how do you all cope with ruminating

[gtrhr]

I like to write.  Sometimes just because the truth of some events matters a lot to me, especially in regards to being told things in the past like "I didn't step up and take charge" and do things for her.  And then her new friend is nice and he did certain things without having to be asked.  And then I find myself looking back saying, wait a second, that isn't true, when I did step up it wasn't appreciated.  I wasn't idealized at the time and I was treated as an incompetent whether it was something I had been doing all my life or not.

The whole concept of validation was foreign to me a few years ago.  I had a stable family life and no shield for these kinds of attacks against my capability or character.  I was an excellent student and went to college.

Who took her to buy rose bushes and planted them myself?  They look gorgeous now.  There are times, especially in the kitchen where I would be doing something and she would quite literally come and shove me aside to make way for the expert - her!  For example carving a turkey with her dull knife.  That incident just made me laugh at her, as she spent about a minute carving and realized I was having a better time of it than she was.  So she handed it back to me and walked away quietly.  It wasn't reality unless she experienced it herself.

There was an incident last summer where she just came in a tried to force me away from the stove and grabbed a pot of a boiling hot dish.  She just crossed all my boundaries and said I was overcooking it when she had not even been in the room to see how long I had been cooking.  It was dangerous and over the top and I really called her out in front of her friends.  Oh she stormed off and went walking and would not talk to me.  I finally told her that we either needed to go home from the beach or she needed to start talking.  I had to enlist her girlfriends to intervene.  I told her I'm not going to sit around feeling miserable while she tries to save face in front of her friends and acts like she's having a great time with everyone else, except for me.

I think it really cuts to the core how unappreciated I was and yet how I continued to try and be there especially for her and her kids, while I was being treated more like a nanny, chauffeur and general man-servant.

You know even now as I am trying no contact I want some logical resolution and closure.  To me the only justice would be her accepting it and giving me the relationship I was giving her at the time.

It's hard to look at it and say she has a mental problem, and shows out like a 3 year old having a temper tantrum, and was using me.  This is an adult I was dealing with.  Why didn't she act like one?

I used to send her these emails and tons of texts.  Eventually I got a handle on it and stopped and I don't feel any better. That never made her change or do anything about it.  That's what couples counseling did for us, stifled my responses and asking for what I needed.  Some of our counselors frankly were idiots and could not conceive that this sweet charming woman sitting in front of them could be responsible for years of abuse that lead to me sounding like an over-stressed wacko as she denies and denies and denies.

Two days prior to the incident that ended it for us, we were having a heart to heart.  And she said I don't mind talking to you like this when "you are calm."  I told her I always start out calm until I start getting shouted down and my words get manipulated and intentionally misunderstood.

Anyhow, better to sound off here than with her.

I definitely had some self esteem issues to work out and her attacking me or saying I wasn't take charge really undercut me.  There was so much manipulation by her like this.

Obviously I wanted her to love me for who I am as I felt about her.  Unfortunately the goal posts were constantly moving and the standard always changing.  One minute I'm awesome the next I suck.

[Promises]

I haven't coped.  It's constant for me and I hate it.  I'm asking my counseler for help with it tomorrow.  I feel ya.