WAW - Very confused and devastated - pt 10

[confusedinpa]

"To be upfront, I am at grips with the fact that there is no hope to save the marriage. I know we will get divorced. Right now she is not going to change her mind nor is she doing anything to work on herself to let go of her hurt to try to forgive and give us another chance. I know that and am facing that brutal reality heads on."

Okay for one thing it's way to early to even think this. The problem with you saying something like this (in your first sentence no less) is that you've given up. So why bother doing all the other things you posted after it?

You haven't really been constructive at doing your own thing since your W left. Concentrate on that to build yourself up again. Once you do that you'll find forgiveness for yourself.

Stuck,

Thanks for pointing that out to me. I didn't mean to imply that I was giving up. I meant to imply that I am not counting on it. I am trying to be realistic, but remaining optimistic. I'm not changing what I want. I want my wife back. I want my family back. I don't want my old marriage back as that was not healthy for any of us, but what a new one can potentially bring with a changed me.

So I'm doing the thing I mentioned afterwards not just to try and build a new marriage/life with my wife. I'm doing them with the approach of with or without my wife, doing those things will lead to a better life than where I'm currently at and potentially even where we were pre-bomb.

I really struggle with forgiving myself. What she said last nite was no different from what she said the nite of the bomb or even a couple of times up to the point where she moved out. I had been trying to figure out why I was so down. Between last nite and today, I came to the realization that I can't forgive myself is why. I'm going to talk to my therapist on this when I see her on Monday. I can forgive myself for what I've done that resulted in hurt to myself. I am struggling with forgiving myself for the hurt that I've caused my wife. I am not even close to even considering forgiving myself for what the part that I played that hurt my boys.

It comes back to this...do you want to save your M or not? There is not gray area. Either you're in it or not. Even when detaching, you can do so with the goal of wanting to save the M.

Have you written any goals in terms of DB? For example, W will initiate a friendly conversation when I do this. A few of those goals along with your own ones that will help you to detach and GAL are what will get your W back.

You've let your W drag you along her emotional rollercoaster that you're letting her trainwreck turn into yours. Think of it like playing basketball. You see the basket but can't get a clear shot because of all the obstacles in front of it. The defending players are hostile and big, so rather than charging into them head on, you pivot and weave your way around them in order to get to the basket. If one play doesn't work, then you switch it up and do something else. You just have to give a play a chance and not think of forfeiting the game because the other players are too tough.

At this point, you can still ask W to join you and the boys for dinner when you're together at one of their games. If she doesn't want to go, then hey, no biggie. I think maybe you need to give her a little of the "chase" that she's been asking for, but not too much that it becomes pursuing. It can start out as being polite, then move into something more. Establish your friendship with her first to earn her trust, then bump up the intimacy each time. Very slowly.

It comes back down to what you want.

So I do want to save my marriage and have my wife back with me and the boys, as a family as a friend. That is what I do want. I just am approaching it that if I don't achieve that, I will still be ok.

My short term goal is to enjoy the time when I have the boys so that they will not be exposed/confronted with our situation. Now that doesn't mean that I won't allow them to be sad/angry/hurt about it, but I will not enable it, as I feel like I've exposed them to too much. This goal isn't for my wife, but more for my boys and I.

My other short term goal is to go out to lunch with my wife one on one to chat and enjoy ourselves without talking about the situation. My approach to achieve this goal is to be consistently warm, friendly, caring, upbeat/positive and attentive when we do talk (I'm changing how I was doing Dark/Dim). So when she asks how I am doing (whether it is text/email or call), I will respond with a positive response. In the past, I would not answer or be very vague/mysterious in my response.

My longer term goal is to go out to dinner with my wife, one on one.

I'm not trying to have too many as I'm trying to take baby steps. I think the common ones (i.e. she will call me to chat or ask me how I am etc), she is doing already - which is the odd part which makes her very non traditional WAW like.

Tonite and last nite we've had the friendly chats and in tonite's conversation she asked if I could pick up our 7 year old and meet at the park so we can do dinner like we had in the past. So I thought that was good.

I am trying to establish friendship to re-establish trust, in the hopes of making the leap from friendship to intimacy (as Coach had outlined in his thread on being friends with a WAS). The problem/struggle I have, is do I love her enough or am I confident enough to continue to do that once the divorce is final.

Thanks for checking in one me again. All the support I've gotten the last couple of days is really helping me dig out of the funk that I got dragged into from Sunday nite's call.

I wish you the best in your situation as well.