Our story

[kolja]

Well, after a few days of silence, my wife texted me out of the blue yesterday to say she had picked up the mail and would drop it by either later that day, or today. Neither of those happened, but that's not the point - I just find it positive, in a small way, that she CHOSE to tell me that. There was no NEED to; I could have gone to pick it up myself, found that it wasn't there and presumed she'd got it and she could have just dropped it off whenever.

Then, last night I had an interesting surprise visitor: the closest person my wife has to a father figure (her biological father left when she was an infant, and this person is a long-time friend of her mothers). He hadn't seen me in a long time, had only heard that we were 'having problems' and came by to see to see what was going on. He was concerned that she might be taking advantage of me, and relayed how much she had borrowed from him when she was much younger and never paid back (around the time of - and immediate aftermath of - her first marriage; possibly reinforcing the theory that when things get difficult in her personal life she gets really bad with money).

He had also mentioned that when he'd seen her at our niece's basketball games, she's been with another guy. It's the first I've heard of any other guy - when her sister contacted me I asked about it, she said it was a guy she recognized from when they were in high school and that he was "a toolshed."

After my visitor had left and I sat down to think, I was actually kind of surprised - pleasantly - by my own detachment. Hearing that she was showing up to someplace she'd know her family would see her with another dude would be something you'd THINK would send me through the roof. But it didn't. I realized that it may, or then again may not, mean anything. And even if it DID mean something - if something was going on - there's nothing I can do about it right now. If there is, it's frankly not WHOLLY inconsistent with where her family thinks her mental state is; and I know from MWD's books and from reading the boards here that it's not going to last.

I can't affect it now; it doesn't HAVE to affect me while I attend to my own life right now, and if we get our chance to reconcile down the road, it doesn't HAVE to stand in the way unless we let it.