I'm hanging in there. The whole separation agreement discussion has really place a damper on everything. She's fairly adamant about getting it finalized. Why, because she believes we need to manage our expectations. She also feels it's a very equitable document. But it's not and what I mean is it was written by a lawyer in such a manner with the expectation that it would go through a protracted negotiation. My lawyer told me basically her lawyer is asking for everything and giving nothing. It basically demands I make all the concessions while providing no reciprocating actions or points.
She and I talked last night and decided it's best we sit down and negotiate directly so that we do not allow the lawyers to turn this into an adversarial thing. Plus this allows us to work on a major point in our marriage, the lack of conflict resolution. We never fought, we avoided it. So now we have to negotiate a very difficult topic.
One thing she did say last night was that she wants to continue the positive growth between us. She still wants to work on being friends and seeing if that can leads us to something more.
The one positive I do have to say in all of this is that even on Friday night when we had a short contentious conversation about the agreement she still said "I told you, I am open to reconciliation." That is a huge positive given the progression of her attitude in the last month. She has gone from "I want to be friends again" to "I would like to think we can be friends again then maybe be together again someday" to "We are being friends again and I hope we can go further" to finally "I am open to reconciliation." Now that's a hell of a progression in a month! Not hard to see why I am struggling with the near demand we have a sep agreement in place.
If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive. - Mother Theresa
