Because I'd forgotten, you see, the Real Point of Divorce Busting. It isn't to Rebuild Your Marriage.
It's to Stop The Divorce.
What do I mean by that? The reason we do this whole thing is, in a very real sense, to turn back the clock to the minute before Walkaway drops the Bomb. Yes, it's to improve the stuff that led up to that minute, but the outcome of successful DB'ing isn't a renewed marriage -- it's the opportunity to renew the marriage.
This. Oh my god, this is such a perfect way to phrase it. Ever since I read this I've reconsidered my approach and my attitude facing this situation.
Every day that goes by with no talk of a D is a victory. Every day where we seem to be a little more relaxed around each other is a success.
If I look at it like that, then I can probably make it through the weeks -- months, even -- that it will take for us to heal.
Me: 44, Wife: 39 M: 17 years T: 20 years Bomb on 08/25/09 1/13/10: MC started 1/28/10, 2/8/10: More bombs 8/28/10: Wife moved out No talk of D, no movement
Divorcing is about nothing if not about power -- that Walkaway, who has been feeling so powerless for so long, finally decides to take Ultimate Power.
So I started to act hard-core "as-if" -- as if I was already divorced. And I stopped caring about what WAW said and did and started to care about what I said and did.
Now TFT is often used as a negative term -- "that's just tit-for-tat," but it can actually be rather a successful strategy. It says, "cooperate and I'll cooperate; be a pain, and I'll be a pain." And what happens is that when you reciprocate pain-for-pain, WAS goes back to cooperate.
Accepting the brutal reality. Detachment. The Spiers Doctrine. This is absolutely essential.
There's no magic potion, no magic bullet, no set of words or promises or photographs or weeping kids or well-intentioned behaviors/declarations/stipulations/demonstrations that is touching enough, persuasive enough, impressive enough, or enough enough to make Walkaway stay. They're gone, Jack.
I can handle it. Divorce, I mean.
It's not the end of the world. The kids didn't spontaneously combust. The Earth didn't spin off of its axis. The Cubs didn't win the World Series. Armageddon has been held at bay yet again.
But above all I do know that I'll manage. I'll keep leading my children the best way I know how. I'll keep doing my job.
Be brave. Have courage. Walk your Path. Find your Mojo.
And no harm can come to you.
Peace.
These are more things that stick out to me. There's a lot of wisdom and truth in these words. Thanks.
"Always go straight forward, and if you meet the devil, cut him in two and go between the pieces." - William Sturgis, clipper ship captain, 1830's.
DB'ing as a way to Stop the Divorce is insightful.
Once the divorce papers are served in the eyes of the law you are no longer constrained to the vows of marriage. My former spouse was living with his girlfriend once he retained a lawyer. It didn't matter in the eyes of the law since he filed so swiftly.
The weight of society judging your actions.. it's only as heavy as you make it. Folks follow your lead. A friend's husband was discovered having an affair. Everyone found out the gory details. Once exposed he waffled then wanted back. She took him back. People accepted her decision, their decision and moved forward, albeit cautiously. After all, what matters is the relationship between the couple, the bond they share. If it's based on what other people think.. then heck.. what good is that?
Stop digging holes. Embrace the fog or find the sun. Drop the shudda wudda cudda's. Drop the rope.. the one within and the one between you and your spouse. Keep your personal lives private. Grow beyond previous coping mechanisms. Divorce begins in the mind.
Me.. I have little confidence in myself and relationships at this point. Then again, I'm that cautious type that focuses on healing, processing, trying to become whole, learning the triggers and moving beyond them. You see, I know I'm walking around with a whole lot of hurt and getting lost in something else scares the bejesus outta me. And fear is like leeches attached all over me. I'm just plucking away.
For what it's worth, I don't think there's any perfect way to go through this.
Well thanks for the good thoughts and compliments everyone. Couldn't come at a better time, for I, Smiley's Person Himself, have been in a deep blue funk.
In many ways I zipped right back across time to that awful feeling of powerlessness that you have right after the Bomb. Just nothingness. The entire weekend went by in a haze; I accomplished nothing -- and lordhavemercy do I have a lot that has to be accomplished.
So what, you might ask, precipitated this most un-Mojo-like emotional-mental breakdown? What pre-post-marital crisis broke, what Batsh*t-Crazy did WAW Herself bring, what-o-what could have caused the usually sanguine Smiley's Person to fall into a pit of regret, remorse, and reconsideration such that he actually for a moment thought about throwing himself, prostrate, at the feet of WAW, begging her forgiveness for making her leave him, and committing himself body and soul in this life and the next to Making It All Better?
