I don't know where to post.

[Messed-up]

I honestly do not know why I am posting this as I am the one who has done wrong.

I have cheated, I have lied, and my wife has left with my kids, I have lost my job, and I am about to lose my house with nowhere to go.

I have burnt every bridge I have ever crossed. For many years I neglected my wife and my children. I had a temper and would yell and scream. I cheated for the most part of our marriage, never sexually, was emotional only, I know it's not any better.

Over the past weeks I have done a lot of searching, a lot of self-thought and I believe I am now doing better and becoming a better person but not long ago I had a letter all written out saying my goodbyes to everyone and saying what to do with my belongings etc and in all honesty those thoughts keep coming up.

I know I am doing better for myself and my wife and my kids, but she won't give me the chance to show her that I have changed for the better, I can't even see my kids.

Look I get it, I know I have done badly in my life I just don't know what to do anymore.

I honestly don't know what I will do if I lose my house or lose the chance to see my kids again. 

I don't know why I am spilling my guts here, not looking for sympathy.

[therising]

Hi Messed-up

Would you say it's less about looking for sympathy and more about the process of waking up to what has led you to this point? I've found at the darkest of times it becomes about being able to shed some light on things, making greater sense of it all. Expressing things outwardly, to others who can maybe help shed light, can speed up the process. 

People tend to wake up at different times in their life, under a whole variety of different circumstances. Some will finally wake up to how out of control their drinking has become while in the back of a divvy van. Some will wake up to how depressing their relationship with their partner has become while sobbing uncontrollably in a therapist's office. Some will wake up to the need to question 'Who am I really and why am I here?', while facing a deeply depressing mid life crisis (of identity). The list goes on. Waking up can sometimes be the most challenging thing we've ever faced in life, largely because it can come with so many mixed emotions, some of which we may have never felt before. A lack of experience with certain emotions can make feeling them and navigating them seem almost impossible.

I've found that waking up can also create what feels like a major reality shift. Kind of like when once we may have only thought of our self, now we can be begin processing other people's thoughts. Other people's thoughts become more real. When once we only felt for our self, now we can begin to feel for others, while feeling their frustration, their grief, their disappointment and so on. Other people's feelings become more real. Considering others becomes an intensely painful process in some cases and can be far from simple.

I'm wondering whether there is any chance of speaking with your wife, to let her know where you're at mentally and emotionally. If she fears for the children's mental and emotional well being, it's understandable that she doesn't want them to face possible screaming and yelling, such as with what they've faced in the past. Asking her 'Under what conditions can I see the kids or are they willing to see me?' may get you an answer. If she says 'They'd be willing to see you for an hour, to start with, and only with me there' then that's a start. It's an hour to prove how conscious you're in the process of becoming. Next time it might be another hour and the time after that even longer. Or if the conditions involve you seeking some form of counseling, then her demands involve you evolving even further on your path of personal evolution.

If your wife's not willing to reconcile, in regard to the marriage, this then becomes about dividing funds from the sale of the house and making a conscious decision (perhaps with some financial consultation) in regard to how the funds you have best be spent. I know I sound like a cold sort of a gal but, based on the challenges within my own marriage over the years, I reached the realisation that when a house no longer feels like a home, it becomes simply somewhere to live and an asset. When it is no longer somewhere to live, at the very least it remains an asset, a financial investment in real estate to be cashed in if need be.

[randomxx]

Hi there op.

l do know one thing , you do NOT have tp give up seeing your kids or still being the best dad you can be in the future , even if you and your w don't get back together.

Men get 50 50 custody in this country now, and all this rubbish of us not seeing our kids was some old cruel long gone relic.

There are things that can still mess that up like abuse and others, but in time it can still be fixed. For example if she had an affair,or was a terrible w "she " could still get to see her kids, poss even get to keep custody, the carpet may even be still just rolled out for her, l've seen it and heard about it even here.

Where as if that's him then probably not, so there are still things still way way warped and one sided, but dads do still have far more rights now than they use to. Same with the house, finances, gone are the days he walks away with nothing. That's just total bs but ofc if she is gonna be primary carer for the kids then that's all taken into acc too.But if she is then you might even want her to keep it for your kids .

At any rate, just sayin, do not give up on your kids , look into things thoroughly and look around for dad support groups like dads in distress and others, could mens line for leads and support and others.

