I'm going to be single until I die

Online dating is a shit show, especially as a single mom.  That's why I prefer to meet men in real life.  And the other day I thought I met one, only to have things fall apart quickly and I'm pretty upset about it.

All of my major relationships have come together because I met someone in person during a time with multiple coincidental circumstances coming together to put us in the right place.  In retrospect I always saw the magic.  How if one thing hadn't happened at a certain time, the rest of it wouldn't have come together at all.  And while those relationships all fell apart spectacularly, they were learning experiences, or involved huge adventures, or in the case of my ex-husband I got an amazing kid out of it.

So that brings me to my most recent frustration.  I'm not a woman who connects romantically with men very easily.  I'm extremely picky (see above: relationships blowing up spectacularly), so I don't date much.  But I thought, finally, that I'd recently met a guy and he showed a lot of promise.

The guy I met is a friend of friends I see often, he's in the military (which is not uncommon for where I live) and is retiring in the next couple of years and in the process of starting to look for a house where I live.  Plus, he's an engineer and went to a great college.  Ticking so many boxes for me.  We met, coincidentally, on my daughter's birthday in the middle of a hurricane that turned out to be a wet tropical storm with very little wind, and we seemed to hit it off immediately.  Our mutual friends are a married couple who live across the street from my local "auntie" and the wife in that couple had been joking with me for at least a year that I need to meet their friend, this guy.  I had mentioned something to her maybe that day or the day before, as a joke, about how I needed to meet that guy still, and BAM, suddenly he appeared just as we were all getting back from going to an arcade to celebrate my daughter's birthday.  We stood around in our friends' kitchen for hours, did a big group birthday sing and cake for my kid, and watched the kids run around the house for a while, during which time the rest of us grownups all stood around talking and laughing.  He and I seemed to have a lot in common and we seemed to hit it off in a big way.  He asked for my number, I gave it to him, he texted me the next morning and called me in the evening.  He asked me out for one night in the upcoming week and suggested I join him, and our mutual friends, for trivia on another night.  I accepted.

Trivia night was first, but it also happened to be on the first night of school and soccer practice for my daughter (I'm the coach).  I warned him I might be a little late and in soccer clothes.  He said no big deal.  I got to trivia and...there were our friends, and a coworker who worked with the guys, and another woman who had come along with my "date."  WT actual F.

My "date" made sure to invite me to get a drink at the bar with him, and he quickly explained that the young lady along with him was new to town and had been feeling down because she'd just moved here on her current orders and didn't know anyone.  So since we were all just going out in a friend group, he invited her along.  Ok, fine.  No biggie.  Nevermind that she was seated next to him and I was seated across the table.

The night went on, we kept on joking with each other and everyone at the table, he caught my eyes a couple of times, we made a couple more trips to the bar together, there was laughing, joking, touching, but I was getting a little loopy because I was exhausted and starving.  I mentioned this to him and he said he was thinking of getting food when the whole thing was done.  Thing is...our friends and I had both left our kids with my auntie.  It was a school night.  We couldn't stay out late.  Apparently this did not click with him.  Fair enough.  He is a little younger than I am and never had kids.

We got to a trivia round finally where I looked at him, and everyone around the table and asked if anyone wanted food, because I was going to go get some and given that the topic was the NBA and I know nothing about basketball, I was dashing down the street for sustenance.  I asked my "date" directly and he said sure, we could split some chicken pad thai from the place I'd said I was going to down the street.  Fine.  Done.  We'd been splitting everything all night.  I took off because...STARVING.

I got back, had to use the restroom, plopped a bag of food with 2 bowls in front of him and casually went, "Hey divvy this up would you?  I'll be right back.  Have to use the restroom."  I got back from the restroom, and it was still just sitting in front of him.  Small thing.  I was so hungry I was ready to eat his arm in addition to the pad thai.  But now, these little things were starting to add up.  I bought our second round of drinks, we were splitting everything (but also, portions were big, so it was kinda cute?) and then I'd said how hungry I was and ended up just taking care of my own needs.

At the end of trivia (which we lost...wha wha...), our friends and I all made it known we had to go get our kids, and my "date" just kissed me on the cheek while we were all hugging each other goodbye.  No offering to walk me to my car...no follow-up plans.  Nothing.

Today, no text.  I sent him a message around mid-day just saying, "Busy day?" and never heard back.

So here's why I'm annoyed, in addition to him bringing along another woman, not apparently taking me seriously when I said I was hungry, and not taking care of the drinks for us (yes I offered, but that's not the point)...and then feeling like I got ghosted.  This sucks.  This is why so many women think men suck.

Men are hard-wired differently than women.  It's a fact.  On first "dates" or whatever that was supposed to be last night, men need to pay for things.  Why?  Because they are hard-wired (for the most part) to be providers.  Or at least, the men I'm looking to attract are providers and also know how to be partners because I'm clearly a provider, too.  But again, in the beginning, the kind of man I'm interested in needs to pay in order to show that he's interested.

