Brand New here, my story, my ?'s

[Ichrus]

25,

Makes sense very much. I have taken ownership of my mistakes and problems in all of this, and I continue to "own" my problems and try to give myself reminders to really re-check and think about my role in how we got here and what I need to do better. I have become a MUCH better father through all this and will always value and appreciate that part of this sitch. I also am much for focused on my friendships and relationships and try to make sure I enjoy and work on them while paying more attention to details. My W has noticed the changes and commented on them, saying she sees that I have gotten better with the kids and things have seemed a lot better between us in the home, but she does not trust that they will stick. I validate that and tell her I understand why she does not trust it, but these are things for me and I will be doing them and learning and growing from all of this regardless of what she believes or doesn't believe.

I certainly know now that the encouraging of her flirting with OM was a huge mistake and way out of bounds for a healthy, good M. It was my issue, and I believe at the time I realized things were not going well in our M and we needed some spark or something to re-energize it...I just made a horrible choice in what sort of spark to encourage as opposed to really looking at myself and our own problems and working on it together...trust me, I have very much learned from that mistake and never intend to come close to repeating it.

She is at a legal doc prep place as I type getting D papers going. She asked that I come along initially (because I have been working with her on coming up with separation agreement and breakdown of custody, assets, support, etc...my decision to do so because I feel it is in everyone's best interests, especially our kids), and originally I was going to go...but just could not square it away in my mind or heart that I could go to this with her. She was justifiably a bit angry about it (after I said I would go and pulling out of it), but I calmly explained that while I agree to work with her on many aspects of this, there are just some things I don't feel I can do...this is her basically deciding to fire me as her H and I can't go in and sit by her side and help her "officially" get that process going.

So I do plan to try to continue to detach and pull back. I will find out more about this paperwork thing tonight I am sure, and she has a move out date set for May 27. We plan on telling the kids as soon as school is over for them on May 23. I understand and basically agree that she needs time and space to figure a lot of this stuff out...and even though it is going to be horrible to work through this with our young girls, I can see that my W will not have a chance to really examine herself and feel what she needs to feel until she is on her own a bit. I plan on working on me and my stuff, and being a strong, stable, calm, levelheaded father for my girls.

I agree that R with OM is very unlikely to go anywhere...I am not really concerned about him personally as much as in the past (again, other then knowing that while he is in the picture, there is no real chance for her to consider what we might be moving forward)...Life will teach both of us the lessons we need to know and the price we will be paying for this and we will see where that takes us.

So space and time are coming for her at the end of this month...along with life hitting us both hard and fast I assume.