As far as the relationship between you and your w and even more importantly your kids, it's all gonna take time and lots of persistence and proof, l mean she needs to see it and so do they, believe it, that's no way gonne happen over night but be consistent. But if you could keep it out of courts and over time prove to her and your kids that you have changed you know your wrongs and you wanna fix it and be the best dad you can to your kids and make things right, maybe things between you and your w can be repaired enough so that you can begin working together for your kids. That's the way we did it and l tell ya, it's ofc far far better for the kids and their childhood and mum and dad , all of it. So if you could get things back to that in time, be the best dad and love you can for you kids, it's not too late. You can make this up to them and they can still have their dad. Never , say never, and never give up on them.

Pls hang in there .

rx

[Messed-up]

Thank you to the above posters. 

Don’t take my post the wrong way, I may not been present in my kids lives but I always loved them and have recently done the waking up and now more than ever before the get too much older I will never give up on them, will never stop trying to see them. I was never a violent dad or husband but I cheated on my wife and lied to her and wasn’t present for my kids. 

It pains me to admit what I’ve done and makes me feel like a piece of trash but I know for me to be and do better I have too. 

I did this, I made the poor decisions that got us into the mess but I honestly believe that we can get through it. She says she doesn’t want to and wants to be a single mum. 

I can’t blame her. When we got together she told me about all her past trauma and I always said I would never be that guy, what did I do? I was worse. I cheated with older women, younger women. I wasn’t helpful, I didn’t participate I wasn’t involved. 

I know now all the things I have done wrong and the usual statement, if I could turn back time I would but I can’t, all I can do is be the best person I can be for myself and my kids and hope that is enough to prove to her that I have changed. 

My wife (ex-wife really) that’s a long story on its own has health issues and up until this day I have always asked how she is blah blah blah but not once did I ever offer to take her to appointments, take her to hospital and this was so wrong of me to not want to able a part of that. Same as all my kids appointments, they are special needs and I never really offered to do any of the leg work and I’m hurting for it now. But these are all the things I have now woken up too and want and will be a part of. 

I just don’t know how to be able to prove it to her. Everything I’ve written here I have said to her but she just says she isn’t interested. 

If she won’t let me see her and the kids how can I prove I have changed and am different for the better?

I know I never treated her the way she deserved but again and this is how I put it to her even before reading it on here. I’m awake now, she is my queen, no pedestal is too high to put her on. I know now to put her and the kids first. 

I am hanging on, barely but I am. 

She tells me it’s too late but we have always said it’s us against the world and I believe we are, can and will be strong enough to get through this. We both still wear a wedding ring even though we are technically divorced and she says she still loves me and seeing me makes her melt (her words not mine) and I have tried pointing out that that should be reason enough to give us one last shot. We have had a couple of other shots but who hasn’t? No one is perfect but I believe we are perfectly imperfect for each other. 

I am just at a loss on what to do next. My living situation is in the process of being evicted and I have no where else to go at this stage. I’m know I need to keep a roof over my head so I can eventually see and have my kids from time to time when she allows it but with no income coming in yet I’m at a loss. 

I look for work everyday and it’s taking a while to receive benefits because I lost my job due to misconduct so they had my claim on hold. 

It feels like everything is in the proverbial toilet with nothing looking positive yet. 

[therising]

Hi Messed-up

The worst or most challenging situations can definitely hold the potential to bring out the best in us. While I believe we're comprised of many facets that go toward making up the whole of who we are, bringing certain facets to life one by one can be a challenge but one well worth rising to.

When it comes to the many facets or aspects of us, we can find the feeler in us that leads us to be sensitive to feeling our own feelings and the feelings of others. We can find our inner analyst that can lead us to analyse the hell out of a situation while also analysing the best way forward. There is our inner sage that can speak to us at times through a sense of wisdom or the disciplinarian in us that can lead us to develop and stick to good habits and the list of positive facets continues. With the darker parts of us and inner dialogue, there can be the pessimist, the harsh and brutal depressing inner critic, the self serving part of us that can take things to extremes etc etc. The question becomes 'What part or parts of myself do I seriously need to begin tapping into at this point in my life?'. Sometimes I find the struggle I face dictates the part of me I need to develop the most. For example, if suffer through no vision of the way forward, I'm being challenged to develop the seer in me. This is a part of me that can lead me to see the way forward (through my imagination).

