Slowly but surely - detach and 180

[spellfire]

Can't say I blame you.

Just remember that people tend to hate on others when they really dislike what they see in themself. On some level W knows what she is doing is really rotten, and she is taking it out on you. Her perspective is warped.

[hopefulinEG]

I am considering sending this in an e-mail to W this weekend.



W,

It seems like you are still very unhappy with our living situation. I sincerely want to make this work for both of us.

Would you be willing to think about what could be done to make it better for you? Should we stay away from each other more? Do you need me to do more around the house or with the kids? Do you need to take the bills back or get more spending money? Am I doing things that make you uncomfortable or frustrated?

We had a good discussion last week and were able to discuss the things that were bothering us and it seemed things were better for a few days. I think we need to keep up that communication so that we can both be reasonable comfortable living here together.

You can be totally honest about whatever it is that you are unhappy about without worrying about hurting my feelings. I am open to any suggestions.




Partly I would like some insite into what it is that pisses her off so much and partly I just want our living situation to become more bearable and am willing to try anything.

[hopefulinEG]

I know it's Saturday but hope someone is around to help me.

I need someone to talk me down off the ledge or to tell me how to do what I want to do correctly.

I am pretty sure that W and OW broke up this week. Further proof of that is that W told me she was going out last night but only left long enough for me to go to my bunco group. If she and OW were still hot and heavy she would never have missed an opportunity to go over to her house. She could have even stayed late or overnight because the kids were gone last night.

So what really want to do is to tell her that regardless of everything that has happened I still love her and still want to work on our marriage. I would tell her that regardless of happened with OW (she thinks I think it is an EA not PA) I think our marriage can be mended and even if she and OW had slept together I would still want to work on our marriage.

The reason I want to do this is I am pretty sure that she thinks I would never stay with someone who had an affair. We have both said things like that in our marriage. I want her to know that now I am in the situation I don't feel the same and that I think we can repair the damage that has been done.

I haven't told her I love her or said anything about wanting to stay together in about 2 months. I have taken off my wedding ring and have put on a good show that I am moving on.

I just can't stand the thought that she might have second thoughts or be at a point where she could see her way back and not think I could forgive her.



I need advice!! What do I do?



This may be irrelevant but last night when I got home I said goodnight to her (through her bedroom door) but she did not answer. But then she visited my Blog and read it for few minutes. Then right before she got off line she went and looked at her own blog. Her last entry on her blog she put up Thursday Morning

"There are no regrets in life, just lessons." Jennifer Aniston
I have no regrets, perhaps someday I will learn the lesson

It made me think she was thinking about regrets.

[pearlharbr]

Hopeful, I just caught up on your sitch

This probably isn't what you want to hear, but I wouldn't do anything right now. Your W is going through something but you don't really know what it is. You're still basing all of your actions, emotions, decisions on what she is doing, thinking, etc. I think it's best to try to detach more and focus on yourself.

You can't control her actions. Whatever she's going through she has to do it on her own. If you try to intervene she may resent you for it.

Here's the thing: if she wants to reconcile she will let you know. She will start to test the waters with you by being friendly, chatting. Or she will come right out and say it. Even if you don't think this is possible, it is. I thought my xBF would never admit to being wrong or asking to come back but he has.

So please just focus on you and really try to detach. Because if you don't work on yourself and figure out how things got to this in the first place you will repeat the same patterns in the future.

Go out and enjoy the weekend. Do something for yourself and try to let it go for today.

[hopefulinEG]

Thanks Pearlharbr

I really needed that reminder. It is so easy to get caught up in the emotions of this whole thing. I went and picked up a ring today that I had engraved "Trust the Universe". It is to remind me that I have no control over this and I have to let go and let.

I am going out to a school fundraiser tonight and I have a new dress and am getting a new haircut and my nails done so I will feel very good about myself. W is going to be there too and I am going to act "as if" it will be a fabulous night and have a blast.

[hopefulinEG]

It was a very crazy Sunday.

I'm not even sure how to explain or even remember everything.

The really short version. She was rude and wouldn't talk to me Sat night at Casino night. We got into it Sunday morning about that and she said she wanted to move out and how much could I afford to give her and still keep the house. She then said I didn't have to give her anything just keep paying for what I pay now (insurance, gas, school etc) and she would get a part time job and pay for her own rent/utilities) and I would have to pay the extra daycare for the girls if she couldn't always pick them up. I basically just started crying because it was such a relief that she would do that and I didn't have to worry about the money or lying to her or anything. We talked about how that would work and I thanked her for that.

Along the way I really wanted to tell her I knew about her and OW because it has been killing me to not tell her and so I said I would be right back and called my sister to convince me to not tell her that I knew about OW and I felt better but I did end up telling her I knew about them anyway. She denied it at first but then admitted to sleeping with her but not until recently. And that they aren't anymore. I am such a sucker for punishment because I can't help myself from believing her.

I realized that I didn't want her to move out really and told her we should keep trying to make living together work. I wanted to try being friends after all because not being friends wasn't working and if she moved out we would end up hating each other forever.

She said she really does care about me and doesn't hate me like I think or she would have moved out and made me pay alimony long ago and not been worried about me not loosing the house.

So we were able to laugh and talk and she isn't going to move out yet. We are going to go to the lawyer this week so we can get our agreement in writing and agreed to while we still agree.

