Sorry to hear that you are ill, but I'm glad you'll be able to get some rest. That's such a great idea to adjust your schedule mentally for his tardiness, must help with any frustration!
Your sitch sounds very positive, with nice movement toward a real identity and commitment of couplehood. Getting kisses even when sick is big! He's gambling with germs for the woman he loves!
Surviving a custody battle is very rare - I'd count it as a blessing, too! You've made a very healthy decision about distancing yourself from your mother for now. Stay true to your intuition about this rather that H's sense of what's 'proper.' I truly wish my wife would 'get it' regarding her mother's ill effects on her, but that is for her to decide.
Well, I've crawled out of bed and I'm in a bit of a catch 22 as my body says I'm hungry but I know eating will make me ill, so I am trying a cup of tea.
I can't believe I am still in my PJ's at nearly 6 o clock in the evening, how slack!
'Gambling with germs for the woman he loves' - I really like that, thanks Gabriel. Things are definitely getting better with our R though, as one of my aims for the R was getting him to say ILY and agree to dates outside the house which he has done.
Now my other aims for the R are:
Have him tell everyone else we are together. Keeping up the 'divorced' act is quite stressful sometimes. I am halfway there with this one as he knows 2 of my friends know and he doesn't mind and still wants to socialise with them, so that's a good sign.
Get him to stay overnight with the kids (I'd like it if he would on my birthday and am going to ask but won't get my hopes up).
Eventually get a house together (I imagine this will be a long way in the future, but I would like it within the next year or two if that is realistic).
MY OTHER GOALS FOR ME:
Practise my Greek more, I have got rusty since my dad died.
Enroll on a course in my local town and meet some more new people.
Pay off some of my debt - get rid of one credit card by xmas this year.
Save up for schooling fees so I can do that pharmacology diploma I want to do.
Book a trip to the sea for the summer holiday.
Increase my business turnover.
Finish writing my book in the next 2-3 months and email publisher.
Of course, I haven't done any of them yet but I will!
You mentioned your W's depression issues and her mother. What are these? I might be able to help as I was so bad with depression once I was in a hospital.
I might be able to help as someone who has 'been there', but I guess it's difficult for you to help her if she's very arm's length with you.
Each of those goals seems realistic - how might you make them more specific? I wonder if you've read LostinLimbo's thread, as she's dealing with trying to get her H to move back home as well (in the Separated forum)?
My W's depression is interested - pretty low level usually but chronic in terms of low self-worth, lots of neg self-talk, and self-depreciation. She got that directly from MIL, who would do things like tell her she had the face of a dog as a girl (she's actually quite a beautiful women, and was cute as a girl from pictures), was very controlling, isolating W from others (would charge her money to leave the home). Some lesser physical abuse as well as minor neglect. Definitely little/no emotional bonding, as MIL used concrete expression to showcase care at key times but was distant otherwise. MIL has OCD, and W has used this in recent years to excuse her mother, but is still paying the price. W was hospitalized with Anorexia at 13yrs, had Bulimia from 18 - 24, was drugged&date-raped at 18. Sounds horrible/rough, yet she went on to excel academically, getting her doctorate in psychology (experimental), and is doing most of her colleagues (me included ) She tends to be very expressive, and is dramatic, drawing folks to her, but often feels lonely or disconnected. We can sit in the same room with 10 people complimenting her, and later she'll overfocus on the 1 statement she made that she saw as week or the 1 person who didn't say hello.
Your W's mother sounds as nutty as mine! Charging her to leave the house!?!
My mother just flat out said 'no' most of the time. I was allowed to H's house once a week (met him when I was 10) and she was ok with that then because I was only friends with him and she was best friend to his mother at the time.
It changed as soon as I was romantically involved with him. She stopped speaking to his mother whom she had been friends with for 6 years.
She allowed me to go to a Disco once a week, but with her there and she was the only person I was allowed to dance with (!).
That was all the freedom I got. The rest of the time I was stuck in my room and is why I took up writing as a form of self-entertainment.
I think your W will only be able to see her mother for what she is once she comes to that conclusion herself. I know my H will not cut my mother out until he reaches the same point I am at.
Your W sounds like an intelligent woman who has overcome a lot of issues. If she percieved you as being unsupportive, this is your golden opportunity to show her you're not!
