Had my two S's for an extra day, MLK holiday. Went to the museum with S's and met up with others and their kids from our DivorceCare group. Had a great time and then dropped off my S's at their mother's before heading back to apartment.
At apartment W called and gave an angry, vitriolic tirade on how I was a "bad, bad parent" for not getting S7 to complete his homework over the weekend. She started going off on me for "failing" this one little task, when I had the entire "3-day weekend" to get it completed.
I tried to defend myself, and got a bit too angry at her threats that she wanted to minimize my contact with our S's, to keep them from harm caused by me. She knows what buttons to push, and her threats really unsettled me. At one point she said, "There's a reason you're in that apartment now, and I am here at home!" (This infuriates me -- she forgets that I am not in my house precisely because of the sacrifice I made to keep the peace and to promote the welfare of my children. I felt like telling her to get the hell out of my house.)
I went to my DivorceCare (DC) meeting feeling absorbed by thoughts of this fight, and having difficulty concentrating on the session material. It didn't help that W tried to call me on my cell phone during the middle of the session -- when she knows where I am at that time.
I called her back afterwards and she said she was in the middle of the difficult, arduous task of getting S7 to do his writing assignment, the one he did not complete this weekend. She was in a foul mood, and said she'd call back later only after S7 completed his work.
A few minutes later she did call and let me speak to S7. I congratulated and praised S7 for completing the last part of his assignment. W then hung up to put S7 to bed.
A while later, still stewing over the harsh words spoken, and recalling the thoughts I had in my DC meeting, I determined that the Christian thing to do, the thing God would want me to do, would be to suck up my pride and admit that I was wrong in not taking this assignment seriously enough -- as an opener to asking W to consider working together with me to help our S's, instead of fighting.
So at the sire risk of starting another R talk, I called W on the phone about 10 PM. She first told me that our S's were in bed asleep, so I had better be calling her and not them. And that's how it started.
We had a lot of harsh words. I tried to agree where I could, but had to object to a lot of her more insidious, unfair remarks. She showed a relentless amount of hostility, and took no pains to soften the candor of her words. It was near impossible to endure the disrespectful ire she levied on me, and several times her absolute contempt for me was palpable. If I tried to speak, she either told me to shut up or pointed out that I cannot listen to her without interrupting, and thus I "never" listen, and it was "pointless." All the while she's lambasting me for being mean, overly-opinionated, never listening, self-righteous, selfish, cold, etc., I noted she was displaying those same negative traits herself with every word she uttered.
I did note she made a few "admissions". First, she again acknowledged the OM for the first time in a while. But she tried to rehash the whole situation with the other man by offering more details than before. She said, once again, that she was already planning on leaving me when the OM supposedly got wind of her intentions. When W told OM that her M was over, he came forward and confessed that he had felt something deeply for W for the entire 11 years they've known each other. W claims she was both surprised and overwhelmed that OM felt this way and it was only then that she opened up to him, but it went no further, she claimed.
W said I could blame her mother for our M breaking up sooner rather than later, rather than the OM. She said that until MIL came in our house W didn't think she could make it on her own financially. Once she figured out that with MIL providing help with our children, she realized she could earn a very good living and thus she did not need me anymore. She said I wasn't there for her and the kids anyway, and was "no help" at all for anything. Cut me like a knife. So she claims that she was going to bide her time until she could either leave me and still be secure financially, or until our S's were old enough to both be self-sufficient in school (i.e., until our S's could become your typical latch-key children of divorce.) But her Mom helped her get moving sooner.
W continues to deny there has been any physical contact or PA with OM; she even refuses to acknowledge she is/was having an EA, saying they are just "very good friends". She tells me I am dead wrong about my assertions she is planning on marrying OM or anyone else -- she claims that she is "done" with M and has no plans to ever get married again. (I am not buying this -- I know her too well. (1) W's self-esteem is tied to her sexuality, so she is not going to do without. W will not be able to remain celibate for very long. (2) She will rationalize premarital sex and "living in sin" for only so long before her conscious dictates she make herself "legitimate". (3) So she says she is down on M right now, but she also has said on similar subjects that she can change her mind.)
She continues to use our S's as her primary excuse for leaving me. In the beginning she used my neglect of her feelings as her primary excuse. And she considers my depression to be a non-issue, just "a cop-out" on my part. When I asked her just what precisely she thought caused my depression, she said she didn't care. And now that Asperger's has been ruled out in my case, she no longer brings that up as my problem.
But now that I have redoubled my love and attention onto S7 and S3, she feels the need to transfer her angst and her accusations of my supposed negligence of her onto our children, now saying her primary cause for wanting to leave me was because of how I neglected our S's. I have a very difficult time with her accusations that I am a bad parent and saying that I must have my time minimized with them as a result --- veiled threats to wrest full custody of our kids. It's one thing for her to deny my love for her, but another entirely when she denies my love and devotion to our children.
Still, I ended up trying to apologize to W and to be diplomatic in trying to get her to understand that we need to cease these hostilities -- for the sake of our S's. I told her that while she may no longer consider me to be her husband anymore, I am not her enemy either. Furthermore, I will always be our children's father and she will always be their mother -- there's just no getting around that despite the fact she seems to hope I will just go away. That is simply not going to happen, so she needs to get used to it. I told her while we are not likely to salvage this M, we still need to try to find some basic level of reconciliation. I all but pleaded with W to consider our S's well being first and put these hostilities aside, for their sake.
