"Why am I upset to learn that my ex is expecting with their new partner? I am not in love with my ex anymore. I moved on and do not have any romantic feelings towards my ex anymore? Why does it still hurt and upset me?"
This is one frequently asked and discussed feelings.
No reason to pretend that you don't care. It is a super hard thing to learn. Some people will swallow the bitter bill and hide their feelings but they become “paranoid” about anything their ex is doing now. Suddenly practise that worked before feels somehow against your child.
Some people are convinced that it hurts because they learned it in an “unsuitable” or “insensitive” way. They believe that it wouldn't hurt so much if…
…If only my ex told me instead of learning from third people!
…If only my ex chose a more considerate way to tell me that!
Some people believe it hurts because they are under the impression that the ex is more happy about and more interested in the baby with their new partner than they used to be with you. It might be accurate, if your child was unplanned and you had a surprise pregnancy. It can also result from your hurt feelings and like we can have a body image distortion we can have a personal circumstances image distortion or irrespective. We are so afraid that something bad could happen that we will look out for “signs” and we ARE seeing them “loud and clear” even if other people would not. Please bear in mind: People WILL AGREE with you that all those bad signs are there. That is called “being supportive”. Like we agree that someone looks good even if they got a ugly dress on, has a “great hair-do” even if it looks like an unwell parrot on their head and convinces them that their bum does not look big at all. Facebook support groups are not trustworthy places to ask people opinions. People there are in the same situation as you and they have THE SAME FEARS as you. They are not neutral bystanders at any means.
What I want to say is that it doesn't matter who said it and how did you learn about it.
It would hurt like hell anyway. And I can tell you why.
Because you used to be the mother of his children. It is a beautiful and powerful position to be. It made you unique and special. Even when you are not together, even when he is ignoring you and does not want to talk to you, it cannot change the fact who you are. The mother of his children.
The only way he can make your title less is to share your unique title with someone else.
It's like you learn that the first prize you used to know is yours is suddenly a draw with someone else.
It hurts. Because it DOES Take away something very important, something very powerful that used to belong to you. No shame feeling hurt about losing this very important "first prize"
Hurt creates anger and we are prone to start fights over trivial things or even from nowhere.
Hurt creates fear for future hurt. You start creating disaster scenarios in your head and you are going to believe that they will happen for sure.
Hurt hurts other people around you. Especially the ones who are closest to you: your children, your partner, your parents and your closest friends.
Hurt needs recognition, acceptance and cure.
Recognition:
Admitting, you are hurt, because your ex is taking away your important and significant position. You are losing something that used to make you unique.
Acceptance:
Allow yourself to be hurt. It's ok to be hurt when you lose something. It does not make you a crazy ex. However, Acting out and not keeping your tongue would create an image of you as the crazy jealous ex. Rule of thumb: Feelings do not make us “bad” but how we are choosing to behave can label us “bad”.
Cure:
Therapy! Easier to say than do. Money, time, childcare can prevent us.
Remember to vent only to your “not very close friends” to people who are unlikely to be in your close circle and unlikely to have an opportunity to say something to your children late on in life.
Vent anonymously on Facebook but remember, those people are likely to make you feel worse, not better. They will fuel the fire with horror stories about how your children will be abandoned and miss treated from now on and you will not have child support and they will take your children from you. (No one is questioning how it is possible to abandon children and get full custody for them at the same time, but that's what you get from Chat Groups).
The absolute best thing to do is to keep remembering to yourself: People have multiple children. They do not kick out the older one, because of the new arrival. They will not stop loving two older ones when the third one arrives. For their dad, they all are the same. The fact that some of them have different mum matters only to those mums, not to this man.
Your fears are coming from your hurt.
Read here more about the technique how mums hurt and fears are forming children's feelings about the new situation.
