Therapy, making things worse?
I know I was a fearfully attached partner. I know I involved myself in the push pull dynamic. I can see my protest behaviours that escalated at the end and made me look “crazy” but were me trying to get my needs met. I have talked to my therapist all about this. I have acknowledged some of my behaviours were hurtful and unacceptable.
I have also made it very clear there has been no accountability from him on his side. That he has accused me repeatedly of being abusive. That he lied about dating his new partner. That he essentially monkey branched after 15 years of marriage.
I have made it clear that the only narrative my ex has space for is his own. He can’t acknowledge any wrong doing on his part. He has shifted the blame 100% over to me. That he continues, even while being “happily” partnered for a year now with his new person to lash out in emails that call me down to the lowest.
Today I shared one of the email exchanges with my therapist. I am trying to engage about asset separation, treading carefully (with ChatGPT’s help) to not set him off. I said I was looking for an equal distribution of assets and for us to focus on building an amicable co parenting relationship. It didn’t matter; he replied with a novel of insults, telling me I was manipulated and downright disgusting for trying to rewrite the past. Telling me that I deserve what I get, etc etc. at the end of the email he made a comment about “at least our son loves you, id trade anything for that” - my therapist said “ahhh, that’s so sad” in a legit and sincere way. I was shocked. I had just spent the last hour telling her how unseen, unheard and unconsidered I was in my marriage, that my ex replaced me immediately (while lying about it and still married to me), and was actively making the separation hard, that he was trying to make sure he ended up ahead of me financially, even though he has the family support in his home community, the fancy new job, the new “better than Me” partner, and got to stay in our marital home.
She still said “ahh, that’s so sad” when my ex talked about wanting me sons love and would trade anything for it….. we could have amicably split two years ago, we could amicably spilt now. We could have had a direct conversation about the new partner and actually split finances and bank accounts then. He could have been honest about anything. He could not lash out at me when I write to him about our son being sad. My ex could do a lot of help himself in this situation, and for a while I was trying to help him, trying to explain our son and what he was feeling to him, but my ex would dismiss my take or tell me I was just trying to guilt him.
My therapist knows all this and still had so much sympathy for him today. And encouraged me to drop my boundary of exchanging gifts with my ex on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. “Show yours son guys are still a team”
We spend a lot of sessions talking about how unseen I was in my marriage and how my needs never were never a priority … and I feel like it’s happening in our sessions. I’m telling her this man is calling me manipulative and disgusting. Telling everyone I abused him. And his emails are nothing but “this is all your fault. You ruined us. You are the problem”
I don’t know what to do.