putting my big girl panties on

[flowmom]

Woke up way too early this morning, thinking about the conversation from last night.

It strikes me that our separation has been so much like our marriage. STBXH, the INTJ, has masterminded an entire plan in his head...and utterly failed to communicate it to me for six months. Yes, his plan is essentially honourable and well-intentioned, yet the fact that I was supposed to assume all this after enduring months of (mostly scowling) silence from STBXH just doesn't compute.

In our marriage, STBXH wanted me to assume good intentions, commitment, and even love, on his part without necessarily demonstrating either through his actions and words. Well, at some point those things trickled down the toilet...I think that's why I was blindsided when the bomb hit. It's not that things weren't obviously wrong in our marriage for a long time. But STBXH had trained me, and I had trained myself, to expect little in the way of reassurance or expressions of love and commitment. So when those things were gone, it wasn't just pure denial operating on my part.

This part is going to be tricky. Frankly, it galls me to accept 50% of the assets because it was mostly his money that paid for them. Yes, I get that I was a contributing member of the household in non-financial ways, but still. To accept concessions on STBXH's part beyond that really doesn't feel right. I know I have to overcome that for my children's sake. But I will have to tread very carefully here. I still care deeply about STBXH and his well-being. And I'm also worried about backlash down the road if STBXH chooses to make (guilt-based?) concessions at this point relatively soon after the bomb/separation. I want the financial stuff to be "clean".

Now that I think about it, I guess if there are concessions on STBXH's part on our home, it could be structured that whatever stake he gives up in the home could be essentially "in trust" for our children, rather than being mine. Hopefully there's a way to figure this out.

I'm doing field work today...but my focus on that isn't waht it should be. And I only got 5 hours of sleep.