As a single mom, I'm also used to taking care of ev-e-ry-thing.  EVERYTHING.  I'm not resentful because I love the shit that comes out of my kid and even when I'm being interrupted and asked for snacks every 15 minutes when she's home, I'll help her out and love spending time with her.  But, I get tired.  And there is no one in my everyday life who is there to take care of me.  I choked once while I was alone when my kid was visiting her dad, on crumbs from a parmesan crisp while eating my dinner, and while I coughed it out and everything was fine I couldn't help but panic for a second thinking, "This is how I die.  Alone, single, choking on food."

So when I meet a man who might be romantically interested in me, who knows I have a kid, I set the internal expectation that at the very least 1) he won't be showing up places with other women I don't know in tow (I mean come the fuck on...that's a low fucking bar and should be common sense), 2) that he'll take care of things when we're out.  The drinks, getting me food when I say I'm starving, walking me to my car...  And now that I'm writing this all out, this stuff should be common sense for most guys, and according to my male friends it is common sense, and now I'm realizing how disrespected I was.

As a single mom in my 40s, I've been single now about 3-ish years and completely divorced for almost 2 years.  I haven't stayed single this long because I think it's a good use of my precious personal time to spend time with men who want me to take care of them.  I'm to the point where I'll put in as much effort as I'm getting from someone else.  And this latest possibility reminded me of that bar that I've set thanks to lots of divorce trauma and PTSD from abuse, and a ton of therapy to heal from both.  I have better things to do with my time.

But the quasi-rejection still hurts.  Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Funny how old ghosts pop up when we aren't expecting them to

 I was watching an episode of "Severance" tonight and I started crying because it featured a Billy Holiday recording of "I'll  Be Seeing You." 

I sang that song at my senior recital in 1999 at Trinity United Methodist Church in Modesto, CA, and a few weeks ago I had the absolute privilege to travel back in time with several people I sang in choir with in high school, and I sang at that church again.  We had a choir reunion, and a bunch of us who had sung under the same choir director had a reunion in our choir director's honor, and under her direction.

Afterwards, though, I ended up having my first panic attack in about 7 year because my dad, who had been my ride to the reunion event that brought me back to Trinity Church, had left my mom and me there (with notice to my mom) because he wanted to run the 20 minutes back to the house to let the gardener in for an appointment he thought he had.  My dad had this bad habit while I was growing up, of waking up on the wrong side of the bed, and having snits that turned emotionally, and sometimes physically, abusive.  He used to get in a snit and take off in the car to go for a drive.  But after about 20-30 minutes of driving, he'd come back to the house to yell at us some more.  He'd do this 2-3 times, until he got tired.  Then he'd come home and lie down.  Once, though, he did it while we were on vacation in Oregon.  He left us for about 45 minutes.  He just got mad, screamed obscenities at us, and left with the car.  We were about 600 miles from home, and my  mom was just...scrambling for what to do if he didn't come back.  She was trying to stay calm, but she was, as she usually did, and as she did on the day of my return to Trinity Church, behaving as if nothing was wrong.

When I first sang "I'll be Seeing You" at that church, I had no idea what the future held.  I had accepted a space at UC San Diego for college, and all I knew was that I was headed down for school and to study music.  It felt...so, so strange.

And I'm sitting here tonight, in my house in San Diego, which I rent, with my 5 year old talking to her Roblox character on my phone while I watch "Severace" on Apple TV. My, my how times have changed.

When I was back at Trinity a few weeks ago, I ended up having a panic attack as soon as I got back to my parents' house, in my childhood bedroom, because my dad left me, once again, in a bad position.  Even though he had give my mom notice and information about what he was doing and when he'd be back, his leaving in the first place and my waving so many high school classmates on as they left, and my teacher left, with my mom standing uselessly, and awkwardly, at the curb holding her stupid purse, waiting for my dad to return (as planned), brought back so many bad high school memories of my dad having a snit and leaving us to fend for ourselves.  It was embarassing.  And when I tried to address it with my dad after he came back, I was told to get over it.  It was nothing.  My feelings were, as they had always been, and as my husband had done, ignored, and belittled.  And as soon as I was able to get back into my room, that's why I ended up gasping for air, screaming, and crying, on the floor of my childhood bedroom.  I finally realized, for the first time, that all of the men who I had let be closest to me in my life, never kept me safe.  I was abused.  They abused me.  And...they weren't really sorry.

