Starting over

Wizzy2011

My partner and I had been together for 5 years, up until 2 months ago. We have a daughter, 2, and our relationship became stale since the birth of our daughter. We pretty much took each other for granted and let our child take over. We had decided to take a break and I moved back to my parents 2 months ago, but as soon as we started the break she hit me with the I don't love you anymore card. I was quite pushy at the start as I needed the break to get myself back in terms of self fulfilment and time with my friends etc. yet she wanted to run as far away as possible, bombarding me with insults about my character and personality that I wouldn't have seen in my worst enemy. In hindsight we both know this was irrational behaviour on her behalf. Back to what happened, last week she met another man, texted a bit and went on a date. She said tht she realised that after the awkward date, that she said all she could think about was me and that she realised that I wasn't the sole problem and wants to get back together. I am quite a strong person, I had been hurt by what she has said and I have told her about my opinion of her seeking another man as my replacement of her affection, but I can see that this was the only solution for her to realise that I'm not a bad guy and there was a problem that we are now working upon. She has now revealed that she feels that her love was never completely gone and wants to work on rejuvenating our relationship and for me we've hit rock bottom and this experience can only make our relationship stronger than it has ever been. I've told her the ball is in her court to my a proactive action to back up her words, and I will support her 100%. The only question I ask is how long should I wait until we start our date nights, meeting up, love making etc as Im willing to rekindle what we had but at the same time I don't want to make it easy by making the plans, as it was her that pulled the plug.

Thanks for any feedback or comments!

clairefontaine

This is your family. The consequences of any decisions you make are tremendous, so I think you should take full responsibility and not ask people on the internet for advice, but look to yourself and maybe a relationship counsellor.

blatantrereg

How long is piece of string?

You might want to ask yourself why you're planning a period of making her work to improve things; keeping her in the cold. Are you just trying to make the point that it's not ok for her to do what she did? Or are you angry and wanting to punish her?

You don't have to accept her back you know. It's probably better to stay separated if you resent her, or won't be able to trust her. Staying with her only out of pride, or only out of concern for your daughter might not be the best idea. You might hate her now. Are you going to be cohabiting parents who hate each other or are miserable? Perhaps it might be better to be separated parents who are involved and co-operative.

You don't mention what the criticisms she threw at you were. It sounds like she had a lot of built up resentment one way or another. If you think there are things you could work on, why dont you look at working on them? If you geneuinely think they were groundless - well that brings up a different set of questions really

Magicmatilda

You mention you needed time to get back "self fulfilment and time with friends". I would not have thought these were priorities with a 2 year old child. When you have children your life changes - it doesn't ever go back to normal, normal just becomes a different thing really. Obviousely self fulfillment is important but it can be worked on when your child is at school and more independent, not while it still drpends almost entirely on its parents for safety and survival. The birth of a child puts huge strain on a relationship and it really is important to work on that relationship to maintain it. I would second the suggestion of relationship counselling. Obviousely there were problems or it would not have ended in the first place and these need to be worked out. It is rarely the case that the relationship problems are solely the responsibility of one party so you need to accept your responsibility here also. Also some counselling can help you figure out when is good to start date nights etc. to be honest I find it odd that you are looking to strangers to figure that out and not to your partner. Have you discussed this with her?

Taltos

I'm with Magicmatilda on this OP. As hard as it is to hear I think both of you have some serious growing up to do.
With a child in play your lives really are not your own anymore, and running back to mommy and daddy or refinding yourself with another man screams of two people needing help.

In terms of all she has said to you, only you can decide if you let all of that go - and I mean this - forget about all of those words and just move on. The one thing I really believe is you both need to commit to though to some long term relationship counselling. You both need help to work through your separate issues. I mean, if you didn't need outside help would you have both acted the way you did?

Who knows though, maybe at the end of the sessions you will both either commit 100% to each other and your family or you will decide that you and your child are better off living separately. It might also be a good idea to have a chat with your GP to ensure there is nothing else going on at the same time. Just don't rush things, take is slowly and avoid making assumptions about how the relationship will go or when things will go back to normal - clearly your normal didn't work for you so don't set unrealistic targets.

