You are singing my song right on key. Paragraph 1 above. Deadec on man.
Paragraph 2 above. Dead on man. Let me quailify I love my wife very much but at thins point I don't know what kind of love it is. Do I just care very much and worry about my wife & 3 kids future and the good 20 years we had together or am I chemically and physically in love with her. As everyday goes by it is more toward #1. Her everyday abuse can not be recieved anymore by all in this house. I do not see her getting better and my old W is not coming back. Can I forgive her for all this and make it work, I sure would like to give it one heck of a try. She would need to decide that she has issues that need to be resolved and so do I. I am working very hard on mine, I don't think I will ever be done but at least I am working hard, hard, hard.
Pretty quite weekend. We spent a lot of time together at kids sporting events. She started riding me last night so I left the house and went out and GALed with some buddies. Just hung out, watched a fight, eat some great food. I also played golf this weekend which was very nice. We have the big L meeting on Wednesday which is making everyone very nervous around here. She is very pushy about going ahead with getting things going with the big D. I wish there was some way of fixing this but it does not look good from here. I like BND's advice above. I may start getting really pushy.
My Husband was very confident about the Divorce, he had it all planned out.... We went to see a Mediator, as he didn't want to spend the money for an Attorney. When he found out exactly what was involved and how much money he would have to pay he wasn't as quick to file.
There can be no testimony without a test. I am praying to go through this test and come out the other end with a new and better marriage then before.
You're doing the right thing in detaching from her venom and doing things that make you happy and/or help you cope with this mess.
I'm still making my way through Daniel Gilbert's great book, Stumbling on Happiness. Today I found a few nuggets that helped me and hopefully will help you and anyone else who's reading:
1. Most people underestimate the novelty of the future. In other words, we take how we are feeling at the moment and project it into the future. In fact the future often looks a lot different when we get there. I suppose this could work both ways. If we are happy now, we assume we will be happy in the future when in fact we may feel worse than expected. But if we are in pain now, we overestimate how much pain we will feel in the future. Our future selves won't see the world as we see it now; today we don't see the world how we saw it last week, last year, or five years ago, etc.
2. Most people are pretty resilient and recover from trauma sooner than they expect. Very few stay mired in a deep depression or are unable to function "normally." What looks like unending pain will, most likely, end or at least abate to the point where we are happy again. Negative events do affect us, but not for as long or as in severe a way as we sometimes imagine they will.
3. It is easier to remember the past than to generate new possibilities, and thus we underestimate the joy we may experience in the future.
4. When faced with trauma, a healthy response system allows us to feel discomfort but also enables us to do something about it. We are not too defensive about our own problems, nor are we too helpless to change.
5. The brain agrees to believe what the eye sees, but the eye also looks for what the brain wants to believe. This is the "believing is seeing" issue I wrote about earlier.
Keep up your good work. Not knowing whether to love her just as someone in pain but someone with whom we can never be again, or whether we really love our W to the point where we really would like to make a serious attempt to create a new M is a tough spot. I am there myself a lot of the time, still uncertain which way to go.
I spent a lot of time with the W at kids sporting events. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
I went out Saturday night and she was very interested in where I went and who I was with. It kind of weird. She said she didn't care if I dated anyone but I said I think you do. No answer to that one. She is really mixed up. Angry and depressed.
Now we are arguing about tax money allocation.
Lots of fun.
Big meeting with the Lawyers on Wednesday is causing a lot of nervousness in the house.
Gilbert's book came out a year or so ago, I believe, and was popular enough that a lot of public libraries would have it, I suppose. You can also probably get a cheap used copy online. I have very much enjoyed the book. He's got a sharp wit, so that makes it fun as well as insightful. He's really onto something in noting that we get ourselves all tied up one way, but life often goes another. I really think you'd like this and find it helpful too. In fact, I suspect anyone going through the pain of separation/divorce would benefit, but it's even good for people in almost any situation in life. You'll gain some deep insights into how you and others think/act.
Good luck fighting over the tax money. My W and I have agreed to split the refunds 50-50, and so we have avoided a fight on that. In fact, we really don't fight. We just don't have any meaningful contact. The only contact is over matters such as "I paid the tax preparation bill today and we can settle that at the end of the month when my credit card statement comes." She then replies "Thanks for doing that."
Good luck with the L on Wednesday. I haven't crossed that bridge yet, but I will be thinking about you and wishing you well.
I'm not surprised to see her interest in where you were. Still, there's not much you can do with that. You handled it well. I bet she does care if you dated but can't/won't think through her feelings on that one. Mixed up indeed, and not much you can do about it unfortunately.
Looks like you just got an item added to the agenda for Wednesday's meeting with the L. I hope you've got some recourse there, but you may not. If it's a joint account and you have no separation agreement, she may have a right to take whatever is there and blow it in one day, one hour, etc. Have you cut her off credit cards? It took me several months to do that, but am I ever glad I did. It was very emotionally hard to get a bank account in my name, walk into payroll and set up direct deposit to the new account, change addresses for the credit card bills that were now in my name only. Yet in hindsight it was absolutely the right thing for me to do. I only wish I would have done it sooner, but I'm not living in the past. Doing it when I did, however, likely kept me from a true financial disaster.
Many people here have said this over the years, but it bears repeating--Protect yourself financially.
