Got an apology from XH. Need advice now.

[seeking answers]

OK, gotcha.

Next question. Do you think that your XH was being intentionally cruel?

Seems strange that he would email you after being some place where you two used to go. Maybe it stirred up some memories for him?

The AAA thing was a lame excuse for contact.

If he emails you in secret, wonder where ow was?

[AntoniaB]

What I can add to this also is that he is not the guy he was last year...for all last year, he had a new administrator, a personal friend, running his school, just was full of fun and life and LOVED his job for the first time ever, LOVED his new life, all that. His beloved principal became the center of a scandal and lost his job and was replaced by two women with not a ton of years teaching. XH has 23 years. OW has 5 years experience. He is MISERABLE at work now. Friends are telling me his FB posts are constantly now about how awful his job is--of course he always says his personal life is awesome, but the job is terrible. He doesn't get that HE is the problem. HIS attitude is the problem. He told me a few weeks ago that the only hope he has of any happiness is to find it all in his non-work hours, because there is no way he will ever find any contentment in his job (incidentally he is a wonderful teacher--but he just cannot deal with administration like an adult and he lets that part of the job destroy the whole thing for him).

So what I know of him now is that where last year was rosy and lovely every day, it's not anymore. When he is miserable about work, he can't control himself. He drinks more, he gets agitated more. He puts an enormous amount of pressure on the woman in his life to make his life outside work "count." So part of me is laughing now as his true colors are starting to come out, and she is going to have to bear the brunt of it, and she has no idea what she's in for...

Do I think this is why he's reaching out in weird ways? Yes. Because she is involved in a lot of theater stuff outside school and has a "life", and he just goes to work and that's it.

It's hard not to be tempted to talk to him because in a way I feel like I'm sticking it to her, since he hides it from her. But so far I've resisted on the grounds that I'm trying to DETACH, not ATTACH to him.

[AntoniaB]

OW would be performing--I checked her schedule. The other times he emails are times I know she is likely at practice or he's in his classroom. He doesn't live with her--he has his own apt. But I get the impression that he is at her place a lot or vice versa if only because of when the emails come.

Do I think he was intentionally being cruel? NO. Not at all. This sort of "insensitivity" is typical of him and has been since he stopped spewing venom and being "the good guy MLCer." I think that emotionally he has no empathy at all and is very childlike, to the point where he can't see that it might be hurtful.

EX. When he told me of his trip to Europe with OW where he didn't mention she was there, all I said back was "jeez, you must be blowing through your property settlement buyout pretty fast" and I put a winky face so he'd know I was just being facetious and not mean. His response? "Oh no, I haven't spent any of the settlement money except 5k for furniture and stuff for my apt.; I tutored after school to pay for it, and besides, you'd be surprised, it doesn't really cost much more than any of the vacations we took to VA."

Yep. Made a reference to our vacations, which were the very BEST MEMORIES that he and I have of 23 years together. Just made the reference in the context of telling me about the trip with OW.

He'd never see that as cruel. He'd say he was just being honest/making conversation but that if I don't want him to talk to me he'll go away.

Like dealing with a toddler, I swear. On an emotional level.

[AntoniaB]

Thanks guys, hug and slap made me laugh, and Beatrice, that's so right.

Yeah I'm not upset just flabbergasted. As in, this crap no longer makes me feel queasy in my stomach, which was always the signal I was going to lose sleep over it.

And like a moron I still have some insane hope that if I just navigate this sort of thing right that 5 years from now I'll have a rel. with him when really the only thing making me want that at all is that it's all I knew.

[kml]

You know, I find a simple "Wtf?" to be an adequate response to messages like those.

[AJM]

Hi Antonia. I think that's very honest of you. I suspect that your R with H being all you knew is part of this. Wanting it to have a happy ending (what's that at this point?) is normal, if that helps.

The part about OW? My thought is that she deserves it. She'll leave when she is ready. Or he will before that. If not, they both get what they worked for, but either way it isn't for you to worry about her. Funny you would mention that though. I see the humor

I don't think it's all that odd that he wants to contact. The part that he doesn't know how is interesting, but it really doesn't matter - it's all about you anyway right?

In some ways you are lucky he does remember the good times. That's much healthier than many because he isn't re-remembering the past right?

AJ

[AntoniaB]

I guess he's got an accurate view of the past. I remember once he moved out of spew mode he did say that he thought only the final 2 years were bad and he said that it was mostly him putting me through a nightmare and that I deserved so much better than that.

See I guess this is where I'm standing but not--in that, I don't want to do anything that horribly jeopardizes something FAR FAR down the road with him, and I know that me arguing with him when he's still batchit will cause that. I know he really thinks that he's navigating this all beautifully, in that I really believe him when he says that he has "always" kept me and OW separate in that he never mentions the other to the one he's talking to. I think in a lot of ways he has this view that of the type of guys who cheat, he's not "so bad" because he really didn't fight me on the divorce settlement, I made out slightly better than he did in a 50/50 state, he didn't get one pet out of all, and he pretty much left with what he came with and half the cost of the house, which over the years, he did pay a lot more towards than me.

I guess I have to judge this by a longer time span and say, well, it's friendly and not heartless and cold, which was the way he USED to communicate with me.

IB I know what you mean when you suggest that no contact might be best for me as I do react when he writes this crazy stuff...

HOWEVER, this is where I am with that...I have been going to meditation class for over a month now and have really thrown myself into learning a lot about the Buddhist way of living your life, and I've done a ton of reading and for the first time ever, a "spiritual path" if you will is attractive to me. I was force-fed a religion as a kid and rejected it all as an adult, and since the bomb, there are a lot of things that have pointed me in this direction, just really, a lot of people/chance occurences. And the reason I'm really gravitating toward it is that the BIGGEST problem I have with "everything" in a nutshell is that I am a person who fights against accepting "what is" to an absurd degree. I've done it for so long that I was a terribly anxious person, and XH fed that by giving in to me all the time. I was terrific at avoiding anything that might hurt me or scare me. I played everything safe all the time. I justified my actions all over the place, and I said "look I still accomplish a lot", but my life was truly ruled by fear.

