Well Dawg, if I put myself in WAW's shoes -- which, I think, seems only fair -- I would say that the hassle, pain, recrimination, guilt, etc., associated with divorcing -- and here I think we have to (we LBS) at least acknowledge the possibility (though I would say probability, cf @Greek) that WAS feels all those things (Monsoor perhaps excepted, h/t @aliveandkicking), and that those feelings are every bit as real as "ours" are -- is every bit as yucky as we think it is, but that the outcome, Not-Marriage remains desirable.
Example: When then-not-yet-Mrs. SP was going through all that bridezilla/wedding-planning insanity, Myself became so frustrated with endless iterations of seating charts and cake decor that one day I threw up my hands and said, "Look -- just tell me when and where to show up and what to wear."
I didn't want to be going through the process of marrying anymore -- I just wanted to be married.
So now, with the Mrsses Dog and Person, same thing, only in reverse.
No, I just don't think they necessarily motivate his actions. I suspect, based on your discussions, that his recent pinging of your IP address (nice! that's my first-ever computer-sex metaphor!) is about him, not about his actions. And, if indeed he "really" is a narcissist, then he doesn't feel those things -- at least not to the extent that he allows them to motivate his subsequent evaluations.
But it's really neither here nor there -- I suspect comparatively FEW WAS are "really" devils.
Now comes the snippy, "So why couldn't you do that before?" --
As a former WAW, this a damned good and FAIR question. The answer?
Quote:
" -- Fair enough, okay, but now you're so...smart? I don't know what I mean, exactly, but it's all this 'psychobabble' -- and don't throw that back in my face! I'm throwing it in my own face! You really are, I don't know, smart. Something. About relationships."
Emotional intelligence.
"Yeah, something like that. Anyway, I wish you had that with me."
Understandable.
Quote:
"Two things -- first, you're talking.
Hello LBFellas...are you getting this? Your W wants the talking!
Quote:
"And second because Miss Someone is getting the 'good' you, and I had (or thought I had) the dumpable 'bad' you. So you have friendship and sex, and now I don't have either."
Who wouldn't be p!ssed? Years of missing something, love tank goes empty, the pain of dropping the Bomb and leaving... then, presto, whammo! He gets it and some other sister gets the good realtionship you had to live without.
Fond as I am of you SP, I'm also proud of Mrs. SP. She's done some work, too, and she's sharing it with you even though it doesn't paint her in a great light. She's a Big Girl now.
Greek
Me45 H46 T25 M22 S21 & 19 D13 Separated and filed 8/08 Moved home 11/08
Who wouldn't be p!ssed? Years of missing something, love tank goes empty, the pain of dropping the Bomb and leaving... then, presto, whammo! He gets it and some other sister gets the good realtionship you had to live without.
Fond as I am of you SP, I'm also proud of Mrs. SP. She's done some work, too, and she's sharing it with you even though it doesn't paint her in a great light. She's a Big Girl now.
I see her point. And even tho I wasn't the WAS, I can relate to the unfairness of someone else now experiencing the "considerate and loving" xH while I struggled for years with the narcissist. Got any insight, SP?
M60 H52 D20 M14 yrs OW-old gf from 1986 bomb-5/18/08 H filed for D-9/10/08 D final 4/24/09 xH remarried (not OW) 2012
Of course not -- never do. Just various and sundry random thoughts.
None of this is really well-formed, as I've been fiddly-farting around with it for the promised "how we write the story" posting, but let me see if I can cobble something together.
It strikes me that there certainly ARE such things as 180s, but it also seems to me that these must -- at least the substantive, not jeans-to-trousers kind -- be far and few between. First, I don't think anyone could bear that many up-endings; second, I don't think LBS can be so completely, systematically f*cked-up that s/he needs to become a different person; third, I don't think anyone can become a different person.
So the perception issue here is key. WAW did not perceive me to have emotional intelligence; it is begging the question (cf, @Greek), however, to assume that I in fact did not. The best we can say is that WAW did not think me to. But I can't control her perceptions.
Why assume, for example, that I wasn't filling her "love tank"? Could it not be equally likely that she simply neglected to go to the filling station? I mean, you can only tell me "I don't want to undress in front of you because you'll get 'ideas'" so many times before I -- yes, even I, the Mystical Smiley's Person -- stop trying.
