Lot's of things to journal about today. I've taken a few days to let it all soak in and to think it through.
Tuesday I met with my attorney to discuss the rough draft of the separation agreement he was drafting. He gave me a copy and we agreed I would give it to my wife and he would forward a copy to her attorney.
Wednesday we went to the state fair as a family. My wife took off work early to go. We all had a really good time and she and I seemed to just enjoy the company and the family outing. Honestly it felt really, really good.
We got home a bit after dinner time and were just beat. But I knew there was something I needed to do. So I took my wife back to the bedroom and gave her the rough draft of the separation agreement. I told her I was sorry we had gotten to this point. All I have ever wanted to do was show her love and have her feel loved. I also said I realized the mistakes of our past and knew if we had a chance it would be start with speaking each other's love languages. Once again she said it'd be nice if I spoke her love language. It was a very touching and honest but short conversation that was devoid of defensive posturing which I attribute to us be in beat from the fair. She was very appreciative that I had a rough draft that we could discuss and work from. (An important point because it addressed her primary love language, acts of service, I had done this for her and told her that.)
After the conversation ended I had to walk out of the room, I didn't expect the flood of emotions I was having. So I walked out to the garage where I just stood for a good 5-10 minutes. I was contemplating just getting in the car and leaving. She walked out under the guise of taking out some trash. She walked over too me and in a very sincere voice asked me what was the matter. It was all I could do not to just explode all the emotions out at her. I responded as nicely as I could "what do you think?" She stood there and did something unexpected. She started to rub my back and said, I know, I understand, if you'd like to talk. To which I replied, honestly not right now. She then told me to take some time and to come in when I felt ready. Honestly this little act from her has meant more to me than anything. It was something from her heart, not planned, didn't have expectations, wasn't manipulative, it was from the heart. It screamed my love languages, physical touch and quality conversation.
I went for a short walk then back in to where we sat down had a little dinner together, shared some wine and enjoyed each other's company. I decided to leave and we chatted a bit more about things and love languages. She again told me she'd like me to speak her languages.
Then yesterday morning she emailed me with her languages after taking the quiz in the book. To my surprise I had her primary one figured out what was way off on secondary on down. She's acts of service first then quality time second. Know wonder my words of affirmation attempts haven't gotten the results I expected.
She also told me in the email she and the girls talked about love languages and figured out everyone's languages. I replied telling her it meant a lot to me that she read the book and shared all of this.
Then last night D11 and I get to talking about it. She told me she asked my wife the night before what she was reading and that started their LL discussion. Then D11 dropped a bit of a bomb on me. My wife told her she was reading the book because hopefully it will help mommy and daddy get back together. That revelation has been difficult to deal with in that I don't want to make cookies out of these crumbs and get my hopes up. But I can't help but feel like we possibly might be close to turning a corner. I can only hope.
Alas the monkey wrench in the works, the separation agreement. I got an email from her about it today and she has some big concerns. Damn I wish this thing would just go away for a while. All it does is introduce so much confusion, hurt feelings, anger and generally set us back on just getting past the hurt. So now I need to figure out how to turn this big negative into a potential positive. Yet we've traded some emails today that have been basically positive.
If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive. - Mother Theresa
