A husband walks into a bar with a WAW on his shoulder and the bartender says..........
Okay so I'm walking thru the kitchen and my W stops me and says that because I have my own life she should learn to handle her own finances. So I calmly work towards figuring out what she means. I tell her that I emailed her with a suggested way of doing this when she said last time that it was important to her, and that she never responded, so is that what you want to do or do you have something else you're thinking? She says we are leading separate lives so we should separate the finances. Note that this has been a big thing for her forever but she has never actually stepped up to do something about it. So I say do you want to do this now? She doesn't. She says this way of living suxx and it's killing her. I ask her what she wants or needs to do. She says (and I knew she would see my GAL and detachment this way) that since we lead totally separate lives she hates it here. So I say that she is giving me contradictory messages. She pushes me away completely and then is unhappy that I'm not with her like before. She says she is not actually doing anything. She's just completely unable to get a hold on what to do in anything and absolutely has nothing in the tank at all. That opens the door for a 3 hr Gilligan tour of our entire history and everything going on now.
Without including all the dialogue here it basically comes down to that this past year was inevitable with all that was going on in the past, and it was in its own way a year in which we both looked inward and both have changed in many ways, so what to do?
I took the road of handling it in a positive manner, reviewing everything that had happened and saying how with the changes in us we can handle it in a way more condusive to a better partnership, gave examples, and how we can look forward as more evolved partners, no dependency, just two evolved people sharing each other by choice and enhancing each others life journey's. Basically, saying that even though our tanks are empty right now, if we just allow each day to unfold we can rebuild the love and passion step by step, in a much better way than how we started off as teenagers, in a more mature evolved manner. I felt completely calm, was easily able to hear everything she said no matter how good or bad I perceived it to be, and told her flat out that I just spent the last year 24/7, even in my dreams working on this and on me. I said that the old us is gone and can be replaced by the next version. A big point for me is that I don't think love is like a bank account that you stick a million dollars in on day one and it carries you through the rest of your days. Instead it requires continual investment, like a garden needs constant caring and gentle tending. Anyway I'm willing to move on this way and it just requires the will to take the first few baby steps and that's how you start a new life.
Her reaction was all over the place. i can see that she's burnt out, confused, cynical, afraid, angry, defensive, and would angrily keep going to the past. Anytime she did I would validate it and where I could point to a positive change in one or both of us that would better serve us in the future.
At first she was seeming to be very agreeable to the discussion as a positive. The she 180'd and said she can't do this, she hates it here and wants out. So i said okay if that what you want then I'll move on too and I think this is a tragic lost opportunity. BTW, although we did not communicate well thru our M, we never got into "fights" in the sense of screaming and all that, so this entire conversation was calm like we usually are. Then she says that she should just disappear and then none of us will be affected by her. I say to her whatever we do is going to affect all of us for ever, and that disappearing will have its own affects. Then she leads the discussion back to the topic of what has been, and what could be going forward.
By now I'm literally exhausted and so is she. I ask her do you have any idea of what you want to do, as an individual and as a married partner. She says she has no idea what she wants or what to do, or even how to make the simplest step.
I tell her that we could choose the path of a new life, where she works on figuring out what she needs to do as an individual, has my full support, we walk the walk together stpe by step and give each other strength in ways we didn't before, don't forget the past but don't drag it along with us as an anchor, and we rejuvinate us day by day. Sounds good to me anyway. I tell her that's what I got and I'm not going to live any kind of life with anyone that isn't at least open to walking in the direction of a life together as partners so if you can't do it I'm going to do that somewhere.
She says she doesn't know what to do and sleepwalks upstairs to her monk's cell.
It felt good to get it all out, and she's the one that brought this all up. Honestly. I've never seen anyone with so many emotions good and bad play across their face.
I also felt very accepting of her one of many non-decisions when she said she wanted out. All of this detaching and soul searching has really helped me. I'm not saying I was Spock the Vulcan emotionally. I just has an easy calm acceptance to that possibility. Something Barely said today about how she will use Retroville to hopefully salvage her M, but if it didn't she would use what she learned to benefit her in her next. I thought that at that moment and felt I was totally in synch with that.
So now I have to decide how to handle this going forward. And I would LOVE some feedback, need it in fact.
Here's what I think at the moment and will definitely be mulling it over. I go active in a gentle way with her again, keep doing the things I was doing before - movies, museums, sporting events; let her live some sort of "us". I just let her simmer with this entire conversation while in the environment of a not completely separate life environment. Going semi-dark on her just doesn't seem to get her jump started to claw out of her depths, but I could be way wrong here in that maybe it's the only way. I really don't know.
I don't see her as a fighter for "us" even by taking the simplest steps, but maybe it's just because she can't as opposed to won't. In this discussion it really hit me that my love tank has gone empty too, and i did mention that it can be filled maybe not in one big blast but in day by day increments. I have never worked harder at anything in my life than this past year, and have been rebuffed the entire way yet she is still here. I'm not sure if its because she's not sure about us, or she doesn't have it together enough to bolt.
In any event I enter the new day still with a huge question mark in my life, and a very strong desire to be with a loving partner, which may not be her.
Christ carried the cross for what, one day? He got off easy. Right about now I'd trade spots with him.
Please friends send your wisdom to this home in the woods of New England! Grazie.
