55: As always, really good thoughts and insights. If only I could believe.

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You started sleeping in another room before the D talk, right? If that's true, then she was sleeping every night in your master bedroom wondering why you weren't crashing in to hold her and kiss her and love her. She was wondering what kind of man would allow that? What kind of man wouldn't give her what she wishes for?


Lucky, it's not as simple as that. I started sleeping in the other room because I get up at 2:30 or 3 a.m. to work with colleagues over the computer on the other side of the world. But I need -- and have -- a really loud alarm clock. So my sleeping outside the master bed was a way of not waking her up -- she's one of these people who MUST have her sleep.

We both recognize that, despite its necessity and good intentions (the road to hell and all), that was a fatal step. She acknowledged yesterday a.m. that it made her feel abandoned; I told her that I felt abandoned, too, but I didn't see how to balance the need for work with her need for sleep. Just one of those stupid things.

Now we did have a "date night," if you know what I mean, but in the months leading up to D-bomb there were lots of excuses made -- tired, don't feel well, etc.

Now is she up there wondering why I don't come bounding in like the cover of a Barbara Cartland novel? Maybe. Or maybe not.

I got the D-bomb 12 hours after returning from an overseas business trip (all part of my sitch description that went into the cold -- perhaps I'll have to do a recap). She decided on delivering the bomb on/about 31 January, while on a trip with her girlfriends to Europe. So when I left for my business trip on 5 February, she already knew -- her friends already knew -- but I didn't know.

As to my feelings -- I must confess I'm deeply conflicted, here.

I read in DR that I'm not supposed to say ILY, etc.; DB Coach doesn't want me to say ILY, etc.; expressions of desire, etc., are said to be pursuing behavior, which will push her out the door and into arms of OM whom she hasn't spoken to in 2 weeks (because he's out of the country) but who she status-checks on Facebook [N.B. to WAWs -- stay off our computers, for god's sake, or at least delete the browser history!!) every day.

Is D a threat or not? She says it's not. She says she doesn't believe that's something you threaten -- in her words, "you only say it if you're prepared to do it."

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She keeps threatening you with, "maybe I should serve you tomorrow." If it truly were "too late," she WOULD serve you yesterday.


Sometimes I think this. On the other hand, WAW is an intensely practical person -- you don't get to where she's at professionally, in her specialty, any other way. We have a really complicated financial picture -- lots of separate, inherited property (land, homes, mines -- the lot) -- and have agreed not to start the process until the kids' school year ends, so there's that aspect. She's definitely not a heat-of-the-moment kind of person. So on that issue I'm agnostic -- it could mean something, it could mean nothing.

It's true, however, that once I started acting as-if -- like when I insisted we book the date with S9's therapist to break the news to the kids -- she got a bit shocked, I think. (Way to go Michele.)

When surgically-enhanced \:o divorcee was obviously "just that into" me, she noticed and even pointed it out the next day -- wow, SED sure was into you. (And as you know, Lucky, for many women no man is more attractive than the man other women find attractive -- it's like the intra-gender stamp of approval.)

But IF -- and I think at this point this is a purely hypothetical IF (I'll have to defer to Portland and Puppy for commentary on this) -- she still harbors some residual....(something)....for SP, it's obviously conflicting with her (at least mental) commitment to D.

There's some discussion in DR about face-saving, but not a lot, but I've seen it in other forums, especially the book Negotiating Past No.

Don't know how, IF that IF is the case, I could manage that while allowing her to save face. I almost think that Best Girl Friend would have to make the suggestion first, don't you, because that would be advice that "only has her best interests in mind"?

What I don't want to do -- and this is me -- is jeopardize my hard-earned DB gains, ESPECIALLY my as-if and loving detachment, which has really become comfortable for me in the past few days, on a crap shoot -- and come up snake-eyes.