Informally separated from WAW, but DBing my best

[AlwaysTrying]

My mind is stuck this morning. I wish I could go back to the end of September and tell myself not to move back in. W was thinking about reconciling around our anniversary. It is so painful to think about. I could have been rebuilding my marriage as a team with her help all of this time.

Instead, I came home without letting her argue against it. Really callously, really. I thought I had a right to be home and be with my kids and that her way of fixing things - kicking me out - was absolutely morally wrong. I was so miserable then that I said I was moving back even if it pushed her to divorce. I'm pretty sure I actually said it out loud. It was a bluff, and a really dumb one.

I wish she had said that she was having some positive thoughts about our marriage but she needed me to stay away a little longer or something. Something. But instead, the last thing she said to me on the matter was that she wanted things to get better between us... and then she filed for divorce.

I can see now how my thoughts and actions were so clouded by anger and... entitlement. I thought I was entitled to live in my house and work on my marriage in a reasonable way. It seems pretty reasonable, really.

I want to tear the world in two when I think about how I missed this opportunity.

So, when I think about it now, I'm trying to do two things: How to avoid getting in my own way and missing another opportunity like this, and trying to understand what I broke inside my wife that week so I can figure out how to reset the clock and allow her to be thinking those thoughts again.

I want to ask her what changed that day.