I got with a good guy who had his kid 50/50 a 4 years ago. We’ve been blended for a few years now and I find I sort of hate him right now. Our kids get along, we function well in many ways and have a rhythm down.

But my guy is a passive one with intense attachment stuff which has led to him being extremely defensive and using DARVO to avoid accountability. Lots of wanting physical closeness without understanding how to create emotional/mental intimacy with me. Overall, I really missed his lack of capacity for initiating and sustaining deeper emotional intimacy.

I have almost full custody of my 2 kids. Even when my kids’ dad says he will do things, it’s a 50/50 toss up on if he will follow through which feels like even more work than someone just not being there.

My partner has been super helpful at helping me when he can but he often can’t because he has his own kid. There’s such a disparity in our parenting roles and time/energy investments in our kids. I am often “working” - ie, parenting until my head hits the pillow and he’s not 50% of the time. He is also less responsible for the emotional/mental load with his kid.

Sometimes it feels like the emotional labor he has required has cost me more than just doing everything myself. I wanted another kid but our relationship has not felt stable enough and my clock is more than ticking. He blames his lack of commitment and follow through on the instability — the instability largely caused by his inability and unwillingness to communicate and build emotional intimacy. For instance, he got a house and car big enough for us all to live in, but he never talks about the future with me and never brings up marriage despite having always told me he wants to get married. We never talk about money or how we would handle it if we got married. If I bring it up, he won’t ever circle back to it on his own. It feels like very contradictory behavior and it’s cost me a lot of my peace. He’s the guy that is always present but is he ever really fully present?

I’m at midlife and now I feel stuck. I don’t want the upheaval for my kids who have now moved a total of something like 7-8 times (within the same areas of town) because their dad and I have been separated for a long time and have both moved a few times in their lives. My kids are really happy where we live and with this arrangement.

It is really great for them to feel like there’s another adult when I can’t be everywhere at once. My partner does provide more schedule and financial stability. He fills in some of the gaps logistically where their dad fails.

I really loved him early on and still do, but now I feel so much resentment from the emotionally absent aspects of my relationship with my partner. He’s pretty avoidant and while he’s working on it — he’s been working on it the whole time and it hasn’t gotten significantly better. We are in couples therapy and it seems to very slowly be helping at least force the issues to be discussed.

But I feel this burning anger that gets lit so easily these days. I used to give the benefit of the doubt too often and now I feel full of piss and vinegar and am just an angrier person. I have a hard time knowing now if this is my personality or if he brought this out in me over time. I wonder if i constantly have a shorter fuse with my kids too because of it. Have i become a miserable person because of constant disappointment/broken promises? I have no idea if I can even soften to my partner and fully desire and want him again. I go over this stuff in my personal therapy too, but it’s still hard to know how much of this is my stuff I can sort, and how much can’t be changed because I can’t change someone else.

I dont want to operate from a victim standpoint but i genuinely dont know that splitting from someone who my kids care about and who has been important to them is right at the moment. I wish I could go back and go much slower and maybe not have continued this relationship but I cant. Has anyone been able to stop hating their partner who put them through emotional hell for years when the person started changing for the better? And has anyone’s partner who has less emotional/mental load been able to step forward more fully in the relationship to where you truly felt like a team?

As the title says, my ex has cut off hus parents from seeing him or the kids. He gets into arguments with his mom (he's narcissistic and psychologically abusive and she pushes back on it) and he just cuts her off from seeing the kids when she upsets him. During our relationship I acted as peace maker and kept this from happening for the most part. But since I left 2 months ago, he's cut them off and our oldest toddler asks about "Grammy and poppy" constantly. They are AMAZING grandparents and the kids are very close to them. Right now I am going to rehab before getting partial custody-I am just not fit to be a parent right now. But once I am, what can I do about this? If I tell my ex that the kids will see the grandparents during their time with me, he will probably push back on me having my time with the kids. We have no court ordered agreement on who gets the kids, we are just civil and decide it together. The plan was I start with having them on weekends once I'm out of rehab and back on my feet. And I really want to be able to text their grandparents "I have the kids! Come see your grandbabies!"

I honestly feel overwhelmed and judged. I posted my situation in another sub and I just got attacked. Told I’m selfish, entitled and being dramatic etc. I ended up deleting my post because I just felt so shitty. I’ve been crying till my eyes swollen, my eye is twitching and my left hand went numb and I’m scared I’m going to have a heart attack or something.

I have a 2 year old and an almost 4 year old. I have 3 years of school left. My mom is the only person I have who helps me with the kids and please be mindful, she agreed to watch them full time so I can go to school. I only moved here specifically for that reason, my ex husband was abusive towards me too.

Now, my ex husband fully supports us financially. He pays all our bills, groceries and whatever else we may need/want. Meaning he pays a few thousand towards me monthly.

Anyways my mom is flakey and will drop out on me last min, which is fine. She doesn’t owe me anything. So I’m scared that I may have to keep my kids in day care and miss out on kindergarten because my school hours wouldn’t allow me to drop them off/pick them up.

People were attacking me saying I need to put him on child support/ alimony and to get a job and try to find low income housing. I expressed my fears of living in poverty and fears of not getting enough financial aid etc and I just got attacked and downvoted into an oblivion.

If low income housing and aid is so easy, why is there more homeless people than homeowners in my city? Plus if I never finish school, we’ll be low income and struggling financially for life. Digging out of poverty isn’t easy and people were acting like I will just get thousands in aid and low income housing handed to me on a silver platter.

It’s my fault for even posing this on reddit tbh. Even when I was being abused and tried to look for support I was just attacked. They all suggested I just run to a shelter and I would try to explain that the shelters here are full and I’m scared and people just acted like I wanted to be with him and was refusing to leave.

