WAW - true or false?

[rh24]

Thanks zero - that's helpful!

OK - weekend update time.

After the 'pretty big' talk Thursday night, the weekend went quite well.

Friday night I got home, changed, then picked up D from softball practice and took her to her soccer game. W and MIL went separately. I was at one end of field talking to other parents, I noticed W and MIL had arrived and set up chairs so learning from my poor handling of the baseball game the day before I went straight up and talked to them and hung out for a bit. Then I saw another friend and went to talk to him for a bit before returning. Mostly watched the game with W and MIL and all was good.

Got home and we went to bed early since Friday was an 'up at 4:30am' day and D had to be at softball at 7am Sat morning. There was no further R or 'situation' talk that night between W and me - just normal stuff.

Saturday was a busy day - D had 3 softball games, S had 2 - first game at 8am, last game at 7pm. We had 'overlap' for one game, I went to S game. During that game he had a pretty bad error because he totally swiped at a groundball, looked afraid, he's better than that - normally in the past I would have 'put my foot in his butt', but instead I went to talk to him and tried to be positive, encourage him and pump him up.

One of the other parents I was sitting next to observed the whole thing - she said that was great. Next inning, S makes an awesome play in the field, then leads off the next inning with a laser shot double. Same parent reinforced to me the positive result of my positive reinforcement.

So at the 7pm game, W and MIL were there. We were sitting next to same parent. At one point she brought up to W how great S did in response to my positive reinforcement. She then said to my wife (about me), "Yeah, he's really growing as a person - that's awesome." [I always had a tendency to complain about whatever was going wrong within the game in the past - nobody could stand to sit near me!]

On Sunday, one more baseball game and two softball games. During last game of the day, W and I were talking about what we wanted to do for dinner and what work needed to be done around the house. W said "I need to go to the grocery store." I said "You could say 'we' need to go to the grocery store - if it would be better for me to go that's totally fine." She responded, "Well it's just that I've had to do for 13 years." [Big time 'revisionist history', but that was fine - I just wanted her to know that I'm there, I'm involved.]

W decided grocery trip could wait, we went out to dinner as a family, with MIL. At one point during the meal, one of the kids was talking negatively about something - kind of a 'glass half empty' thing. In response I said something like "You need to see the good result happening and believe in it and good things will happen. If you think positive thoughts, good things will happen."

To that W chimed in, "Yes, that's your dad's new philosophy." (or something like that). She did not seem to say it sarcastically.

Got home from dinner and I washed our cars with the kids while W and MIL did a blitz cleaning job inside. Then took dog for a walk with W and MIL - it was good. Then back home, finishing up laundry before hitting bed. Another full, busy day with a lot of good interaction.

This morning I got up first, switched over laundry and started last load, then emptied dishwasher. W got up and went to work out, I got ready and left for work before she got back. That was another learning from our R talk Thursday night - she doesn't like it when I don't leave early for work. She wants to see me be more work-focused, which I don't disagree with.

Lastly - I had a few added notes from our R talk Thursday night that I left out of that post:

- W commented about me doing work around the house now just pisses her off (because I didn't pull my fair share for so long). I told her I'm sorry she feels that way, but that I'm not going to stop doing the work because that's the right thing to do and I wish I had done it our entire marriage.

- Towards the end of the discussion, I suggested we sell the business, move to a slightly smaller house and have her not work (she has said many times she would like to just be able to stay home and not work) - I'll find a travelling job if it would help! She's always talking about how her sister's husband has to travel a lot and she thinks that's good for their R. Sis doesn't work.

- W talked about wanting a friend - I talked about TRYING to be a friend, but only getting one word answers back makes it hard!

- Her new business partner just got engaged to his long-time GF, GF's mother isn't in the best of health and he said he wanted GF's mother to know GF would 'be taken care of'. W started crying telling me that story. Her mom is in good health and very active, but she also wants her mom to know that she will be taken care of. Hopefully MIL seeing changes in me is making a dent in this one.

- W said she thought at beginning of our R that I would NEVER hurt her and she started crying big time upon saying this.

- She needed support from me last summer when she was going through her 'business divorce'. I said I SO wanted to, but I just didn't know how and I apologized and said I wish I could have that to do over.