I was also brought back to my first Christmas as a married woman, married to an extremely horrible and abusive man, who left me at my parents' house, 400 miles from where we lived, because he had a bad reaction to a (horrible) meal my dad had cooked, and I refused to cut the trip short because I wanted to see the friends I hadn't seen in months because we'd been traveling to see my then-husband's friends instead.  So my then-husband had left me with my parents, and driven the 400 miles home by himself.  After I flew home, on my parents' dime, and I had asked him for a ride home from the airport, he told me to "go fuck [myself]."  So...it's no wonder I had a panic attack when my dad had abandoned my mom and me at a high school reunion event because he found it necessary to run home to let the gardener in the back yard, even though he didn't have a hard appointment.

When I got to sing at that church, surrounded by people I had known pre-husband, pre-college, pre-all of those experiences, it was magical.  It was a portal back to my innocence.  After a significant amount of trauma had set in, but before worse trauma had set in.   I remember singing my solo, with my choir director, who only held slight disdain for me, playing my accompaniment, there at the piano.  I didn't know what the years held before me.

Now I look back, and my college experience was nothing less of awesomely transformative.  I was on my own near the ocean for the first time in my life (and I have always been drawn to the ocean as if it is something magical and powerful).  I studied music in a form that I didn't know was possible.  I joined the pep band, which was an amazing experience in leadership and camaraderie.  I went to two foreign countries -- one for love, and one to study.  I later worked in the arts, to find that it's full of well-meaning wonderful people, and equally full of well-meaning incompetents.  I got married.  I raised stepkids for a decade and got the chance to be a mom, with all of the homework checks, fieldtrip rides, parent-teacher conferences, board memberships, play dates, birthday parties, and team mom experiences that came along with it.  I had my own kid.  I got divorced, thank fucking God.  I survived abuse.  And...I'm still standing (and these days, "I'm Still Standing" by Elton John is one of my 5-almost-6-year-old's favorite songs).

It's been a mind-blowing ride since I first stood in Trinity United Methodist Church and sang my senior solo, thinking about how much I'd miss my friends, and how much I loved my still-living grandparents.  And now I'm typing this on a Sunday night, in my San Diego home, which I used to share with my now-ex husband and my stepkids, as well as my own daughter, who will be 6 in a month and is currently making up her own narrative as she talks to a kids' game she's playing on my phone.

What a very wonderful, frustrating, painful, trip it has been.  I'm angry at my abusers.  Thankful for my friends.  And even more thankful that some of those people, who I was looking at and thinking of when I first sang "I'll be seeing you" the first time at Trinity Church, were there when I got to sing there again, with them, just a few weeks ago.

He called me crazy so that he could justify his behavior

When my ex used to tell me stories about how "crazy" his first wife was, she definitely sounded nuts.  Over time, I came to find out that that impression wasn't wrong, but I had a revelation today -- he's told everyone the same thing about me.

In the beginning stages of our relationship, my ex used to call me and complain about his ex.  They had been divorced for a year, but they were still fighting constantly about the custody schedule.  His first wife was blocking visitation and phone time, and kept changing the visitation schedule, and all of that drama gave us something to bond over.  I call that our "trauma bond" because we were bonding over his trauma and drama.  Her crazy actions gave us something to bond over.

When we started into our separation, I found out later that he already had a girlfriend and he'd been reconnecting with his high school sweetheart.  Now, yes, we were clearly breaking up.  But we were still living in the same house and no papers had been filed.  While I have no actual evidence that my ex and his now-girlfriend/ex-fiancee (romantically engaged at 18 and alas, it didn't work out and they went on to marry other people) were talking during that time, his behavior indicated that he definitely had someone new.  For example, when a narcissist starts accusing you of cheating when there is no way you could have been either because of your character or because of plain logistics, that's when you know they're cheating.  When a narcissist truly starts to be cruel and stops even trying to breadcrumb you into staying by offering half-hearted apologies, you know they have someone else lined up and they're trying to get you to initiate the breakup because they don't want to be the one to close that door.  Because...if a narcissist doesn't close a door, that means it's still open, even if someone very clearly closed it for them.

I was so hurt by how he just slid the new woman into my space.  Like, literally just slotted her into his life, and the lives of my stepkids, where I had been.  Outings for birthdays or celebrations, she was in the spot I used to occupy.  Attendance at kid sports events, she was there where I used to be.  And I was absolutely banned from those things.  It still hurts.  Incredibly.  I can't stand his girlfriend because she's clearly co-dependent (and um, she's still married to her husband, but they're clearly estranged), and how could she get together with my husband while we were still in the same house?

Well, I was listening to a YouTube video today from Ben Taylor (he's a self-aware narcissist who has a channel all about how to heal from narcissistic abuse and how narcissists actually think), and he was presenting a "narcissist's breakup checklist" from a book called "Psychopath Free" and one of the things on the checklist noted that a narcissist will push your buttons until you react, and then they'll use your reactions to show other people how "crazy" you are.  That enables the narcissist to ensnare the new supply, and the new supply therefore has no problem getting into the relationship because the ex was deemed "crazy" and the new supply takes on a support role for the narcissist.  It's that desire to help the narcissist heal and to save them that allows the new supply to justify the new relationship, even if any of the parties are currently married or in a long-term committed relationship.

