Informally separated from WAW, but DBing my best

[AlwaysTrying]

[quote=AlwaysTrying]AlwaysTrying - Good job on getting out of the house. Maybe you can visit a few other churches on alternate Sundays. I am partial to my church, but visiting my friend's church helped give me a mental break from my sitch. Even if just for a couple of hours.

Thanks for the suggestion. It would be nice to get a break and still have that community connection.

I'm partial to my church because that's where my kids are, and where they are taking their religious education classes on Sunday mornings, and where the other families we interact with are, etc, etc.

Also, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church. It's a very different experience and I can't just go to the place down the street and get something out of it.

It's not that I'm looking for some way to spend my Sundays, because I don't have any trouble figuring that out. It's that I don't want to give up on seeing my kids on Sundays - I just want to find a way I can do it without stressing out my wife.

I want very much for our current separation to "work" - I want to give our R the time it needs to heal and make sure I have time and space to do the work I need to do without W having to escalate to dragging the kids into a two-house lifestyle.

Maybe I have to give up on seeing them Sundays. I don't know. I wish I was better at predicting when W is going to need more or less space.

She sat down with me to watch TV on purpose the other day... Friday night. She even stayed after I started watching a show she had already seen. She was calm and comfortable... and I was really nice having someone else on the couch with me. I considered putting on a different show - one she hadn't already seen, but I decided that would be too much like pursuing her to change the show to something that she would be more likely to stay around for.

I didn't want to make it seem like I was trying to make her stay. I was surprised she was with me at all after all she said about needing space this week. I do believe this warming of relations had a lot to do with my deciding to own the debt we have created.

But about 7 minutes into the show, the main characters started having a bitter feud over money they owed each other. W got really tense. I wish I had just acknowledged it directly to her and said something like, "Ugh, this is not what I'm in the mood for right now. I'm going to put on something else."

I was afraid of acting like I was pursuing and couldn't think of something witty to say, so instead I acted like I lost interest in the show and walked into the kitchen. I guess I really didn't want to be walked out on. As I was walking back, W said, "I'm going to go lie down."

She spent the next hour and a half in her room on her iPad. Probably talking to totally-not-an-EA-guy.

After that, I brought D15 home and started a movie with W watched for a while.


I guess I'm picking my wife's behavior apart a bit, but the picture that is forming for me is that, although things are often fine or even nice between W and I, the reason she most often needs space is that random events can trigger all of her anxiety about me in her life. I'm too tired to tell if I'm thinking straight right now. I have to go to bed!