Oh she's not done, not by a long shot -- not anymore.
Note to LBHs -- when she says she's done? Don't believe it.
No one was more persuasively "done" than Mrs. SP, and if I'd wanted to I could have talked her down the aisle this afternoon.
But that's the rub -- I don't want to. I may be the Done One this time. It's an open question. I'm not thinking about it. I'm not trying to answer it. I am Present.
Couldn't let Last Night go -- not when I kept seeing the look on The Boy Himself's face over and over, every time I closed my eyes.
So sent her a long, long email, a real SP special. The email was entitled "endings."
She responded thoughtfully, kindly, openly. Full confession of some things she'd long denied.
This morning she dropped the kids off at school, and I invited her in. Let her cry. We talked a bit of this and that.
She's so jealous of The Other Woman. Envious. Of course she's constructed an Other Woman Relationship right out of Hollywood -- if I had anything remotely like that going on, I'd be the King O' Swing, but whatever.
It's not the fact that there's OW. It's that OW and I talk, instead of f*ck -- which is what she did with OM.
Somehow -- I'm sure the ladies can explain it to me -- a Talking OW (not an EA, mind you -- I mean, WAW gets every bit of my feelings -- but a talking relationship, as in, "what an interesting conversationalist you are") is much worse than a F*cking or S*cking OW. "Bodies are bodies," as WAW says.
So I did some talking, some DBing, some bringing up of things I've internalized from my reading in the DB'er's Library, from the past 7 months. "God, you sound so healthy. I was actually better off when you were all emotion, no thought," says WAW. Meaning, SP ain't nobody's fool no more.
Lesson to New DB'ers. Hat tip to @Forrest Gump. Do the work.
In any case, I laid down some Law. There can be no more Last Nights. No more fights in front of the children. I told her that, yes, in fact, I still have love inside me for her -- how could I not, when I see her every time I look at our daughter, who looks more and more like her every day, and who was carried and borne by WAW?
But having that love inside is not the same as "loving her" -- choice or no choice notwithstanding. So another marriage? Don't know. Full disclosure: Not likely.
But let's talk reconciliation. "What?" Sure, I'm happy to work towards reconciling.
That is, towards Definition 1(a) of "reconcile" from the Merriam-Webster: "To restore to harmony."
She didn't get around to canceling Fabulous MC#2 because she got rope-a-doped at work, so FMC#2 and the sitter are still on the books.
I told her, last night's declaration to the contrary, I will go, as long as MY agenda is THE agenda -- what will it take to work towards the restoration of Harmony?
I don't know what Harmony will look like. I'm not going to define it up front. Could be friends, could be lovers, could be domestic partners, could be enemies, could be frenemies. (I have another term, but I'm holding it in reserve for the Great American Divorce Book -- but you guys'll like it, guaramanteed.)
Why? Why do it? Harmony is the only good outcome I can assure for the children right now and it is, at present, the only -- ONLY -- outcome I am willing to consider with WAW after the Last Night Escapades.
She conceded. And that is that.
Divorce busted, after a fashion. The legal proceedings may continue -- will continue -- but the end-state is not "divorce," per se. It will be Harmony.
I don't know where that will take me. But I'm keeping a weather eye out for any white ships on the horizon....
