That is a great suggestion, Techguy - thanks for bringing it up. I have tried to change some things over the last nine months - I've started getting together with friends, which is unusual for me - and I've started wearing more button-down shirts - which I like to do - but don't wear often since I usually just work from home. I've also started wearing contact lenses more - just to remove the barrier I sometimes imagine between myself and others when I'm wearing my glasses. I don't think my W really cares enough to notice any actual changes in me at all...and any ones that she has noticed have just become more of an opportunity to be negative about me...i.e. when I started playing outside with the kids more she accused me of trying to manipulate her - and when I played more with our baby boy she accused me of not caring about him but just playing with him in order to make her have sex with me....(I still cannot make sense of that accusation)...
So...I've made a lot of changes in my life over the last several months - though most have just been 180s that have helped me be happier with who I am as a person and as a father...one big one for me is that I just don't drink much wine at all - almost never - and I really enjoy a nice glass of red wine...but I never buy it now...ever...so that's another 180.
I don't know...today I've been mulling my situation over more in terms that you've been sharing, techguy - and find myself getting lured into that idea of the grass being greener out there somewhere...I look back on our relationship - and just reflect on the last couple months since she's moved out - and I see so much anger everywhere...but since she moved in November - all, and I mean ALL the anger has been hers and hers alone. I just don't live with it in me...and am now very aware of how much anger she could bring into our relationship. I was just looking at a photograph from when my S11 was only 6 and we were hiking together - and I remember how she snipped at him and made him cry - just because of how he was climbing up a slope - a slope that he was very excited to climb up. She was worried about him hurting himself, but the way she expressed it was by snipping at him in a way that just startled him and made him cry.
She used to do that a lot - and when I stood up for my son, which was often, she would accuse me of not respecting her - though from my perspective she had no respect for my son - or for my role as his father - and she had/has this strange conviction that children are to be treated liked fools who are going to do something wrong - and not as little people that can learn from their mistakes - and who can be taught to do what is best in most occasions. Everyone who has ever met my S11 marvels at how polite he is, how intelligent and poised - and yet my W would always treat him as though he were a misbehaved childhood - it would confuse him constantly...and I could see it in her eyes...and over the years there have been many, many instances in which I've seen her father treat her the exact same way.
...about her father...have I mentioned yet that he told one of his employees that he was upset because he felt like baby boy had replaced him. He had actually complained about a 2-year-old baby getting more attention than he...that is just unreal to me...and yet I look at my situation and see that my W started to fall apart around when our son was 1.5 years old - and I then wonder, what was her father like toward her when she was around 2 years old - the first child - and taking attention away from him...
Which brings me back to my thoughts of late...maybe this crisis will be her opportunity to grow out of her past - maybe this is what she needed to improve herself...then again, maybe she won't ever dig in enough to recognize that a lot of her anger and pain comes from inside her - not from me...she's almost managed to push me away completely by now...that's part of the pain of been feeling - my awareness that I'm accepting our M as over and that I have no choice but to step completely into my life AS IF she were no longer part of it...It's not something I ever wanted to do - but I have to - and so I shall.
Any other changes I make will be for me and my kids - as part of my work toward acting as a great man would - there's just nothing else I can do for her - or change for her. I don't know if I'll want to be with her when she comes around - or when she realizes what she's pushed away - but I can't just sit here crying and hoping that she'll wake up - right now she's still this person that can create fictions about me - and who can negative all the happiness of our life - she can lie and she can manipulate - and she can be emotionally abusive in some terrible, terrible ways. She just isn't someone I could be with and be healthy - despite how much I love her - and despite how much it hurts to have lost our M.
So far as I know she's still not getting any help - and from the conversation I had with her father - it's clear that she still blames me for all our problems - since she basically just presented him with a list of problems she had with me...so...I'm going to focus on building me...taking care of me more...and turn my focus more and more away from my W.