Mind. Blown.

THAT is how I got hooked.  That is how my ex's girlfriend got hooked.

During the divorce process, I did my utmost not to create unnecessary drama.  I didn't want to give my ex and his girlfriend more to bond over.  I did, though, end up giving my ex and his first wife reason to align themselves again.  I watched them fight for over 10 years, and I had no part in it.  I just supported my then-partner.  Yet now, they blame me for their fighting.  Because, that makes sense to them and it's easier to scapegoat me than to take responsibility for the vitriol (which mostly came from the first wife) they slung at each other.

My ex's first wife really did end up doing some crazy things.  CPS was involved, she introduced my stepkids to a new boyfriend every year who was "the love of her life" for a few years.  There were police reports for domestic violence...she didn't go to counseling...the kids reported that their mom got trashed a few times when they were young and she had a female friend over, and then their mom ended up passing out on the floor overnight...  She was crazy.  She did that herself.  I saw it.  I heard about it.  That's why I know that it's true.

In my case, I hate the drama.  I've never had an abusive partner before my ex.  I like rules and I like sticking to them, and I pride myself on being a logical person.  But because my ex moved states, and because we have very few close mutual friends, he's been able to control his side of the narrative.  Telling everyone I was crazy and controlling and that I jerked him around and was lying about him, even though all of those accusations are projections.  But at least now, learning about how narcissists work, I'm able to understand how people can still defend him.  I understand that his girlfriend believes in a lie.  And it's sad.  But there's nothing I can do about it, other than come here, and put my truth out in the world in the only logical way I can think of.

The gaslighting is strong with this one, and lasted a long time

My ex tells this story that he was a straight-A student in high school (potentially, because he does pick up on things quickly) who got kicked out for having too many tardies, which is why he hated this one teacher (the one who gave him the tardies) and wasn't allowed to graduate and had to go get his GED.

He also throws in this crazy story about how he did commit assault one time in high school because some kid was rumored to have raped a female friend of my ex's, and my ex let the kid know that he was going to beat him to a pulp for the thing he supposedly did.  The kid, in retaliation and in an effort to protect himself, was rumored to have brought a gun to school the next day.  I never got a straight answer about whether or not the kid actually did bring a gun to school (and this was in the mid-90s).  As a pre-emptive measure for the kid potentially having brought the kid to school, my ex said he did beat the kid to a bloody pulp, fractured his jaw, and sent him to the ER and later ICU, for a bit.  My ex's dad apparently had to settle a lawsuit with the kid's parents for my ex having committed egregious assault, and paid the school district a settlement, too.  Oh...and my ex also tossed in a detail here or there about having done some time in juvie.  But he didn't talk about that except maybe once or twice in our 12 year relationship.  After all, there was no public paper trail because he was a minor at the time and those records were sealed.

When I first heard these bits of these stories, I thought, "HOLY SHIT!  HE'S GOT SOME ANGER ISSUES! And...aw...he was protecting and vindicating his female friend...that's so heroic...he was young.  He had a tough life when his parents got divorced when he was 12 and his mom fled to the east coast with his brother and he chose to live with his dad and then his dad ignored him and had a parade of girlfriends through the house so he went to live with his mom on the east coast for 2 years and then decided he wanted to move back in with his dad, who was living with a woman by that point who used to bowl with his mom and dad and who his dad probably cheated on his mom with...that had to be hard..."

Drama, drama, drama, and excuses I lapped up for breakfast.

Of course I believed that he happened to commit assault "for a good reason," and then was allowed back at school, and that he got kicked out of high school for tardies.

It took me years to take those rose-colored glasses off and go, "DUH. HE WAS EXPELLED FOR ASSAULT.  And was probably looking at not being allowed to graduate because of tardies anyway."  I mean, when has anyone ever heard of a public high school kicking someone out of school for absences and/or tardies?  Yeah...they usually keep you IN.  Otherwise, the school isn't getting paid by the government.  But for years, I didn't see that.

There were other stories I just shook off over the years, like the one about my ex kidnapping a guy and throwing him in the trunk of his own car and driving out to a spot in the desert where they threatened the guy with a gun because the guy had supposedly robbed my ex's house (when they were in their late teens now, maybe early 20s) because the guy had also ratted my ex and some friends out to the division of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms because the guy was a middleman in a massive pot operation my ex was involved with and my ex and his associates tried to cut out this middleman.  Still a bunch of holes in that story, but the big details are nuts.  Then there was another one about my ex and one of his best friends, also during their drug-dealing days, getting kidnapped, or something, and getting pistol-whipped themselves for not delivering something to some powerful, dangerous people.  Straight out of a movie plot.  And my ex was a meth-head for several years in his late teens/early 20s.  Which is actually common knowledge for anyone who knows my ex.  Because most of his friends are the same people he's hung out with since elementary school, except for those 2 years or so of going to school on the East Coast, and they used to use with him or were very aware that he did.

