I think a lot of what roe_zee says makes sense. it goes along with the book I'm reading...its all about having a goal for a conversation, keeping your focus, and acheiving your goal while being respectful to the other person.
I agree, that if this is what you want, then this is a good way to start getting it. just try to keep your focus on what you want to accomplish, and try not to get caught up in personal attacks and such.
M-41 H-38 M-10 years, T-14 years Bomb-PA 3/19/07 Separated-6/7/07 Piecing/h back home 5/08 S-6 S-4 D-4
"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is that little voice at the end of the day that says, 'I'll try again tomorrow.'"
Apparently I have chosen to do things this way, and I have to live with the consequences.
After an uncomfortable day together Sat at the end of which d refused to go stay at h's place so we all went home and had pizza and then h fiddled with his laptop all night and then slept in the spare room. When he finally got me in a position on Monday to aske me why I'd been avoiding him all Monday I told him that I was uncomfortable (he thought we had a nice time!) and that I'm like a cat on a hot tin roof around him and never sure what's going on. I said "I can't be friends with you for a while until I get my sh1t together"
He says "That's all I need to know. bye"
and hangs up.
And today I realised I needed to let him know what was going on with d this week to avoid him going off at me for keeping him in the dark with d so I sent him an email (reproduced below)
Hi,
To keep you informed as to what [d] is doing:
Today - As per normal, you will pick her up from school and I will come and pick her up from you at [hs work]. Let me know if there is a change.
Wednesday - Because I have water polo early, I have asked J (R's mum from ASC) to pick [d] from ASC and look after her till I get home. J has netball up at [your work] at 7.15pm so you might see [d] up there. J will then drop [d] home as both her and I should be returning home at about the same time (around 8-ish). If you are finishing work at 6.30pm and don't have anything on afterwards and you would like to spend time with [d] I can ask J to drop her off with you (up at your work) and I can pick her up from you or you could bring her home if you wish. If you would like to do that, let me know so I can tell J.
J has offered me their trampoline (for free) as they are moving over to the Gold Coast soon. All it needs is a new mat. I will pick it up sometime. (She has a trailer I can use). Just letting you know.
For Thursday - I have given d's teacher a note to notify the school that [d] will need to be excused early from school due to an appointment (counselling). I believe that you will need to go through the office when you go to pick her up (which I think you know anyway). I haven't yet told [d] about the counselling appointment. If you would like to talk to her about it I am more than fine with that, otherwise I'll bring it up with her tonight.
Friday - I am still going to the Indigo Girls concert. I have organised A to babysit from 6.15pm.
Saturday - while [d] is at gymnastics I'm going to the beautician. Saturday night I have tentatively arranged for [friend] to come over for a sleep over as I believe it is supposed to be my weekend to have [d]. Let me know if you this is different to what you think should be happening.
If you have time available on Saturday afternoon and would like to spend some of it with [d], let me know and we will work something out.
Sunday - I have a brunch thing with my water polo team after training. Again, assuming that I will have [d] with me, I will be taking her with me to water polo training and the brunch.
That's about it for organising things for now.
I can understand if you are very angry with me. However, I don't want to have [d] in the middle of any fights between us and I especially don't want to block you from spending time with her. I hope that we can discuss issues about [d] without arguing and organise times for you two to spend together. If possible I would like to discuss this on Thursday with counsellor) but if [d]'s there, it might not be practical to do so. We do need to discuss sooner rather than later how we are going to share parenting [d] and I would like to have a third party there to keep us both on track. I guess that is mediation which we will do do with whoever [C] recommends.
I hope you have a good day.
K
So I sent that and then sent him a text to let him know that he had email. That was at 10.30am. I get a text from him at 2.30pm saying
How very impersonal. You will have to call me to tell me because I am not at work and can't check them now
I message him back to ask if I can call now. He messages back 'whatever' (which he knows I hate!)
So I go to a spare office and take a deep breath and call him.
He says 'what do you want'
I said to go over what Ximena's doing this week.
