I actually have gone NC. She is the one that contacts me every two weeks or so. Hell she called me again this AM to borrow a ladder for her neighbor.
Sometimes I think she is just checking in on me to make sure Im still kicking LOL.
There is one fly in the ointment to my NC. We are both co-signers on my Son's mortgage. Mind you she is living there and paying his mortgage for him currently.
I have to stay on her good side. Why? Because she may buy his house outright. That means that if I play my cards right I will no longer be glued to my Son's $90k home loan.
And that my friend is something I defenitly would like to see happen. It's times like this that I am reminded that marriages are more than just love and sex. And you have to keep money issues seperate for your own protection and keep your emotions out of it.
I try to be friendly to her when we do interact but I keep thinking Detachment, Detachment, Detachment. It's the only thing that really works.
Me:48 W:55 M:22 T:23 Bomb:19Nov09 S:15Jan10 D:11Feb10 EA:Confirmed on 20Apr10 Fast track to her divorcing me
Allow me to offer some input if I could on some of the facebook/maiden name issues. Let them go for a while. Cautious is right on (obviously). They are emotional decisions. I have a WAW who has done the same thing and thankfully I was given advice by some friends not to panic or worry about it. In many ways it's a coping mechanism for the W or XW because they have been hurt by us.
The advice I was given was to let them do it. In my experience (I can't speak for others), it seems to have allowed her to work through some of her emotions, including anger.
gt450, if I may offer a thought here (although Cautious really already did), your XW will speak to you when she is ready and you will find out some things that can still help you with a possible future reconcilitation. You need to be ready to listen to her. I would advise against you offering her suggestions about how she's feeling or thinking.
A few weeks after filing, my wife called me and was ready to talk a little bit, so we did. I pursued a little about a week later for a date and she turned me down. A couple of days later she said she needed space to think. This concerned me at first because we had just had productive talks, but my counselor's advice was that giving her the space she requested knowing the divorce process is underway can allow her to think with a different set of emotions than she had before she filed. Our divorce is still filed, but she is starting to question if it's what she really wants.
Offering her suggestions as to why she divorced me and changed her name was a mistake on my part. I recognize this now.
The last time I spoke to her I refered to her as "Mrs. XXXXX" i.e. her new married name (Last Hustband's name). This was about a month ago. This week I talked to her again and she mentioned to me that she did not want to be refered to by that name but to simply call her by her fist name.
Hmmmmm...
Odd that she wanted to ditch my family name for his yet she got her feelings hurt when I called her that.
Now mind you that I was not being petty (OK I was) but I wanted to guage her reaction to this out of curiousity. I didnt do this in a rude way. I can see now that you are probably spot on. It was an emotional reaction from her.
But honestly, I am starting to get to the point where I really dont care if she changes her name to bozo the clown. I wish her the best in life.
Sadly, some of the things she has done has hurt her more than me and her emotions will get the better of her sometimes. I hate to see this because she has always been a kinder and better person than me.
Me:48 W:55 M:22 T:23 Bomb:19Nov09 S:15Jan10 D:11Feb10 EA:Confirmed on 20Apr10 Fast track to her divorcing me
I hope and pray that my wife and I do not end up with a divorce. I do believe, though, that this website along with my counselor have provided some great insights on how my wife is feeling. As guys, we typically want answers right away and don't understand why things can't just be fixed. I mean, crap, if it's broken, you fix it right?
Well, I am learning that my wife does not operate that way, especially when emotions are involved. From the time we separated until we had our first good conversation was about 2 months. In the meantime, she was friendly and nice, but you could tell she was angry. I walked on eggshells around her and I guarded every word I said.
I guess my point being that my counselor told me to expect my wife to test me and that it may go on for a while. My wife has said being married to me at times felt like dragging dead weight. It feels horrible to hear that, but I let her talk and just listened. If our marriage does survive, I truly want to know how she feels.
My experience with all this is teaching me a couple of things 1)My wife feels like she's done most of the giving for a long time and wants to experience freedom from that, and 2)I've learned it can take weeks to months for some emotions to come into check, especially anger.
From my perspective, you calling your XW by her "new" last name is testing her in a way that will upset her. You don't necessarily need to do acts of service for her like you've been doing. But some things that I would do are call her by her first name and listen any time there is an opportunity.
For instance, one time my wife casually mentioned something small I did that irritated her. I asked her how it made her feel when I did that and she talked for probably 15 minutes about it. It was a very small thing in my book, but she had resentment that she had never expressed to me before! I am trying to make a habit out of those type of conversations where I do about 90% listening.
Lets be honest. Most wives do give a lot of themselves. They are hardwired that way and society and the church teaches them this. So yes I completely understand that. She has more than done her part in our marriage.
When my Son left home there was a huge void in my life and I sometimes wondered where me and my XW were going to next. Two years after that I found out the hard way.
I do listen to her. Ironically, the last time I was there I had to leave and she seemed to want to continue a conversation about a virus on her laptop etc. It was almost like she was sad to see me leave her breakfast table. But that may have just been wishful thinking on my part.
My Son has alienated himself from both her and even me now (has a GF) to an extent so I am all she has left. Her family lives 300 miles away so she depends on either me or her friends for help with things.
I know I should not do things for her but I keep it to a minimum and she is the one that initiates the contact, not me. I no longer persue or plead. I simply do acts of service that she needs from time to time and she sometimes does some for me (usually breakfast). Mind you this is only maybe twice a month or so.
She does NOT want to be friends anymore and since this is now understood by us both, there are zero expectations on my end.
Right now this is my best strategy I think. It allows me to show her GALing and keeps predators away who tend to take advantage of women like her.
I really am getting slowly detached from her but I still care enough to be protective of her. It's only natural after 23 years and all she has done for me and my Son.
Will she ever come back? I doubt it. But in the next few years this will probably not matter to me anymore. But I wont go into details here about what Im doing to move on with my own life.
Wish me luck.
Me:48 W:55 M:22 T:23 Bomb:19Nov09 S:15Jan10 D:11Feb10 EA:Confirmed on 20Apr10 Fast track to her divorcing me
From my own experience, it's best to minimize contact. For a long time the occasional contact from my xw would bring back all those difficult emotions. Some time would pass and I'd be fine again. The only way I was able to move on was to forgive and realize that my life was my own and she has no right to have any sort of influence over me. She lives with the OM in her affair and it's up to him to be there for her...it was her choice.
Set contact boundries. Run like H@ll and take life by the horns.
Formerly SGfan M:38 W:33 M:8 yrs T:10 yrs Bomb: Dec '08 Separated: 4/18/09 Divorce: 8/28/09 XW Affair began: April 08
That's the spirit g450! Like many, I'd imagine your XW has a lot of feelings swirling around. She's probably doing a lot of reflecting.
I really believe that if you are not terse with her in any way, you'll be suprised what can happen. She will say something out of the blue when she is comfortable and you will have the opportunity to ask her about HER feelings.
