Slowly but surely - detach and 180

[hopefulinEG]

So we had our big talk after work today. She really wanted to and I thought we should get it over with so when all my work was done I went home early. On the way home I decided to act "as if" it was going to be a great conversation. That we were not going to fight but have a calm rational discussion.

So we had a fairly long discussion about how we can work things out to live together amicably. At first I just let her talk and bitch and tell me all the things I was doing that she didn't like and I was actually surprised at how much she blew stuff out of proportion. I guess I should be surprised. I just validated her feeling. I can understand. I didn't realize you percieved it that way. I will try to pay attention to how I greet you when I come home. Bla bla bla. And then at a certain point she said I sounded like simon Cowel with my 8 answers that I use over and over. I said I wanted to keep the conversation calm and give hear what she had to say. She also said she was totally confused be cause I said I want to be friends and then I say I don't and she doesn't know what to think. I asked when she remembered me saying I wanted to be friends and she said I said I wanted to be friendly not friends.

Then she asked me what I wanted. I said I don't want to be her friend. I think we should be like friendly neighbors. We say high and chit chat and are friendly. but there are certain topics we should not talk about. We should not talk about our relationship, we should not talk about our marriage or when we got together or when we broke up. We should not talk about Divorce or Separation or her moving out. Until you want to file papers there is not real reason to discuss it.

She gave several examples of times she might "need" to mention it. Like what if I want you to burn CD's of all the pictures so I have them when I move out. I said you can just ask me to burn CD's you don't need to say so I have them when I move out. I might realize that is what it is for but we don't need to talk about it. I have thought about it and almost all of the issues we have had are when we talked about one of those subjects. It's like when you are not supposed to talk about politics or religion with friends well this is our topics we shouldn't talk about.

She was a little resistant and made comments about if she was "allowed" to say this or that. I said I am just making suggestions but you don't have to do anything I say. So she realized that it actually made sense. I also did say that the OW was part of the topics that I did not want to discuss. The reason we got in the fight today was because of her and it is often the reason. Whether she is your "best" friend or not, to me she is all wrapped up in our separation and divorce and will only cause problems. She agreed not to talk about her again.

After that we moved from the counter to the couches and the discussion got much more comfortable. We talked about household stuff and division of labor and a few things that had been bugging us and we were able to nicely agree on how to handle them. We ended the conversation on a very good note.

She is leaving for the weekend with the girls tomorrow before I get home so I will only see her in the morning for about 45 minutes getting the girls ready for school.