There was BAD SHIT, but I was so blinded, and convinced by his "reformed bad boy" persona that I just shrugged my goody-two-shoes shoulders and said, "Aw, look at him now!  I'm so lucky." What the fuck was I thinking.  Sure, he wasn't using or selling drugs by the time I met him, nor did he sell during our relationship to my knowledge.  And sure, he didn't seem to get in fist fights as often, but I did witness him getting into drunken fights with his siblings, and he tried to punch his 4'11" sister when she ran her mouth one night, and he did the same to his brother, twice, during our relationship.  Then when our marriage was falling apart, he got himself into two bar fights, and proudly texted me about them, then tried to play off later like they'd never happened.  But because the baseline had been set for me -- guy who once beat up a classmate at age 17 and used to use bad drugs -- his behavior at the time we got together seemed mild in comparison to what he used to do, and I was enamored by that.  I wanted to help him continue to be better.  I wanted to continue to love him into being a good person.  I had never gotten in trouble.  I was an honors kid through high school who loves band and was on the swim team.  I have an advanced degree from one of the best business schools in the country.  But emotionally, I was so dumb, until I filed for divorce.

There were also stories about an old girlfriend stabbing him in the chest with a fork and biting him in the bicep "because she was mad and a crazy bitch."  I mean...sounded plausible?  He had the scars.  But they didn't break up for a long time after that.  He also had a crazy girlfriend (who he later married -- first wife -- because he got her pregnant for the second time and her dad sat him down and told him when the wedding was), who, apparently staged a display for the cops one night.  This wasn't the last time she did this, apparently.  They'd had a fight.  I know her to be unstable anyway given my dealings with her.  They were living together in a second story apartment pre-kids and marriage that had a drainage pipe running next to their balcony.  She called the cops reporting him for assault (my guess is that he'd pushed her and threatened her, because that's what he used to do to me), and apparently when the cops pulled into the complex, she flung herself off of the balcony, onto the drainage pipe and climbed down to the first floor, screaming that her boyfriend was trying to kill her.  Meanwhile, my ex had apparently been using a butter knife to make a sandwich during this fight, and when his then-girlfriend went wailing down the alleyway toward the ongoing police (who she had called), he went out onto the balcony holding the butter knife, looking very confused, and the cops at first started yelling at him to put his weapon down.

I mean...there were GIANT, WAVING, GLOWING red flags here.  There are more stories.  Time he spent as an adult in jail wearing pink boxers and pink flip-flops.  Things I should have taken as signs and run from, post-haste.  But, I wanted to help him.  I was his savior, and he told me how happy he was to have met me and how lucky he was -- when he was in the hovering/love-bombing phases in between periods when he'd be debasing me and calling me horrible names while also accusing me of being entitled, lazy, and controlling.  I came from a crazy family myself, but not like his.  My parents never got divorced, I was never abused like he was, I got a great education, and I had resources and support.  He didn't.

For a long time, I didn't understand the toxic relationship patterns we were in were toxic.  I didn't put the pieces of his stories together to realize all of the horrible things he'd actually done, nor did I pay attention to the fact that he truly was only sorry he got caught.  Truly.  To this day.

The gaslighting was so strong.  I permitted it.  I went along with it.  Until one day, I wised up and started asking questions.  Until I started putting my foot down about all of the abusive name calling and the pushing and the grabbing, and everything else.  That's when he started to view me as the problem.  Eventually, I was done.  But it took a long time to get there.  A very long time.  I'm glad I'm out.  And I hope for the other people who are sticking around, despite knowing that something is wrong, that they'll wake up some day soon, too.

My ex thinks I shouldn't be calling myself a single mother

It was always a trigger for me, after I got immersed in the world of blended families and how divorces with kids work, to hear people calling themselves "single parents" when they're regularly receiving parenting help from their former partners, and regularly receiving financial support in many cases.  To me, those parents aren't "single."  Their relationship status might be "single" but their parenting status is "divorced, with shared custody."  Let's not attach labels that mean something else.

There's a certain martyrdom that comes from being considered a "single parent."  Society either pities them, judges them, and/or honors them.  I've seen people (often women), flaunt their single parent status in order to garner sympathy, even when they have plenty of help both physically and financially.  It really chaps my hide.

