Is it gonna get any easier?
My(28m) fiancee(27f) and I split up at the beginning of this year. We have a 2yo daughter that we are currently co-parenting. My question is, does it ever get easier?
We weren't ready for a baby, but we decided that if she ever got pregnant we were going to keep it no matter what. My fiancee and I had a great relationship for a lot of our 6 years together but things became more difficult as time went on, and we started to resent each other for various reasons. We are still "close", but it feels much more like a business arrangement than family these days.
When our daughter was born, something awakened inside of me and I felt so much motivation to be the greatest dad in the world. It was my pride and joy to goof around with this girl and to teach her about new things and to show her that life is beautiful. My fiancee struggled more with bonding with our daughter and I think that is the source of my intense desire to be a great dad. I also didn't have a great dad growing up, so I'm sure that was a factor as well.
Resentment had built up over the years and we argued about everything and stopped being intimate altogether. We both wanted to make things work, seeing therapists and working on ourselves, but in the end, she broke things off with me. When we split up, she had just purchased a family home all by herself. She intentionally didn't include me because of our problems, and because she had just started a higher paying job and could afford the mortgage alone. I was going to live there and pay rent, so that I could still be with my family everyday and continue to work on myself to be someone she could love again. My only desire was to keep the family together and I had quit my job, taken the new job that she suggested, started taking the meds that she suggested, stopped drinking, and made myself available as much as possible for her because raising a child is difficult and I couldn't leave that burden on her alone. I was always primarily responsible for our daughters needs at home while she was busy finishing her degree and working her new job. I was just naturally more inclined to take care of a child, and I loved my role as super dad. Anyway, things didn't work out and we went our separate ways.
Now I live with my mom again, over an hour from my ex fiancee's house. We amicably split custody and I have her monday night thru Friday morning and she has her on the other days. We only communicate about parenting things for the most part.
I am seriously struggling to find any joy in life anymore. I try my best to keep being the best dad I can be, but I'm really starting to hate my life. The biggest problem is having no free time. I work 12hr shifts 4 days per week and care for my daughter fully on my days off. I have a very small family and so I can really only rely on my mom or my exes mom for help, but because I work the weekends, I am never aligned with their schedules. My second biggest problem is having no friends. I've always struggled with making real friends. Our entire relationship, we shared friends. She made most of our connections herself and I was happy to have that load taken off of me. I loved getting to know these people and spending time with them, but it seems that they only talk to her now. My new job is mostly remote so I never even interact with my coworkers in person. I'm finding it incredibly hard to make my own friends now. I've tried many dating apps and going to the bars around me but have had no luck. I live in a very rural area now so I'm sure that has to do with it a lot.
Meanwhile, my ex is absolutely flourishing. She's got her beautiful new house, her high paying new job, she has all of our old friends, she has been incredibly successful in her dating life and is even starting a new exclusive relationship with a guy she met immediately after breaking up with me. I try my best to not compare myself to her but it's killing me at this point. It makes me so uncomfortable that my daughter will be meeting this guy in the future. Idk I guess a lot of this is jealousy from me, but I just feel totally replaced.
Now I am struggling to just feel okay on a day to day basis. I feel like I failed my daughter in so many ways by not being strong enough to keep our family together. I struggle to come up with things for us to do now. I'm getting impatient with her. I just doom scroll any chance I get. I just feel like a babysitter instead of a father now. It's like my daughter's entire life is exists around my ex, her house, her daycare, her friends. She has none of that nearby to me. I feel like I have to try to build a new family for my daughter and I completely separate from her mom's. I just don't know how to do that. I'm struggling so bad mentally.
I don't expect much from posting this, but if anyone has any life experience to share on this I'd be very grateful. I just want to be happy again. I want to feel like a good dad again.