You're looking for reasons not to do that, says @aliveandkicking.
Not really. Different issue.
I think you are still unaware of what was missing for her in the R and what her needs are. Doesn't mean it is worth figuring out or delivering at this juncture, just strikes me when you are reflecting on the past.
In some ways WAS WANTS to see LBS in relationship with someone else or playin' for the other team. It provides easier justification to leave. No need to blame it on the difficult to understand relationship dynamics or on the WAS self.
---
Yes, O'Dog has got more than a few questions about WomanFriend. W was probably thinking, that if only he had someone else then I could just kinda sneak out of the R without making much of a stir. But WomanFriend is just a friend. O'Dog shared at length with WomanFriend about what he was going thru in hopes that WomanFriend and her H could get it back on track. And they have. O'Dog shared this with W.
O'Dog also got his gender ID questioned a few times too. "It's Sunday and you're going out for a bike ride with your Tri buddies? Aren't you required by law to watch NFL?" No.
Now, O'Dog hopes that for those who DO find their M not working for this reason that they find their happiness. But it's not my case and I find it sad that W almost hopes it true because it would make leaving easier.
--
Just blow off these hopeful justifications. Be strong in who you are.
"My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand." Thich Nhat Hanh
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?
Just food for thought.
Thank you aliveandkicking. I have been and am both a WAW and LBS. I have no idea who anyone is on these boards but sometimes I feel for the other side ( having been there ) and I think that maybe pointing something out could evoke empathy from the poster. Food for thought / another perspective.
I know all the men on this board are not my husbands SP and for that I am truely thankful. ]
Okay, youse yo's, Smiley's Person is back on the coast after his -- extremely irritating, total waste of time, energy, and (most importantly in the D-process) money (gaack, I could strangle someone!) -- sojourn to Great Lakes City in the Great White North, which was pretty much just like America except their money is weird. Some queen lady or something all over it.
Anyway that's neither here nor there -- or wouldn't be, had I not received in my absence a nearly $3K bill from The Mouthpiece. Um, dude? Mr. Dude, sir? You know exactly how much money I (don't) have -- so how is it you think I'm going to pay this? Time to get a new mouthpiece, methinks.
(Gosh I love WAW. This sure was super-swell of her. Can't thank her enough.)
Back to divorce-busting. Not sure where things stand. May or may not be going to see Fabulous MC#2 tomorrow. WAW is still upstate with Themselves, so I'll get an answer later today.
Here I have to make a correction to an earlier post. Reading WAW's emails on the computer, as opposed to the iPhone, I see that she wrote: "the fact that I am apologizing for handling things badly [the freakouts] doesn't have anything....." (and then there's some organizational talk). So she apologized or nearly so -- I mean, she never says "I'm sorry," but six of one, half-dozen of the other.
So let me here stipulate and declare -- I misrepresented when I said WAW had not actually apologized.
After the full moon waned (or did it wax?), WAW sent what were, by her recent standards, surprisingly lucid e-mails attempting -- unsuccessfully, but trying anyway -- to clarify her POV.
I'm pasting here what is OBVIOUSLY a limited sample, a representative flavor, before we carry on with our explorations. What I will ask -- given that this is Page 54 of the thread -- is that IF you have thoughts, please don't cut-and-paste via the "quote" function, as that soaks up a lot of room and the mods will weigh in here and lock the thread e're long. -----
I'd be lying if I said I hadn't had a small hope that I was wrong about everything between us
Okay, fair enough. But when didn't you say this? Oh, I remember -- you always didn't say this. Half-empty or half-full? Truth or retrospective reevaluation? Or what you want to believe right now? -----
So then I queried why she had said the things she said and, directly, if it was true that she'd thought she might "be wrong," why had she insisted on walking-away?
I was angry and I wanted OUT. That meant a lot of things but first and foremost it meant a physical separation. I absolutely had to have that. And whatever happens or doesn't happen between us, that was without doubt the right decision for me.
