Home › Forums › How To Get My Ex Back › Advice for getting back ex when you have a child together
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Jen.
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Jen
Hi, I’m just looking for some advice on how to get my ex back. We were together for 10 years and have a 4 year old together.
He broke up with me just under a month a go now.
Main reasons we’re that we weren’t making each other happy anymore, we’d lost the spark, he’s stressed with work and needs a break from something and to not feel guilty for working all the hours he does (he’s been the owner of his own pub for 2years now) and me being on my own all the time. I told him about 2 months ago I was starting to get lonely in the nights on my own all the time. Part of me wishes I didn’t say that to him as this wasn’t the outcome I would have expected or wanted, I just wanted him to be home a little bit more (selfishly) and this was a big player in his decision.I did the usual you do when someone breaks up with you as I honestly thought that if we just got the chance to spend some time together alone, out of the house, we would start to get back on track.
I think he’s going through a kind of quarter life crisis (he’s 35) as the past few months a lot of people we know or family have had health problems or are seriously ill and he even said to me that he’s half way through his life and that it’s shown him that life is so fickle and short.
He told me that he loves me and cares for me but that he needs/ has to do this. I asked him if we could do it as a break so he could clear his head and then start fresh but he said he didn’t want to give me the false hope that it would all be ok as he couldn’t put a time line as how long that would be (which I understand) and then have to watch me break again.
We were about to move to a new house closer to his business so that he could be home a bit more and save us money as he doesn’t drive. He is still going as it’s practical for when he has our daughter and he even said if things worked out we would still want it.Anyway sorry for rambling on.
Basically I’ve been doing limited contact with him, only messaging about our daughter or something about the house for 2 weeks now.When we see eachother we are friendly and laugh at times but he avoids talking about the new house and sorting things like taking his name off the current lease ect but he is moving to the new house this week, he just keeps saying we will deal with it when we need to.
I’ve been doing some mediation lately and it’s helped me massively!! I’ve realised that I wasn’t happy with in myself and I was definitely showing it, so it made it look like that I wasn’t happy with him, which I was.
I let myself slip alot!! I hardly went out with friends or had a life away from his and our daughters because I felt like I couldn’t for some reason.
He kept telling me if I wanted to go out with me friends to tell him and he’d sort a night off but I never did.
Part of me feels like as if I didn’t show him how much I appreciated what he was doing for us, he made me a stay at home mum and I worked in the pub cleaning, but even then I didn’t really see anyone.I’ve got myself a little part time job now and I’ve joined a fitness class to get me to where I want to be!! It’s the start and I know I’ve got a long way to go to get me back!!
I’m just wondering if anyone has been in this situation and things have worked out.
Is limited contact the right way to go?I can’t seem to find very much advice about doing limited contact and what to do after that with a child involved.
Thank you for reading, I know I wrote alot 🤦🏻♀️
Maddie
This sounds like a very difficult time, especially since you miss him and have a child together. However, it is very telling that you tried to discuss your issues with him, and his response was to come back having made the decision for you both to just separate instead of looking for solutions (such as going to couples therapy together). You can’t force someone to put in effort to fix a relationship who doesn’t want to do it.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you’d done anything wrong to lead to this outcome anyway, people sometimes just grow apart over time instead of together. It also sounds like you were getting lost, and neither of you were prioritizing you! He “made” you a stay at home mom — was that something you wanted? “I hardly went out with friends or had a life away from his and our daughters because I felt like I couldn’t for some reason.” Did you feel like you couldn’t because you were looking for the kind of relationship where the man is fulfilling your needs and spending lots of time with you, or did you feel you couldn’t because it was difficult to communicate with him? Would he tell you things doing things were okay with him but then not act like they actually were? Or did you think that by ignoring your own needs and “sacrificing” for him (whether or not he asked you to) that it would make him more likely to pay attention to you?
It sounds like low contact co-parenting and focusing on yourself is absolutely the best thing for you right now. You’re right that you need to find you again, and take the focus off him. Figure out why you were staying in a situation that wasn’t really happy for you once he began prioritizing work over everything. Build up your self-esteem, live life for yourself (and your child) for a little while, then check back in with yourself about how you’re feeling about him and if you even still want him back. Maybe you weren’t actually that happy. If you still do want him back later, and he sees changes in you and your confidence and you two can communicate better, you may be able to reconnect. But I’m very skeptical since it sounds like you’re taking on too much of the blame when he’s got some issues communicating openly and honestly, and you don’t share the same priorities in how you want to live your lives.
Most importantly, hang in there and be kind to yourself! Focus on you first, then you’ll be in a better place to figure things out with him after a little distance and perspective.
Jen
Hi Maddie, thank you for replying!!
I stayed because I loved him and I was happy with him but yeh deep down I did feel like I had changed for some reason.
We both discussed me being a stay at home mum and I was sceptical at first as I’ve worked all my life and obviously then we would have been relying on the one income.
I loved it the first year but then when he started to having to work more, I think that’s when I started to not enjoy it enough and our daughter was getting to the age where she’d be having tantrums all the time ect and so I would be dealing with that everyday on my own. I’ve realised that being a stay at home mum is alot harder than it looks and it isn’t for me!!My ex doesn’t deal with stress very well at all and he goes down very quickly so with all the stress from the pub and then me telling him that I was lonely he automatically took it that he wasn’t making me happy anymore which wasn’t the case.
He knew that he would have to work more hours again especially when the weather starts to get better as the pub would be busier obviously, he also said that he had seen this happen so many times in the pub trade and with his friends/parents relationships, where things start to go south and they end up fighting more and resenting and hating each other and so he didn’t want us to get to that point because he wants us to be in each others lives and have a good relationship. I told him he can’t compare our relationship to others but once he thinks something is going to happen it’s hard to change his perspective about it and he didn’t talk to anyone when making this decision. One of his close friends they nearly broke up a year ago but they tried because they had kids together, ultimately they broke up because it didn’t work out and he’s fixated on that thinking that even if we did try ours would go that way aswel, but no one knows!!I haven’t told him about how I feel now and I’m not sure if I should, part of me wants to so that I can show him that I’m dealing with it and also because part me kind of thinks that he will just turn around and think well I definitely made the right decision then and then not even think again about us, which I don’t want.
I told him that I’m not giving up on us, we’ve been together for too long and things were good before he got his business so I know that they can back that way. I didn’t even suggest couples therapy.
He did say that he’d think again but obviously saying it and doing it is completely different.
I think that moving to the bigger house may have an affect on him, but I do also think that he does need that little break because he never got anytime to himself let alone us.I didn’t find it difficult to communicate with him no, I guess it was kind of like a mum guilt, I was a stay at home mum so that’s what I had to be kind of thing and I don’t know why I thought like that.
I think that maybe I was a bit too co-dependent on him when I shouldn’t have been and I’ve realised that now.I am still hopeful that we can work this out and that if he sees the changes that I’m making for myself and that I can be independent again that we can discuss things.
I’m just really torn as to whether to tell him that I’m making the changes and that I realised that I wasn’t happy with my myself not himJen
He was also still very affectionate to me and loving, he didn’t pull away from me emotionally or physically before this happened and I even asked him about that because you would if you were planning to leave someone but he said he didn’t because he still had those feelings towards me and that he didn’t hate me when we were together.
I also asked him why he didn’t do it the following day when we would have been on our own as we were supposed to be going out to spend some time together but he said if he had left it that day he wouldn’t have done it -
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