Hi Inky-

Thanks for laughs. I really needed them.

He was totally indifferent about having kids. I think this woman asking him for a donation really gave the old ego a boost.

I did ask him why someone would want sperm from a 50 year old man and he got all offended. It degrades with age, too. There’s a reason banks won’t accept it from men beyond 40.

I have no idea who has asked him for this. But I hope she is cool with having someone in her life who gives silent treatments, sulks, stonewalls and lies. Because whether she likes it or not, she is TETHERED to him.

Hi Anita,

The problem with the therapy is she is the only one who specializes in trauma in my insurance network. There are other ones, but they are $180/session, I would be paying OOP.

Re: my mother. I am very low contact with her. I don’t call her, I don’t take her calls and I don’t respond to her texts. My son and I are flying to my hometown for Thanksgiving next week and I am kind of dreading it, because my mother will be around. I have other family members I’d like to see, but my mother will be there, too. I just “grey rock” around her. I give binary answers, I don’t ask reciprocal questions and I cut the conversation off if I feel like she’s trying to get a rise out of me. It is so much better than the way we used to spend holidays with her. She would create these chaotic, dramatic scenes before dinner and storm out, ruining everyone’s holiday. It’s still exhausting to be around her, because my guard is always up, but much preferable to her dramatic nonsense. I’ve booked a hotel for my son and me, so we’ll have our own physical and mental space.

But I can start a thread to discuss abusive mothers, if you wish. 🙂

So, last night, I got an email from an unknown person and it was my ex saying he missed me and was hoping we could continue our relationship. He also said he still wanted to go to Disney World with my son and me in February. I didn’t respond and I blocked that email account, too. He is blocked everywhere.

I honestly don’t think he understands what having a baby means. I think he was flattered. But he sleeps until 10-11AM and is one of the laziest people I’ve ever known. I think a baby is going to be a shock to his system. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

This is just me, but if I wanted someone’s sperm, I’d be looking for a young, fit man, not a 50 year old dude who lives on gouda sandwiches and stroopwaffels. Sperm from a 50 y o man has a higher number of DNA errors in it. I wouldn’t want to take that gamble, but it’s not my problem. I did tell him he was probably the absolute, dead last person in her list of potential donors. 😛

I am regretting not getting out sooner. But this relationship did make me see I need to shore up my boundaries. I let him stomp all over mine over a 6 year period. Now look where I am, cast out in the cold without any warning.

I don’t know why, but the way he phrased it when he told me struck me as strange. He said, “I don’t need a kid in my life right now, but if some friend 500 miles away wants a kid, better mine than a stranger’s.” You don’t need a kid, but you’ll have one anyway, OK, then.

And I took my rose colored glasses off and for every “good period” in this relationship, there was a longer period of his “nonsense.” He would create discord where there was none. Ignore me for no reason at all! He would belittle me and when I told him he hurt me, he would tell me it “was just a joke.” He was not the person he was when we met. He was my first “serious” relationship since my husband passed and I felt like he really got me. I spent the entirety of the past six years trying to get back to that place. But that’s not who he is, he was wearing a mask.

My mother was like this. She would stop talking to me as a child and I would follow her around the house crying and begging her to talk to me. I never knew what mood she was going to be in that day, so I spent my childhood walking on eggshells and trying to be invisible to avoid being a target for her wrath that day. But sometimes, she would be so loving towards me and I would feel so relieved and happy. In this relationship with this man, that is what I had been doing. Making sure how I spoke to him didn’t set him off into some silent treatment/sulk for days on end.  I changed my behaviors to avoid making him angry. I felt like I was living in an iron maiden. But I was living for the good times, and I was so desperate to get to that place we started from.

I finally told my son we weren’t going to see him anymore and I told him why. He said, “I don’t think you should go back again.”

So, yes. I’m still carrying baggage around from my childhood many years later.