When I started to go to meditation, that was in the same week he and I spoke for the first time in 5 months. That had become my "greatest fear". Just talking to him. And I forced myself to face it and I was so ok, that it has helped me to see that he's not all peachy, that I'm doing better than I thought, and that I can detach from needing him even more and I can work to remove him entirely if that's the direction my life takes, and I can still be happy.

So there are times, like today, that I start to think hmm...maybe you shouldn't allow him access to you if he can say potentially insane things that might hurt, and then the person learning Buddhism in me says "that's FEAR talking to you, face the fear, face him down, do NOT let him get to you. Read what he says, vent, wonder about it a few hours, and then let it pass like a cloud."

For me, that's a test--can I do that? I think I can, the more I practice it. And when I face down the anxiety with him, I can recall that when I have to face other anxieties.

I keep telling myself that I am "training" to be a person who better handles adversity by allowing him to have this access. I can always ignore what he says, or I can respond, but the main thing is that I face it and don't let it ruin my week, and I'm learning to do that.

If I start to feel a little antsy, honestly I go read another essay on learning to live with uncertainty and embracing that as much as you embrace a moment when things are perfect. The result is that I'm learning how to calm myself down. Yes I need a few hours to do it, but I'm down to a few hours now as opposed to days :-)

[AJM]

One of the great disservices we do to people in western religion is not tell them the whole thing. We paint a picture of "if you do this, then you will get that." Kind of like using God as a vending machine, right?

That never works.

There was a paper I read once that mentioned that eastern culture has no concept of MLC. They reasoned that was because of how they accept things differently.

In both easter and western religions, nobody should ever fear. That's a common concept around the world. Fear is the enemy no matter how you slice it. Really, FUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt. It's how people have controlled others in warfare and politics for generations.

It seems to me that you are coming to terms with what is, vs. what you thought or wanted. That is HUGE! You are learning to be at peace in a world that may seem uncertain at times, but you have hit on a major growth path with that mentality and approach. You are putting into practice the idea of living without fear. Of living in a way that you deal with what is and not what you want to see. In essence, you are taking off the rose colored (coloured?) glasses and seeing that life is great even without them.

I applaud that. I think when it comes growth, you are really on the right path. We may disagree at some point about religious differences (I am a Christian and eastern religion is a vastly different focus) but we will always agree that FUD has no place in our lives. When we remove that FUD, we live the life we were meant to live. With the freedom to see it for what it really is and how great and wonderous life can be.

Be at peace. You are learning a great skill and while you are early on that path, just know that you do not want to ever get off that path. At least, I don't recommend that you ever get off it.



AJ

[beatrice]

Antonia - you got an email from your xh recently after two weeks' silence, about a music festival you both used to attend. I had been out all day and got back and found one from my xh after a couple of weeks radio silence. He wants my opinion on the European economic crisis.

I kid you not. Can anyone outbid this??

[AntoniaB]

Wow, Beatrice. That's really crazy. Going straight for smalltalk. Nuts.

Ok so, an update. I have thought about this and feel that while I do want to try to handle interactions with him without flying off the handle and whatnot, that ignoring him when I see him doing something that to me breaks a boundary is something I should not ignore. If I keep ignoring when he does so--i.e. bringing up the trip with OW, bringing up a weekend that had meaning for me that I'm no longer part of, then I'm kind of allowing him to make me a doormat, even if he doesn't INTEND to do so.

So to that end, I sent a short and sweet reply.

I just said, "So, would you like me to return the knife you just put into my back?"

Because really, that's what it felt like. I didn't think it was over the top, and I figured, if he gets combative, well THEN I can walk away, but I should address this in some way.

So here was his reply. As I suspected, he's pretty clueless he did anything wrong, but he apologizes:

"If you mean the music fest then sorry. I was just trying to think of some news so the email wouldn't be strictly business. I guess my point was that it wasn't much fun because of it only being Friend A and Friend B.

I guess I didn't think you cared because you had stopped going years ago due to the other festival you went with your sisters.

Sorry."

I'm not sure what to think of this other than that hearing that he didn't think I "cared" about this festival because I had stopped going is a bit of revisionist history. It is true that I missed a few of the festivals in the past several years before the marriage ended because there was an event I went to instead with my sisters in another state. I never saw my sisters and I never thought the rest of that group cared when I "chose" my family over them. Maybe they did? Maybe he did? I don't know. I know I didn't miss it the year before he left me the first time, but I had missed it in 2009 because we were broken up. I actually went to a beach 30 miles from where he was alone the same weekend he was going because I wanted a trip away but he wasn't comfortable with me going with him that year.

All I know is that when he took OW instead of me in 2010, that I was devastated by the "meaning" of that, and I almost think that he and the rest of them had already sort of "divorced" me from that trip long before. Not like that excuses their behavior, because I did tell them all that it hurt me that they continued a tradition with my replacement so quickly--but it says to me that I spent a whole lot of time being upset over something that meant little to others. I had all sorts of visions of them all just living it up while I was crying my eyes out, but maybe they were all oblivious.

Now you know my instinct is to: email back and tell him WHY it mattered to me, and WHY I cared, and how just because I chose to go with my sisters before never meant that I didn't care about him or the others, but I guess there really is no point to that at all.

I'm thinking this was all I needed to say: that I felt hurt, and he apologized, story over.