Oh, brother. I wish I could really take my own advice. I wish I had the wisdom and fortitude to be able actualize what I know to be the wise and (as Confucious would say) honorable path.
<journaling> I blew it again this evening with the W.
She had left me another nasty-gram in my voicemail, complaining about our joint bank account. I called her back to find out what had riled her up. Last week I opened a personal checking account and told her about it. She had already opened a personal bank account for herself back in July. And I decided to open one for myself as a protective measure. I intend to have most of my paycheck direct-deposited to the personal account, and have only part of it drawn into the joint account to cover child support.
Today she got a letter from the bank saying the balance had fallen too low and triggered the overdraft protection. She launched into me saying I was irresponsible for taking all of the money out of the joint account and putting it into my personal account. I explained to her that I did not take all of the money out of the joint account, but only half. What was left should have been more than enough to cover any outstanding payments made from that account, but it did not. I apologized to her for the mistake -- and I refrained from telling her that only I have been contributing to this account ever since she opened her own account.
She got snippy with me and she asked why I opened a separate account instead of using the joint account. In reply, I asked her, "Why did you open your own separate account?" She said, "Because I can't trust you...", then that's where she caught herself. I continued saying, "And you think I am the one who's been acting the most untrustworthy of late?"
She then brought up the SA (separation agreement) again, saying she thought I should sign it if I wanted to guarantee her behavior. If I sign the SA then I could be assured that I would be protected legally.
I have ignored her suggestions to sign the SA, especially as she currently has them written. I am trying to avoid the issue as much as possible. I told her I appreciated her concerns for my legal standing (yeah, right), but I just don't agree with the terms. She asked whether I disagreed with the divying of the liabilities. I said no, but I don't need to sign a piece of paper to honor our agreement, specially when the other terms were not so agreeable.
She then asked whether I did not want to have a legal gauarantee to child visitation (by signing her SA). That's when I started to lose my cool. I asked her, "Are you implying that you intend to not honor our verbal agreement?!"
Let me tell you, from there the conversation spiralled out of control very quickly. She threatened to withhold my rights to have visititaion with my S's, let alone joint custody, if I didn't go along with her plans. And we ended up letting loose on each other all over again. We argued over the R and the failures each of us made to it. We argued about the history revisions, we accused each other of being delusional, and I said far too many anti-DB remarks.
It got very heated, but at one point I just stopped suddenly and said, "You know what? Why don't we just stop arguing. I don't ike getting mad, and I don't like making you mad. It does neither of us any good."
I then cooled down very quickly, which is pretty amazing for me. W was still trying to argue, saying stuff like my anger is who I am, and I need to stop being who I am not. I calmly told her, "Yes, for many years now I have been very angry, and for that I apologize. I am trying to change that. Too often you thought you needed to "fix' my anger, but all you did in so doing was make yourself the source of that anger."
From that point we had a tense but less antagonistic conversation. We still were in disagreement, but for the first time I was really better able to reign in my volatile anger. I think it surprised her a little how quickly I got us back under control.
Nevertheless, the damage was done. Whatever positives might have come out of my success in calming the situation down midstream are going to be ignored and forgotten in the future, and all W will remember are the negatives, that we had another fight.