It took a loooong time to get my message through to W. She took every sentence I said negatively and would immediately interrupt me or make some snide comment. She has so much disdain for me that I cannot fathom how she ever got to this state of mind. Eventually I got my points across, patiently getting through the tangents, the accusations, the disrespect, but I just don't know how much she really got; she just has so much hatred and contempt, so much disregard for my thoughts and feelings. She accuses me of thinking I am God, for trying to point out right from wrong, or for trying to "predict" outcomes in our situation, even though anybody with half a mind can see what is likely, given the current circumstances. She doesn't want to see or even consider the possibility that the emperor has no clothes.
At one point, W glowed about how her mother is really doing well with our S's. She claims MIL is showing more patience with the both of them, including S7, than even herself at times. And in describing her mother's advice, W actually tried to tell me of her mother has so much "wisdom". I couldn't contain my laughter and outburst at such a ridiculous notion. I apologized and said that MIL has never learned from any of her mistakes in her life, so "wisdom" is just not a word I would ever associate with her. I told W that as far as her mother's improvements and her ability to raise our children, I have direct observation of how she still has childish arguments with S7, and holds juvenile, petty grudges against a mere seven-year old. I disputed any assertion MIL is fit to raise our S's and it concerned me greatly.
W's response: "It beats daycare." I nearly fell out of my chair.
By comparison, W treats me either like an imbecile and an unruly child, or a villain escaped from hell (sometimes both). All alien spew, I know, but it hurts no less. She also told me that this, how she is now -- hostile against me and contemptuous of my character, selfish and concerned with herself first -- is how she really is, and that she is merely returning back to how she was before she met me. She claims she suppressed her real self for my sake back when we first started dating, and now she can be "free to be herself." She claims she realized early on in our R that I was too intolerant of other's opinions, so she just went along with what she considers to be my petty value system.
It was such utter drivel, and mindlessly hateful speech, all designed to demoralize me and anger me. I saw it for what it was, and yet it still hurts. I asked her at one point when she lost her soul, or did she really ever have one. (Yes, this was a very anti-DB slip of the tongue.) She shot back that was between her and God -- her soul was just fine, thank you very much, and not something I was qualified to judge.
I told W I think I understand her better than anyone else. I thought I knew her better than I actually did prior to the bomb, but I was lost then and couldn't see where she really was. Love is blind. But I know her motivations now and see how her priorities are actually stacked. I told her I understood her insecurities, her self-esteem problems, and how all her long years of abuse by her mother and her step-mother have damaged her -- and now she is transferring the blame for all of that onto me, making me into the cause for all her problems. She started to argue saying, "So now this is all my fault, you think."
I said, "No, but we've already hashed out my failings, and my faults. Over and over. Do you want to go into those yet again?" I continued, saying that it all boils down to trust, and that she has never given me her complete trust, always doubting my love for her, always making me have to "prove" my love for her. I endured the continual testing of my devotion to her, even though I had given her my heart completely.
She responded that I began to take it all back over these years, and I thus killed the marriage.
And then I wrecked our finances, she says, and became unstable and untrustworthy. That I became unreliable and a major disappointment to her. And that I neglected her and our children. And now I have failed another of her "tests", and failed our S7, leaving her to clean up the mess. She said all I want to do is be the "good daddy", but not the real father. A real father would make his S do his homework, before going out and having fun with him, rewarding him unfairly for not doing his work. I could not gainsay much of what she accused me of in that. She oversimplifies the situation, but yes I failed in that particular role this weekend. But it does not warrant her total disrespect.
W said that I make it too easy for S7 to just ignore adults and get away with not doing what he needs. She claims S7 learns such behavior from me, because she says I ignore her and her demands.
W made another admission. She told me that she tells S7 that when he argues with her, she asks him if he learned such behavior from "Daddy". I got her to clarify her statement. W said that S7 has learned his disrespect and unruly ways from observing me and my treatment of his mother. She said that my arguments against her were recognized by S7 as a bad influence, but he tries to protect me when W asks him about my influence on him.
I said, "So you are asking S7 whether his bad behavior was learned from his daddy?"
W: "I never called you bad in front of him, no. I said your behavior was bad. I never say anything bad about you to him. Unlike you, who tells S7 I am a liar."
Me:"But you are saying you use negative behavior to associate that with me, his father. You are telling S7 that his father argues and that S7 learns such bad behavior from me. So you are putting in his mind to associate negative behaviors with his father."
W: "Well, yes, you are the one who has exhibited the bad behaviors -- he understands that."
Me: "You accuse me of not "seeing it". But you are the one who just can't see it -- how harmful this is to S7 and his relationship with me. You said you would never do that, right after accusing me of the same, but yet you just said you did this to me."
W: "You just don't get it. Separating the person from the behavior."
Me: "Oh, I get it alright."
My M is dead.
I know -- trust nothing they say. But I cannot abide this woman anymore.
