more continued from original post

[pilot]

Ok, since I cannot see what I have posted and I beginning to forget what I have said and not said. I am sorry to make my posts so long, its just I feel I have a lot to catch up with since everything really started nearly 10 months ago and I am just getting here. Also I have no idea if I am even posting correctly. I cannot add these additional postings to my original thread, so I am just making new ones as I go. I hope there is a way I can later condense them into a single thread.

I think I left off where we both came back to our home state and where our parents live about 4 hours apart. The idea is the kids will spend a week or two at a time at each grandparents for the summer. My thinking was it would be a much easier transition for them to go between grandparents than being thrown into two new homes with only a mommy and daddy at each.

The idea of DBing is pretty new to me, although the LRT approach is one I was generally aware of and for the most part started before I hear about DB. Thinking back to my previous posts which I did over the course of a couple of days I am concerned I may have come across as done, uncaring, unwilling to work at it, or unwilling to accept my own faults. I hope not, as it is not the case. True I pushed the D issue on several occasions, mostly out of raw emotion and probably hoping to elicit a response where she "wakes up and smells the coffee" Reading DR and following this forum I am now keenly aware that had no chance of working and only served to push her further away. I knew I had plenty of blame for our relationship falling apart. Most of it was due to a lack of communication. It is not that we didnt talk. We were always talking with eachother. Just not about the little things about eachother which bothered us. We both felt it was better to let things slide than risk hurting the other person's feelings. I guess we had defined our relationship as being perfect by the single point that we never argued. How wrong we were!

Even as our relationship was falling apart there was still plenty of affection from both of us. The sexual side died off pretty steep around February, with only a few bright spots. This was highly unusual in our relationship. As I said, it got very "passionate" once we decided we were going to get D. I tried not to read much into it as I have read that is not uncommon.

So where are we now? As I said before, a few days before we left our old home, I was so angry at catching her with the OM I told her I did not want to talk to her unless it was kid related or move related. I also told her I would be responding to her divorce petition and she would most likely not like my reply. For the record, she filed on her own, although a lawyer did help her write it. She is currently not being represented by anyone. She also has not served me yet either. She has 120 days to do so in our state of residence. I do not know if she currently has any plans to do so. So our last few days under the same roof was me being pretty disconnected. When we got back to our old home state, we stopped off at my place first, and the kids were going to spend the first week here. She went off to her parents. The only contact we had was she would send a text asking if she could facetime with the kids, and I would either say in a little while, or just dial the facetime and give the kids the phone before she answered. After a few days, she just started calling with facetime on her own without asking and I would let my kids answer.

Our first swap was actually my 3 year olds birthday party. We had hastily thrown together a bday party for both of our kids since the bdays are about a week apart. She arrived with her mother, and me with my father. The people attending was a mix of old friends who we knew had kids about the same ages. I also invited a ex gf who had a niece she is watching the same age. I may catch some heat for that from some here, but I did. In being honest with myself and everyone here, I did it for two reasons. One, the obvious, why not show my W that other pretty women enjoy my company and I am not going to be sitting around moping. Also, as the past couple of months had unfolded, I began looking at my possible future, which at the time seemed bleak. I always had coped with losing a relationship by dusting off the old black book and finding a pillow to land on. At any rate, the ex gf was really excited to hear from me and was more than happy to come. The W noticed but I really did not have much interaction with her other than kid related/birthday related conversation. She did try to hug me when we first saw eachother, and I did not accept her advances. Although I did hug her briefly when she initiated when saying our goodbyes at the end.

Ok, enough about her, about me, and where I am with all of this. I am torn to pieces. I was of the mindset when I got married that she was the one, and I only wanted to marry once. I had put off marriage or even serious relationships until I was financially stable to support a family. Oh how the economy shot that one back in my face! I am by most definitions what you call a nice guy. In other words, I always try to help others, and do what I can to make life as pleasant as possible for those around me. I do not argue or fight with people I care about. I am well aware that words can hurt and you cannot take them back. That doesnt mean in my situation I have not screwed up but emotions do get the better of us all sometimes. I also knew communication was a major problem (looking back). But it really wasnt until I hit this forum and read DR that I was able to better identify just where my shortcomings came from and where I wish I could go back and change. I also have gained a better perspective about her EA, possible PA and my role which may have driven her to an OM. I love my wife, and I miss my family. I spent the past 2 months an emotional train wreck. Crying, not eating, not able to function at work, etc. Now that I am separated, I have been much more at peace in my daily life. THe out of sight out of mind philosophy has really helped me center myself. Mostly the out of sight. She is still on my mind, but I am at a point where I do not break down emotionally. I only had one episode when I first got back, and that was when her father called me to tell me he had talked to her. He basically relayed what she said to him, and none of it was nice. It hurt really bad, and I was out GAL at the time and broke down. Reading here and on DR it makes sense now and I should have expected that everything she says will be negative, and she will have a tendency to rewrite history.

Now that she has the kids for the week, my plan is to limit any contact to only asking to speak with the kids. However, there are a million questions I would love to pose to the vets and those who have been in my shoes before. Because I am certain I am still doing a million things wrong. I know an important aspect of DBing is to work on myself, and make myself a better person regardless of how my M turns out. And I have begun. Some of these changes were noticed already by my W at the bday party, and it had only been a week. I will continue to try and identify places where I can make a 180. I got DB book in yesterday and almost finished reading it. Kinda weird to read DR first, then DB, but that is how Amazon delivered it. 5 Love Languages is supposed to arrive tomorrow. One of my concerns is now that I am LRT and basically NC except for kid stuff, the last thing I said to my wife was more or less dont talk to me and you can have your D. Now, I know time is on my side and I certainly do not have to act on the D right now. I dont know if my last words to her affect how she sees my detachment. But at the same time, I know if I concentrate on improving myself, maybe it wont make a difference. I do not think at this time I will break NC to try and clarify my intentions because I know she does not want to hear it anyways.

I have also quit talking with her dad about our relationship. I know that is a no no. At the time, he was really the only way I could find out what was going on as she did not talk to me about things she felt she was missing. During a MC session she stated she did not like me talking with her parents about our R so I quit. Save for brief discussion or two in the days before we moved. I know her family is extremely supportive of us working things out. While things are relatively calm now, there is a huge storm brewing in the near future. That being she thinks we, or at least she, is going to be moving back where we came from, and that the kids will be there as well. She thinks we or at least she will be back there before the end of the summer. Since my oldest has to be enrolled in school, and we no longer have an address back there, I have a feeling this topic will be brought up sometime around mid summer. Currently both my kids are enrolled at a private school there, but I have already told the school I will not be paying and to withdraw them. While I cannot control where she moves to, I do believe I will have a say in where the kids are. And ultimately the kids need to be where it is best for them. That means where they can be cared for the best. So I dont know how this will play out, and may actually require me to reply to her filing simply to state my case and be able to have a say so.

I hope I end up off moderation soon because I would love to be able to interact and get some much needed feedback!

Thanks for reading/listening so far...

[pilot]

copied this into my original post. I will delete when I figure outhow