WAW, Filing as Fast as Possible

[aeolianchaos]

Are you sure you don't want to remain cat-sitter for a while, if only to keep a link with your W?

Thanks for reading it, Talk!

I feel like the motivation that would have me remain cat-sitter is the same motivation that my W already has taken tremendous advantage of. She knows that I love her and believe that D will not solve any of our problems, and in ways I feel like she keeps putting stuff out there to control me, implying that there is hope so I shouldn't do X, Y, or Z.

MWD talks about this a little bit - the idea that in a relationship dynamic things can get out of balance if one person is always giving and the other one is always taking.

I can definitely see that in my M - I have been the one giving emotional support to my W when she felt overwhelmed, yet I never asked for it in return. Even when I was going to therapy intensely and not staying @ home, she was the one calling ME to talk her down from whatever crisis she felt like she was having. I don't say that with sarcasm at all - she would literally call me up in tears and having serious anxiety about things and I would listen and try to help her see that whatever the situation was, it was something she could handle and that her 'worst-case scenario' interpretation was just one of many possible perspectives.

I'd be dishonest if I said that I didn't feel like I have been really taken for granted and taken advantage of by W over the course of things. Esp. over the past year and a half, it seems like the worse I felt, the more happy she was to take what I did do for granted - of course I played into that because when she talked about what I had given up, I didn't want to recognize how much pain I truly was in and how overwhelmed I felt by the way it felt like my life was going. I was clearly in a state of denial about that. At the time, it felt like to acknowledge that would be to find fault w/ our R and w/ her in some way, and of course to acknowledge that perhaps the career I've been pursuing was looking less and less viable.

Perhaps I too took her for granted at times - I'm sure I did when I was so wrapped up in myself and my own aspirations - and for that I am truly sorry. We had a plan, and that plan had good intentions, but you know what they say about those..