Then I have the friends, like myself, who really are single parents.  We have to fight with our kids' dads (or moms, but in a majority of the cases, dads) to get them to pay support or pay more than what they think is "fair" and pay it on time.  The other parent in our situation might have limited parenting time by choice, and might not even exercise all of it.  We might not have a lot of family in the areas where we live, but we figure out where our support systems are and we learn to use those networks because there's no other adult to step in.  We do every school dropoff, and pickup, and bedtime, and bathtime, and parent-teacher conference, and get every.constant.snack, and do all of the homework.  Meanwhile, we also maintain our households without much help.  We do all of the cleaning, the laundry, the grocery shopping, the trash runs, the Goodwill runs, the fixing of things or arranging with our landlords or repair people to get the things fixed, we maintain our own cars, and we deal with all of our own bills.  Without help.  Because there's no one to help.  Even when there are people to help, they're often not the other parents.  They're the single parents' parents, or siblings, or cousins.  And even their availability is limited.  We're the ones who chose to have the kids, after all, and they're our responsibility first.

One of my girlfriends, sweet person that she is, unfortunately made a series of bad relationship choices, was a lot more fertile than she expected, and ended up a single mom with four kids from four different dads (and for demographical statistical reference -- she's not in an ethnic minority group.  Don't be judgy.).  Her own mom isn't in the picture and wasn't a reliable figure growing up, and her dad wasn't around at all.  She relies on a difficult aunt, a flaky cousin, and a whole lot of prayer and assistance from her community, to raise her kids, meanwhile juggling different, infrequent, custody schedules.  I don't know how she does it, but she does it.  And she's an amazing single mom who always puts her kids first and doesn't martyr herself.

I only have the one small child of my own to worry about.  I know I got lucky.  My kid is happy, well-adjusted, kind, and we're buddies (I'm very much in charge, and she knows that, but we're buddies).  I'm lucky that I formed some community connections that are so close, it's become like I have family in the area, so I have support, my kid has a sense of "framily" and consistency, and we're both able to get what we need.

So, getting to the trigger for this post, my ex decided to lambaste me the other day for possibly referring to myself as a "single mother."  He stated that he's a great dad, and I have no right to be using that term for myself.  Except...he's undercutting his child support and I'm the process of preparing to take him back to court for that.  He also lives 350 miles away and moved there by choice after I filed for divorce (I mean hey, his girlfriend lived there as it was, and he hasn't made any new friends since high school -- not kidding -- and they all live there).  He has 15% parenting time.  He isn't involved with our daughter's school because he chooses not to be.  He actively tries to block me from getting the daycare I need (because he thinks I should be using something cheaper), and block me from getting our daughter the preventative medical care she needs, like vaccines, flu shots, and even sealants for her teeth (because he doesn't think she needs them, even though the dentist was pretty clear why they're needed, I got them for my stepkids, my ex also got some of his own a few years ago, and I've had them.  Mostly, he didn't want to pay for them.).  We have joint legal decision-making, and it's a real pain in the ass.  But luckily, since he's so far away and can't help with anything, I inform him about what I'm going to do for our kid before I do it.  He has the chance to respond.  If we disagree I tell him that, and then I tell him I'm going to do what I need to do.  That's what we used to do with his first wife.  It works.

Am I a single mother?  Absolutely.  Is my ex a single father?  Well...technically no.  He's a dad, sure.  But he's not involved in any sort of day-to-day parenting.  He's a divorced dad with visitation.  Were I to re-partner would I still be a single mother?  To my daughter, yes.  A single mom with a partner (who might not want to be super involved with my kid's needs, and that would be his right as a stepparent, but at least I might have some extra help with the household).

Granted, whatever you want to call yourself, do that.  But be truthful.  Don't be looking for sympathy or unnecessary accommodation or praise or pity because of your single parent status.  Don't try to make it out for more than it really is.  I only bring up my being a single mom when I have to talk to an employer about availability for meetings.  I recently got a new boss, I work remotely, and I had to tell him that there are times blocked out on my calendar that I can't budge because those are school pickup and dropoff times and there's no one else to do them.  He, thankfully, told me "family first, you do what you need to do."  Not everyone has a supervisor who's so understanding of those demands.

Being a divorced parent, with any level of help or without it, is hard.  I see you.  I get it.  Just remember that your duty is to your kids, not to your image.  Be truthful.  Be grateful for the support you get if you get it.  Because it really, really does take a village to raise a child, whether that village is supporting you or supporting your kid.

I hate watching my ex move on

I shouldn't still look at my ex's social media, but I do. Mostly, I'm keeping an eye on him because I'm looking to see if he's been partying and drinking too much, which could put our daughter at risk.  Usually, he doesn't post anything interesting.  But today, he changed his photos to include his stupid girlfriend, and it hit me right in the gut.

