I was married for 20 years to a man who I loved. We have two daughters, now aged 8 and 13. One day, he told me he “needed to breathe” and was moving out the next day. Three days later, we told our daughters we were separating. We supported them as much as possible, but they were both devastated. A week later, he was arranging a holiday with a new girlfriend. I am not a fool and understand that this person had been around for some time. I was deeply hurt, but life goes on, and I tried to keep things as normal as possible for the girls.
Having given him time to settle into a new apartment, we started sharing custody. Two weeks after that, they were introduced to his new girlfriend and her two kids. They now spend all “his” weekends together doing things together. But my youngest has started having “belly aches” that have no physiological explanation. The doctor says she is under emotional stress and the inclusion in a new “happy family” is really hard. When I addressed this issue my ex-husband accused me of inventing illnesses to make him feel bad. I am not trying to hurt him, I am just concerned about my daughter’s emotional balance. They surely needed time to “grieve” the loss of their family unit. Am I silly to think that two and a half months is not long enough for my daughters to get used to all these changes? Am I being old-fashioned?
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