This was a terrible weekend. XW was invited to a charity Halloween Party in Birmingham (~100 miles away) Friday night by my brother's XW. When my X told me she was going, I should have had "no comment". But no, I had to spout off that I'm sure she was happy to have a new excuse to hook-up with OM while she's there.
She had a strange response to my accusation: she informed me that she had decided to back-off emotionally from their R, because she discovered his MySpace.com profile, which contained no mention of her. She was mad because he listed his status as "open for romance", rather than "in a relationship"--which infuriated my XW. She showed me her cellphone, where she had changed his name to "Butthead" in her contacts list. She even forwarded me an email she had written to OM last week.
Her message and his response were very revealing. She accused him of using her, while continuing to "shop around" behind her back. His reply was a rather lame attempt to justify his actions. He told her she had nothing to worry about because every woman he has met online falls far short of her charms and beauty. He specifically mentioned that he was uncomfortable with my XW's apparent eagerness to get married, since they had only been dating a couple months.
Well, I resisted (barely) the urge to point out to my XW that I had recognized this evil creep immediately. It was my emotional attempt to open her eyes to his wily ways that had resulted in a restraining order. I knew he would only use her, but she had just forwarded my warnings for her on to him.
The reason the weekend was a disappointment is because I had expected my XW to recognize the futility of her R with OM; maybe she would even see me in a new light after getting burned. But, either she is desperately in love with the guy regardless of his black heart; or, she is even more naive than I realized. She left Friday evening (ostensibly to attend the party, then spend the night with her ex-SIL), and didn't return until late Sunday night. She refused to answer her cellphone the entire weekend. (I didn't call, but our D17 tried repeatedly.) She refused to answer any of D17's questions about where she had been or why she wouldn't call home.
Of course, she won't acknowledge her tryst. But even D17 knows what's going on--without my input. Is this situation strange to anybody else but me? She has to know that she'll inevitably be hurt by this loser. So why is she in such denial? I suspect her pride prevents her from acknowledging that I had been right about him from the beginning.
In anticipation of the advice that I will probably get to ignore my XW's dating habits, detach, and work on GAL... You're absolutely right. I am able to observe this impending trainwreck from a distance, almost as if in slow motion. I take no pleasure in seeing my XW suffer like I did when she booted me out. The failure of this R--if it falls apart the way I expect--does nothing to make me any better a mate for her than I was when she walked-out two years ago.
On the other hand, shouldn't I see this as a positive development that my XW should recognize that I wasn't so bad after all? I mean, even without my self-improvement efforts, I have to look good in comparison to OM, right?
A successful man earns more than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who marries such a man.Married men live longer than single men, but married men are a lot more willing to die.
