@robx: now something throws me off for a second, SP did you stop seeing that woman you were dating and start pursuing your wife again, is this why the momentum appears to have shifted back to her?
No -- in fact I leave on another Great European Getaway Thursday week to see Miss Someone on her turf.
And again, let me emphasize -- I don't begrudge WAW her Mr. Someone, this fellow she hooked up with on her Great European Getaway; by her declarations (and let me also emphasize for the sake of @Gypsy -- I don't ASK for this information, it is simply given to me whether I want it or not): "I like him and he likes me and we're great in bed and I'm going to keep seeing him."
She's on her own -- "Free, White, and over 21" as my un-self-consciously racist great-grandmother used to say.
That's as may be -- she wants to get it on and bang a gong, she's going to. I have no control. I make no -- and am entitled to make no -- judgments about Mr. Someone.
I do believe, however, that I am entitled to render a judgment upon Signore -- a .45-caliber sinus cleaning comes to mind. Yes, HE did not destroy the marriage, she did, but that doesn't mean he's an innocent bystander -- Gosh, dude, sorry I boned your wife! Like, I totally couldn't help it. I totally didn't even know what was happening -- I was just, like, waiting in line for coffee.
If her story is to be believed -- and on this score I have no reason to doubt it -- he pursued her and made her feel girly and wanted and all that other "Mister, I met a man once" B.S. that Waywards spout.
According to mutual friends, this is Signore's M.O. -- he preys upon vulnerable married women and then, when they follow their hearts (or what they think are their hearts) and split from their families, he high-tails it out there and heads for the hills, leaving them without home, hearth, and him.
What I begrudge is her EXPECTATION that I queue up with that piece of sh*t as just one of her "guys." No thanks.
And, to be blunt, I'm more than a little bit puked-out by the fact that WAW -- who was, at one time, in some parallel universe, actually "my" wife and best friend -- has so little self-respect that she would jump at the chance to exonerate that mo-fo, excuse his piece-of-sh*t-itude, and then actively seek to reconnect with him. "We're good friends." Yeah, sure -- that's a fine basis upon which to start a true friendship: "Hey, remember when I f*cked you over after you broke up with your husband and left your children? Goood tiiiimes; goooooood times."
That just takes me right into the aforementioned "who are you?" territory.
Losing her power, her value after holding on to it for so long was a horrible, scary experience - traumatic even based on the above description.
Hesitation was right though.
How could you reconcile a relationship with someone like that, who basically admits, I've had affairs but i'm not going to talk about them because I have value and I don't need to explain myself to you plus I'm so high value, you should take this deal without even thinking about it, you're lucky I'm even putting it up as an option.
And boy what a fun marriage that would be to reconcile ;-)
I can't stop people from starting to tell me stuff, but I can stop them.
I would never seek out information about my divorcing spouse but if someone started saying stuff, I wouldn't stop them..
UNTIL..
I learned that it hurt me more in the end and did absolutely nothing positive for me...
AND
That whatever I heard, learned, etc. hurt.. just plain old gut twisting, backstabbing hurt.
So, I learned as someone started on that subject line to stop the conversation, say: That is no longer my concern, I'm not interested, etc. Most recent attempt was friends and his sister wanting to talk about my former spouse's wedding and his wife. Uhhh.. not interested, but could you send me pictures of the kids?
It's always easier to be mad at someone else, rather than someone you love..
That happened when my rebellious teenage son gave the security code to his friends to party at our house while we as a family were away for two weeks. I had no problem being mad at the 'miscreants' who invaded our home; it took me much longer to see what the real problem was... A son who made poor choices and my spouse's and my part in it. Ouch.
Smile.. can I call you Smile?
I'd like you to just listen (or read) without any reply forming in your mind. Just hush and read.
I was angry, destroyed and hurt as all the revelations trickled down after my spouse left. It sucked twelve ways to Sunday. I never made a timeline but I knew the day he said he was miserable and wanted out. I kept repeating the same story over and over. After the shock wore off I still wanted people to know (in case they had any doubt) that my divorcing spouse was an insensitive, stupid, cruel jerkwad who destroyed a family. It. Was. Not. Fair.
At some point between all the good self care, counseling, pallet full of 2x4's I realized that I was the one who kept screaming within. That I had to make sure there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he was a complete $#@%@#.. but I also had to do it without calling him names. Queen of the high road.
So.. eventually I learned to just hush... because the more validation I sought from others, the more likely the seeds of bitterness would flourish.
My brother probably told me every day, every time I had an 'aha' moment, to stop beating the dead horse. He'd whack me with a 2x4.. I'd pick it up and keep going at the horse.
So, Smile.. I see things in you that remind me of me. The anger, the hurt, the cycle of saying the same tales of woe over and over.
I just started to type a synopsis of my situation and stopped. Why? It hurts, it makes me feel bad.. and it does nothing positive. It doesn't make things better. It's like getting stung by a wasp, plucking out it's stinger and stinging myself over and over.
I had no choice in the bomb, but I am in control in how I heal.
"Oh, I know what's wrong. I just want to hear you say it..."
2:13
"Your problem is you."
"Excuse me?!"
"You ought to spend a little more time dealing with yourself and a less time worrying about what your ex-wife does. That's just an opinion."
"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
Okay, we're going to have to establish some epistemological, methodological, and ontological standards for DB posts. Sorry, O'Dog, but you're going to have to stay awake for this one.
If someone says, "Hey SP -- I lost track of the thread, how did it come to be that...?" it seems to me that the polite thing to do would be to repeat the story.