He was very abrupt and we ended up getting into a fight about 'fine, if you want to do things by email and text that;s fine' 'if you change your mind, you come and tell me' he was paritcularly unimpressed about being snubbed about the concert.
Because he was being so abrupt and almost rude I left out the trampoline part and also left out the bottom paragraph about hism being angry with me.
It's just so 'non middle ground' with him. Either we're buddy buddy and he feels like everything's fine and I'm okay with him moving on and rubbing my nose in it but still expecting me to be available to spend time with him whenever he wants or we do what he thinks I am saying and we communicate through text and email and that's that. arrgghhh!
to quote Morgan...f him.
I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't.
There's heaps of other bits and pieces which i am trying to get 'paper journalled' so I can reflect later. When I've got it covered I'll try to put it on here....
I want to have conversation with my h. He is not a talking kinda person.
He is a physical touch kind of person.
If 50% of the things he tells me 'triggers' me because they can be related to our problems or his new woman, he says 'fine, I won't tell you anything about my life then'. that would be fine if I could have a relationship/friendship with him that didn't involve conversation. However, it is what I ache to have with him. Just little inane conversation, small talk, giggles about silly things. If I am on tenterhooks around him wondering what he is thinking and what he's been doing with her and his new life and if he's mad with me, or just thinks I'm useless - why would I want to expose myself to him by having a conversation with him?
I am not comfortable just 'hanging' with him. At some point he ends up touching me in more than just a brotherly way or making some sort of sexual comment to me to let me know that he still finds me attractive and it makes me just so sad that he can't talk to me first and we can't laugh first. It makes me uncomfortable, It makes me feel like he wants me to be part of a harem. I'm sure he doesn't but that's the way it feels. I feel like my upset is an overreaction but my upset never really gets validated.
so to summarise (ha!) if I want conversation with him, but he is not going to tell me anything because anything he does say upsets me 50% of the time :(because I don't think he thinks about how a reference to his new girlfriend might upset me) then how can I have a friendship with him??
It's like he wants to skip over all the hurt and pain and guilt and jump straight to a 'happily divorced couple who are now really good friends'. Man...that sort of sh1t takes months, maybe years to get to. He wants to get there in less than a month?????
where is the respect to the space that I need? where are my cojones to explain myself clearly???
oh yes...and if ever I want to talk to him again. I'm going to have to be the one to suck up and swallow my pride. Cos he won't.
And then I'll be right back where I started. I don't know how to set a boundary without him getting p1ssed off about me setting it.
It's like I can try to set a boundary (don't make sexual comments to me) he can throw a tanty (tantrum) or get the sooks (be upset) and I'll back down in an effort to keep the peace. I just can't see a middle ground in all this crap. this is a dynamic that is so old with us. I don't know if he sees it or if he just thinks I'm screwed up.
God I'd love to have a good chat with his ex-flatmate and find out what she thinks of him now. But that of course would just fuel the fire. It might clear things up, it might just muddy things even more.
Oh yeah...and his comment "fine, I won't tell you anything about my life anymore" isn't going to make anything much different becuase he didn't tell me anything worth knowing before anyway! the only things he told me were things that hurt, to do with Loopy, to do with 'new girlie'. He won't even rise to the bait and deny that she is his new girlfriend. That sucks. He would deny it if it wasn't true.
I just don't want to give him the opportunity to parade me around (along with d) as part of his new harem. that's what it feels like. Maybe I'm imagining that but the feeling is still there. Man I want to text him that...."I refuse to be part of your harem. You can't take liberties with my personal space and then talk about 'new girlie' like I am your mate. I am still your wife. F8cker."
Yeah...that'd be reeeeal useful. That's why I posted it here.....get it out of my system.
Ok, maybe email wasn't the best only because he doesn't have enough access to it.
Personally I see nothing wrong with email, it'd always been a big part of my relationships, and especially to explain complex arrangements (and that way one can refer back to it). But it sounds like using email to get your feelings down might be good but might not be, as then he might either not read it properly (and you think because you've voiced it he understands) or go off the deep end about one little thing you've said and not even read the rest. so I think the best bet if you are going to use emails is just for the facts.
