Well, after much deliberating about my reasons I went home without my ring. Apparently some people noticed, but W said nothing. Since then, things have improved dramatically. We had a nice visit there and at my house as the kids visited. I said that it would be a month since I would see the kids again(not whining about it a bit) and she said I could come there for a weekend. She even checked on flights and offered to take off of work to pick me up... Our converersations have been pleasant and upbeat.
I am TRYING to have no expectations, but that remains my challenge. We have talked about me buying a condo and she has been searching on the web some -- strange. At some point I will need to say that I can't envision a life apart like this, but I am sure the time is not right to do that yet.
I continue to look for a job closer to our home butu it is difficult, there is one now and we have talked about it some. It is not in the same town but with 90 minutes...
I don't know if taking my ring off had anything to do with what is happening, but it is the only change on my part.
True -- I don't want to live this life forever. But I do think I will want an answer at some point.
I guess i have also been working on being more decisive. One of the things that drove her crazy is that for the most part I usually deferred to her, in my head it was because I did not want to be overbearing like my father is. But I can see now that by doing that I was just putting more pressure on her to be teh decision maker.
W saw C yesterday. These visits have always been followed by a noticeable coldness, but so far I have not seen any ill effects (even though I am still prone to look under every rock to find them).
Together we decided to take our house off the market yesterday. I see this in a positive light. Before it was "I can't wait until the house sells so I can get my own house." She made the comment that even if things were 1000% between us we would still have the housing and geographic issues we are dealing with. The last percentage I heard from her was that there was a 2% chance of us working out.
Still focusing on low expectations and remaining cool and somewhat aloof about the whole thing...
No - she had mentioned the 2% of her own free will and accord last calendar year, and I probably did ask her about it in December. The 1000% positive comment was hers and not in response to a question or comment on my part. I was only comparing it to the 2% comment of hers long ago - before I got a little better at this.
I have been completely cool about pressure - so far!
