This is a marathon - not a 100 yard race - right now you are running at your W like you're in the same race...you might well be on different tracks right now...
Your strategy might well be to catch up...if you think so then you need to pace yourself...
Slow down and work on you...
I found that to be the scariest thing ever...but when I did, that was when I started to see results.
Yes, that "we are not married anymore" refrain gets heard a lot around here. It's the new "marriage is a state of mind. If you want to get divorced, just change your mind" philosophy. Legally, it just doesn't fly.
Part of the problem with your discussions is that both you and she are highly intelligent people. And you are engaging in a battle of the minds. Neither of you will win. Perhaps that is a game you both enjoy, but it sounds like you don't anymore. It can be fixed. It takes willingness.
@Sara -- I'm certain it can be fixed. Okay, that's a lie. I "believe" it can be fixed, I'd like to be certain it can be fixed, I'm certainly interested in (and desirous of) fixing it.
That being said, the marathon analogy is an apt one. Today was a bad day. I'm just so p.o.'d at this. At myself, yes, but today (and indeed, I think, for the first time since D-bomb) most definitely at her.
We had to attend D6's performance this evening. Tense, to say the least. If body language made sound, hers would have been shouting -- she was nearly in the lap of the person to her left to create as much space between her person and me on the right.
Expectations for Thursday? I expect that there won't be a ritual murder-suicide. I expect that we'll both survive the event. I expect there will be tension. Now, apparently, I expect rain, which sucks.
Thinking a lot about this question of why I'm so fed up. Is it because DB isn't "working"? Is it because WAW isn't noticing the supremely awesomely cool changes that have turned me into a Super, an 11 on the Manly scale of Absolute Hunkiliciousness (but this one goes to 11)? Is it because WAW hasn't fallen into my arms, dragged me upstairs for an all-afternoon romp in the bedchamber, and then professed her undying love (and admiration for my Eleventy-ness)?
I don't think so.
I think what's irritating me is the fundamental injustice of it all -- not of the D, per se, but of a daily life where I am constructed and reconstructed by WAW to suit her purposes.
Now I get the whole "no control" thing, and this is clearly a reaction to that, but it vexes no less because of it.
I think, too, I'm futurizing a bit. For sake of argument, assume there's a reconciliation (I expect there won't be, but play along). If I'm not "me" after the DB process -- through GAL, 180s, and the School of Hard WAW Knocks, I change -- and if she's not her, then who are we? When I think of the phrase "save the marriage," I think of the marriage in Time Period T. But at the end of the reconciliation process, it is Time Period T+1. Wouldn't it be ironic if we didn't like each other in T+1? Now that theoretical possibility is waaaaaayyyyyyy down the road (in fact probably not at the end of my road), but nevertheless it is a bit of poser.
I think about an officer I knew before, during, and after Iraq. I always had a modicum of respect for him before the war. He was efficient, knowledgeable, and basically unoffensive. But during the war he was given a command, and in that position was a disaster. Overly cautious, hesitant, a**-covering, meek, bureaucratic. He tacked as closely to the regulations as possible, at a time and place where virtue was not its own reward -- where there was a mission to be accomplished (and not in the W sense of the phrase!). The pressures of combat command brought out the qualities that were surely there all along, but which didn't matter in T -- but surely mattered in T+1. Now I despise the guy -- wouldn't p*ss on him to put out the flames if I saw him on fire.
So this gives me pause to reflect on who I am, who WAW is, who I want to be, and -- perhaps most importantly -- my concerns that, since she's not (to my knowledge) DB'ing, WAW will not grow in the same way I am.
And that would be supremely ironic. WAW drops the bomb, I DB; bomb defused; then I drop the bomb because I no longer want to be married to xWAW!
Anyway, all speculation and futurizing and neither here nor there in terms of today -- work, kids, no GAL today -- but the kind of thing that creeps into the brain in the heat of the night, when I got troubles wall-to-wall. Sing it, Brother Ray.
you forgot the "so I won't feel guilty about the sex I've had with someone else...."
I have thought about the T+1 too. For me the fact is that if we can't BOTH be better people to each other, then I'm not willing to continue in this marriage. I love him to death. But. He has to grow. And he has to grow up. I have total responsibility for the choices I have made. But I didn't get here alone.
THAT is what I'm not sure I'm going to see - the change...the growing. But I know I love him and that is the hard part.
Melissa
"Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst."
Melissa, I hear you. And with respect to the part I left out, she doesn't feel guilty. Or, to be more precise, she's not manifesting any guilt. Whatever.
SP - This sounds like a constant "battle," that she consistently initiates. It's complete opposite in my camp, where he wouldn't initiate a "conversation" if it had a million dollar prize attached! Not sure what's better...
You have little ones. Is she spewing her wrath around them?
One of my boundaries with my H has been not taking away their "innocence" to our situation, until it's absolutely necessary. That's something you can't take back, or earn back... How sad to hear kids talk about about, or just plain know about upset in the home.
Good luck today!
Me-46, D-21, S15, S13
After many years w/my head in the sand... I FILED Divorced 6/2011
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.
