Thanks for the advice FP. I do plan to do more reading not only to help me in this situation but also to pick back up as a hobby. It's something that will occupy my time and keep the lonely downtime thoughts form creeping in.
Something happened today with my SO that I wanted to share in the hopes that some of you who may have similar experiences can tell me if it means anything...or perhaps if I'm being used:
For the past 4 or 5 days our daughter has been sick with a cold. At any rate, my SO and I have a set (again, non-legally binding) visitation agreement where she comes to get our daughter at ~10 every morning and drops her off in the afternoons before she goes to work.
Yesterday, with our daughter being so sick, she decided not to come pick her up, but she told our daughter she was going to take her to lunch. So this morning rolls around, I let my daughter try to sleep in a bit as she's still sick, and then she got up and I fed her breakfast. My SO messaged me as to how our daughter was doing and if she needed to go to the doctor. I responded and didn’t hear anything else.
10AM rolls around and my SO shows up, but my daughter is still eating breakfast(she didnt start eating til later than usual). My SO is annoyed that our daughter isn’t ready, and says she's going to get gas for her car and she'll be back. She called me while she was out and was angry, yelling at me. I told her that with her letting our daughter get rest and stay here yesterday and her saying she was going to take our daughter to lunch today, I didn’t think she was going to be coming over until closer to lunchtime. My SO said that was a stupid reason and told me just to have her ready when she got back.
Therefore, I did, and my SO came in and was surprisingly pleasant. I'm not sure why she calmed down. At any rate, she started asking me what I was doing today, if I was going to the gym and whatnot and I said probably. She said she needed to drop our daughter off by 1:30 since she had a dentist appointment at 2:30. I told her I'd be home by 1:30, and that’s when she asked if I wanted to meet her and my daughter for lunch.
I was enthralled by the prospect of spending time with my family, though I only replied calmly that that would be fine. I told her to message me when she decided when and where. We both left our house, and she waved to me as she pulled off.
About an hour or so later, she messaged me and we determined a place and time to meet.
The lunch was nice...aside from the food being pretty good (and each of us eating some of one another’s food), it was relaxed with lighthearted chitchat. We didn’t talk about the relationship; we joked around and laughed about some stuff. Our daughter was there and like most her age was frequently craving attention when she saw her mom and me talking to one another and not focusing on her. The only thing that was talked about that bothered me, even though I didn’t let on, was when she talked about doing a lot of housework around her dad's house and in exchange, he said he would pay on her new car. I thought to myself "I would pay off your whole car if you'd open up emotionally and come back home".
We ate at a restaurant in a shopping mall, so after we were done eating we walked around the mall for 20 minutes or so. Then my SO had to heave for her appointment.
Therefore, we said our goodbyes and confirmed that she would come at 10 tomorrow. She said "I'll talk to you later" and I said, "Have a good night". She waved at me again as she drove off.
I don’t know what she's thinking, and unless she tells me (and maybe not even then), I can’t know what her motives are. However, I'm hoping for some educated guesses.
So for those of you with a WAS...or for anyone who's seen this type of behavior before...should I see her inviting me to have lunch and waving at me to be a positive sign, no matter how small? Is she confused and/or unsure about her decisions to leave me? Alternatively, was I being used...either as a pillow to cushion my SO's guilt at leaving or as a taxi so that my SO wouldn’t have to come back to our house to drop off our daughter before going to her dentist appointment?
It would be great if it were a positive sign. I mean my SO told me that she hoped we could be friends unlike her own parents...so in a sense that's what we were doing.
However, when people who've been more than friends do the friends route, there’s a chance that that’s where things can be stuck. If both are ok with that, then that’s fine, but I know that I would like things to be more than that. Therefore, from my perspective, friends "for now" is fine...but it’s not how I want things to always be. I'm not interested in being her friend while she moves on with someone else and that guy gets all the closeness and intimacy that I once had but wont as a friend.
I would appreciate any thoughts and feedback anyone has to offer.
