Unfortunately, I just had my heart ripped right out once again.
After calling my W's cellphone to wish our S's a good night, W began talking about today from her perspective. This was a very disturbing R talk. My W said many things to me that I found deeply hurtful (to put it mildly). She said my presence today in our house was very painful for her, "like finger nails on a chalkboard." While she perceived that I didn't care how I affected her (I was oblivious to this) and enjoyed myself with my sons, she was suffering in my presence.
She said she took a Zanax (sp?) to help with her anxiety. She said she feels the same way whenever she is around me and feels the same way in church. She said for that reason she cannot go to church at the same time I am there, and that we should arrange to not be in our church at the same time -- or else she should find another church to go to.
At points during this convo she began to sob.
I am in silent alarm for most of this. I am feeling anguish, anger, grief and sorrow, and shock and disbelief, even horror. All I can reply at times is, "I am so very sorry you feel this way." To which she would refrain, "I am sorry -- this is why we will never be together again. It's too painful." And then she would sob more.
I also told W that I never had any intention to make her feel this way, and apologized that I seemed so horrible a person in her eyes. W said she was sorry she felt this way, that she's felt this way for most of our time together. (whatever.) I replied, at one point, maybe she thought it would have been better for her if I had died in the car accident I was involved in in 2006. W said that our S's need their father. I told W that she did not sound so sure of that.
I asked W what would ease this "anxiety" she has with me. W insisted that she needs us to separate our finances and sign the Separation Agreement (SA) so she can relax, find some peace, because she just cannot trust me. She cannot trust me. I got her to elaborate, and she says that she hears S6 frequently talk about Tennessee and how I want to move there (I had only considered it at one time this past summer.) She says she keeps thinking I am going to run off to another state with our S's, and she cannot bear the thought of me taking them away from her.
She has mentioned this fear a couple of times in the past, and it just astounds me. How do you affirm your WAS' feelings in the DB way when their feelings are so outrageous and hurtful? One cannot rationalize with this insane talk, nor can one affirm it in any way, and yet it begs for a response. I told her that I was not the one to whom trustworthiness is at a lack, and that my word was my bond. I stand by my obligations, so in that her fears were without basis (yes, this is anti-DB, but what else can I say?) I also said that I know that removing my S's from their mother would only harm them more than her, and would thus hurt myself. I told W that I hoped she knew that and felt the same herself (she said she did.) Even if I wanted to harm W, taking our S's from her would be foolish -- that would be parental kidnapping.
And then W started crying about how if I loved my S's then I would have been there early enough this morning to see their gift opening this morning, but I didn't.
My jaw fell in my lap and I was exasperated beyond words. She complained that I could have been there in time this morning, but she figured I was too tired from being at the church until the wee hours of the morning. She said I might as well not even have shown up at all this morning if I was going to be late. But it just showed that I had not changed at all.
I managed to reply that I had no idea I was even welcome to so much as show up on Christmas Day ... until 12:08 AM this morning.
W protested this saying she told me long ago about the holiday arrangements, but obviously I was continuing to ignore her words, still to this day. She claimed we had discussed this at length. I told her this was not so, that I have been paying particular attention to any and all discussion of holidays since before Halloween, at the least.
The conversation devolved from there, as you can easily guess. My W is adamant that she told me I had been welcome on Christmas Day and that I was effectively calling her a liar. She said I was again making her feel like she was small, "about as big as a pea", and demeaning her when I had so little regard for her as to listen to what she said. She said that I was too arrogant and "perfect" to even consider that I might be wrong.
I told W that I was far from "perfect", especially in the time leading up to the bomb ("our falling out") but since then I have paid particular attention to my conversations with her and what she has said. I told her I never said she was a liar, but she had to be "mistaken".
(Side note: This is not the first time that W has gotten our conversations wrong. I now journal our conversations, as few as they have become, quite extensively. While I know I have gotten her words mixed up before in the past, I have documented now several occasion where she has failed to recall things correctly. But heaven forbid if I ever call her on these discrepancies. I really think W talks to so many other people -- her mother, her sister, her friends and family, her OM -- that she forgets what she says to who, especially me.)
W says this is just more of the same, that our problems with communication are too great and that I don't respect her enough to listen. In the past I would have to agree with her, because I really did have a problem with listening and comprehending what she was saying during the depths of my depression. But that is no longer the case.
Now I am in shock and seeing the insanity of this situation -- and that I am, at last, seeing that I really am fighting a lost cause. Nothing. Absolutely nothing I have said or done, or will do ... will ever change anything. Not with her.
So, I said, "That is why we are separated. We are just not communicating. I know what has been said between us." W agreed and echoed we need to be separated -- that she was sorry but she just cannot stand being with me. She said the best thing would be for us to sign the SA, complete the split of our finances, and speak as little to each other as possible aside from about our children.
W then begged to end the conversation to attend S3 and put him to bed. I let her go and calmly bid her good night.
I started to cry after that. It was not supposed to be this way. I still do love her.
I am just so devastated that she continues to have this animosity and contempt for me, that she feels that I am so abhorrent to her, and she sees me as being so horrid a person. As little interaction as I have with her, she still continues to perceive of me as some monster, and that my very presence is a burden on her. I am anguished that this is having a negative effect on my S's, that her perceptions of me affect their own perceptions -- and that they too are coming to believe that we are all better off if Mommy gets what she wants, even if the family is split. I hear what she is saying, and I know it is really her guilt that makes her ill. When she thinks that I am threatening to steal our S's away from her, she could only contemplate that if she herself had considered or was considering the same action herself. It is all my fault in her eyes.
Folks, today I am finally facing just how wide the gulf between W and I really is -- and how little progress we have made. We are so far from even being able to co-parent our S's effectively, divorced or not, I am beginning to lose hope.