I'm not sure how to make my list more specific without setting myself up for disappointment if said goal should not work out by the date I want. Any suggestions?
When H and I eventually move back in, it will be to a new house. We would have to get a completely different house as where he is living has really steep stairs (I have often joked with him that he moved there on purpose to 'Jo-proof' the house! ) and my place is a tiny 2 bedroomed bungalow designed for elderly couple's with no storage space - in fact, my garden is bigger than the bungalow! Whenever I have dd's here, we feel like sardine's in a can so we would definitely need to get another 3 or 4 bed place, and this kinda adds to the complication of moving in together as neither of us can afford removal costs atm - another reason to pay off our debts!
get a house together ...within the next year or two.Number of months. Try adding a realistic goal about debt payoff again with monthly goals and enddate
Practise my Greek more.By self or others? How many times/week? Min per practice? Schedule it.
Enroll on a course in my local town and meet some more new people.Name 1-2 topics, look up schedules, registration dates, and do it!
Pay off some of my debt - get rid of one credit card by xmas this year.How much per month? (necessitates layout of budget - income and expenses, try a common software program to help keep track of it all, especially one that can graph (like quicken).
Save up for schooling fees so I can do that pharmacology diploma I want to do.How much per month? See above budget!
Book a trip to the sea for the summer holiday.Set up a travel savings acct, and embed in budget, saving an amount each month.
Increase my business turnover.How? Need observable/verifiable steps.
Finish writing my book in the next 2-3 months and email publisher.Excellent!
I see the similarities in theme: control. Right now, W sees me as controlling in our M - definitely not the case, but I was unsupportive to a great extent regarding her distress/depression. It frustrated me over time to see her not getting better, choosing to work to exhaustion over the years, with little time/energy left for me.
I also made the error of trying to get her to admit MIL's problems and I did act in a way that suggested I feared W would become like MIL over time. Instead I should have emphasized her healthy differences and loved and focused on that about her.
It is time to be supportive and selfless in my interactions with her. She'll need such support in order to heal.
My W still has to dance mainly with MIL when they are at a dance together - very odd similarities here.
Get a house together - by Christmas 06 at the latest. It would be a struggle financially to get a place before then, unless he moves earlier and I've already told him I'm moving with him if he does.
Practise Greek more - it would have to be alone as I don't know any other Greek people in this country. There is a CD rom you can get which is interactive and you 'talk' to the computer animated person in Greek, but I consider this a luxury and don't want to purchase one until I have lowered my debts. I thought maybe I would ask for it as a birthday present! and then once I've got it, do 1 hour a day.
Enroll on courses - There is a vegetarian cookery course I quite liked the sound of (H and dd's are all vegetarian, I am not, but trying to be one ) - it's only £3 a lesson. Then there's a desk top publishing one which I need to improve for my job, but my only trouble is, there is no creche and it's outside of nursery school times, so I'm not sure what to do with dd4.
I will telephone the centre to ask for advice.
Pay off debt - my Barclaycard I can pay off by Christmas 05, but I also have another £3,000 CC to pay off and this computer (bought on hire purchase for £80 a month). I have another 33 months before computer will be paid off, but I hope to start paying this back by June or so. I am currently paying roughly £150 a month on it but some gets spent again as things crop up (eg, dd1's birthday, phone company asked for 6 months worth of calls and internet charges in one go this month which came to £267 so of course I have dipped into CC to cover that).
By June I hope to have got the excess bills out of the way so I can leave the money on the CC without spending it again.
Pharmacology course is £70 deposit followed by £35 a month which I cannot afford atm but hope to be able to by September so will enroll then.
Increase business turnover - involves kicking H's ass to get him to update the website! which is quite a feat in itself as motivation is not his strong point, or doing a course in web design which would take me months to learn and basically I need it done quicker than I could learn it.
I also need to do another print run of 1 of my books (which has almost sold out) and write to more companies to see if they will become customers (I sell to businesses as well as the public). Print run cannot be done yet has H ran my business into the ground after we split up and I had to serve him with court papers to get it back, and then pay off loads of bills and fines he'd build up when he had it. Money is not his forte either. I took it over last June and have been trying to re-build it since then with varying degrees of success. Am considering having a sales push in a shopping mall.