"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" -- that's what done it.
The kids spent Hallowe'en at their mother's new house. It's in one of those townhouse complexes where the houses are all next to each other, and it also happens to be one where there are lots of kids our kids' ages. THE house, the former familial manse, is not located in such a place. So I thought it would be a good opportunity for Themselves and would help move them along in their own respective processes.
And then. About noon. On the day. It struck me.
Every Hallowe'en save one -- the one when I was in Iraq -- the kids and I have watched Charlie Brown. Just the three of us -- WAW isn't "into" cartoons, as she says -- and it was our Thing.
WAW doesn't have a DVD player. And when I realized that we weren't going to do that, weren't going to watch Charlie Brown, I honest-to-the-gods broke down. It's that whole "missing out on half" thing @Thinker was musing about earlier in his thread. Of all the dumb stupid ridiculous things to get upset about, 25 minutes of 43-year-old animation. And afterwards, after the tricks-and-treats, Themselves called me to report with glee how successful their candy-hunting endeavors were and to tell me that this had been the Greatest Hallowe'en Ever!
Which, of course, I was very happy to hear -- or so I told them. But inside? Man, it ate me alive.
It's not that you don't want your children to have every bit of excellent parenting they can get from Former Spouse; it's just -- I mean, let's admit it -- that you'd prefer that yours be excellentER. The innate competitiveness of the separated/divorced parent, I guess.
But ye gods! How it made the divorce real. And I honestly went into the worst funk I have experienced since the Great Art Museum Phone Call in Big Midwestern City back in the May -- the one that set me forth on the Path of Mojo Righteousness.
I feel better today, finally, and it couldn't (in fact, didn't) come a moment too soon. But oh, wow, how these things can bite you on the behind.
I think the same mojo gremlin who visited you was at my house all weekend too! And for the same reason - I started thikning about how this set of upcomign holidays will likely be our last "together." And, then everything went blue - the funk that is.
I'm slowly crawling out, with help from great folks here.
Just nothingness. The entire weekend went by in a haze; I accomplished nothing -- and lordhavemercy do I have a lot that has to be accomplished.... I feel better today, finally, and it couldn't (in fact, didn't) come a moment too soon. But oh, wow, how these things can bite you on the behind.
Pandemic swept through up here 'bout the same time it hit you & Gima.
Same symptoms, lasted just as long, too.
Better today is good .
Keep going.
Gardener
"My soul, be satisfied with flowers, With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them In the one garden you may call your own." Cyrano deBergerac
I recovered well enough from the All-Hallow's-Eve funk. Then had to cope yesterday with what wouldabeen Number 19, or what "they" (who is them what sells lots of "collectibles" LOL) say is the Bronze Anniversary.
Made it through with a good dose of Thought-Stopping but no real funk. Had to listen to a couple of my Mojolational Songs a couple times, mind you, but otherwise survived on the day.
Of course, day after tomorrow it's off to Appalachia for War Bud's Funeral. Which is just going to be a heckuva topper for a truly lousy week, karmically speaking.
I also spent the better part of 3 days' worth of free time writing my "what happened in the past 2 months" dossier. I wasn't trying to be fair to WAW by any stretch of the imagination; I was just trying to recapture -- without benefit of hindsight -- how it was I came to perceive things the way I did.
And doing that, I could see where I'd made some tactical errors to be sure -- but on the whole nothing that would have led (I think) to a decisively different outcome. The bottom line was this: WAW cannot give up the notion -- which would be consistent with my 22 years of knowing her -- that she's in charge.
Recall, you who have been following the Saga of Smiley's Person, that one of the "bads" I did in the marriage -- one of the things I had to 180 -- was that I "let" WAW be in control. Polarity, unmanly, etc.
I'd sort of forgotten, however, just how much of a Control Freak WAW really is. So as I can see, the way I evaluated her seeming re-thinking of the Big D (don't mean Dallas) was this: She took Ultimate Power -- ameliorating her own feelings of powerlessness in the marriage (as told to me and two marriage counselors) -- when she dropped the Bomb. She would define when the marriage ended, and it was then.
She then spent the better part of 7 months, still in charge (in her mind, at any rate) -- Move On, SP! Get Over It, SP! What Are You Waiting For, SP? I'm Done, SP!
Then, Signore Schmuckatelli threw a monkey-wrench ("spanner," for yew ferners) into her game plan by dumping her once she was available. She went into a Funk, professing herself (to Smiley's Person Himself) unlovable, undesirable, unwantable -- he didn't even want me to use me for sex! she lamented.
