? for people who have gone to Retrouvaille

[25yearsmlc]

LOL, I was trying to not talk to him about it, he engaged the conversation with me. He wanted me to tell him that I understood that this was merely for communication for our son, and that the divorce was stil going through, and didn't want me to go into the weekend with false hope.

fair enough. I saw maybe 3 couples going into our weekend with the same plan. I am positive at least one of the couples changed their minds after the weekend, if not two couples.


All I asked him was that letting go was one of the options after this weekend, I that I'm open to 2, we either reconnect and decide to work hard to repair what we've broken, or we meet on the court date in 3 weeks to finalize the D. His mother and grandmother have both asked him to at least humor the option of reconciling through the weekend and that it's never too late for anything.


good to know they are on the side of the m, but it may take a divorce for him to get the space he needs to view things more clearly...the more a person "talks" to the MLCer the more foggy and stubborn the MLCer becomes.

It's as if they see every talk as pressure and that makes them MORE determined to leave/flee. So in that sense the "help" that family/friends want to give CAN backfire or stall the progress.

I once told my x bil (before he left my sister) that I WANTED him to hurry up and "let her go", so she could find a man who'd treat her better like she deserved. HE was stunned by that comment and a bit more motivated. Later on in years he DID finally leave her, for good...and she did meet someone who is better for her and better to her and she is happier now than she ever would have been with her ex h.

btw, the ex h DID tell her that he "got it" and had made a 'huge mistake" and blah blah blah. She's honestly happier although I know she has regrets for the suffering her kids went through. (**ALSO ex bil remarried too. His new wife is, as HE describes her, "high maintenance" ---- the opposite of my sister..so clearly there is a GOD and karma's nice to see***)


Hopefully he won't bring it up again with me until we're done.


veer off the topic and say "we'll be getting to is soon enough" and besides, it will give you some communication skills which you'll need. Make sure YOU get them b/c he'll "forget" to use them whenever...but if you really get them down, then you can model them for him later on so no matter what happens, that will improve and you'll model by example which = you showing change...


I tried to explain to him that any talks we have, or had have recently are all counter productive since it always ends in him screaming and being demeaning and me crying myself to sleep.


that sounds as if you're saying he "always" loses his cool and "always" hurts you. Which is holding him responsible for how it goes. I am not disagreeing with you but I am wondering if that's such a helpful way of saying it. Or fair.

Maybe say "WE LACK the tools we need to communicate better (one of the reasons we're divorcing) so let's wait til after the weekend to address this issue please"....and then when you go there


and get the tools and use them successfully, that will undermine his belief that things cannot improve, yet it's not with you overtly pursuing him. Make sense?

I told him if it would make him feel better to talk to one of the mentor couples that we had contact information for, and he said he wouldn't do that because he felt like he was being force fed purple kool aide after talking to one of the contacts.

sounded like pursuit from you via a mentor couple, whom he has not yet met,

and it backfired. Leave him alone. Hopefully your mentor couples will impress you as much as ours impressed us. Not all the couples you call are the same as who'll be there at the retreat, btw.

Good luck!