@antlers: It's a damn shame that it takes something like that to bring about positive change in ourselves. But it does...and it did.
I agree absolutely. Though in a wider context, isn't it nearly always the case that we change only in response to a major external stimulus / crisis / event?
I can almost hear that late-nite teevee announcer voice: "Stasis -- the human condition. But wait! There's more! With every Stasis you get this fine-quality Complacency at no extra charge! You pay only for shipping and handling!"
On a more serious, if also more conventionally cliched note, it speaks to the importance of communication in a(ny) relationship. Even STBXMRSSP is now -- now! -- willing to admit that "maybe" she could have spoken up and made clear to me just how dissatisfied she was: "Obviously it's not like you couldn't change." Uhhhh, day late and dollar short much?
But, to paraphrase hoosiermama, it doesn't really matter. The kids and I will spend the next several years putting ourselves back together after whatever-it-was sucked the soul out of the person I married and thought I knew better than anyone else on the planet. It doesn't really change anything. It just plain sucks, and it sucks worse than anything that I've ever experienced.
"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.
There was a bit of a crisis yesterday, precipitated by STBXMRSSP's session with her therapist on Monday. The bit of a crisis was touch-and-go for a couple hours. It could have been bad. But STBXMRSSP and I talked it through on the telephone, cordially, without rancor. She got edgy / panicky, which is uncharacteristic of her, and I maintained my mojo and stayed cool and talked her off the ledge, which was uncharacteristic of me during the M. Role-reversal. Ended on a positive note.
She asked me if I would share my POV on a particular matter; I did, and in so doing pointed out that, from my POV, she has been wallowing in MLC and has underestimated the impact of her rejection of me on me, largely because she herself has essentially never been rejected.
I pointed out that, when she was rejected by Signore Schmuckatelli -- and I used her specific words to characterize that affair (no big deal, only once, etc. etc.) and then (being Smiley's Person Himself) pushed the outside of the envelope and used her words to other people, ferreted out by surveillance activities, about Signore that painted quite a different picture -- she went into a tailspin, to the point of crying about it in front of me! "So here's this affair you claimed lasted no more than 6 months, wasn't that memorable, was based on 'a couple' phone conversations only, and ended not with a bang (hah!) but a whimper, and you went into full-bore self-pity mode: you're obviously repulsive, no one wants you, etc. etc. -- TO ME!
"So maybe you could put yourself in my shoes -- 22 years, commitment, children, and then to be told 'I don't want you anymore'?
"That's rejection!"
So take that, I suggested, and multiply by an order of magnitude and perhaps you have a sense of what a Left-Behind Spouse goes through.
She didn't reply right away to that e-mail, which worried me, but she was apparently thinking about it. And her reply basically boiled down to: I hadn't thought about it that way; I don't know if you're right about MLC, but I don't know if you're wrong either; I hear what you're saying.
And nary a word about being busted on the lies about Signore which is also uncharacteristic, because historically (i.e., the last year) she would have thrown that back in my face with a dismissive "that's all in your head!"
And that dialog, too, ended on a cordial note.
Refreshing.
----------------- * @gypsy
Prime real estate in my head is owned by sex. Sorry.
You do this all the time. You recover from batchitcraziness only to have a sane conversation with her, and you think all's well that end's well. But, it never ends well, and the next round of batchitcraziness is just around the corner! But somehow, you always act like it takes you by surprise.
Thanks, @Lotus -- I was starting to get worried. It took much longer than usual for someone to leap from "Hey, today didn't suck!" to "Oh, dude, you're still so into her."
Nowhere in that post does it say I "think all's well that end's well."
It says that we had two conversations -- one of which could SO have gone the other way -- that were collegial and ended on a cordial note, and that, from my POV, it was a refreshing thing to have happen.
Didn't say "permanent" change. Didn't say "cue Peaches & Herb."
All it was was a journal entry that said, in essence, "Wow. Today didn't suck."
I wrote in my thread entry for Starting Aught-Ten that I set a goal of not being spring-loaded to the freak-out position with respect to STBXMRSSP. To work the mojo; to follow the @Gypsy Doctrine and be impeccable in my words -- in other words, not to let STBXMRSSP get the better of me in the moment.
Nary a word about building a bridge home or talking to her like a lover does or being the man the foolish she oughtn't to leave. Nary. A. Word.
Just noting one of the peculiarities of these situations. That it can still be pleasant to talk to the woman who took everything away. Isn't always. Won't always be. But in that instance it was. A welcome and refreshing breeze. Who knows where tomorrow will be? Typhoons and cyclones and tornadoes -- oh my! But on the day, it was refreshing to be almost kind of nearly somewhat like normal.
For the record, nowhere did I accuse you of trying to get back together with your wife. All I suggested was that this might be the eye of the storm. It's no time to let your guard down. She's still a loon.