Wizzy2011

Let me elaborate on the situation. Our child was unplanned at a time in life where she had just started her dream job after college and hadn't been made permanent at the time; I myself was in my last year of college. As for parenthood, I took it upon myself to take up my responsibilities as the Father of my child, sacrifices had to me made in life and I put 100% of my time and effort into raising my child. She said that she had lost her independence and was stuck in a relationship my by choice but that she was forced to stay together just for the child. It is quite immature of her for thinking this thought process but she isn't the best with expressing her emotions, hence the build up over the years. She says she will work on becoming more open with me and Ill admit that she is trying and improving with every day. I was and still am the dominant parent, I take most of the slack in terms of minding our daughter, hence the want to meet up with friends that had drifted apart in the past few years. As for normal, I hadn't any hobbies or pastimes outside this environment, so in terms of self fulfilment, I've taken up exercise again, something that had been quite a focal point in my life, that took a nose dive when we had our daughter. I'm integrating this into my schedule, even when we get back together as I lost the pride I took in my physical appearance, and I'm using this as a self motivator to boost my confidence again. I'm not going to go into details about what she has said but it was in the heat of the moment and I have forgiven her for how she has reacted to the situation as a whole. I don't resent her and I think it takes the bigger person to use this experience as a learning curve and to rekindle the relationship and make it stronger than it has ever been. The only thing is that I want her to make a conscious effort at the starting hurdle as it was her that walked away, and I'll support her 100%, from then on I will make efforts to rekindle and grow the relationship slowly but only if it is mutual, and it is early days.

ElleEm

Wizzy2011 wrote: »

Let me elaborate on the situation. Our child was unplanned at a time in life where she had just started her dream job after college and hadn't been made permanent at the time; I myself was in my last year of college. As for parenthood, I took it upon myself to take up my responsibilities as the Father of my child, sacrifices had to me made in life and I put 100% of my time and effort into raising my child. She said that she had lost her independence and was stuck in a relationship my by choice but that she was forced to stay together just for the child. It is quite immature of her for thinking this thought process but she isn't the best with expressing her emotions, hence the build up over the years. She says she will work on becoming more open with me and Ill admit that she is trying and improving with every day. I was and still am the dominant parent, I take most of the slack in terms of minding our daughter, hence the want to meet up with friends that had drifted apart in the past few years. As for normal, I hadn't any hobbies or pastimes outside this environment, so in terms of self fulfilment, I've taken up exercise again, something that had been quite a focal point in my life, that took a nose dive when we had our daughter. I'm integrating this into my schedule, even when we get back together as I lost the pride I took in my physical appearance, and I'm using this as a self motivator to boost my confidence again. I'm not going to go into details about what she has said but it was in the heat of the moment and I have forgiven her for how she has reacted to the situation as a whole. I don't resent her and I think it takes the bigger person to use this experience as a learning curve and to rekindle the relationship and make it stronger than it has ever been. The only thing is that I want her to make a conscious effort at the starting hurdle as it was her that walked away, and I'll support her 100%, from then on I will make efforts to rekindle and grow the relationship slowly but only if it is mutual, and it is early days.

If you want her to make the effort to start things off then you're taking a back seat, and don't need advice on "when" to start dates, etc.

Obviously she hurt you, and I doubt you're fully past the things she said to you due to the fact that you mentioned it in your first post. I can imagine you want to take it easy so that you're not hurt again.

I would have a lot of concern for the fact that you were five years together, with a two year old child and she developed a relationship and went on a date with a man in the two months that you've been split up. That just seems so fast.

I would really encourage you to go for couple's counselling. I know it is advised a lot on these forums, but you are obviously unsure of how to proceed, and haven't got the confidence to speak with your ex about it openly and honestly (or else you wouldn't be here). You both need to commit to this, and if you can't, well I would doubt the commitment to the relationship. You need to be able to openly talk about EVERYTHING- why your relationship went bad, and how you intend to make it better this time.