Obsessed With Ex Boyfriend

Karolyn wrote:

I'm writing in hopes that you can either advise me on the best way to get my boyfriend of 8½ years back (we also have a seven year old girl together) or help me come to terms with this rather "involved break up"

And don't laugh but this is really an outrageous situation, but please believe me I really do NOT belong on the "Jerry Springer show".

Here's some history for starters:

I've known Jim since I was about 15 years old ( couldn't stand him at all then) he was friends with my former and now deceased husband and as a result we wound up interacting quite a bit about 10 years ago. Well I was on the verge of divorce from my then husband and ended up in a relationship with Jim that prompted me to follow through with the divorce I'd contemplated for some time.

However Jim too was currently married but he persued me anyway and I submitted. For a while I was content but not long into the relationship he began going back to see his wife (and did more than see her). Then about 10 months into the this relationship I became pregnant and still he was back and forth (stupidly I tolerated it in hopes that he would finally just stay with me after the baby came, but alas that was far from the way it turned out).

Now the wife came up pregnant and Jim has a son six months younger than our daughter. The wife died 18 months later in a car accident. The boy now refers to me as mom. Right after her death Jim's focus was on the poor little boy with no mommy but in the process our daughter essentialy lost her father and this has been a point of contention since, resulting in numerous disagreements between the two of us. Nonetheless I love Jim and want to be with him.

Then about five years ago I entered a treatment facility for help with my drinking which was my foolish way of dealing with the unsettling circumstances of my life. Upon my completion of the program I thought I'd be coming home to Jim but a week prior to my release I came home to visit only to have the two little ones inform me that another woman had spent the night with Jim the night before and had barely slipped out before I arrived.

Then the true roller coaster ride began. I was devastated. But I was not going to let go so easy. I tried everything and anything I could think of from sweet and loving to hateful and demanding to get Jim's attention and this continued for about 2½ years. He would come to my home (I did not move into the home we had shared previously ) and spend the night about once a week but it was rare that he would actually arrive prior to 10 or 11 pm and would leave right away in the mornings, spending very litlle time with our daughter who thought her daddy "hung the moon". This was truly heartbreaking but still I wanted Jim and continued the chase.

I would stay up til all hours of the night waiting and hoping he would show up, but I didnt see him much and it didnt seem to matter to him that my heart was breaking and so was his daughters. He spent all of his free time with people such as that woman who had been in my bed (although he denies any further sexual relations with her (which I do not believe) and her sister who was equally "slutty". Both of them knew how badly I wanted my man and for them to stay away but I was really the "butt of the joke" amongst their little "clique" and they couldn't care less about my feelings.

Yet still I was trying desperatley to win Jim over and finally after much pain and humiliation and hearing that I was "toast" I gave up. The last straw was last fathers day when I took my daughter and we went to his work to bring him dinner and a card only to find his car locked up , shop closed, and him down the road at the other woman's house! He would not come out to talk to us but rather sent the friend of the "slut" out to "run me off" with our very dissapointed little girl in the back seat of my car crying for her daddy.

That was it! ... I thought.

A short while later I gave into the "come ons" from a co worker and we were very involved and Jim was now the one begging, crying and doing the chasing. But I would not return to him. Then three months later my new "love" whom our daughter had grown very fond of left and come to find out was doing so because he wanted to "return to his wife" Again I was crushed and this was painful for my daughter too.

Now its been about 9 months since then and up until a couple of months ago Jim was still trying to win me back. Then one day Jim informed me that it had been 6 months and that was his deadline. Now he would no longer love me. "Whatever" I thought and although he gave notice to me about a week later that he had finally "gotten layed" he was still persuing me on and off, but I wasn't "biting" then he seemed to stop for a time and resumed a few weeks ago, this time I gave in and he was in my bed.

Needless to say all of the old feelings werent gone, they were just burried under a heap of denial and now they were resurfacing with a vengience! And now it is I who wants Jim back but as it turns out the person who he "finally got layed" by and he is still very involved with has just about taken him completely out of my reach but I keep trying (foolish as I know it to be) is his first cousin. I am not only hurt by the lack of devotion to me and his daughter but I am "sickened" by this abomination that he says is "love" between his first cousin and him. And still he was coming into my bed with in the last few weeks and up until this week I was not showing any desire to re-unite with him but suddenly I'm overwhelmed with the need to have him back but he is claiming to need to "watch" me to see if any of the negative traits I tended to display toward him (which is my persuing of him in the past) have gone away, and for me to "clean up the wreckage" that I caused before he'll work on rebuilding "US" with me.

Also he feels that it would be "rude" to just stop the relationship with his cousin, so I'm to clean up the wreckage while he's sleeping with his cousin under his moms roof no less but rest assured that he too would like us to work out yet all the while he is admitting that he is in love with "cousin sluttly"

This is the worst dang trip I've ever been on and oh what I wouldnt give to be able to walk away from it and still be able to function. Its gotten so crazy but I do still love him and for reasons that I cant explain I still want him.

Just the thought of him with her is killing me, and now I've been told that his little boy has started calling her "mom" and it making me crazy and my heart aches and the depression at times can be so overwhelming that I can barely function from day to day.

What is the matter with me that I would have had such experiences with this man and still want him? I'm confused and dont know actually how to deal with this. I dont want to be so disrespected and neglected not to mention cheated on again but with out him I'm miserable. Please help me!

Either send in the surgeons to perform a lobotomy on me or help me find a way to win him back because I can't live while I'm feeling like this. And our daughter wants her daddy too but all the neglect he issues me is also handed out to my little girl as well.

anxiously awaiting your guidence,

Dear Karolyn

Thanks for all the details - but it all says the same thing, doesn't it ... this man is a scumbag who is using you. He has no respect for you, he is happy to tirture his kids rather than make an effort.

You say you are in love him, which is, of course, rubbish. You are obsessed with him, in love with an image which probably never existed.

If you were a single woman, I'd say you have a choice - carry on playing his games until a miserable old age, or leave him behind.

But you are not a single woman, you have responsibilities. Even if you want to live as a door mat, you have no right to force that on your children. Why should they suffer for your dreams?