We did go down the road of "I do still love you and I do believe we can still fix our marriage" which she said "no way". And she said she still thinks I don't really love her be just don't want to be alone. Same story.

At one point when I asked her about a time in December when we were making out a lot and why did she do that and I know that she was into it, she said that she did feeling something then and that because I believed so strongly that it could work it made her think it was possible.

This morning we were still able to joke around without the bad feelings.

I think that maybe being her friend will be the better way to get her to warm up to me. I was have been trying to do the friendly neighbor don't be to friendly thing. But I did a bad job and she interpreted it as rude and not at all friendly. I think I did more damage than good trying to be distant. So I am going to try just being friends. Working on getting her to laugh and joke with me and maybe even hang out together a little.

I guess nothing can hurt at this point. I won't talk about the R anymore or say ILY anymore but I do feel a little more hope again.

Some how I got this feeling that she does still have feeling but is still so very hurt inside. Apparently she is getting it from all sides. Everyone is telling her she should get back together with me and give me another chance bla bla bla. I hadn't realized how many people were telling her that. Even the few people that she thinks of as her friends have been doing that. I told them to back off and leave her alone because they aren't really helping as much as they think they are.

[LR1]

Hang in there EG. I will keep you in my prayers

[hopefulinEG]

Totally on the rollercoaster the last 2 days. I am glad to be going to the lawyer tomorrow to get the financial parts worked out and get that stress done.

As far as detaching I have slid so far back I am just as bad off as I was in January. Knowing that they slept together even if it was just a few times like she says has got me in a tail spin. I go back and forth between believeing and not believing and feeling sad and angry. I have all the urges to try to convince her and explain to her how we can make it work again.

There are some peaceful moments where I can convince myself to trust the universe and think about forgiveness and living in today but not enough of those moments.

I had gotten to the point that I could really sympathize with her feelings. Why she was angry and that she needed to work through them and then she could maybe remember the good again. But now that I know she is really in love with this OW I can't get back to that place. She isn't the WAW I thought she was.

I am just struggling so much now to find some balance and figure out how to deal with this new information. I can't find the hope I had before. It all seems so pointless now.

[hopefulinEG]

Well I got out of my tailspin. I started by going back and reading through all my previous posts and the responses. I was so focused on my emotions and not Dbing at all. So re-reading really reminded me of the end goal and how to keep at it. I needed to remind myself to GAL and 180 and give myself a productive focus again.

Other things that happened… We went to the lawyer yesterday and got the ball rolling on the agreement about community property and alimony. W got really angry at one point when discussing child custody and ended up walking out but later we did come to agreement on everything. It was really a misunderstanding.

It means filing for divorce, which makes me sad but I don’t think hurts our chances of reconciling. We were together for 13 years without being legally married so a divorce won’t change anything. She will still be living here and I will still have all the same opportunities and it would really be easy to put everything back together later. It might also make her feel like the pressure is off and I can’t have false hope and let her guard down some. Maybe I am totally wrong.

While W was out of the room the lawyer told me she thought that I have been in an abusive relationship. She said W uses anger to control me and is being abusive. This kind of shocked me. My mother said the same thing recently (why does everyone have to trash your ex when you breakup) but I had dismissed it. I have thought about it and her anger has always bothered me. I even told her she should go to anger management classes but never pushed it.

For some reason after that I totally calmed down. I think it made me realize that there might actually be good things that could come of the breakup because I wouldn’t have to deal with her anger anymore. This doesn’t make me want to not reconcile but it did open my eyes. I have been in the I can only see good phase and this made me see that there were more problems than just what she was mad at me about. I have to be realistic that we would both need to work on our faults and not just me. After that I made a total 180 in my attitude. I feel like I have made huge progress on detaching and being OK with the outcome either way; being able to see myself surviving this and going on with my life if W never wants to reconcile.

I even was able to talk to the OW at the kid’s school and not feel any hatred. This was literally the first time I have talked to her since W told me we were absolutely through on 1/3/09. Also if her name comes up it doesn’t elicit the intense anger or reaction from me that it did before. I am not sure how this came about. Maybe knowing that something went or is going instead of imagining and suspecting. Maybe it is part of my detaching. But it feels really good to let go of that anger and angst that it brought me.

Last night I didn’t dream about W (I dreamed about Vampires because I am reading the Twilight series) and today I have not thought about her much and have had no sadness since leaving the lawyers office.

The maybe not so good things, is I have been joking with W about having sex. She isn’t really reacting negatively to it but she has always made it clear that that is not an option now or ever. I also once when I was joking about it said, Oh but you couldn’t do that because you would be cheating on OW. She insists that she is not in love with the OW and they are just friends again. I know that is just bull because it was only a few weeks ago that she sent the txts to her friend about how hot she was and her eyes, and voice bla bla bla. I have told her that I know she is in love with OW. I said I know her too well. First it was only a few weeks ago that the txts show she was clearly head over heels and second she could never sleep with someone she didn’t have feelings for. I wanted her to know I understand what is going on and I didn’t act like I was all upset about it just that I knew it existed and her denial didn’t fool me one bit. This is probably driving her toward OW.

So things feel good right now. I am DBing more actively again and feel some hope right now.

[Puppy Dog Tails]

EG,

You sound good, and that makes me happy.

Puppy