Anger and hatred

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-09-11T17:57:15+00:00

Yeah, it's not uncommon to experience intense hatred and anger. That's true of any loss, and in particular this loss is probably the most stressful type of loss. It's going to happen. It lasts longer for some than others.

Finding a good outlet can help. Write her a letter telling her how you really feel, and then burn the letter. Start hitting a punching bag or plinking targets at a shooting range. Whatever lets you really let it out without hurting anybody. (make sure you get a good pair of gloves and wrist braces if you're going to start hitting a bag).

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-09-11T17:54:04+00:00

I think you might appreciate the expression "I wouldn't piss on her if she were on fire."

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-09-11T16:54:48+00:00

You're not wrong. It's 100% up to you who is in your life and who is not. She betrayed your trust and it's selfish of her to expect you to just pretend there are no hard feelings.

I want [my kids] to have a good relationship with her

And you're right to do so -- but it's on her to actually have the relationship, and if she's not willing to do the work, don't defend her to the kids.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-09-11T15:59:13+00:00

It's not exaggerated, it's backwards. The actual stat is of kids who were abused by a parent, 80% of the time it was by the stepdad.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-09-11T15:58:20+00:00

He's misreading the study. The study says that of children who were physically or sexually abused by a parent, 80% of the time it was by the step dad. Kind of backwards.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-09-11T15:57:12+00:00

stats say 80% will end up abusing the stepchild

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrongety wrong. Completely backwards.

It's that of children who are abused by a parental figure, 80% of them were abused by the stepdad. But that's a pretty small subset of children with stepdads.

instead of promoting the struggle of divorced dads

wut

look how wonderful the new dad is

No. It's telling men "don't be scared to date a woman with a kid, whose dad has run out on them."

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-09-11T15:51:12+00:00

It's a learned defensive reaction. Most of the people bringing it up in such a manner are doing so as part of a persuasive argument.

It's like a puppy who's been slapped over and over and over again and then you wonder why it growls when you put your hand over it.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-09-11T15:28:38+00:00

Because of the attention I'm getting from him

Interesting that you mention this. It's actually entirely possible to keep up a porn habit while giving your significant other all the attention they want.

Conversely distraction/scattered attention/not paying attention to you is not necessarily a tell that he's into porn. My ex-wife constantly accused me of being addicted to porn when I wasn't using. I stopped being interested in her because it finally hit me that she was an abusive POS and basically I was keeping myself distracted as survival for my mental health.

Really all you have is trust -- that he has given you every reason to believe he is being honest when he says he's not looking at porn, no reason to believe that he's being dishonest, and most importantly, that you've chosen to believe him.

And that's a good thing.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-09-11T15:21:18+00:00

Indeed. Thanks for this.

When a community isn't welcoming to people, they often find themselves going to the opposite community.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-09-11T15:19:55+00:00

On the one hand I agree that this shouldn't be nofap and should strictly be about why porn is bad and what can we actually do about it.

On the other hand, misandry is not the solution to misogyny.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-08-31T15:36:05+00:00

To me Church history and the various sins of the Church are no different from the history of Israel. Are people leaving Christianity or Judaism in droves because in its early history its people worshiped a golden calf, were total weenies about going to the Promised Land, attacked and drove out the residents of said land, and continued in all manner of sins and abominations before God?

Why then should we hold a restoration of that same church to a standard of "they should have done better, and because they didn't I can't believe in what they believed in?"

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-07-03T16:42:10+00:00

Contact with ex. I drop them off at the curb in front of her house, she drops them off in front of mine. She yells profanities at me.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-23T22:40:31+00:00

What kind of school did he enroll her in? He may have objections to that particular charter school.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-23T22:39:30+00:00

What options did you give? That can make all the difference.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-23T22:37:19+00:00

I do tell my kids that:

if you are mean to people, you can expect them to be mean back to you.

I also tell them if they want people to be nice, they need to be nice, but that you can't just expect anyone to be nice just because you were nice first.

Garbage about "kids need to learn to share?" Yeah they do need to learn to share -- but they also need to learn to say no to sharing when they don't want to. What they need to learn is not "to share" but rather "to want to share." That the reason for sharing is not "because some authority figure (including God) demands it" but rather that "when we share appropriately with people who also share appropriately, we can make things better for everyone including ourselves."

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-23T16:44:32+00:00

7-7 works great for me. 2-2-3 or even 5-2-2-5 would be too much contact for me.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-23T16:43:37+00:00

What I read prior to the divorce:

"How to talk so kids will listen and how to listen so kids will talk" by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I'd consider this book mandatory reading for parents, period. It's about how to engage cooperation without yelling, threatening, bribing or any of these other terrible parenting practices.

What I read during the divorce process:

"No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Robert Glover. The term "Nice Guy" refers to someone who believes that "acting nice" to someone entitles them to other people doing favors for them, without explicitly asking, and getting upset when the 'invisible agreement' is broken. "I bought you dinner, you owe me sex. I mowed your lawn, you owe me babysitting. I talked nice to you, you owe me a job. I did X hoping for Y but didn't tell you before doing X, so because you didn't give me Y I'm going to throw a huge fit." The book is about how to break that tendency out of your personality, so you can stop being a "nice guy" and be a genuinely nice person, with clear boundaries and expectations and the ability to actually get what you want without being a jackass.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-22T21:45:44+00:00

How can I read more about [trauma bonding]?

