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Oh, wow, I’m so sorry this is happening. It’s really unfair of him to put this burden on you and to blame you for his poor mental health. Please know you 100% did nothing wrong, you were great to listen to your intuition and back out of the date, and you did do respectfully and with compassion. Your moral obligation to this person is over now. Try to avoid him as much as you can. Are you still in the support group together? Is this group facilitated by an adult? If so, would you feel comfortable discussing with that adult what’s going on and asking his best to set boundaries when you share space together at school?
I also commissioned a watercolor painting of a friends dog after the dog died. My friend is estranged from his family and single and that dog meant the world to him. He said the painting was one of the most meaningful gifts he’s received.
From now on, your billed husband gets zero say in your dating life. He has a problem with it? Too bad. Kept your conversations limited and centered around your kid. If he asks you about your dating life, tell him it’s not his business unless and until you’re serious enough with someone that you might want to introduce your kid to him. In the mean time, you may want to discuss the general idea of introducing your kid to future partners if you haven’t yet so that those boundaries are very clear, understood, and agreed-upon to avoid unnecessary drama and manipulation going forward.
Oh my god, why does your ex-husband get any say at all in who you date?! To the point of limiting your options to only men outside of the town you live in? That’s wild.
It’s ok to not be friends with this person anymore if the friendship is toxic or unsatisfying for you. I had a friend who was trans and we were casual friends for years but as she got more and more toxic, she had fewer friends in her life and so the ones who stuck around, like me, were leaned on more by her. She was really toxic though and I wanted out of the friendship but I worried that that would leave her with no one and I felt bad about that. I didn’t want her to have no one or to be sad. I wanted her to be happy and healthy. I had a hard time negotiating these seemingly conflicting feelings, so I stayed in the friendship longer than I wanted and she eventually blew up at me over something that wasn’t my fault in a moment that I was particularly vulnerable (my 19-year-old cat was dying) and I said enough! I blocked her number and haven’t spoken to her since and I only wish I’d gotten out sooner.
I say all this on the chance that you have any feelings of guilt, like I did, about leaving a friendship with someone whose support system is already small. You are not obligated to stay in a friendship that doesn’t serve you.
I think really acknowledging how much Daisy means to your brother and what an important relationship that is and how hard it will be/ is to lose her will go a longer way than you think. So often, when people lose pets that grief is as intense as if it were a person they lost. But in our society, the loss of a pet doesn’t carry the weight of losing a human loved on, and that kind of dismissiveness can add to a person’s grief. So validating his pain in whatever ways feel appropriate is going to be so helpful. Your brother is lucky to have a lucky and attentive sister!
I think you’re being jealous and insecure, but I also think your boyfriend is giving reason to be that way. Were you jealous and insecure before he gave you reason? Regardless, this is a super unhealthy dynamic in a relationship and I don’t see a way to get past it. You need to be on your own for a bit and explore where this jealousy and insecurity and need to control comes from and work on getting past it because no healthy relationship can be built on a foundation like this.
Perhaps I misunderstood your letter and your boyfriend’s marriage was already over before he met you and he had already moved out, but reading between the lines, it doesn’t seem that that’s the case. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Though my advice was essentially be the same: let the kids have all the time they need to be ok with meeting you. Pushing this before they’re ready will backfire.
Yep, I agree with everything Miss MJ said. To be frank, you’re lucky his kids don’t actively hate you – or, at least, it’s not communicated to you that they hate you – after their father left them for you. How can you not see it from their perspective? Their dad met you while still married to their mom and living with all of them and within months, he left them and moved in with you (during a 6-month time period when kids couldn’t even go to school, somehow their dad managed to meet someone, fall in love, and blow up his family’s life; almost impressive). They deserve allll the time they need to process your existence and your role in the upheaval of their lives. If you need their acceptance of you in order to feel your boyfriend’s commitment to you, maybe you shouldn’t have moved in with him until you could get that. Same with the friends (especially if they are also friends with your boyfriend’s ex-wife, whom he left for you).
It feels like you’re too young to put your dating life on hold for at least a year for someone you don’t have a very strong foundation with and who is behaving in an odd way with a former girlfriend he now spends all his time with. If you stay with him in a monogamous relationship, there’s a strong possibility you’ll look back at this time in your life and regret dedicating so much of it to a relationship that brings very little joy and intimacy.
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