At some point, the time comes when your ex-partner has a new love. If he’s fair, he’ll try to break it to you himself as soon and as gently as possible. If he’s mean, he’ll be right outside the door with the new wife the next time you have the kids, or you’ll be able to see her sitting in the car from the kitchen window. And if he doesn’t think at all, your children will tell you after a weekend of contact that their dad has a new love.

There are better moments in life when you are a single parent yourself!

If your breakup is recent, you may be wondering how he got a girlfriend so quickly. How can that be? Was she perhaps already there when you were still a family together?

Or you might ask yourself: What woman gets involved with a man who is recently separated and has two young children? Their red lights would have to go on, because – what mother with small children leaves her husband “just like that”?

Ha – pretty naive, don’t you think? Welcome to the club. I thought so myself when I was squatting in my new home with my one-year-old and couldn’t believe that there were women who weren’t alarmed by this circumstance.

Today I know: we all have no idea what old wives’ tales our ex-husbands tell their new girlfriends to put themselves in the best light and portray themselves as poor victims.

But that’s their problem, not yours or mine.

Of course, it’s not nice when you’re not yet on the same page with your new daily life as a single parent and your ex is apparently on the fast track: “Look, how great my life is!”

And clearly, he can increase his chances of finding a new love more easily than you can if you live the residential model and the kids live with you during the week. Spontaneously going to an after-work party is simply not possible – you already have a hard time with the conferences that are scheduled by the boss after 4 pm.

Let’s summarize: he found a new love faster than you, because he has more options per se. Nevertheless, take a deeper look at your feelings – what particularly gets under your skin?

Fear of not being able to find a new love of your own

Even if you have actively broken up, it may be that your self-esteem has been pushed to the lowest basement during the partnership. Your main task in the coming weeks and months will be to work on your self-esteem and build it up again.

By the way, you can read the state of your efforts in this regard wonderfully from your beliefs.

Popular beliefs in this context, especially if you are over 40:

• I’m too old!
• I am obviously not worth being loved!
• Who wants a middle-aged woman with x number of children?

Such fixed beliefs are extremely annoying and hard to get rid of. I firmly believe that once you start moving forward, you will find your dream partner when the time is right.

This topic alone is worth a separate blog article and would blow this one out of proportion. I just want to mention it here because it’s part of the emotional potpourri when your ex finds a new love faster than you do.

Now let us focus on a particularly painful feeling:

Jealousy of the new love.

After all, if you’ve only recently moved out, there’s a good chance you’re experiencing feelings of jealousy. You may still be hanging on, full of grief, to your shared dreams of family and the house you shared.

If you had to move out of the house you shared, the situation weighs twice as heavily. You may already see the new one coming and going in your (!) bedroom, which you had decorated with so much love. Not to mention other fantasies that you become aware of in this context.

Stop it immediately! This is sentimental muckraking. Better:

Make a list right now of the 50 things why you’re glad you don’t have to be with the man anymore.

You’ll feel better right away. Promise.

Yes, collecting 50 reasons is a lot – but it forces you to really fathom your thoughts, too. Collecting the first 10-20 reasons is still very easy – these are the things that run through your head every day anyway. But if you drill deeper, you will make interesting discoveries.

So – we understand each other! – 50 and not a point less.

You are afraid of losing the children to your Ex.

Or maybe there’s a whole other movie going on with you: “Can he take the kids away from me?” After all, he stayed in the big house, and the new girl is still relatively young (of course!) with the appropriate potential to start a family 2.0.

You know he knows that’s your biggest concern. The scamp may even drop a hint or two that he will start a family with the new love and your children will always be welcome there. Simply because he enjoys the fact that you are afraid.

Be reassured: he can’t do that so easily. You would have to be heavily addicted to alcohol or drugs, and your life would have to be a pile of garbage for him to be heard in court.

If you still have the feeling that he could succeed with perfidious means, then it’s best to start making notes. Every day, write down very briefly how your children are doing and how you are doing, and if necessary also note down any actions and reactions of your ex.

Hopefully, you will never need the booklet in court, but it is tremendously reassuring.

You are afraid that your children might love the new one more than they love you.

Don’t worry, that won’t happen. Never ever.

But just between us prayer sisters: Isn’t it basically very reassuring if the father’s new love is nice to the kids and they like her? Wouldn’t that make it much easier for you and everyone involved to hand over the children?

Much more interesting for me is: Why do you think that they could love the new one more than you? Don’t you trust the love between you and your children? Do you think yourself unlovable when viewed through the eyes of your children?

What would your children say if you asked them directly? I’m going to bet on:

You are the best mommy in the whole, wide world! I love you to the end of the universe and back!

And they would hug you so hard it would hurt! No matter what you did wrong again. Whether you scolded yesterday because your nerves were on edge. Or whether you nagged again, even though you had firmly resolved not to.

Children don’t need – and want! – perfect mommies.

So don’t stress about it.

Take the time to chase that feeling. If you’re getting jealous of the relationship between your kids and the new girl, you should still look at yourself first. Do you love yourself enough? What can you do to give your self-esteem a boost? What specifically would strengthen you to feel more self-love?

For example:

• A new job task with which you can have interesting new experiences.
• Building something on the side to earn more money with (e.g. on child-free weekends).
• Pursue a beloved hobby more intensively.

The bottom line is that it is also positive when your children meet people who are good to them, who are kind to them (or at least try to be) and who teach them other things that you can’t do yourself.

Be it coaches, teachers, neighbors – or just the new woman in their father’s life.

Conclusion

The information that the Ex has a new wife again is already overwhelming news, which sets off a whole avalanche of emotions.

However, you decide what it does to you.

Even if you are still full of frustration and aggression about your ex: with highly emotional reactions on your part, you are feeding negative energy into the cycle.

And that has to stop. Now.

I would like to invite you to visualize the image of my queen, which you may already know from my child handover exercises, before encounters with the woman:

You are that queen! You are as sovereign as possible and as distant as necessary. You keep your head up, keep your composure and of course the rules of etiquette!

The other woman can also be completely overwhelmed with the situation, so you should allow her to react in a wrong way from time to time. Everyone has a right to be allowed to make mistakes. So do you and so do I.

You also never know what your Ex told her about you. We should always keep that in mind, too.

I mean: Your ex’s new love can catapult you forward enormously in your further development.

Take the chance!