Slowly but surely - detach and 180

[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.