I Feel Like A Bad Person (Vent)

So I've been awake all night... For context, my ex and I had a pretty awful relationship. I left him at 30 weeks pregnant and our daughter is now 5 months old. Things were fine until I got pregnant. Then all of these red flags started showing up. He would yell at me and blame me for pretty much everything even if I wasn't involved in whatever situation I was being blamed for. For example, around 20 weeks pregnant I was having severe cramping and was told to go to labor and delivery. We were driving back from my parents house and stopped at the hospital on our way back home. He works as a manager of a group home. We just had my car and he had a work emergency come up. He blamed me for his work emergency happening because he had to go to the hospital with me because I wouldn't drop him off at home, which would've made me get to the hospital 30 minutes later. He would threaten and actually try to kill himself in front of me multiple times while I was pregnant and I would have to physically restrain him to keep him from harming himself. He would threaten to kick me out of the house. During some arguments, he would block the door so I couldn't leave the room. He caused me to have such high stress during pregnancy that I developed pre-eclampsia and the placenta even ended up dying. Not sure how related that is, but none of my immediate or extended family have had complications with pregnancy (like at all) so I do believe it is at least partially related. Now for my current issue, I was dumb and brought vented to him one time while I was freshly postpartum because I don't really have anyone to vent to. I told him how I was very hurt by a lot of things he did and that I have a difficult time trusting him. Stupid, I know. And he has brought up several times since then that he has severe trauma from me. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out anything I couldn't done (aside from leaving him) that would've caused even minor trauma. My sleep recently had been awful and I'm beating myself up over little things. In my mind, I'm a bad person. Only bad people don't know when they have severely hurt someone. My ex is manipulative for sure, but I can't stop beating myself up. Why can't I think of anything that I did to cause him trauma? I don't like hurting people and would never do so on purpose. I don't think I did anything wrong, but what if I did? What if I did something so horrible that now he had severe trauma from me? That makes me a bad person. I've always had a really low self-esteem. It had started getting better once I had my baby and saw that I can take great care of her, but now it's getting a lot worse. I've been trying to find a therapist, but it's hard. I have prescription psychiatric medications, but I keep forgetting to take them so they obviously aren't doing anything since they aren't being taken. I have such a difficult time taking care of myself. I wish my ex would just go away. He doesn't do much for our daughter when he visits anyway and she's a lot more fussy when he's here. She's typically a super easy baby, but she screams at least half of the time that her dad is visiting. Even when I tell him why she's crying and how to help her, he doesn't listen to me. He will sit on the couch and hold her. He'll give her a bottle or change her diaper if she needs it, but that's about it. He does the bare minimum. I have baby toys and books in the room with them when he's here and he doesn't do anything with those. I'll tell him that she is tired, but he won't wrap her in her blanket or give her a pacifier, so she gets ends up screaming herself to sleep. Not like she naps long anyway because she struggles to sleep when she's being held. I feel like him visiting just takes away time where I could be doing activities with her to help her learn. I've tried to get him to do tummy time with her or do other things with her but he never does. Sometimes he'll text me during the week to ask how she's doing and I'll tell him about different activities we are doing. Like we had a dance party to Disney music last week. He'll say that sounds like a lot of fun and he wishes he could do things like that with her. He has full access to the same things when he's here. Same toys, he could turn on music, etc. To get her to stop crying he relies on me being close by so she can see me. He visited two days in a row this week because he was trying to make up a missed visit. He made his sister hold her most of the time because he felt like our daughter didn't even want to see him and that was making him cry. It wasn't. She was tired. She hadn't napped well that day. I told his entire family who was visiting that, but they still kept trying to say it was something else. She was passing gas so they were saying she was crying because he tummy hurt. She wasn't in pain, though. I know her cries. She was exhausted and they weren't helping her sleep. She cried most of the time they were here aside from when I was holding her. The second they left, she stopped crying. I put her down in her bassinet and she fell asleep super quick. I know this isn't really related to my original topic. I'm exhausted and rambling. But I have no idea why she gets so fussy when he's visiting. She's fine with new people holding her. She isn't constantly looking for me when new or unfamiliar people hold her usually, but she searches for me almost constantly when her dad is visiting. Sometimes I wonder if she can sense who he really is. I don't talk bad about him around her. It's not like it's a one-off thing where she's only crying during a few visits. It's every visit. We have other visitors come over all the time and she doesn't get more fussy. She's such a happy baby usually. And she's usual so easy to soothe when she's crying aside from when her dad is here. Anyway, that's probably enough rambling. I mostly just needed to vent, but advice would be nice if you have any about any of that. If you read the whole thing, thank you.
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From what you've said and his reactions to just the few situations you've included you haven't done anything and leaving him sounds like the best thing for you and bubs. stop trying to find what you've done wrong and wasting your energy. It's a manipulation tactic, my ex used to pull the same ones. When he's around you need to be strong and advocate for your baby, not worry about what hes going to think if you do. If she's tired and needs something and he's not listening, you are the primary caregiver, take her from him and help her. You know your baby better than him or his family because she's got baby and are with her ask the time they only visit. He sounds pretty awful and manipulative and maybe she can sense something from him, baby's are very sensitive to the people and emotions around them.

