Thanks BeingMe. Our weekend was another tumultuous one. I can see what folks mean when they say the real hard work begins once you decide to try to reconcile.

We've been pulling back from each other more and more, and I was seriously considering if I would be best served by walking away and moving on again. My W had the kids over the weekend, and she did call me Saturday and ask me to going bowling with them all that afternoon. We had a great time, and I was sad to see them go. W was acting strange though, and even asked right in front of the kids "So H, you have a big date tonight?" I had no idea where that was coming from. The kids were right there though, so I ignored it.

Sunday morning I was increasingly concerned that her distance and that bizzare question might possibly indicate that she has been in contact with OM. I am reluctant to snoop, but I did look at her FB page. I am not FB friends with her, but she does not hide her friend list, and sure enough, OM was still on it. Hit me hard, and I decided right then that we needed to stop this crap and either be honest with each other or get divorced. I drove to her house and told her we needed to talk. She could see in my face I was serious. She said she was already late picking up our son, so she only had a minute. I looked right in the eye and asked her straight out.

Me: "Are you in contact with him?"
W: (very convincingly) "No! Not at all. You can check my phone, my email, anything you want. I haven't been in contact with him. My gmail account got hacked, remember I told you, and I sent a message to everyone in my address book about it, that's it, but he didn't reply."
Me: "He's still on your FB friend list."
W: "We didn't de-friend each other."
Me: "Why not?"
W: "Because it seemed like a hostile thing to do, and I didn't see a need to be hostile."
Me: (speechless)
W: "There was no need. I don't use FB for anything important. He hasn't posted on my page, and I haven't posted on his."
Me: "This isn't working for me."
W: "Are you making some sort of final decision?"
Me: "I think we're both confused as to where we are. What was up with that question yesterday about whether I had a date? Right in front of the kids too."
W: "I asked you that in front of the kids?"
Me: (nodding) "Yeah, you did."
W: "I did?"
Me: "Yeah, you did."
W: "I don't really remember that, but ok. Are you at a point where you want to stop this? Are we going to go back to just co-parenting, no friendship, nothing else?"
Me: "No, I'm not at that point yet."
W: "I am really late, I do need to go."
Me: "Ok, we'll talk later. I apologize for coming over unannounced."

She was pretty agitated, and took the opportunity to jab at me. She said "You did it once before, and I told you to never do it again, but apology accepted."

The vibe between us was VERY bad. We said a quick goodbye and both drove away.

I felt very bad the rest of the day, and any path to reconciliation appeared to be gone. Last night I was fighting the urge to call her or text her to continue our talk. I need some sort of resolution to this, and even if I was going to throw in the towel and walk away, I owed it to her to at least tell her I was doing that.

She beat me to it though. Around 9pm she called me. I could hear in her voice she wanted to talk, really talk. She said she was sad, said she felt like we were slipping away from each other, and right back to where we had been before. She said she doesn't want that, but she can't see any way for us to get past what she did. She said she can't give me what I need. She said I have every right to be angry, and to need what I need, but she just can't give it to me. I asked her what she thought I needed. She said "You feel I betrayed you, and I did. I know I hurt you. You need me to say it was wrong, and a mistake, but I can't. You need me to hate him with you, and I can't do that. What happened changed me, for the better, and I can't regret that. I can't regret loving him. I understand if that makes it impossible for you to be with me." She wasn't saying all this with finality though. Thinking back to Puppy's response to my post a couple months back, I could hear in her voice that she was searching for hope from me.

I said "Those are your feelings, and you can't deny them. If there's any hope for us though, you need to keep them inside you, out of view, at least for a while. You can't keep external reminders out here where I can see them." She said "I understand." I said "Like we talked about before, maybe someday there will be a safe place for us to put it, but not now, probably not for years." Then I said "I know I failed you in a way that made you long for what that gave you, so I can't just point the finger at you, I have to point at myself too. I know that."

We talked more about what I needed, how she treated me during our last months living together. She owned and apologized for how poorly she treated me. We talked about our past, how we've changed, what we like about each other, how unhappy we were before. Unlike what Puppy watches for in these situations, her unhappiness in our M was not "retroactive" after she met OM. She was terribly unhappy for years beforehand. I knew it, but I was incapable of truly understanding why, and she was incapable of conveying it to me. I was unhappy too, for my own reasons, but because of my demons, I didn't think I had any need to express it, or even the right to do so. I was just supposed to grin and bear it.

We concluded on a very positive note, and said we'd continue the talk the next day.

These are the R talks that need to happen for my M to have any hope. We're no where near through it yet, and I think it's going to get worse yet before it really gets better.