I really thought that this year's Valentine's Day was going to be awesome for me.  I had been away for work (and away from my partner) for a month and a half, so I was literally 'getting back home' the night before Valentine's Day, so I figured we had time to miss each other and there would be 0 drama.  It's also our first Valentine's Day since SD moved out and should have had nothing to do with me or him.  How wrong I was.

Do you know that scene in "Love Actually" where the wife excitedly opens her Christmas present because she thinks her husband bought her beautiful jewelry, but then she opens it and it's a CD and she realizes that the beautiful jewelry was for someone else?  She tries to keep a smile on her face and be appreciative in front of him and their children, but goes into her bedroom to cry before coming back out with a smile.  That scene has always made me bawl my eyes out and now I relate to that, but with my partner and his 20yo daughter.  Last Christmas and New Year's hurt me very deeply and I still haven't recovered from them.  Now so did this Valentine's Day.

My partner is struggling financially right now (because he paid for his daughter's school and books, all the furniture for her and her friend's new apartment, including hundreds of dollars on big, flat screen TVs that they had to have, he pays their internet and cable, he pays for everything for SD's car that she keeps wrecking, he buys their groceries and takes them out to eat, and now he owes a bunch of money on his taxes).  He told me he's very depressed from it, but still doesn't tell SD no to anything, and he asked if I was okay not getting flowers delivered from the florist this year.  I, of course, said that I wanted him and not presents, and I meant it.  He got me a bouquet of kind of dried out, smushed roses from the grocery store that I still loved and a little metalwork sign that I also loved.

We got into a really weird 'discussion' because he out of the blue started telling me that he has a hard time believing that his daughter is such a monster, because he doesn't want to believe it.  On Valentine's Day.  Basically dragged up all of the awful stuff she's done to me and wanted to talk to me about how maybe some of it "wasn't actually her" (he has actually told me on a couple occassions that perhaps someone FRAMED her - WHY would anyone frame her to make it look like she did evil things to me? honestly) and it hurts him to think he created such a monster (well, you did, and I begged you to do something different for years, and you didn't).  He brought all this up while driving me to an appointment and I was a shaky mess.  When we got home, it continued.  Him telling me that he can't talk to me about his kids and they're, next to me, the most precious things in his life.  Me telling him that he can't talk to me like his kids are normal when I know that they aren't and his daughter has been abusive and sick towards me.  He wants me to pretend that his kids are okay when he talks to me, is the real issue, and I get upset and remind him that SD tried to poison me, went through my stuff and stole from me, pretended to be another woman online who was sleeping with him, taunted me about being sex trafficked as a child and destroyed my social media presence - and he does not want to hear ANY of that about the little princess.  I told him if he looked at her social media, he would realize that she's badly on drugs and drunk constantly and is probably too high to know what she's doing half of the time and that she has a different guy in her bed every other week and he just keeps paying all their bills.  He told me that I'd better not check her social media and it was just upsetting me and that I'm "stalking his daughter" every time I look at her Instagram (but it's cool that she hashtagged # incestisbest all over mine and said that I loved my rapists because they're the only men who ever actually wanted me).  He actually had the nerve to tell me that his daughter might not have been the one who did the social media stuff to me and "maybe it's someone else who hates you, who looked at my daughter's profile to copy her typos and way of speaking to frame her."  I literally get along with everyone in my life and mostly keep to myself.  Who does he think hates me and also knows the drama with his daughter to do this??  Anyhow.  I digress.

He made a point to tell me not to check her social media at least twice more that day, which is why I did check it that night.  And there it was.  He sent his daughter a beautiful, huge, extravagant bouquet of flowers from my favorite florist, and she posted pictures of it and the love note that he included for her (tells her he loves her twice, calls her by her nickname, says he hopes she has the best day ever, love dad).  So he didn't have money to get me flowers delivered and he didn't have time to write me a note or get me a card, but he had time to do it for his daughter.  On Valentine's Day.

I haven't been able to sleep at night and I am so depressed.  I have C-PTSD and struggle with self-harm and haven't injured myself for almost a full year, but I hurt myself pretty badly.  Was laying in bed at 10:30 last night with him next to me trying to angle his phone away from me to text his daughter how much he misses her and loves her and she was sending him some stuff she wants him to buy her and I don't know what else.  I had an opportunity to stay here more full time and travel a lot less, but he actually told me that he prefers me to be on 50% travel because then he has time to focus on his daughter when I am gone.  He focuses on her when I am here too, so not sure what it matters.  He has to bribe her to get her to come over for dinner once a week and she's one of the most evil people I have ever met.  I told him that I blame him for how she has turned out because I begged him to tell her no and take her phone and do ANYTHING when she was just starting high school and first started being disrespectful towards me.  But he didn't and I have wound up getting horribly bullied and abused.  I never see any consequences for her.  I get 'a talking to' all of the time, but she never has.  He tried to tell me again that I'm the older one, so I should just get over things.  I told him, "Your daughter is 21 this year, has always known that what she's doing is wrong, she's a liar and an abuser, and I don't care how old she is, what she does is still WRONG and gets more wrong all of the time."

And it's not the material things, really, it's the principle of things and what I have to listen to and go through.  It's like on Christmas when I had to listen to him freaking out in the grocery store, near tears, because he only had five giant bags of gummi candy that his 20yo daughter requested for her stocking.  I told him that all I wanted was a little love note in my stocking when he asked what I wanted.  I didn't get anything in mine.  It's New Year's when I wanted him to be present with me and he just kept taking pictures of lights and fireworks to send to his daughter and when I asked if he loved me and wanted to be with me, and said that I needed some reassurance (literally that is what I said), he got into a huge fight with me instead about how I shouldn't need reassurance.  He insists that he wants me around for the holidays, but his actions never say so.  I feel like the holidays are so  much worse rather than being a joyous time.

I'm having a hard time defending him or looking on the bright side at this moment.  I'm very deeply hurt.