The point is this: Being "open" on the DB boards gives people who are NOT vested in one's own situation an opportunity to say, "Here's what I see." That's quite a different animal from saying, express or implied, "You're just like me; you're just like my h/w" and then wielding a judgment.
It's also quite a different animal from saying, as one often sees here there 'n' everywhere, something to the effect of, "Well, my sitch sux, and my spouse cheated; so because your spouse is superficially similar to mine, based only on the scant details you've provided, your sitch sux and your spouse is cheating, and if you deny that I'll get in a hissy-fit."
From my POV, what the boards do is give people who have no real -- i.e, authentic -- investment in how your situation turns out (i.e., I will be perfectly content if my friend @aliveandkicking triumphs after divorce OR triumphs over divorce) to look at things with a more objective and/or analytical eye than one can do on one's own, trees getting in the way of the forests and what-not.
Personally I have gotten as much out of the relating/projecting posts as I have from the objective ones.
Actually, I think it is quite a stretch to swear full objectivity.
On my thread right now, getting input from the guy who left is so helpful and pacifying.
I welcome all of it. Of course, who am I to project that you should feel the same?
Besides, most of us do have our biases anyaway (for example, your loathing of French people and assumptions about H and his accent which doesn't actually exist). We paint pictures in our minds tainted by our biases and certainly our heightened sensitivities right now. So what?
most of us do have our biases anyaway (for example, your loathing of French people and assumptions about H and his accent which doesn't actually exist)
I don't actually loathe the French; I just like loathing them for entertainment value.
And I know he doesn't have an accent -- Ah haff seen heem on ze Yoo Toob!
Well, WAW is in the predictable mode since the Letitout Marathon, which was both predictable and expected -- which would, I suppose, be an oxymoron, since if something is predictable it more or less is by definition expected.
She's retreating, thinly communicative -- short e-mails with no pronouns, that sort of thing, but there's a hint, a whiff, a soupcon if you will, of a combination of irritation and intrigue. She hasn't come right out and asked, "Is there anyone else in the picture?" but she's obliquely referred to "what if" and "if ever" and the like, so I know the idea is lodged on a small piece of her brain.
As for me? Well dudes and dudettes it is blue skies and fields of clover for Smiley's Person. I had my own minor personal mini-breakthrough today while fighting my way home on Crappy 1960s Freeway after a NoHo lunch (shout-out to @aliveandkicking, yo!) with a Very Important Person (practically a legend in his own mind) in the world of international diplomacy.
It is becoming clearer and clearer to me as I listen to the ray-didio, puzzling and puzzling 'til my puzzler is sore, that I really, really lost myself -- to me -- in my marriage.
So many things, thoughts, preferences, wants were subordinate for the "good of the team." And I took what the Declaration of Independence calls "a long train of abuses and usurpations," accepting her evaluations, her characterizations, her grievances as being Gospel (if a Heathenic sort like me can borrow that helpful term). If I had the temerity to voice my evaluations and etc. I'd be accused of being "deliberately" contrary and contradictory -- as if I didn't actually have independent thoughts, but just tossed some one like costumes to piss her off.
And I thought about what is really a trivial, yet symbolically important, thing for me -- the physical manifestations of sentiment (or sentimentality). I have the first letter she ever wrote me. The first photograph ever taken of us. But years -- years, my friends -- without a birthday card, an anniversary card, a Valentine's Day card. Silly, stupid little things -- yet silly, stupid little things that I managed to procure every year. And when I did, from time-to-time, have a bit of Hallmark manna dropped into my lap, there'd be a kind of pro-forma invocation of affection ("you're such a great dad, the kids are lucky to have you, xoxo Mrs. SP") whereas mine had actual letters in them, actual thoughts put on paper through ball-point.
