What she is doing now IS a full time job! It's just not 9-5, 5 days a week. It's usually 3 12.5 (sometimes longer) hour shifts during the week, sometimes 4. For the past few months there has been a lot of training, as well, so sometimes, it's two shifts, and two days of class, or something like that.
When the kids are in school, she usually has two or three days during the week that are completely kidless, from 7:15 until 2:30 or so. So, it seems that her new career gives her a lot of benefits, though the 12 hour shifts are hard. But that's the way of nursing these days.
Lola, I know I am far from perfect. Though the more I think, and explore, the more I see that my imperfections have been vastly overstated in order to make everything my fault. It is her nature, at this point. I REALLY think she needs to see a C, whether she stays married to me or not, I think she has some issues, and I don't even begin to understand them. I used to think it was all my fault, but I am learning that it really isn't. She projects all of her unhappiness on me.
My C today said something interesting. She asked if W could be the one depressed! I didn't have a good answer for that. I really don't think so, but it was interesting. We talked about how W has blamed me for every decision that I thought was joint that she has later wanted to disagree with, her being a SAHM, which house we bought, whether we moved or not, etc. W says I didn't listen to her, and more or less railroaded her. I was thinking about it, and realized that I don't have a railroading (other than modeling) type of personality (the C agreed). There is no way that happened! No matter what her rewriting of history says, that's not what happened! They WERE joint decisions! She did agree, at the time. If she had second thoughts later (like more than 15 years later, in the SAHM case), it's not fair to blame that on me, and I don't need to take that blame!
The other thing we talked about was my idea of just asking if she ever sees herself wanting to work on the M. I realized that there isn't a lot of risk in the question. If she says no, I haven't lost anything that I don't have anyway. And, at that point, I can choose whether to continue living as I am, or planning something else. If she says yes, I don't have to change anything right away, just ask what she means, and arrange to talk about it again in a few months. I think I may do this sooner than later. I need to be unstuck.
