Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums We're separated--What Now? Reclaiming myself and my life

And I respectfully disagree that "this is not a DB'ing situation."

It absolutely is!!! Yeah, it's not like last time, but what worked last time won't work now. Detaching and working on yourself IS DB'ing, just a diferent flavor.

This is a good question. She has made several 'claims' that she needs to get another job, etc, etc, but she hasn't done anything about it. Now, today she has $180 in her checking account after paying the bills SHE is responsible for and it's going to be 2 weeks before she gets paid again. She is supposed to pay our grocery bill. Most likely she will ask me for money in a few days.

One would think that would be a motivator. How many times do I HAVE to tell her? Like FaithIsBelieving's sitch, it doesn't do any good because she is immature when it comes to money. Clearly she is immature when it comes to responsibility in a marriage when your partner is down and out for months.

So, I have no expectation that she will be of any use in this situation. I am going to tell her we will be selling her car so we can get some money out of it and remove the $450 monthly payment. Maybe THAT will wake her up but most likely it will piss her off.

and you know, I just don't want to deal with that. It helps me to detach when I think about how she is doing nothing to increase her income FOR THE FAMILY. But, that would mean she can't have her 'freedom' if she found herself working lots of hours at a second job.

Like my counselor said which I posted in my older thread "W doesn't do things that she doesn't want to do". Like keep her commitment to me, and actually put effort into helping me when I needed her and asked her to help.

You're right Drew. However, it's a LRT situation only. Being 'nice' and 'validating' is out the window. Time to move on with my life.

Frank should not be expected to DB if it means further neglecting himself, which it would due to Frank's tendency to put himself and his needs on the backburner. That's the main reason he crashed THIS time. Sometimes a person has to stand down from DBing. I disagree with the idea that working on oneself is a form of DBing. No it is not. DBing might become a BYPRODUCT of working on oneself, but working on oneself is not DBing.

Already been through that. No more options left except pay the mortgage. We had been in litigation with a telephone company in our business who owed us $250,000 of which $75k was mine. They litigated us to death and now all the plaitinfs are settling for 1/3 of the money, and it's coming in slowly. So we've been in a bad financial place since last August.

Right.

D12 is too young, D17 has been sick with Mono and really can't help.

Been doing that.

Nobody would give me that - been on the rocks with credit for a while.
Already done that kind of floating.
This has always been a sore point with me. For YEARS I've always suggested to W she clip coupons because when I was younger I had friends whose mom was a big coupon clipper and saved a lot of money. W just never made the effort.

A couple months ago she actually started to do it on her own. Not a lot of coupons but she is saving money now.

I don't buy clothes often. I can't stop W from shopping at stores she has credit cards with but at least she is not buying a lot these days.
Thought about this. We might make a few hundred dollars but we don't have much to sell that wouldn't be 'giving it away'.

Thanks for the suggestions. We're going to survive because I'll do the hard work to make it work. As W is getting more and ore angry with me because as part of MY LRT I don't talk to her much, and when I do I try to keep it neutral in tone, and cut it short. She isn't liking that at all.

Step 1: Get rid of her car. Your family is too big to live in a Prius.

ROFLMAO!

I don't know if she will ever get to that point, but I need to get to the point where I FEEL like I am worth fighting FOR
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Same here, my was just a joke for H and we are separating this week.

Already I feel the toxic cloud shifting off me, don't know about you but I have really good hrs (not days, hrs) and really bad ones... this is yet another rollercoaster.
You are I are done neglecting ourselves, and I'm very glad for that.

Last night I was going to do some journaling and I grabbed a notebook I had used in the past. It wasn't the 'regular' journal but one I hadn't used in a while. It had an entry on the last page that was from 9/3/2006, about 4 months after we were 'back together'.


A few weeks later I posted this to the board:



I did tell her. And as I slowly declined emotionally she did nothing except either tell me she 'supported me' or complain that I needed to 'get help'.

Looking back at the past tells me that I didn't fix anything. I just helped her through her insane crisis, got us into a place where we SHOULD have been able to heal ourselves, but ended up still carrying her issues while also carrying mine. Then adding the issues of bad business situations on top of that.

No wonder I crashed. I didn't take care of myself.

I think I have analyzed the process that got me here enough now. W is a bad match for me unless I am 100% in my power. She's a bad match for anybody who has any serious down time. She would be better suited to be with someone who has a regular job, no real pressures in life and none of the history we have with deep problems. Probably like her mom, who married a guy who has a regular job and is working his way to retirement. Normal, uneventful, no stress.

Me on the other hand, I'll always be living a little on the edge and now that I understand how to stop myself from having those extreme down turns in my life I have a better chance of remaking my life into what I want it to be.

Thing is, we could make it work together now because I see her true self, and I know mine. Whether or not she ever sees that is unknown.

Right now she is becoming more angry with me because she is not liking my detachment from her and the lack of interest in my tone of voice when we do talk. She's getting colder.

Today she's going to to hang out with her other friend who lives a ways away. This friend is the one who went to school to learn to be a 'spiritual counselor'. She told be 2 years ago that it was 'ok for W to leave on her path because it was a lesson for all of us, me and the kids, and part of all our life paths'. I told her that she was wrong because 'we' didn't decide that we wanted to be hurt, and have our family broken up. Ah, but we DID as part of our 'agreements' when we chose to be born. I stopped talking to her after that. At the time I told this to my counselor who is also a spiritual advisor and she said "someone who claims to be seeking their spiritual path through life doesn't hurt others while pursuing that quest".

She's also the one who made sure my W had condoms when she went to go see OM to 'find herself'.

As AmyC suggested, I'm going to pray that God will protect her from the influence of this persons misguided beliefs.

Yes, I am having more 'hours' where I feel good. I'm sure some of it is due to my chemical changes by changing my diet and avoiding alcohol as a 'medicine'.

But part of it is knowing that I don't have to care about her any more, and even though it hurts it does give me some relief.

Just keep on putting one foot in front of the other. I can do this.