My partner of 5 years and the father of my two kids has been locked in jail for selling drugs. This has completely rocked me and shattered my whole world. We have always had cheating issues and just before he got arrested I was once again trying to recover from his cheating. Now he is in jail for at least 3 months until he goes before a judge and my sons who are 4 and 8 months will miss out on their dad who has always been in their lives since day one. I dont know what to do and how I will cope with the two children by myself. They have special needs. Has anyone been through this and have some advice to offer? Feel like my whole world is coming down around me.
7 Replies
I'm a single mum to a child with severe disabilities.
Now is the time to get yourself some help. Speak to your GP, tell them you need someone to talk to and you don't know how you will cope. They can refer you to services.
What I can tell you, is you'll be surprised at how easily you cope once you get yourself in to a routine. You'll be surprised how well you will cope without emotional drama and an unrealisable partner making life harder than it needs to be. Sure it will be an adjustment.
Now is your chance to build your best possible, emotionally healthy life. Because I bet when you look really hard at your life, a cheating, drug dealing lifestyle of your partners is making things way harder and unhealthier than they need to be.
If it was me i qould read what i wrote. Then i would think, fuck this is how low my life is with him. Cheating, drugs, jail. Then I would say good bye and move on. Isnt that enough? Dont let him back. Its not good for you and for your kids.
And don't feel bad thinking he's lonely in jail, tell him to get his chick on the side to visit him
Ask yourself - is this man really the person you want your children to be around? You're already in a toxic enough relationship and your kids are growing up in an environment which is not going to be pleasant - him cheating, you feeling like crap and so on. If you've ALWAYS had cheating issues why do you keep going back? Surely he isn't that great and he obviously has no respect or care for you if he continues to do it. He's walking all over you. And to top it off, he is selling drugs. What if something went bad and the wrong kind of people got involved, came knocking at your door mid-session wanting a pick me up and you and your kids were at risk? You need to be smart about this and seriously think about your choices of staying with him.
Use these 3 months to find a safe place for you and your children, apply to received government benefits to help you get by, get the support you need and move the fuck on (sorry but I have to say it as brutally as possible!).
You know what darl, Raising kids on your own is hard but you know what's harder? Raising kids with a partner who has such little respect for you that he cheats on you numerous times. A partner that has such little regard for his family that he's gone and landed himself in prison for a serious crime. If experience has taught me anything it's that men like this don't change, your life will be a series of disrespect, infidelity and prison sentences if you stay with him. I'm sorry to be blunt but that's most likely the reality.
You and your kids deserve 50 times better hun Xx
Rocked you because you didn't know he was a drug dealer?
Why the fuck would you keep taking back a cheater? He is neither a good husband nor a good father.
We all cope somehow. Plenty of single mums of special needs kids doing it. You put supports in place. You arrange respite, with formal and/informal supports. You get counseling. You have good routines in place. You budget and you plan. You focus on you and your kids, you don't get caught in his drama, and you live a good life as a strong independent confident woman!
I'm a single mom with a highly hypocritical baby daddy. I so my advice is find someone who is going through the same thing as you and ask them to be part of your support system, now in my eyes and mind the perfect way for me would be having these characteristics all in one person(social anxiety and bipolar, depression and trauma make it harder for me to ask for help and have alot of people around,trust issues with ex friends and even family, but enough of that back to what I was saying.) You want to look for these things while finding someone or someone's to help by being your support person/group:
1. You want someone/s that is always going to give you the truth, even if it is going to hurt for a little bit (emotionally), cause anger, or any emotion good or bad. Once you start lying you either cant stop or rat your self out. So number one is you want a person or people that are going to tell you truthfully what you need to or want to know and always keep it real.
2 . You want someone who is going to build you up and not drag you to the deepest fathom of the earth core and leave you there to rot. Being only negative is not a good thing, its also not good to be only positive you need to find balance and peace with yourself otherwise you will stay exactly where you are or were.
3. You want someone who loves you, cares about you, and will be on your side. You also need to make sure that if they give you advice or someone else and then turn around and do whatever it was that they were advising against or do the opposite and say it is lame or makes you a loser to do that. Then stay the h*** away like 100 miles away because they are the most toxic narcissistic people ever. Let me know if you need to talk