In the photos, he slotted her right in where I used to be.  Literally.  He posted a picture with all of his kids (my stepkids...who are completely alienated and won't talk to me, and the daughter we share who lives with me full time), and the girlfriend and him.  A picture of a big, happy family.  Like we used to appear to be.

But that's also the thing -- it is all appearances.

I've done a lot of research and learning and reading about narcissistic abuse in the past few years, and it's helped me to heal from my abusive marriage and understand what I see my ex doing.  I know that he can't be alone.  I know that he jumps from relationship to relationship because he needs the opinion and affection of a partner in order to feel like he matters and like he's a good person (even though he's not).  I know he picks partners he thinks he can control, who possess something he feels like he's lacking.  With his first wife, she was pretty and spontaneous and had a lot of energy, because she has borderline personality disorder.  In her, he got a load of admiration thrown his way, but also a load of chaos.  They negatively fed off of each other, until she wasn't getting enough attention so she cheated, and then when he reacted abusively, she filed for divorce.  With me, I'm calmer, responsible, have a great education, and I was a steady influence for his kids, especially after they were removed from their mother's care and were sent to live with us full-time.  I did all of the household and family work so he felt entitled not to have to.  Then when I started putting my foot down and demanding that he help me after spending years asking, I got told, "You're not going to domesticate me.  This is who I am.  I'm not going to change."  And that was the beginning of the end, until I couldn't take the abuse he was heaping at me anymore either and also filed for divorce.

But before I even filed for divorce, he took up with this girlfriend now.  She was his high school sweetheart.  They broke up after my ex got kicked out of high school for assaulting a kid and putting him in the hospital (my ex thought he was defending the honor of a female friend, based on a rumor).  My ex fled to his mom's on the East Coast and got his GED, and the girlfriend decided not to follow, which my ex said broke his heart.  By the time my ex moved back a couple of years later, she'd hooked up and gotten engaged to another guy.  She spent 20 years married to that guy, tried to divorce him twice, never quite passed the finish line (the case is public record, damn straight I looked her up because she's around my kid, and it appears she's still married), and she called my ex, in the beginning of our relationship over a decade ago, when she found out that her husband had been cheating on her with a 19 year old in Las Vegas.  They trauma bonded.  I don't know if they ever really stopped talking.  But hey, when it looked like my marriage was about done a few years ago, it's clear that they started their "romance" up again.

I have no real evidence to prove my ex cheated as he let our marriage die a horrible death.  But the timing matches up.  And given what I know about narcissists now, I understand that when they have a new source of "supply" they complete abuse the old source and withdraw.  I know the time period when that happened to me.  I saw the social media posts about this time last year when they went off on a "romantic weekend" together.  It was clearly an anniversary.  Which means by now, they'll have been together for 2 years.  When he moved out of my house and I filed for divorce less than 2 years ago.

This woman is not everything I'm not.  Honestly, she can't hold a candle to me.  She's thinner, owns a house because she inherited it outright, and she has my ex's attention, and that's about it.  I know I'm a solid person with a lot to offer, and I've made my peace about being abused by the man that new woman now thinks is so great.  What I really miss is having access to my stepkids.  I miss being their mom.  I miss being allowed to celebrate their accomplishments with them, and help and support them when they need it.  I miss sharing their lives with them.  Those are things I'm not allowed to do anymore because my ex, and the kids, won't let me.  It breaks my heart every day.

That's why I hate my ex's new girlfriend. It hurts to see him move on, and to see other people who used to celebrate our relationship, celebrate his new one.  But mostly, she has access to my other kids and I don't.  She has displayed weak morals and co-dependent tendencies that show she's a weak person for not being able to stand on her own two feet at 45 years old.  I don't want that kind of influence in my own daughter's life.  But...it's there.  At least for now.  And she's nice to my kid, so I don't have to go all "mama bear" and into protect mode.  But seeing my stepkids cast me off as well, and open up to this woman and her extended family and her 3 kids, rubs salt in that wound.

So I have to sit with that.  I have to compartmentalize and rise above and remind myself that their relationship won't last -- because with a narcissist it's always only a matter of time.  And I have to pray that the next tramp person he gets together with isn't horrible.

It would also be easier if I'd moved on already, too.  But I haven't.  I learned to be alone.  I have decided to be reasonably picky.  I'm a single mom trying to date.  It's hard.  At the least, I don't have to be in a loveless, abusive marriage any more.  I keep repeating to myself that my house smells better (because it does), and I go through paper products at a glacial pace now whereas before it felt like my ex was eating all of the toilet paper and paper towels because they were disappearing so fast.  I have more money now, because I'm not having to pay for too much and get too little in reimbursements.  I have my friends back.  Before, it was hard to have a social life because my ex though he was better than all of my people, except for a few, because our politics differ.

Life for me is better now.  I'm not under constant stress.  I'm not constantly feeling unsupported.  I'm not fighting with anyone on a regular basis, and other than my daughter at home, I don't have anyone else around making messes, not contributing, and then blaming me when things look sloppy.