Moreover, there was no "presto, whammo!" I started counseling in October 2008; she dropped the bomb at the end of January 2009; I was "me" -- or at least growing into "me" -- for nearly 16 weeks before she decided to 86 SP Himself from the saloon. But there was Signore, you see? So I can't control for the fact that she wasn't paying attention. Marital prestidigitation, eh? She's watching the left hand and doesn't see what the right hand is doing.
Now perhaps I'm ever-so-much-more-so, so it's well within the realm of possibility that my Total Manitude just shines so-much-more brightly now, but fax is fax and the fax is that I was Doing the Work well before she hied herself to Upstate City for a taste of strange.
What's happening now -- I would submit -- is that she is becoming aware of what she dumped, after the fact. [This is the unfinished narrative bit I'm working on, so bear with me.]
In literary criticism and sociology and some allied academic disciplines, they speak of how narratives are "constructed" -- that is, how we tell the stories we tell. For example, the Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom, the Indians loved their brave and plucky selves and cooked turkeys and corn for them on Thanksgiving, then George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, the Redcoats came, and -- boom! -- Ronald Reagan kicks Kommie Azz and America wins.
That's a narrative (and a familiar one). But there's another narrative, right? The Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom, pillaged Indian graves and corn storehouses, waged terrorism against the Wampanoag, and were more-or-less utter failures at establishing their new Eden; George Washington not only didn't chop down a cherry tree, he didn't even have wooden teeth; the Redcoats came and, in lots of places, were well-beloved indeed (New Jersey, for example, was a seething hotbed of Loyalist sentiment) and when they left, lots and lots of Americans left with them; and Ronnie Reagan not only had nearly everything ass-backwards about the Soviet Union, he appears more-or-less to have known he did. But he gave a bunch of money to these really ass-kicking anti-Communists in Afghanistan who then hijacked some airplanes and flew them into our buildings and America loses.
So which one is "correct"? Well, both. And neither. And that's the point.
@Greek is very nearly dichotomizing the situation -- there was Before SP and After SP and why o why couldn't After SP have been Before SP?
Nah. Not buying. There's Just SP. What WAW is seeing is what she would have got -- indeed, perhaps even what she already had -- had she constructed a different narrative. (Assuming, of course, that SP would have done more work, which is a strong, but not improbably so, assumption.)
Instead, she went with the he'll-never-change-but-Signore-will-bring-his-Seven-Four-Seven-of-Love-in-on-my-landing-strip story, so hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to court we go.
"Had to live without." Those are powerful words, @Greek. Why not, "Chose to live without." "Opted to live without." "Decided to live without." "Didn't have to live without." "Did everything possible -- or, in this case, didn't do anything possible -- to avoid having to live without?"
All narratives, you see. Which is why The Story matters so much. And, paradoxically, doesn't matter at all.
So how do we know that our chosen Perception is erroneous? How do we cut through the resentment that years of hurt and Failure to Get Needs Met (or even Failure to Recognize that Spouse Has Needs Aside from Meeting Mine)? Because nothing causes us to see things through Ugly Glasses more than resentment.
Clearly, as previously discussed, Another Person reflecting back a more pleasant and "okay" image recalibrates our own mojo, how we see ourselves. And that can be misleading, or it can be liberating--especially when the New Relationship is unencumbered by baggage and painful patterns. But either way it tends to be life-changing, especially when folk are wearing a self-chosen Ugly Glasses.
I would respectfully submit that there is a New SP and an Old SP. The Old one was just waking up, just becoming the New SP, who was shaken out of complacency, paralysis, acceptance-of-crummy-status-quo. Whose own perception changed as a result of waking up.
But that's neither here nor there, really. What enquiring minds want to know is--how does one bust out of resentment? I mean, before it becomes so set like the concrete it is, that busting out requires busting the marriage? 'Cuz that's where we purchase the Ugly Glasses that become such a part of us that we forget we're wearing them. And how does one avoid going there to begin with? How does one choose to rewrite the story in a positive way when one is left raw and bleeding by the spousal unit?
M60 H52 D20 M14 yrs OW-old gf from 1986 bomb-5/18/08 H filed for D-9/10/08 D final 4/24/09 xH remarried (not OW) 2012
