but we are financially stuck for at least a year. He says he only says things because I make him mad…  I am wondering if anyone has tips on how to stop myself from constantly living in the memories of what I’ve read and heard said about me. And how do I reconcile the fact that he says one thing to me but is still saying the opposite to his family and friends?“- you can’t unhear what you heard, unread what you read. To be hurt less by all that you read and heard/ to stop obsessing about it, it’ll help if you completely accept that he, your SO,  is not a decent person. A decent person wouldn’t repeatedly gossip about people, especially not about the female  health issues of the mother of his son, information that should be private!

To completely accept that he is not a decent person is to no longer hope that he will change and become decent. Hope is a bad thing when it keeps us anxiously waiting for something good to happen, something that doesn’t happen day after day, year after year.

Sometimes we wait for so long, we forget what it is we’re waiting for.

Accepting vs waiting for a positive change may lessen your anxiety and prevent future disappointments because you’d be prepared for him being more of who he is (future gossips, future irresponsibility, etc.)

* Maybe he will change one day, but it didn’t happen yet, it doesn’t seem like it’s happening, and it may never happen.

What do you think of my reply so far, do you think it make sense?

anita