Hope and heartache

[mishka422]

Ideas for stuff to do with the girls tonight:

1)pick up pizza fixin's and let them make their own using english muffins for crust or stretched out canned biscuits.

2)A movie would probably have them up too late since it' a school night, so how about finding out what's on Disney channel and making it a short evening watching that with some popcorn.

3)let each of them pick a book to read and take turns reading it and making up voices for the characters.

Can you tell I really miss having a little one that I can do fun silly stuff with? Heck, I'd do these things myself if my teenage on wouldn't make an eye-rolling fuss about it.

[ClingingToHope]

My W has always been better with the silly stuff. Like letting them make dinner and things like that. My strength was in taking them places and planning things and having the patience to be with them in public. And talking. Talking about their days. I love every second of that.

These are great suggestions.

[ClingingToHope]

Hey, I'm a quarter of the way to 100 pages. When do you get moved from Newcomers?

[mishka422]

You move whenever you feel like you should. No timeframe on it.

I think mine is on page 134 ish....they used to lock threads and you had to start a new one. Now they don't every seem to lock them unless you ask them to.

[ClingingToHope]

Thanks Mishka for input on my question. I didn't really want to throw that out to the group.

[ClingingToHope]

Do we sometimes give mixed messages on this board? Yesterday, W had a terrible day at work and she called me. I did what Dottie (DB counselor) would want me to do, listen, validate her feelings, not fix things.

I felt very good afterward.

But I've also seen the message that I should be more unavailable to her. Only talk to W about kid stuff because she has to realize what D is like and that's no more support from me other than the kids.

So what to do?

Another up and down day emotionally.

[TrentC]

Do we sometimes give mixed messages on this board? Yesterday, W had a terrible day at work and she called me. I did what Dottie (DB counselor) would want me to do, listen, validate her feelings, not fix things.

I felt very good afterward.

But I've also seen the message that I should be more unavailable to her. Only talk to W about kid stuff because she has to realize what D is like and that's no more support from me other than the kids.

So what to do?

Not every situation is the same. What may work for one couple may not for the another.

If one of the problems in the R was that you were emotionally unavailable to her, then going dark and limiting contact may not be the best solution.

Ultimately, you'll be the best judge. If talking to her and being there for her is helping things get better, keep doing it. If it's not, then stop.

[Gardener]

CTH,

I felt very good afterward.

More importantly, how do you think she felt afterward? Most importantly, what impact do you think your non-fixing behavior had on your wife?

But I've also seen the message that I should be more unavailable to her. Only talk to W about kid stuff because she has to realize what D is like and that's no more support from me other than the kids.

So what to do?

Go with your gut. Definitely go with Dottie. And ask Dottie her opinion of these two seemingly contradictory approaches as they apply to your situation if you have another session with her.

Keep going.

[Coach]

Do we sometimes give mixed messages on this board? Yesterday, W had a terrible day at work and she called me. I did what Dottie (DB counselor) would want me to do, listen, validate her feelings, not fix things.

I felt very good afterward.

But I've also seen the message that I should be more unavailable to her. Only talk to W about kid stuff because she has to realize what D is like and that's no more support from me other than the kids.

So what to do?

Another up and down day emotionally.

If your wife is having a affair then I would be more unavailable.

If you two lost your connection and she hit the ILYBINILWY wall then you need to restablish the connection. As a rule, listening, validating and not rescuing make sense in most sitches - if you are here you probably weren't doing it before.

My wife got in a small fender bender with my daughter and she came to see me while we were seperated. I appreciated and was grateful that I was the go to guy. She wanted support and I gave it to her. First stage in DBing is reducing negative feelings.

What are your wifes issues with your marriage? If they are valid in your eyes then 180 the problems.

Cheers

[ClingingToHope]

Coach, I've done some snooping which I'm not proud of. I still do not think she's having an affair -- but she's looking to see what's out there.

She's gone out with friends a few times since I moved into an apartment -- a couple of them are male friends, a couple of others are divorcees who probably were feeding her the "grass is greener" stuff. One is a twice divorced lady with two kids and now, I saw on Facebook, is back in love again.

And twice she's gone out with the maid of honor from our wedding who is a friend of mine and actually got us together originally.

She's also googled the one serious high school boy friend that she had, it looks like about three weeks ago.

There's also another thing I found which really shocked me but I'm not putting it on the forum. It's just so different from what I knew about her.

She didn't hit me with the ILYBINILWY. She hit me with the "I never really loved you" talk and the "we're just too different" talk.