And then, Smiley's Person started to look different. So I could not trust the timing then and, even in retrospect, I don't think I'd trust it now.
But what chafed my buns was her attitude -- she got to say that the process was changing, that things were moving in a new direction, that now the "only" reason to go to Fab MC#2 (to whom we were going to work co-parenting issues) was to "save our family."
And then, because I didn't leap into her lap like a cocker spaniel puppy, she wigged out, brought Hard Batsh*t-Crazy, went on a Great European Getaway, and found Mr. Someone (Signore il Secondo) whose Himness, I hope, she did not in fact "blow off," poor chap -- though she threatened to (and she didn't mean with a gun, mind you -- "In fact, I'm going out to find someone to bl*w, and I have enough anger in me right now to bl*w it right off," she wrote me, which was supposed to hurt my feelings since she'd never been willing to do that to/for me).
So we had an agreed-upon framework. We had an agreed-upon process. We were going to Fab MC#2. We were taking things slowly, in a step-wise progression, engaging one issue at a time, building confidence, building trust.
And she unilaterally decided, we're going to change that.
No. That's wrong. You don't get to make that decision. You get to ask. And you get to wait for me to answer. Because, of course, I had to stake the progress I've made in my own process against the probability of reconciliation.
And, a la Schnarch, I hadn't experienced any changes in her that would have helped me believe there was a positive probability -- as demonstrated by the fact that she continued to Assert Control (though, ironically, she wanted to divorce me because "I always have to assert control").
Though flirted with the idea of giving that dossier to WAW, at the end of the day I just kept it myself. It was useful because I have more confidence that the decisions I made in the moment were sound -- even with the benefit of hindsight and "if only" and "I wish," I can see objectively that my concerns were well-founded, and I can honestly say I wouldn't have made different evaluations even with the benefit of hindsight.
And doing that, I could see where I'd made some tactical errors to be sure -- but on the whole nothing that would have led (I think) to a decisively different outcome. The bottom line was this: WAW cannot give up the notion -- which would be consistent with my 22 years of knowing her -- that she's in charge.
Recall, you who have been following the Saga of Smiley's Person, that one of the "bads" I did in the marriage -- one of the things I had to 180 -- was that I "let" WAW be in control. Polarity, unmanly, etc.
I'd sort of forgotten, however, just how much of a Control Freak WAW really is. So as I can see, the way I evaluated her seeming re-thinking of the Big D (don't mean Dallas) was this: She took Ultimate Power -- ameliorating her own feelings of powerlessness in the marriage (as told to me and two marriage counselors) -- when she dropped the Bomb. She would define when the marriage ended, and it was then.
Thinking about the control observation. I thought the Greek was a control freak too. What she really wanted was security in the issues she needed me to lead on. But to me it looked like control, when it was really the opposite, she wanted me to take on more of the responsibility. The things I viewed as her wanting to control were the things that caused her the most stress. The more she wanted control the more I backed up, I thought she was handling it. This is a Mars/Venus issue.
My experience taught me that if someone was grabbing for all the power and control then they did not want or need help. This is man think. The analogy that helped me was of a dinner party. Man cooking on his grill with 5 different meats, 3 vegetables and two sauces going (plus the beer marinating in the cooler.) Does this guy want your help? No, it's his domain. Your job is too drink his beer,look over his shoulder, nod approvingly and say something meaningless - "that's what I'm talking 'bout." Now, woman in the kitchen - she's making all the sides, setting the table, keeping the appetizers moving, keeping wine glasses full, and clearing the sink. She wants and welcomes help, all the woman intuitively slide right in and get busy. The woman is in control but she wants and needs the help - support, love, talk, and bonding. One of my "AHA" moments in DBing.
Sorry about your buddy. It's heartbreaking news.
Cheers Mate
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.
one observation about the control freak/power dynamic issue: - if someone has to publicly claim that power, if someone has to make it visible that they are taking control or wanting to take control of something, they are admitting that they didn't have control to begin with, they're putting on a big show displaying to everyone that they have taken control or they will take control but it's all just a show.
When you're in control, you usually don't have to consciously display that to anyone, everyone around you pretty much knows.
SP you should continue dating & seeing that Miss Someone.
This is a very long process to be sure.
Do you have definite date for "D" day? How is the divorce process thus far, stalled, in progress, what state is it in right now.
Remember the fact that your wife knows that she has to pay a certain amount of support to you, that's another area she doesn't have control over, that's just another reminder that you are in the driver's seat and it's because she put you there: directly or indirectly.
