Ah, I guess it's time for an update <Uh, oh. Another book coming...>
I was in a pretty good mood this evening ( and most of the day). As I drove to tonight's DivorceCare meeting, I called to talk to my 2 S's, as usual, to catch them before bedtime. At the end, W started telling me she was planning to take our S's to see her aunt and uncle later this month, after Christmas. I asked her about the health of her sickly uncle, and while he's not doing well, somehow she segued us to saying something about how everything would be better "if I would just go ahead and sign the papers."
At first I didn't know what she was talking about, now how it related to the price of tea in China, just more alien nonsense, but then realized she was talking about her precious Separation Agreement (SA).
This started another disagreement. W insists that I need to sign her SA to make what we are supposedly abiding by legal and in writing. I told her I had not nor would I sign any of the drafts for her SA as written because I did not fully agree to the terms she had put in there. W responded that if I don't sign her SA then it was going to mean $65 to $100 an hour for a mediator, or even more for a lawyer, which was senseless and more money than either of us could afford. It would mean driving up our debt even more.
I responded that even mediation wouldn't be necessary if she would at least listen to and discuss my own counter offers and my own terms so we can reach a mutually-agreeable compromise. She complained that when she wrote the SA I was sitting near by and she "discussed" with me what she was putting into the document (Mind you, this was the very first week after the "bomb", when I was shell-shocked and too emotionally overwhelmed to be making a life-altering decision like that, without legal counsel or even proper consideration for my own interests. W was using one of the on-line legal forms vendors to put together her document -- and was trying to railroad me into terms unfair to me.) W thinks that I was fully in agreement with her terms, when we both know I told her then as well as now, that I disagree with her terms and believe she is leaving out stipulations that I want addressed. W shot back that she was not going to allow clauses that had nothing to do with either custody or with separating our finances -- she said I couldn't put any of that "irrelevant, silly stuff" about reconciliation or about restrictions on dating other into the agreement, as I had asked for before.
I told W that even for the terms she specified concerning finances and child custody (she is calling it, sneakily, "visitation". Hah! I wasn't born yesterday!), I don't agree with the terms she's drafted there. She asked how so. I told her for one thing I want not only joint legal custody, but joint physical custody of our S's.
W's response was "Wha-? How do you propose that would work?" I told her I already have custody on the two Weekend days, I would expect to have custody on one additional day during the week. I can pick them up on a Wednesday evening, they would stay with me overnight, and I would see them to the bus stop and preschool the next morning.
W said, "That won't work. How will this offer any consistency and continuity to S6's schedule? S6 doesn't need to have any additional disruptions in his life - how is this going to help that?"
I replied, "It won't offer any more drastic a change in his life than what he's already been suffering under this separation you have demanded."
W then took another tact. "But how are you going to be able to get them to where they need to be the next day? I thought your work was so demanding -- that's why we had to separate, because you value your job more than your children."
I replied, "I will make the adjustment, and my employer will have to get used to it."
W: "Even if it means you don't get to work until 10 Am that day?" Me: "Yes."
Then W repeated one of her oft-quoted refrains whenever I do or say something that throws a monkey-wrench into her stereotyping of me, "I am sorry it took me leaving you before you would ______." (Fill in the blank.) In this case, "... before you would be your sons' father." She went further, "I guess my leaving you has proven to be a good thing, if it means you are getting to appreciate your sons and do all this for them."
That's when it began to spiral out of control. She was continuing to pat herself on the back for leaving me, and I began to try to refute this alien illogic. We started arguing more vehemently. She insisted that I was never going to change, and that she had to leave me for the sake of our sons (so why does she need me to actively be their father if I am such a horrible person?)
I asked her why was it necessary for us to communicate better, especially with regards to my counseling and my spiritual healing, when that has no bearing on the raising of our S's in separate households, as separate parents -- that would really be none of her business. If we are, in her opinion, irreconcilable and there is no way we could ever be together again as husband and wife, meaning we will no longer be one happy family, then why the pretense for us to have such personal talks (one-sided as they are, with me spilling my guts)? All we would need to exchange is impersonal information about our S's and nothing more.
W still evades the question. Instead she lobs grenades at me about how she can never and will never trust me ever again. Again, I ask, so why the pretense?
I then went anti-DB by telling her she knows nothing about what reconciliation really is. I told her she bristles at the very mention of the term and yet she hasn't even considered that there are degrees of reconciliation. I told her that without some minimal level of reconciling our differences, at the very least, we were not going to have much success in co-parenting our kids. And until then these one-sided conversations were pointless. As if to prove my point about her stubborn intolerance, W stated that we were not ever going to reconcile. To which I said, "Then we're never going to be able to have even a civil discussion about their well being. A first level of reconciliation means that both parents agree to and focus on being civil with each other at the very least. This is a long way off from a full reconciliation of the M, which you are so blindly dead set against."
I was quite testy with W by this time. I was sitting in the parking lot, late for going into my meeting, and I was trying to find some way to bring closure to this disturbing talk with W. I was fighting to keep from breaking down. She put me in such a dark mood, laying this whammy on me right before my Monday night meeting. I realized I had allowed her to drag me back into another R talk, a morass of senseless, angry words. She circled back around to the SA again, to which I asked, "Why? What's so important about a SA? I am true to my word. The agreement you sign, however, is not worth the paper its written on -- no more so than the one you signed 16 years ago."
W insists she's "done". She can never go back to being neglected like I did to her before. I told her, "In all honesty, do you really think I would want either of us to go back into that same situation as it was before? No. I care to much for you -- and myself -- to ever have that happen again."
I finally told W I had to go and ended the conversation. I went into my meeting a mass of frazzled nerves, trying to fight back the tears. She says she's done; well, I guess I am too. But the meeting (with a lead-off sermon on peace making, and a main topic of helping children during divorce) got me to thinking: maybe I am not being clear-headed enough -- I need to keep the welfare of my two little boys in mind.
After the meeting, I called W's cellphone to see if she wanted to finish our conversation, since I ended it so abruptly. She was still putting the boys to bed (after 8:30 AM on a school night) and would be too tired to talk tonight afterwards. She told me she sent me an email, and that we could discuss this via writing.
Here's what she sent:
"Well, I wouldn't mind if you had another day with the kids, but it would be very detrimental for their week to be broken up. The teacher's will tell you, it would be torture for S6 & harmful to S3. So you could do Thurs. night or Sun night. I will update the separation agreement & when you sign it at the bank with a notary present you can start taking them an extra day. Thank you, W"
W is still on this SA. Still.
And she is still not hearing me -- this was only one of many changes I have in mind for our so-called agreement.
I can't say that, at this point, I am opposed to the very idea of an SA -- just to the way W wants it to be worded. I am thinking though, that maybe these should be broken down into separate agreements -- a Custody Agreement, a Financial Separation Agreement, a Marital Separation Agreement. It might mean easier and more malleable terms for each, and which one can be altered without affecting the others. I have to think more on this, and gather some thoughts from others.
I am also giving serious thought to drafting a first-of-its-kind Reconciliation Agreement.
