Living with my WAW 3

[Nomopo]

I thanked her and told her she did not have to do that, I could have picked up a wrap at the gym. She did not really answer when I said this (twice since I thought she did not hear me the first time)

Why did you say this?

I was so surprised that my WAW had cooked dinner for just me and at nice one at that, I really wanted to express my gratitude. Really, this kind of freaked me out. Think about how you would feel if you came home on one of your days in the house and your W had taken off and made you dinner, how would you respond? I talked about this with the IC, of the many possible explanations, we agreed that the most obvious one is that she was feeling guilty and tried to assuage her guilt by doing something nice for me.

What I was actually wondering about was why you told her she did not have to do that. I would be curious to see if she repeated this positive action.

I see a lot of baby steps here:

1. I continue to follow through on my goals, esp. in changing past behavior which caused flare ups in our R.
2. W continues to want to spend time with me, even to the point of coming over to the neighbor's who she has been trying to avoid.
3. I am lovingly detached and it is giving W opportunities to (a) spend some time away from me and (b) pursue me.

Agreed.

My mom sent W a letter saying that she is sorry that we are having difficult times in our R, but that she appreciates what a good mom (and DIL) my W is and that my parents welcome us all to stay with them when we are in TX. She also offered to take the kids for a while or do anything else that W would like to help out. Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad one. W has not mentioned it, but left out the opened letter with other mail for me to go through.

I think it was an excellent thing.

DBing worked great on neighbor's W. When I first showed up, she was venting about how my W is a nut case, that she just needs a dose of reality to wake up, and that she cannot believe that she is living in the guest room. I let her go on for a bit, validated her feelings, and then said that W needs some space and time to work out her issues. She is not trying to hurt anyone and I am happy to be "separated" while living in the same house as my kids. After I showed this support for W, neighbor's W calmed WAY down and a few minutes later went over to our house with her DD. As mentioned above, we all ended up spending an hour or so together after this. AMAZING!!

That is cool.

The attraction of being 21 again just ain't there!

Actually, I think I would like to be 21 again. Maybe I'm having a MLC! I would, however, like to keep all the things I've learned between 21 and 39.

Nomopo