If someone doesn't "get" the point of a particular post, moreover, it strikes me that attempting to restate for clarity would be the logical response, rather than have the interlocutor, and the thread, veer off on a tangent unrelated to any foregoing content.
I not sure that the methodological approach of simply counting the number of instances in which a particular story is told has any real substance, but if that is to be the standard by which these things are judged -- though it enumerates but doesn't illuminate -- I'm happy to go along.
You ought to spend a little more time dealing with yourself and a less time worrying about what your ex-wife does
Here we have to add discussion about rules of evidence -- specifically, assuming away facts in evidence.
See, I'm not "worried" about what she does. Nowhere does it say, "I'm worried about WAW's having sex with someone."
I'm "irritated" at what she expects me to do.
Let me draw an only mildly counterfactual thought experiment: Would it be correct to infer that, based upon your approving reference to the Rule of Sheen, that if the former Mrs. O'dog, whom you have recently learned has another dog in the kennel -- a dog with a key to the kennel, no less -- began hectoring you to go bowling with said dog, and if you demurred from availing yourself of that splendid opportunity began attacking you and calling you names, that you would forebear vexation -- and spleen-ventilation -- hereabouts simply because doing so would constitute "worrying" about what she did?
With respect to how much time ought to be spent in "worrying" about myself, we are fortunate here to have data.
Two posts (in this now-71-page-long thread), "Confessions" and "Confessions, pt. II," both of which are largely negative self-evaluations of my performance qua DB'er -- self-worry, mind you -- total some 7,150 words.
By way of contrast, those two posts alone -- from only 1 of 10 threads -- are longer than every State of the Union address, save one: Lincoln's first SOTU, in 1861, in which he called out the Confederacy as "disloyal... insurgents... defectors... insurrectionists...despots" who were undermining America by seeking "aid and comfort" from America's enemies abroad.
Now I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if the only Constitutionally mandated presidential report to the Congress that is longer than Mr. SP's musings was that of Abraham Lincoln in the first year of the Civil War, then SP's pretty dang self-centered. So I don't think we need to worry about Smiley's Person worrying about himself.
However, if we wish to declare as a methodological maxim that The Story may only be related once, I'm all for that.
And if we wish to declare as an epistemological proposition that none may make queries about The Story, as the answering of same would require the apparently Much-Dreaded Repeating, then I'm all for that as well.
But let's do so clearly and not selectively, shall we?
And what of the cheer-leading posts? They clearly fail the Sheen "Worry About Yourself" test, and they also do not pass the epistemological smell test in that they provide no information or knowledge -- they are the sugar frosting on the cereal of self-awareness, empty calories, decoration. So ought we to declare a moratorium on them as well since, far from promoting self-worry they actually promote a kind of self-congratulation?
If we wanted to avoid having to police cheer-leading, which I think we all can agree is a nice thing to see and do, we could propose instead an Impeccability Maxim under which no one, except in the one post dedicated to The Story, would be permitted to post ANYTHING about her/his Wayward or Former Spouse. This would have the nice effect not only of eliminating potentially biased representations of someone who is, after all, a second-order Total Stranger, it would also compel each poster to be exclusively focused on him/herself -- save for the permissible cheer-leading referenced above.
But what we can't do is have it both ways. We can't say, "Come to the boards to vent," and then say, "You know, you really shouldn't vent -- you're not worrying about yourself;" we can't say, "Hey, I didn't see what is the status of your story?" and then say, "Whoa, dude -- stop repeating your story."
We need a bit o' consistency here, Sports Fans, lest we break the glass walls of our houses....
Or, we could simply read what people post to us, really THINK about it, and say "Thanks; I never thought of it that way."
And this is precisely why we need some ontological and epistemological standards.
"we could simply read what people post to us" -- conditional tense, could. We could also "could not."
"really THINK about it" -- begs the question: what makes you think this doesn't happen? Or is it the case that to "really" think about something is code-word for "think about it the same way I do"?
"I never thought of it that way" -- on what basis do you make the assumption that "it" was "never thought of" in "that way"? Or are we assuming that every single post is a unique, discrete chestnut of wisdom? The gods know mine aren't, but perhaps I lack imagination.
One sees this time and again -- "you didn't do what I said, therefore you're not listening; you're stubborn; etc."
Posters -- me, K4D, among others -- are often accused of being "defensive" or of "disregarding" things. Isn't it within the realm of possibility that it is they who say such things who are the defensive ones? "Well, you didn't take MY suggestion, so sod off!"
If thoughts and advice are freely given, they are given with no expectation concerning how they will be received, evaluated, used, discarded, etc. But often it seems this isn't the case -- thoughts and advice are conditionally given.
And if that's going to be the rule hereabouts, again I say that's great. But let's be clear and above-board about it. Let's just begin every post with "Hello DBGuy2: I am about to offer you some thoughts and demand that you agree with them...."
SP- did you read what Puppy said? He said to "think" about what is being posted to you, not follow, agree, accept...
I figured you'd refrain from even responding cuz it was such succinct and reasonable advice but there you went.
I adore you enough to say that I doubt very much that your wise-cracking, quick to respond, mentally exhausting arguments don't affect your relationships with women (btw , takes one to know one so I'm calling it on myself too).
It is not that you don't follow or agree, it is that you don't seem to stop, think, explore others' input. And then you whip out jargon that you must know is going to pummel your fellow conversationalists into either submission or stupor.
Explore how this may contribute to your R troubles...just think about it.
