After 7 days without posting or (due to the saving grace of bad connectivity at the beach house) even reading the DB boards, the boys and I are now back at home. Mrs. Thinker arrives back from her visit with MIL tomorrow night.
Just a couple of thoughts / updates:
It was a great week, with my whole extended family - perfect weather, great times, etc. It was also the first time in 12 years that I attended one of these events without my W - and honestly, it was probably more relaxing and fun for me for it. The absence of stress showed me how much stress I have felt in the past when my W and I were together with my family and I had to juggle the competing goals of fitting into the dynamics in my family, and keeping my W happy.
I was also surprised at how infrequently I really thought about her this week, how little I worried about my sitch, and how much I thought about the women I saw around me on the beach. It seems to run in parallel with some of the discussions I just read on @smileysperson's thread. For my part, I am still committed to the M, but Man!! am I starting to fantasize about it!!!
As mentioned above, we had very little connectivity where I was - for some reason my network just wasn't working. I was pretty happy not to receive calls, texts, etc, but the lack of easy communication drove my W crazy all week. Ironic -- if I am traveling and she is at home, then I can barely get her to answer the phone, but when she was traveling (and away from the kids) and was not able to get through to me, she was very agitated and took it personally. I would periodically get a connection and fund multiple anxious / angry voice messages - "you aren't answering" "Please carry your phone with you" "I haven't been able to reach you for days" etc.
Each evening I found a spot with connectivity and called her and put the boys on so she got a chance to talk to them. Other than the few words we exchanged to set up / conclude those calls, I really had almost no interaction with her.
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A week ago I mentioned that we had our Anniversary ("Oh what do do for a card, etc"). Just to follow up on that: Mrs. Thinker did end up getting me a card - an appropriate blank one on which she penned her own thoughts:
- "It's strange to be spending our anniversary apart" - "I'm really at a loss at the moment" - "My mind is blank when it comes to talking about us. I'm simply tired" - "I don't know what the future holds for either of us, so let's just enjoy the summer and precious moments with our beautiful boys" - "I'm sad not to be with you all this week"
I thanked her for the card, it really was classily done, and it echoed a lot of the same feelings I have been having myself recently. She also gave me a box of chocolates from a handmade chocolate store we both like - which was actually the first idea I had for a gift for her.
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Hope you all had a great week. It felt good to take a holiday from the DBing (and the boards... ) for a while.
Now I'm back.
Me 42, W 39, S8, S6, S2 M 11y, A & ILYBNILWY 11/08 Walking away from a bad situation.
) for a while.
