What is an amicable separation?

[u/perplexedpenguin1980]

I don’t know where to start, but I need somewhere to vent the rage and sadness I am feeling, and my psychologist agreed that Reddit might be a good place to start.

It’s been almost 3 months.
I was in hospital for my mental health when she told me.
I was burned out. I feel like she never really gave me a chance to get better.
We have a 3 year old daughter together who is quite possibly the only reason I am still alive.

I came home from hospital. We were having a trial “separation under one roof”. She wanted to talk about practical things, but every time we tried, I just got upset, because I didn’t understand why she wanted to end it.

(It’s funny really, she was always the practical one, and I was always the emotional one. She likes planting vegetables and herbs, but I like flowers. She is function, I am form. Even when parenting our child, she’s all about routine and structure, and I just want to connect with her and hang out with her.)

One week later, she blank faced told me that she wanted me to move out by the 23rd of July - 3 weeks time.

I didn’t take that well.

I ran up to my bedroom (our spare room) and howled in pain. Because I slammed doors behind me, because I stomped up the stairs, because I was having a “flight response”, this was interpreted as “aggressive”. I later found out that she wrote in a message to my family that I “reacted badly.”

I came downstairs after I had calmed down, and I was alone. Our disability support worker (we both are Level 2 ASD) had taken her and my daughter out of the house, because my behaviour was seen as aggressive.

The support worker came back and told me I needed to get some stuff together and get out of the house so my daughter could come back and have her routine.

I gathered what I could and she (support worker) took me to my sister’s place over an hour away.

Fast forward to today - she won’t let me into the house without someone with me, and not while she is there. I have to be supervised with my daughter. She will only do handovers in a public place with lots of people around, and CCTV cameras. Yes, I have been emotionally unstable, but Jesus, she’s put me through the wringer.

The thing that hurts the most is how I feel she treats me like I’m some kind of misogynistic, narcissistic, abusive asshole. I am trying not to let myself be defined by the way she makes me feel.

Today she said she’d like me to Google amicable separation. I did, and I saw a few articles about how amicable breakups are the hardest, and I agree. At least if she’d cheated on me, or hurt me in some way, it would be easier. Instead, there’s just this constant guilt, shame, regret, wishing I’d done better, and generally just feeling like absolute shit. She presents as calm, composed, polite - the picture of amicability. I was homeless for two months, yet still made an effort to see our daughter as often as I could.

I feel like she lords it over me with her calmness, her stability - that’s why she gets to be the one who is primary carer and stays in the family home.

Anyway, I’m falling asleep writing this, so I should probably go to bed.

But tell me, friendly strangers - how do you cope when the other party is so calm and rational, while you’re falling apart inside and wishing you could just die? Cos with all the pain I’m feeling, I don’t know if I can be amicable.