Another one joins the flock (Part II)

[Mike85]

momof2girls:

Actually, she was supposed to have the kids all day/night on Friday and cut it short and is supposed to have them Sunday but seems to have "forgotten." I had thought about pushing her to take the kids when she was supposed to, but decided against it for a few reasons:

- the kids are confused enough without the stable parent (that would be me) suddenly acting like I didn't want them either (or that I was putting my own wants/needs before them, like mom).

- I wasn't comfortable about how wife and bf would treat the kids in that situation (and how they might spin it to the kids)

- I don't want to use my kids as pawns to teach wife and/or bf a lesson

I did make a point of sending pics of the kids w/text captions to wife during the day. Hopefully, it will remind her of how much fun we had as a family doing the festival.

Like you said, we do fun things. We were at our village festival from 10:30 in the morning until 8 pm. The only reason we left was that my youngest doesn't like the volume of live music.

The kids marched in the "Teddy Bear Parade" and got free treats, played in a bounce house, got stuff from the comic book store, ate slushees, fried dough, fudge, assorted free candy, pizza, ice cream, sno-cones, and a ton of bottled water. The bounce house was free, and my youngest must have spent an hour in it. Kids got to pet and play with an alpaca (!). I bought them cool tie-dyes (one of my favorite college-era fashions...). Kids had a blast, as did I.

Also ran into tons of soon-to-be-former coworkers and students, who all congratulated me and said they'd miss me. A bunch of my former students (now in college) are planning a BBQ for/with me. One of them waited on us at the pizzeria, sat with us, and then he gave my sons free ice cream. Ran into parishioners from my church who congratulated me on the good news and gave me support for the wife-mlc news. Turns out there's another member of our "club" - another parishioner just had his wife leave him...for another woman. Whoa.

I'm over the dream, and it's nice to hear that others have the same experience. I just have to remember that it's just my brain playing out my worst fears and neuroses and not to read anything into it. It's just hard to have a period that is supposed to be a respite from obsessing over the issue turn into a REPLAY of the issue. Maybe there's some psych exercises my counselor can recommend to "program" better dreams.