Ok so what could you have done when he texted back and said "how very impersonal", you could have texted back (although then you might get in a texting war) saying there was a lot of detail about d's arrangments this week, so email was easier, regarding today, the usual, where you pick her up etc. let me know if there is an issue. details in email about thursday. i'll summarise it in a letter for you now, in case we don't have time to discuss it when i pick d up. (then if he wanted to ring you he could- you need to stand your ground)
i think you made the wednesday much more involved then it needed to be with this trouble your having. maybe it's my lack of motherhood, but why do so much juggling for him to see d when it's going to make things so complicated for everyone?
you definitely need to set a time to talk about d, so that you don't have all these ad hoc arrangements. just brainstorming here.... maybe think about setting up a babysitter to look after her for after after school care and if H works out he can take d then he needs to ring the babysitter to cancel. maybe trial it for a little while and maybe set a hourly rate a bit less then the usual rate to cater for cancellations but she gets paid regardless. or vice versa a higher rate if she actually does the baby sitting to compensate for the cancellations... hmmm... a bit complicated.. probably not going to work.
the crux of the idea is to do less juggling yourself and less juggling with d, get him to take responsibility and to increase the amount of time he spends with her in blocks and reduce the number of short times he spends with her as it just ends up making it complicated for the both of you.
at the moment H is able to be more difficult and keep himself in your life and making you anxious by the ad-hoc arrangements you have.
it's almost like you need to just organise your life until he decides to come to the party and communicate about how best to deal with d.
try to keep the emotion out of your discussions at the moment (yeah i know- that's hard). maybe the email was impersonal but that's kinda how you seem to want things for the moment.
what you could have done is just text him arrangements for today and then give him a letter with all the other details for the rest of the week, but leave all the other feeling stuff out of it, and just say i thought it'd be easier if the arrangements for this week were written down. let me know if you disagree (or something to that effect).
Anyway i hope some of this is useful.
I'm a bit confused by your first post about he saying "if you change your mind come and tell me" is that referring to something else or doing things by text or the concert. I see nothing wrong with doing things by text and email if the feeling is left out of it and it's just factual.
Maybe this makes sense. Just little inane conversation, small talk, giggles about silly things. If I am on tenterhooks around him wondering what he is thinking and what he's been doing with her and his new life and if he's mad with me, or just thinks I'm useless - why would I want to expose myself to him by having a conversation with him? .......................
It's like he wants to skip over all the hurt and pain and guilt and jump straight to a 'happily divorced couple who are now really good friends'. Man...that sort of sh1t takes months, maybe years to get to. He wants to get there in less than a month?????
When i read "inane conversation, giggles etc" that sounds like flirting to me (or at least very close, where wires can get crossed) so I'd be cautious about doing that anyway, if it ever becomes possible again. I'd like to know what other members think about that?
you're not useless! and if he thinks you are that is a reflection on him. you need to stop caring about what he thinks. all that stuff about wondering whether he's mad at you... I know it's going to take a while but you need to stop worrying about if he's mad (of course don't purposely make him mad- but if he gets mad because you are looking out for yourself and d that's also a reflection on him).
the second paragraph that i quoted here would be really good to bring up in your next counselling session I think.
hang in there. it will get easier, you just need to keep distancing yourself for now.
Oh and I'm curious about other people's opinions on what i wrote/write. if you disagree i won't mind at all but try and provide some other ideas to do instead.
OR you could have texted him to say "need to call you to talk about arrangements for d, let me know when is a good time. also, in case your not sure arrangement today is for you to pick her up per previous discussis. let me know if that's changed."
then made sure u wrote down all the arrangements like in the email so when he calls you have it all ready and try to stick to it. and not talk about any emotional stuff.
if he trys to talk about emotional stuff say we need to have a face to face chat. if he continues to talk about it say you'd prefer not to talk on the phone about it and that you also need to have a chat about more permanent arrangements for d and you can talk about it then. and that you prefer face to face as you don't want to be hung up on again.
