b4s I have been doing some reading in a book called Why marraiges succeed or fail by John Gottman. It seems the 4 horseman have set up residence in your M, critizizing, contempt, defensivness and stonewalling. Also your thoughts dictate your awarness. Try an experiment. No matter what think positive about your W, understand that her anger comes from deep hurt and be the one to lead you both back to a better place. The key is to think and look at her in a positive way, no matter what. Be kind to her, be gentle, be patient, even when she is behaving cruel to you, love her unconditionally. Work on growing as a person. Bruce Fisher has a great book called Loving Choices that could really help you. One of you has to break the cycle, take one for the team. She has not left yet, she is waiting for you to love her. I believe if you do that she will eventually come around, but you have to eliminate the 4 horseman from you behaviour first. Give it a try for a few months, see what happens. 4
Need to defend B4 here a little. He's been doing this for literally years. Sometimes things do come from deep hurt and we can feel sympathetic to that but it doesn't help the fact that there may be illness that cannot be overcome.
My C asked me the question in our last session....if my W suddenly changed her mind and decided to stay in the marriage but also didn't get help, would I want that? The real answer is no. As C said, she feels sorry for all the people in jail that havehadterrible childhoods, lives, etc. but still wants them in jail.
Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone.
I'm sure you are right, I have been criticized up one side and down the other (I know you're talking about me criticizing!), and she says she doesn't respect me (never did, she says) and she assumes everything I say is an attack (which makes her defensive). But I have some other issues I'm dealing with, namely paranoia, alcoholism, her family history of severe mental illness (her mother was in the funny farm most of last year) and a general lack of her ability to think really about anyone but herself. A month ago, the night before the first time I was to have major surgery, she decided she was going to shove some CS issues up my you-know-what. Compassion is not her stong suit.
That said, I had (have) plenty of issues. I push to get my way too much, I lean toward a behavioralist point of view (it's what you do that matters, not how you feel about it). If you can't "prove" that it's the way to do something, I most likely will oppose it. I didn't pick up on some non-subtle cues that she was not happy. I refused to believe that she would pull the rip cord on our M, and didn't address some significant issues between us. I need to learn to let her win, even if her solution appears ridiculous to me (I need to decide if I want to be right or be married). That said, when she finally got through to me that it really was serious, she refused to lift a finger to attempt to work on it. I did everything she asked (got a C, did a million honey-do items that I'd let slide, improved my performance at work, etc) and she just hung me out to dry with the improvements on her side - meaning, she didn't do any.
So, I will pick up those books becasue they sound interesting, but it will be for helping with my next M, this one is finished.
built4speed My Saga "How others deal with the gifts you've given is not your decision, but theirs." - Richard Bach
If your looking at reading something for your next M B4, try "Marriage Fitness" by Mort Fertel and "Scripts People Live" by Claude Steiner. The secong one especially might help you see how people approach relationships.
Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone.
So, finally had an atty meeting Friday. I think the last one was in March, with delays due to medical issues (mine) scheduling issues (attys), and vacations (my atty). Typically, my atty and I got there on time and and W and atty were "conferencing". We've complained multiple times that they need to do that on their own time, not when I'm sitting there with my attys clock running. After 20 minutes, hers says he needs to talk to mine. Another 20 minutes. This issue came down to W is mad that D14 is blaming her for the D (with the implied "you've turned her against me") and wants us to do some family C. It took another 30 minutes with the four of us to decide that it was probably a good idea. So a 5 minute decision took over an hour, at $10 a minute. Excellent.
Then they wanted to discuss the "move out schedule". Since we only add agenda items if both of us agree, I said that was not a topic I'd discuss because I had no faith that W wouldn't change her position on agreements and try to screw me. I said if I'd actually moved out in October like I was planning I'd still be stuck in some crappy apartment with no way to get my equity.
So, they said lets work on what it would take to get me equity. So W is going to start trying to refi. Then I had to make a call and when I came back they decided we were done for the day. So, aother $2000, and all we figured out was W is going to start the refi process.
So I said, before we go, how about this: since the house issue is resolved, let's just split all remaining cash and stock accounts down the middle. Then we both have the same tax issues, the same cash position, and it's very simple. She hemmed and hawwed for a minute and then said okay. The attys looked a bit sick, because that just kills the billable hours escapades. Plus, if W trys to go for more than 50% she'd just get a huge fight from me and end up in the same place anyway, so this works out the best. Of course immediately the attys are saying, we can do this, we can do that, but the bottm line is: we now have a verbal agreement on the split of the assets, and it took less than 10 minutes.
All that is left for the next meeting is to figure how to cover kid expenses for the next 8 years, and we're done. I can hardly believe it.
Gotta go, more later.
built4speed My Saga "How others deal with the gifts you've given is not your decision, but theirs." - Richard Bach
Just a quick update: we had a meeting with the attys Friday and hammered out two significant issues: how she pays me for the house and splitting the assets. She will refi and pay me some of the $ now and the rest when she sells the house. That lets her keep the house with a smaller payment, allows the kids to stay in their rooms, and gets me enough to put a down payment on something else. Pretty much a win-win. I had some people telling me that I shouldn't let her keep any of my equity for now, but one of my issues has been trying to get everything I want in our M, so I guess compromising is a 180. I hope it works out.
The other significant issue is we agreed on a 50-50 split of the assets. This is pretty typical for D in our county, but she had gotten in her head that she would never do this. After she agreed to it, her atty looked dumbfounded and asked her if she was sure about this. I'm sure it's because she had been telling him all along that she wound never go for that. But it really is fair. By the end of the meeting she was saying she was "very comfortable" with that arrangement.
So, all that is left is to figure out the child support. We had some discussion a while ago that went nowhere, but once we get that decided we can tell them to write it up. It took 10 hours of meetings to figure out almost nothing, then 10 minutes to figure out the asset split, the biggest issue. I hate lawyers.
built4speed My Saga "How others deal with the gifts you've given is not your decision, but theirs." - Richard Bach