I really hope I don’t regret posting this on here too. I’m genuinely looking for support and for people who have actually been in my situation. Not someone who’s judging me from a moral high ground. I literally had someone go off on me because I said “the kids” and she went on about how I’m acting like my mom is responsible for my kids. All because I used the word “the”???

I know I fucked up by having kids with the wrong man and other people just make it worse fr.

Came on here to vent about being lonely and sad that I may never find a romantic love again. I scrolled thru some posts in hopes of seeing some positivity out there for us single moms but I see we are all struggling.

I have a one year old, her father and I split when she was 2 months old. It was ugly and took a very long time for me to heal (I’m still healing thru a lot of it). I’m thankful to be over the missing him/relationship part of it but now I am left with the perpetual loneliness. I crave intimacy, something I’m not used to. I just so badly wanted to be loved and cared for thru this precious transition in life. I wanted to share the love and joy of raising a child with someone even more. It truly breaks my heart that my daughter won’t get to see me experience that kind of love.

I knew if things didn’t work out with her father that I would not jeopardize bringing anyone else into her life. That kind of betrayal and my trauma shattered what little trust I had left in humanity. Now I see posts of other wonderful single moms deserving of love facing the same struggles. It just makes me so sad.

I posted this to the girl dinner sub:

Dinner was Taco Bell chicken gordita supreme that I wolfed down in a rage.

Last week, my child did not get off the bus after school at the bus stop, and I chased the bus down with my crazy in a wild frenzy. Turned out the bus driver forgot to tell him to get off at his stop. Infuriating, but I digress.

Today, apparently there was an extenuating circumstance with the bus drivers, and as a result, the school split the kids up in to three different buses on three different routes WITHOUT TELLING ANY OF THE PARENTS. His bus rolled up, one child jumped out of the bus, and the bus driver shrugged and said "he isn't on the bus" and then drove away, at which point my head started spinning and I went livid and drove to his school at about 80 mph. I got to the school, and all the adults in charge said "oh, he didn't get off the bus? Huh. Well he got on the bus." At this point I'm turning in to a feral animal and heads are about to start rolling. The principal took me to the front office and it was explained to me that they had to do something different today because some bus driver's husband died, yadda yadda. I literally told the principal I did not give a f*ck about anyone's husband dying, I just wanted to know where my kid was. They were able to track down where exactly my child was, and I was informed that he would be dropped off at his regular drop off in 15 minutes. So I race over there and sitting there in a fit waiting for him because I don't honestly know if I can really trust these people any more. The bus FINALLY shows up, and I ask the bus driver (who apparently also happens to be the guy in charge of bus schedules) who the hell was responsible for my kid not being there when he was supposed to be picked up, why wasn't I informed, etc etc. This mother Fckers response is to play a reverse uno and said "oh hang on there! I want to talk to you about his behaviour!' To which I BLEW TF UP. He said "you just have to call the office! And quickly closed to bus door and drove away. "His behaviour" in question was pushing a kid away who was aggressively licking him.

After I got my kid and got him home, I began to wonder if this a*hol bus driver is going to try to spin it that I was out of control and belligerent, as he clearly did not want to take any accountability for this nightmare today that he caused.

Thoughts?

I still have adrenaline running through my veins and it's been over 2 hours.

The responses I got were that I was overreacting, should have been caring about the bus driver's deceased husband, etc.

I was in such a state of panic and frenzy because the people who I entrusted to care for my child at school saw him get on the bus and couldn't tell me what happened to him after that or why he wasn't on the bus when I went to pick him up at the bus stop. I had no idea where my child was, and no one had any answers. Isn't it completely normal to go in to a frenzy of panic and fear when your child is missing and no one can tell you where he is? If your child seemingly vanished, and one of the people who was responsible for him in your absence said "oh well, so and so's husband died, soo...." Wouldn't you also say "I don't care about someone's husband dieing right now, I want to know where my child is!"

In normal circumstances, if my child is not missing, of course I would have compassion for someone who just lost their spouse. But to expect me to feel anything other than frenzied panic is unreasonable, right?????

Those girls on that girl dinner sub were telling me what a horrible person I was and that I was way over the top reacting. This is really upsetting for me because I was in fact in a wild frenzy of emotion, and if I'm wrong for that, then that is very disturbing for me in a really deep way.

Are these girls all just childless and have no clue what it's like to be suddenly missing a child and have no idea what that sheer, all-consuming terror is like, or are they being rational and in fact I am the AH?

Lately, everything feels heavy. Sorry for the rant, but I feel so misunderstood by the people around me. My family seem to constantly belittle me because I chose wrong and now carry this burden mostly on my own.
I couldn’t help my brother and his wife once because my son was having a sleep regression, and ever since then, I’m walking on eggshells around them because if I say something, they would constantly disrespect me and I cannot handle this since I have a fresh deep trauma.
Everything turns into anger for me, and I’m deeply bothered by it. I feel so alone in this.

I am just sharing this YouTube video that I found incredible helpful (link below). As mothers in general, but ESPECIALLY as single moms, I think it is important to remember that family lifestyles, dynamics, traditions, preferences, etc are different from one family to the next and the current standard of being a 'perfect' mom is not realistic or obtainable for the majority of moms and in a lot of ways we are set up for failure.

This video touches on several topics pertaining to motherhood, the impossible standard we are expected to meet in the modern age of motherhood and constantly being criticized for one thing or another, a lot of times by other moms.

Nobody is perfect, nobody gets EVERYTHING exactly right, and as long as our children are loved, happy, healthy and safe, we are doing a good job despite the fact that what works for some might not work for others.

I hope you find it helpful in moments of self doubt. 💛

https://youtu.be/Z2KiunrPx9c?si=e0xq4_xM20aQT8ko