So what do I do with that? Leaving me and the children was "without doubt the right decision." So now working her way back -- is that "without doubt the right decision"? Should I expect another "without doubt the right decision" in 6 months, a year, a decade, where she again wants "OUT"? ------
another thing I think we can both agree on is that our communication is terrible.
I told her I absolutely agree with this but, as I've been reflecting over the totality of our relationship, I can see that it always was. In fact, we had 12 years of a very good marriage in spite of our sh*t communication abilities, which I actually take to be rather complimentary to the both of us. ------
I thought we would be "seeing" each other in addition to whatever else might be going on.
This one I just can't get my head around. So she'd ILYBNILWY and do all the other stuff, move out, break the kids' hearts, be with Signore... but we'd also be "seeing" each other. Was I supposed to infer that? "Know" that instinctively? Guess it? Is that in the Walkaway Manual -- I'll give you a mercy poke from time-to-time to help you get over things?
I asked her how this was supposed to fit in with Signore and now with "my" Someone (whom WAW knows about).
I thought I didn't care about sex anymore and what I realized was that I didn't care about it with you.
*Sigh. So all the times I tried to initiate in the year leading up to the Bomb -- that meant that "I didn't care" about sex anymore. And given that she realized SHE "didn't care about it" with me, what would have been the benefit of this "we'd still be seeing each other" thing? -------
So I reminded her that she'd said Signore was merely a plaything, not the cause of the D, and that all of the things she objected to in me were, by and large, still things she objected to.
There are varying degrees of "problems." The lack of ambition and spending habits are fairly significant to me, especially because of the implications for my own work life. The lack of intimacy is a dealbreaker. Ditto the "not being there" for me.
The "not being there" refers specifically to 2004, when I'd just come back from Iraq. So that's STILL a "dealbreaker," which would lead me -- maybe not you, but certainly me -- to wonder what the hell the rest of the discussion is about.
Now there's a nice DB road-map there. Intimacy can be built. "Spending habits" refers to a long-standing dispute over what is and isn't an appropriate use of money and I'm not sure that one can be overcome.
I'll use a trivial and not-real example. I'd like a coffee table. There are lots and lots of coffee tables. I'll judge them by size, color, design, and price. I'm prepared to trade off color or design for price. She, on the other hand, inevitably "must" have what is inevitably the most-expensive of the lot -- and because it's the most expensive, we don't get it. We "wait."
Well I get tired of waiting. Here's a real example -- this house that I am living in, 5 years after we bought it, still doesn't have window treatments because she didn't want to buy "cheap-looking" ones that we could afford and so chose instead NONE against future really-nice ones.
As for the last, I don't think there's anything I can do about that one. I've apologized, validated, opened myself to "being there" on all sorts of things since I started DB'ing, etc. Until SHE forgives, that's just there. And she herself, in one of our "good" convos, acknowledged my accusation -- which, as it happens, turned out simply to be a true statement -- that she'll keep moving the goal-posts so that I can never be forgiven for that. -----
So anyway, that catches you up on nearly everything. We'll see what happens in re: Fabulous MC#2.
I wonder if its that attitiude that makes the entire rest of the world dislike Americans !
It might be. But then it's easy for the rest of the world to dislike Americans, isn't it, since whenever anything goes wrong they know they can just pick up the phone and call and have us come bail their a**es out. I mean, it's not like the Kuwaitis rang up the Norwegians when Saddam was destroying their country.
But you again take things too literally there, @polly. I use the French -- as many Americans do -- for comic value in much the same way that comics in Oz use the "pommy Englishman." Just a caricature. Anyway that's all neither here nor there.
One of the wisest things I ever read on this board was, "Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past". When you parse it that way, continued unforgiveness seems pretty futile.
The problem seems to be, is she willing to start from now and extend an assumption of good intent towards you in this area as you go forward?
Upon reflection, her dealbreakers are ridiculous, viewed as "what I would need to go forward". You can't get quality intimacy and being there in the middle of outside relationships and/or divorce proceedings, can you now?
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