As the saying goes, 'Actions speak louder than words'. If you're unsure about which part of you needs the most attention and development, I imagine taking the action of asking your ex wife would gain you an answer. Then taking action to develop that part of you would prove to her that you're serious when it comes to evolving beyond who you used to be. In my own marriage, I've lost trust in my husband when it comes to how he says he's going to change. I don't say this in a depressing way, it's more so as a simple matter of fact. I can trust him in other ways. In many cases over the years, while he's genuinely held the intention to change, he's been largely all talk. Sometimes the only way to regain trust is through actions. For a partner who's suffered in the relationship in depressing ways, intention to change is simply not enough.

In regard to a job and somewhere to live, desperate times can call for desperate measures. At 54, if I had nowhere to go other than where my mum lives, I'd offer to be of service to her any way I could if she could serve me in the way of putting a roof over my head for a period of time. If anyone said to me 'Ahh...so you've moved back home with your mummy', my answer would simply be 'Yes'. If the choice is between a deluded sense of pride and somewhere to live, pride doesn't keep you warm and dry. Anyone who you could come to a mutual agreement with, in regard to somewhere to live? On the job front, I can recall some years back asking the local aged care facility if they had any jobs going. While becoming a kitchen hand wasn't my ideal job at the time, I was desperate for money. I'm actually still there, largely based on the fact my co-workers are amongst the greatest people I've ever met. While they've led me to develop in more ways that I can count, I love working along side of them. The job serves me in a number of ways throughout this period of my life. Btw, with the 'pride' factor, sometimes it's a sense of humility we're being challenged to develop. Some challenges can be humbling, where they're more about developing a soulful sense of self and life and less about ego.

[Messed-up]

Thank you therising,

The biggest things I need to work out is why I did the things I did and how do I prevent them from happening again.

If I somehow manage to keep my house and get my family back, how do I go about not sabotaging anything ever again? Like I know how I feel and what I want and that is to never do any of it ever again but as has been pointed out to me if I got put in a situation where someone other than my wife was flirting with me or something, even at this stage it is possible I would flirt back, not that I would want too but based on past bad behaviors that is what I have done and I do not want to do that or be that guy.

I want and need to be the guy that my daughter looks up to and thinks that she needs to marry someone like me, someone that is truthful, faithful, loyal and will never hurt her.

The main things I know I need to work on is to not seek attention outside of my relationship, not lying and not spending money I do not have. These are previously my 3 biggest downfalls. Attention seeking from the opposite sex, lying about cheating / money and spending money I do not have.

I want to put my words into actions which is why I am here, laying it all out to strangers, strangers in possibly the same or similar situations that can guide me or point me in the right direction. I have done a lot of self-thought and healing lately but I know it will not and is not enough to do it alone.

I had a very bad childhood. Not blaming my childhood for my behavior or my choices just thought it may help with some background.

My mum cheated on my dad with my soon to be stepfather and my dad killed himself on my 10th birthday. I overheard the argument that happened when my mum came home from being out with the girls (actually not) which led to my dad killing himself. You would honestly think knowing all this I would not choose to do what my mum did to anyone I care about, but I did, and I want and need to understand why I did this which will help me not do anything similar in the future.

My mind is 100% set on being a better version of me, but I know I cannot do it alone.

[Eagle Ray]

Hi Messed-up,

Just reading this last post of yours I immediately thought of a book by Mark Wolynn called “It Didn’t Start With You”. He is a therapist who has specialised in looking at intergenerational patterns that get passed down, especially people like yourself who find themselves doing things in the present that they often can’t explain. There are also several podcasts online with Mark Wolynn that may be of interest. His work has helped me a lot. He looks at epigenetics and how gene expression (not the genes themselves) can change through environmental circumstances. So certain gene expression can be switched on in response to certain childhood events, or even events that occurred in past generations that get transmitted down. This can have a tendency to drive particular behaviours. But those gene expressions can also be switched back. The first step is becoming conscious that we are even trapped in a pattern and you have reached that step.

As an example, my paternal grandfather fought in war as a soldier and was also a POW. He died before I was born and I knew nothing about his war experiences growing up. However, from when I was a small child I had this graphic imagery which I won’t describe the details of here, but it would haunt me most nights when trying to go to sleep. It made no sense for a small child to be experiencing this specific imagery and it continued into adulthood. Then as a young adult my dad told me about the violent incident of what my grandfather had to do. It’s the first time I’d heard this and over time I realised my brain was playing out this trauma incident in graphic detail, as if I was my grandfather reliving it. But not only that I found it was for my dad as well who had recurrent nightmares about it. Actual memories get encoded and passed down.