Why did I put up with it? Why did I take it? I remember the last office holiday party I attended. I sat, on her left, at a round table, around which were gathered 8 of her colleagues. And they spent the night talking about work, laughing at inside-jokes, funny things that had happened on the job -- you know, perfectly innocuous, stultifying, mind-numbingly dull mandatory fun. I sat there, literally for 3 hours, more-or-less silent, answering the infrequent question tossed me way but otherwise having nothing to say since I (a) don't know very much about their work and (b) wasn't a party to any of the "oh, do you remember?" hilarity that had clearly been ensuing all year long. And WAW did nothing -- nothing -- to bring me into the conversation. She was a full-fledged member of The Gang, hootin' and hollerin' with the rest of them, not 6 inches away from Mr. Cellophane.
But that's not her fault necessarily; I mean, I let it happen. I was complicit. I was a party to it. But what I realize is that, for whatever it's worth, I was in fact pretty dammed unsatisfied in my marriage -- and I'm not just talking about the mandatory annual sex ("can you hurry up?") -- but un-realized, un-actualized, un-, un-, un-personified.
But what I'd like to know, what I'm trying to get straight in my own mind, is why I did it -- what did I think it would do for me, get for me, accomplish for me? And why didn't she say anything? She knew who I was "before" -- why the passive acceptance of my self-subordination, self-abnegation, unless in some way it met her desires, preferences, goals?
Tough questions, none readily answerable "for real," but worth -- I believe -- reflecting upon because if -- IF -- I'm going to treat WAW like a prospect, I need to know that those decisions weren't in some sense a rational response to the general tone, the tenor if you will, the milieu of the marital partnership in question. Was that, in other words, who I became -- and thus, one might hypothesize, the zusammenbruch -- during the course of the M or, alternatively, was that who I was expected to be?
So yesterday WAW emailed me asking if I "objected" to her having an extra day of custody this month -- "I have to make my hours."
I emailed her back saying that I wasn't going to split hairs like that. I mean, it's not like I'm going to run to the court: Yerhonor, Yerhonor! She only had custody forty-FOUR percent of the time last month! I want 20 more bucks!
To which she replied, "I'm anal, and I don't want to be accused of 'dumping.' And I'd like to see them and I bet they want to see me."
Now of that last sentence there can be no doubt. And I've never suggested she didn't want to see them or vice-versa. But the motivation for the "extra" day was clearly to maintain the percentages (i.e., the money), because among other things they're going to her house tonight and will be with her all weekend long -- and a 4-day weekend week after next -- and a 5-day weekend in October (marathon) -- and etc., so it's not like there's a paucity of seeing on the agenda.
So I replied in a silly vein, "Ahh, talking with the lawyers, again, eh?" Because that's what we've been saying when these kinds of things come up, in a jokey-teasing way.
No reply.
But this morning, caller i.d.: "Mrs. SP."
So I pick it up -- as does The Boy Himself, who sees the caller i.d. on the base station phone, and when Mom calls it is ALWAYS for the kids.
SP (in a sing-song voice): Hellooooo!
THE BOY HIMSELF (at same time as SP): Hi Mom!
MRS. SP: Let's just f*cking stipulate that I'm a g*ddam f*cking bitch! You're getting divorced from a f*cking g*ddam c*nt b*tch! You a**hole! I never want to talk to you about anything other than the f*cking kids again! F*ck you! You're lucky to be getting free of me I'm such a f*cking b*tch!" (Click!)
Well. The Boy Himself certainly got an earful. "Mom said swears! She said the F-word! A lot!" And by the look on his face, it was unclear to him if he should be shocked or thrilled.
So I tried to cover -- I think your Mom must have been really, really angry with someone at work and accidentally called us -- and dialed her back, but she wouldn't pick up.
Each day, brothers and sisters, each day suggests to me more and more that it may be me, Smiley's Person Hisself, who is getting the better end of this deal.
MRS. SP: Let's just f*cking stipulate that I'm a g*ddam f*cking bitch! You're getting divorced from a f*cking g*ddam c*nt b*tch! You a**hole! I never want to talk to you about anything other than the f*cking kids again! F*ck you! You're lucky to be getting free of me I'm such a f*cking b*tch!" (Click!)
SP- "Hold on a sec your voice is breaking up on the speaker phone. You'll never guess who all just dropped by......."
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