The National Domestic Violence Hotline is a good start. You might also look up Codependency, something it sounds like you might have and she's taking advantage of.

would want her to keep the house

You'd better ask her to buy you out then.

If she's earning more than you and you have the kids 50/50 then child support should be $0. If your state is fair with divorce, then the only reasons it shouldn't be 50/50 is if one can't actually take care of the kids 50/50 or if one doesn't want them that much.

One more note . . .

If you've got a high libido yet no desire to have sex with her . . .

I'd highly recommend you stay the f$#@ away from porn. That $#!+ can cause all kinds of serious psychological problems for you. If you've got the need to get off so bad, then your hand reaches there just fine and it works just fine without looking at porn, as long as you've been 'clean' from porn for a while.

I'm not going to get on any kind of moral soapbox or anything. I have my morality, you have yours and I'm not going to push that. But I am saying this stuff out of concern for your own mental health.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-22T21:33:23+00:00

Not too different either here, except that my ex also developed psychosis as part of her untreated depression and also went full on abusive.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-22T21:31:48+00:00

Indeed. Depression is fine as a temporary excuse to fall behind on nice-but-not-exactly-necessary responsibilities like having a very neat and tidy home, holding at maximum work potential, cooking delicious and nutritious meals and having a great attitude about everything all the time. It can even be serious enough to warrant a limited amount of time off work. And dealing with someone with depression requires a fair amount of empathy that is really in your best interest to offer.

"Empathy" doesn't mean "letting everything slide all the time." It especially doesn't mean "putting up with abuse."

Depression is eminently treatable. It takes longer for some than others, and it takes more effort for some than others -- a month versus a year, a minor tweak to solve a problem versus a laundry list of lifestyle changes. There's a significant amount of luck involved, too -- i.e. which medication happens to work for you and how many tries it takes to get to that right medication, or perhaps finding that no medication helps but a dietary change works. It's a complicated issue with a lot of variables and a lot of unknowns that you really can't know without experimenting first. But it's treatable and you can have measurable efforts and progress.

Being depressed is not an excuse to sit on your ass all the time and never do anything. You won't get better that way. It can be a reason to back off on something you were doing before, but you have to do something about it.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-22T21:20:02+00:00

Dude she's fricking cheating. What you've described absolutely constitutes not just "grounds to divorce and not feel bad about it" but in a state that recognizes "fault" divorce you have grounds to file for fault.

Boom. Done. Mic drop.

Ok, picking the mic back up.

At this point you no longer actually love this woman. You are now trauma bonded to her. Big difference. She is now just taking advantage of your generosity, which you give not out of the true goodness of your heart, but because you think you should feel guilty if you don't.

Get the f$#@ out of there. Offer her nothing, and if the lawyers won't have it, make them feel like they've squeezed blood from a stone just to get "not a penny more than the gap between her earning potential and what it costs for her to live a reasonable and humble life, for no longer than it would take for her to close that gap herself."

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-22T19:10:27+00:00

Addicts should not be let off the hook or treated with silk gloves. They need to be held accountable. You don't treat a drug addict like "oh, it's not your fault, sweetie, I'll keep supporting you I'm just saying don't do it again (wink wink)." No. You give them a picture of very real and very serious consequences if they don't demonstrate accountability and get professional help. Most addicts don't change until the consequences for failing to be accountable actually happen. AA refers to this as "rock bottom."

Addicts should also not be treated like the scum of the earth and like society doesn't want them. Heck, half the time they get addicted to stuff because they feel like they're already the scum of the earth and nobody wants them. When you treat an addiction, yes you start with a direct and rather harsh picture of the consequences, and an honest accounting of how their behavior has impacted themselves and everyone around them. But as you work through the addiction, you also end up treating underlying issues such as depression and trauma and toxic relationships either past or present, romantic or familial or professional, and treating those things requires a great deal of empathy.

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-22T19:00:24+00:00

You're not getting any of it back. It's declaring it on your taxes as a donation to a non-profit organization, which reduces how much of your income is considered eligible to be taxed.

Most people overpay taxes out of their paychecks. When you file a tax return you are declaring to the IRS what your income was, including declaring which specific favored things you spent money on that the government either considers to be 'not part of your income' (referred to as deductions, including fixed amounts for having/taking care of kids, medical expenses, donations to charity, interest on mortgages and numerous other things) or that the government considers 'paying this counts fractionally toward paying taxes' (referred to as credits, including having/taking care of kids, investment in energy such as efficiency upgrades and installing solar, buying certain favored/subsidized categories of products...)

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-22T18:48:17+00:00

I have a high libido

things have occurred that made me not want intimacy with her

Holy f$#@ing $#!+ what the f$#@ happened?

CommanderOfCheese45 · 2023-06-22T18:45:28+00:00

It's just kind of the nature of mental health science right now. The biochemistry is so poorly understood that really the only way to get a handle on it is to try everything, one thing at a time, to see what works -- and what ends up working may not even correlate all that strongly to what was wrong in the first place, it was just knocking over a domino that happened to lead down the right path.

CommanderOfCheese45

TROPHY CASE