Divorce saved me.  But seeing a woman in the place I used to be, and seeing my ex display what he thinks love and happiness look like, and looking down his nose at me while he does it because I'm still single, is really stinging right now.  And that sucks.

It's easier to be mad than sad

My post the other day got me looking back at some of my past entries, and I know that I've been a little inconsistent with calling my ex "Guy" or just my ex, and his first wife "Stella" or just...my stepkids' biomom, etc. So moving forward...still expect to see both used interchangeably. And new terms: Elsa will be my daughter (she's currently 5, and quite precocious), and Jolene will be my ex's mistress/current source of narcissistic supply. So that said...

I got my daughter back from my ex/Guy yesterday because it was the end of his parenting time with her for winter break. The exchange went fine, except he often brings Johnny with him, who is now 16 years old, 5'11", and 235lbs (or so he's posted on his Twitter), and avoids looking at me at all costs. The kid absolutely buries his face in his phone and does.not.look.up. starting as soon as Elsa gets out of the car. He's done this for over a year. It breaks my heart a little more each time, and most of the time I think that's why Guy brings him to the exchanges.  To hurt me and rub it in. That, and the exchanges usually require two and a half hours of driving, minimum (depending on where we meet), each way.  My ex can seriously go to hell for moving back to the state I thought he wanted to escape from and for forcing me to keep up the commute we hated and did together for over a decade for parenting time exchanges for Johnny and Marsha with their crazy mother.

Johnny won't look at me.  Won't acknowledge me.  Won't answer my texts on the rare occasion I send him small notes just to say hi and tell him I love him.  Guy insists that it's Johnny's wishes that we not talk because the kid is 16 and "old enough to make up his own mind."  To an extent, I get that, but the kid and I used to be close and even teenagers need to be corrected and forced to do things they don't want to do, including talking to "relatives" they might not want to talk to regularly.  Except...there's no way in hell an alienating parent, like Guy, would ever force the kid he worked so hard to brainwash to change course and be respectful toward me once again.

Thing is, I've also had this thought on the precipice of my thinking for a while and I finally put it into words -- it's easier for the kid to be mad at me for perceived wrongs, than it would be for him to admit he's sad (if he's sad, but I think he is) every time he sees me or hears from me.

Kids who are subjects of parental alienation are caught up in loyalty cycles to their alienating parents.  All of the studies and books I've read on the subject say that these kids deep down feel that if they don't go along with whatever their alienating parent is telling them to do, then they'll lose that parent, and their love and attention, forever.  It's a sad, well-documented phenomenon about PAS'd (Parental Alienation Syndrome-d) kids.  They violently reject a non-abusive parent suddenly, for no significant reason (and in my case, it's "she had parental controls on my phone and limited how much I could use my xBox!").  They cling to a clearly disordered parent like crazy, and tend to repeat exact phrases that the disordered parent might use when discussing the alienated parent with other people.  The alienated kids might also express knowledge about adult issues they should know nothing about, like specifics about a parent's sex life or specifics about how they choose to spend their finances, or specifics about conflicts between the parents, because their alienating parent is confiding in them -- something that makes these kids feel more "mature" and important, even though that kind of stuff really stresses kids out and causes mental health issues because of the pressure they inevitably start to feel with regard to helping their alienating parent out with dealing with the adult issues they shouldn't know the details of in the first place.

The difference between kids who are rejecting a parent because of PAS, and the kids who are rejecting a parent due to abuse or neglect, is generally fear.  Abused kids demonstrate fear, and still often try and make excuses for their abusers and might still make efforts to keep their abusers close.  PAS'd kids demonstrate contempt and hatred toward alienated parents, and again, their justifications are either exact retellings of things their alienating parent has said, issues that the kid has been told about which are out of context and adult issues as they are, or small and trivial issues that any reasonable person would not react so strongly to.

I'm left to assume, and I think (hope?) correctly, that Johnny has to act like he really does hate me out of loyalty to his dad, a fear that he might lose his dad's favor if he doesn't agree, and out of sadness about being taken from my home abruptly and denied the chance to come back.  Anger always leads to action.  It's the feeling that tells us we have to do something to change a situation, or to push forward.  Sadness is hurt.  And it's paralyzing.  It's easier to be angry.  But eventually, anger, like sadness, and fear, and the depression they lead to, has to change.  Everyone has their breaking point, and carrying negative emotions is heavy and exhausting.  I just don't know where Johnny's breaking point is going to be.  I'm hoping he finds it soon, but moreso, I hope he finds it at the right time, because when people find their breaking point, it rocks them to their core and hurts like hell.  The poor kid has been through enough.  Here's hoping there's not too much more he'll have to endure before he reaches adulthood.