I’ve been kind of all over the place as this is happening and I think maybe some outside perspective would be worth it. The situation is a little weird and requires a lot of background information, I’m sorry.
My ex G and I met during out first year at uni and we started dating about a year after, when we were 20-ish. We became very close very quickly. We both came from abusive homes (T more so than I) and we were each other’s family. G had been effectively on his own since he was 16 and cut contact “formally” right before he started university. My family and I were still ‘speaking’ technically, but I was an ocean away from my abusers in a country I’d never lived before. We became family. G started therapy right before we became friends, and I started a little while after we started dating. We really grew together and learned conflict resolution and communication together. We wanted to turn a new leaf and never repeat the cycles and patterns we’d learned from home, and we did turn a new leaf.
After university we moved to a city that was top of the line for our industries and we had it really, really good. Financially and emotionally we were doing great. I had known I didn’t want kids all my life, and at first G said he didn’t know, and then he said he’d thought about it and didn’t want kids either.
Until he did. After over 10 years, at 33, he wanted kids. So we broke up. It hurt, sometimes it still hurts, but it was an amicable end. It was a fundamental incompatibility and it happens. A relationship isn’t a waste because it didn’t work out. Getting to know and spending time with a good person is never a waste of time. But fuck it, did it hurt. We shared most of our friends, worked in the same industry (different companies though) and had a really entangled life, especially considering neither of us were in contact with our families anymore. It was the hardest year of my life. G occupied – literally and metaphorically – the ‘family’ status in my life, and vice versa. We were each other’s emergency contacts, and we weren’t really in a position to switch that up. I knew all his medical history and stuff like that. It wasn’t a simple cut-and-break break up; as far as I’m concerned, it was more like an amicable divorce. It was like co-parenting without a kid. We couldn’t completely let go because we’d always been linked up, financially and legally, not just emotionally. We were never officially married but we were in a civil partnership, which in our country meant our contract was effectively a marriage contract re: finances, medical consent, taxes, etc. We were also linked because of his grandmother, who took me in like family and with whom I’m very close and help take care of. (long story short, G had never met his grandmother because of his abusive parents. She found him and reached out to him a couple of years after we graduated, and it turns out she’s a wonderful person. She’s the only family G has left biologically, and after she met me she took me in also. I care for her deeply).
After we broke up, G got married to A, whom he’d known for about a year. From what I can work out from the timeline, G and A knew each other for about a year (they met shortly after G and I broke up), got married, and during the honeymoon A got pregnant.
I’ve met A, and she’s a wonderful person and a good mother. She’s hardworking and intelligent. Their kid is great; really smart and really funny, he starts primary school this August and he’s gonna rock it. Like I said, we have mutual friends and we never completely ‘cut’ each other out or anything like that. I see G maybe once a month, more if there’s a formal industry event. We see each other for BBQ’s his grandmother likes to set up a couple of times a year.
About a month ago, G called me to tell me he and A were divorcing. He wanted me to hear it from him, and not from his grandmother or mutual friends. I’ve since spoken to him and A personally (and independently) and from what I’ve been told their divorce is amicable and a co-parenting/custody agreement has been set up and it’s all good.
Last week, G called me and asked me to meet over coffee. I don’t want to put the entire conversation here, but the crux of it was that he still loved me. He didn’t divorce A because he expected to get together with me, and he didn’t want to pressure me or assume I was still ‘available’ or willing to be with him. But he still loved me, and as much as he loves his child and doesn’t regret being a father, he regrets having walked away from me.
I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t know what to say. I’m still not done processing.
I never stopped loving him, but taking back a man who left me for children 5 years ago it seems. I don’t know. I don’t know if it means I don’t have self respect or. I just don’t know. And the relationship will never be what it was, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be good. I don’t know.
Mutual friends are split down the middle. One half is saying I shouldn’t take him back. The other half are saying it’s ‘soul mate’ levels of circumstance. The few friends I’ve made that don’t know G or didn’t know us as a couple don’t really know what to say. I don’t blame them. I don’t know what to say either.
Part of me is relieved. Part of me is angry, furious. Part of me is just tired. I'm thinking of calling my old therapist and setting up an appointment, but I don't know if this is worth it.
I just don’t know. I know Reddit probably can’t really give me better insights than friends or I myself could, but I’m looking for anything, any advice or perspective any of you have to offer. I’m just lost and not done processing. Thank you for reading.
Tl;dr My ex and I were together for over a decade, and he left me about five years ago because of incompatibilities re: children. He wants to try again now that he's divorced the mother of his child.
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