Trip to seaside - I have just opened an ISA but it only has £2 in it as it's only a couple of days old! I am joined to this scheme for single mothers where we can go on day trips for £5 a day - even to theme parks - because the health authority pay for the rest (it was set up so kids from disadvantaged families could still have fun). I intend to book some of these, they are normally in July and August every year.
Vegetarians?! Oh, no! Jo, don't give in to the dark side. I don't like to hear that having made my life's work in beef production. Oh well, people should be free to choose their own paths. Are their objections to meat of the nutritional variety or for ethical reasons?
Well to start with it was animal welfare reasons and nvCJD but it's more health reasons now. DD's are vegetarian because he is and he'd turn me into a burger myself if he found out I fed dd4 meat! - only joking.
DD1 is a really strict vegetarian, by her own choice. She can't stand cows milk ('I'm not drinking something that comes out of a cow's boobies!' - lol) and she insists on having soya milk on her breakfast.
She will only have milk if it's disguised in food or as milkshake because then she can't taste it. As a toddler she refused anything that even looked like meat, so I guess it was in built in her, and she refused to eat any 'junk' food until she was 2 (we offered her ice cream and she spat that out till age 2) - chocolates she refused until age 3. She always wanted fruit like raisins and pieces of chopped apple.
I think dd4 is the same way as I offered her fish a few times and she spat it out. She also hates sweets and says 'yuck' and 'I don't like that' when I have offered them. Her favourite thing is also apples. I now keep her vegetarian as her father wrote to me and asked if I would, when I was 'going dark' on him.
I actually used to be vegetarian (from age 12) and it was me that got him into it. I broke my 13 year diet when we first went to court and I went over the road to a shopping mall afterwards, and bought chocolate and a bacon sandwich to allivate the stress.
Then I just started eating bacon sandwiches every time we went to court.
I am mainly vegetarian now as I eat what dd eats, but I do still have the odd bit of fish, which I am going to give up before we move back in together as it would be a source of conflict.
I still believe in all the reasons why I was vegetarian, but I couldn't handle the elavated stress levels at the time and it was my 'fix'.
I still use chocolate as a 'fix'
Feeling better now, thank you, still achey and tired, but I slept a few hours this afternoon so that helped. I have managed to eat something for my dinner and will go to bed again soon.
Quote: but I also have another £3,000 CC to pay off and this computer (bought on hire purchase for £80 a month
Hi Jo.. That computer sounds a bit expensive.
Two of my customers are Rent to Buy (US term), bought on hire purchase ( british term) stores. I see some of their business printouts. Some computers they were renting to buy cost them $800 to $1,000 and the rental to buy fee was $2,400 to $3,200.
In the US several stores sell "e-Machine" or Dell brand computers and monitors for less than $500. For $700 you can have a newer style flat pannel LCD monitor.
It's outside my rights to suggest you should return the computer but ask you, could your H help you out with a computer he took in on trade or made from parts so your monthly pay out was not so high?
I have a couple computers I bought as part of a lot of used equipment that are good for the internet, wordprocessing, and other common usages applications. If I wanted to, I could add a TV card and watch TV on my monitor. I paid from $100 to $200 for these computers.
Our local Office Depot had a desktop computer 2.8 ghz, 80GB harddrive, DVD palyer, 256 RAM, 56K modem 17" CRT monitor, Windows XP, Microsoft Works software like MS Office, keyboard and mouse for $475.
About your posts; Jo I have been reading your posts. Looks like you are doing things the way they will work for you and congradulate you for being so persistant. Sorry to hear you were sick and had to postponr your family time.
Thanks for posting on my thread. I was posting some of my problems on your thread but felt that was not fair to you. That is why I decided to start a new thread over on SSM. I am not ignoring you in any way.
Eventhough I know I/we have to work on several issues before the EC and sexual connections improve, for me its these two losses that hurt the most sometimes.
He's gambling with germs for the woman he loves! 
) She tends to be very expressive, and is dramatic, drawing folks to her, but often feels lonely or disconnected. We can sit in the same room with 10 people complimenting her, and later she'll overfocus on the 1 statement she made that she saw as week or the 1 person who didn't say hello.