@Nicole thank you for your response. I don't think I've done anything to cause him trauma, but my brain won't stop thinking about it. I'm hoping one of the therapists I reached out to for scheduling will respond within the next couple of days so I can get help and be the best mom for my baby. She needs at least one good parent. Here's a crazy story if you want to hear it, my ex asked me to be his Valentine this year and asked if I wanted to go out with him that day. Didn't have anything to do with him wanting to do something for the baby. I left him in July last year. He seems kind of obsessed. I ended up having to screenshot the messages he sent me about Valentine's Day and sent them to my attorney who then talked to his attorney about it. My ex then got upset with me for not telling him he crossed a boundary. I've told him several times I will not be going out with him. I don't need to constantly remind him of my boundaries.

I’m so sorry. You’re not a bad person. Nothing can compare to him treating the mother of his child so badly that it affects both of you. That man has severe mental issues and doesn’t want to admit that he probably resents you having his child and bringing stability to his life. Mentally ill people love chaos so they seek it in every situation. For you and your daughter’s mental health and safety please try to go no contact and take full custody. I think your daughter does sense his negative energy. You’re dealing with a narcissist and you can’t let him destroy you. Maybe one day he’ll change but it’s not your job to fix him. Hopefully he’ll get it together for his daughter so she won’t have to go through the same hurt you’re going through. If you ever wanna message me I’m here 💗. Keep your head up and know that you’re loved

@Tamara unfortunately we already had a custody case with our attorneys. I do have full physical custody, but he still gets visits once a week and will stay getting one overnight every other weekend when our daughter turns 1 in September. I'm honestly just hoping he'll give up and leave so we don't have to deal with it anymore he does have a history of drug abuse even though it's been years. Both of his parents were also alcoholics and his mom died because of that when he was 16. He had severe anger issues, and I agree with you about him being a narcissist. He's never done therapy. We tried couple's therapy before I left him, but it made the abuse worse because he didn't like that the therapist wasn't fully on his side. He claimed to be polyamorous, but we were in a monogamous relationship and he was still reaching out to other women (mainly his exes) to try to hook up with them even after If confronted him a few times about it.

He didn't like that the couple's therapist that we only saw one time wasn't solely working with polyamour couples even though the therapist told us he had worked with some polyamorous couples in the past. So he refused to go to a second therapy session. Which was obviously my fault because I didn't find a therapist that had the same values as him. I should've left him way sooner, but I thought I loved him. I wanted my daughter to have her parents together in a happy relationship. When I left him, he told me I was being selfish and not thinking of our daughter. But no, she's the reason I left. I wasn't going to have her around all of that toxicity 24/7.

You did the right thing leaving. There’s no way to satisfy a man like that. He doesn’t know what he wants. He keeps wanting someone to blame for his problems and why they aren’t getting better. The reality is, sleeping with a hundred women won’t make him happy and neither with having a family until he’s ready to get his mind right. He needs healing and self awareness. I’d say continue the visits but keep them supervised. If he does anything harmful to your daughter or even shows up intoxicated to come see her you can file for emergency sole custody!!

@Tamara unfortunately in our court paperwork, he's able to start taking her out of my supervision once she's 7 months for 4 hour visits. He does have to stay within the county I live in at least. And at 9 months, his visits increase to 10 hours once a week also unsupervised. It's pretty scary to think about. His visits right now are 3 hours and one of my family members or I usually end up having to hold the baby at least once each visit so he can take a phone call or use the restroom. I also usually end up holding her about twice or more each visit just to calm her down from crying so much.

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