Changing Man

[Gardener]

Back and journaling:

The hike Sunday was great. My hiking group is really two groups. Two leaders, different hikes, anyway. One leader organizes hikes. The other one organizes hikes! This one was a hike. Like a forced march, actually, complete with rock scrambles and tossing your back pack up to the guy in front of you while you climb! I love hiking. The woods are full of answers. The strenuous hiking is good...good to really challenge oneself every now and then.

I took the next few days off from the Forum. Felt like I needed to focus a bit more on DBing than DB Foruming. Had some things to take care of, some things to think about. My wife's gone dark since all the positive small changes and connections she seemed to initiate last week. I'm not surprised. Though they were all small things, they still represented a lot of "towards-ing" for her.

I've thought a lot about the core of my sitch and realized the obvious: that I don't really know what the core is. True. When my wife dropped the bomb, she mentioned that she didn't think I was happy any more. Said she couldn't live like this (didn't elaborate) and then cited one situation, one argument and one "disappointment" that were, 6, 11 and 15 years ago (!) respectively.

Aside from my depression of last year, my drinking, which I stopped 3 1/2 years ago and some of my annoying behaviors and ineffective communication style that came up in MC, she has not told me why. I'm sure the above-cited problems exacted a cumulative toll, but I would love for her to give me a fill-in-the-blank answer to "I want to divorce you, Gardener, because ________"

Of course, in this mix all along was her pro-divorce-and-move-on IC

So, my thinking left me with two (mind-reading) answers:

1) Her lifelong penchant (of which I've posted before) of reaching a last-straw of hurt with people and then cutting herself off from them totally, completely, and permanently. She runs away.

2) She doesn't want to divorce me, live life apart, etc. (hence the early "Come back to me," "Be my hero, Gardener," type statements post-bomb).

And it strikes me that - if I'm right - I have to manifest the same behavior whether the answer is #1 or #2: It's safe here. Again. There is no reason to run. Not from Gardener. You can be you with me.

But I have to be on my guard. From me. Because I can tend to take such insights and run hog-wild with them. Like, just show her you're safe. Centered. A rock. Her rock. So, then, who needs all this DB stuff, don't answer the phone, call back later, go dark, be mysterious, end phone calls first, don't bring up the R, etc. I mean, why be a hard-ass when this is really about a scared and confused girl who's running away because she thinks there's no other solution?

And sometimes I do wonder about the applicability of DBing in my sitch. A sitch in which there was no animosity, no malice, just a sad, resigned, logically-concluded "it's over."

Damn, more questions just when I thought I had an answer

Gypsy? Greek? Sandi2?