Sorry for the long story, but basically I ended up working on this with my psychologist who is the person who actually told me about Mark Wolynn’s book. We did a somatic exercise and language exercise working with this graphic memory. Finally in my late 40s this recurrent imagery has started losing its grip on me. So I think what happened for you, that memory of what occurred with your parents, is something that could be worked through so that it isn’t unconsciously driving patterns of behaviour in you now. It would have been incredibly traumatic for you and often what we do at the time of trauma is dissociate. Those memories then don’t get stored and filed like other memories do and can often be acted out unconsciously in various ways in the future.

It can’t be known at this stage if your marriage could at some point be salvaged, but the one thing you have control over is taking responsibility for working on yourself and becoming the person you want to be. That will be great for you and your kids. Have you sought any help from counselling or therapy? I just wonder if you had a good therapist to work with you could unravel your patterns of acting in ways that have been sabotaging for your relationship. Those patterns do seem tied in with your childhood experiences. It’s never too late to start addressing those things and moving forward in better, more positive ways.

All the best,

Eagle Ray

[therising]

Hi Messed-up

That's so heartbreaking and so traumatic, what you faced as a kid (something no child should have to face). I think when we can identify certain events that have impacted us in certain ways in life, it's not about making excuses, it's about finding possible reasons for why we perhaps think, act and feel in the ways that we do. While our thoughts, behaviours and feelings may seem completely unrelated, we can be surprised to find out a lot of the ways in which such events do actually relate in some way to our current nature.

Not sure it will be of any help to know but I hit on the revelation not too long ago that if I don't strategically manage my sense of wonder and my imagination, things can go way off course. You wouldn't think a sense of wonder and a sense of imagination wouldn't be all that big a deal but it can be surprising where such things can lead us. To offer a couple of examples, when it comes to where a sense of wonder and imagination can lead a person...

• Someone could basically wonder what it would be like to be with someone other than their partner. Next level wonder could involve them wondering about going to a bar and having a bit of a flirtatious chat with a stranger, so they satisfy their sense of wonder by going to a bar. And then next level could involve wondering what it would feel like to kiss them, so they satisfy their sense of wonder and find out. On and on it goes, from next level to next level and next
• Imagination can be the same. Someone could imagine what it would be like to drive a particular car. Simply imagining isn't satisfying enough so they go to a local dealership and go for a test drive in the car of their dreams. They drive it and have never felt such a high. They imagine getting that high every single day. The thought itself creates hits of dopamine. For weeks they imagine what it would feel like. Their imagination gets the better of them. As the thrill seeker in them comes to life full force and the financial manager in them that dictates 'You can't afford this!' is drowned out, they've gotten themself into an incredibly stressful debt. As the bills come in and the choice is between keeping the electricity, water and gas on or keeping the car, the whole situation becomes stressful, depressing and overwhelming

Sometimes the question can be 'How do or can I manage my sense of wonder and my imagination?'. They can be incredibly powerful things at times.

[tranzcrybe]

We naturally inherit our parents' nature, whether it be genetically passed down (perhaps relating to Eagle Ray's experience) or simply by the innate observations that children make of the world as seen through their parents' eyes.
If we are lucky, such traits are moderated through personal growth among peers and mentors; but even that is no assurance we will not eventually turn into our parents regardless. Who among us hasn't said or done something that has set us back on our heels as a result of hearing our parents words echo through us in horror? Usually when frustrated, rattled, and losing sight of our emotional centre, I think we all possess such a fallback in channeling our parents - perhaps under duress we become 'needy children' summoning familiarity and some overview of things we can't reconcile.

Your divorce while remaining cohabitants creates instability in your relationship - you are at the same time 'in' and 'out' which doesn't provide much of a foundation for being there for each other. A clear delineation needs to be made from which to repair or find a new path, and neither seems feasible under your present aspirations. Also, you may be making such determinations out of fear which, even if successful, may fall by the wayside once such fears have abated.

I doubt your (ex) wife can or will make you a 'better person' and it sounds like she has a greater grasp of the limit reached, but you have a strong desire to understand yourself and chart your future which may or may not resolve many years of neglect.

Learning to believe in yourself and remodeling preconceived notions might be the first step toward presenting a more accepting nature from which others will observe with interest and high regard in time to come.

I hope you find clarity in your endeavours for self determination which can lead you in surprising new directions hitherto unimagined (with a nod to therising).