Oh hell, where do I start. Ahhhh, I know. I want to first thank you very much for your time and input, I really appreciate it. I don’t know if I can address all your questions in one post so feel free to ask again. As it stands, I am already pretty good at posting novels
You asked me about my shortcomings in the M. Below is a paragraph from an email I received from W the other day. Her entire email is on page 12 of my thread. I think this will address part of your question.
“I don't want you to be miserable- I don't want that for any of us!!! Our kids deserve the very best parents that we can give them. I just know that unless you can be the family's financial rock and backbone every day, week, month and year from now until forever, that I can't return to what we had"
As you already alluded to, the financials are huge but yes there’s others. In the beginning of our M I don’t think I needed W as much as she needed me. I married her because she was so caring, loving, supportive, etc.. She was into me! Even past the first one or two year honeymoon phase. After being together for 5 or 6 years all that vanished. It’s messed up, it’s not like I went bald and gained 100 pounds!!! Hopefully I am not offending anyone Anyway, I was so sick of the changes. She became cold, gave me little attention, started becoming emotionally and physically distant, etc… It got so bad that I seriously considered leaving her. It was interesting because I had this mindset that I didn’t need her anymore.
Then came another change, not necessarily for the better. She remained “the same” but then I became the one that started to need her more. Looking back, I really didn’t like who I was becoming. I was always complaining to my friends about how poor our marriage was. What friend wants to constantly hear that, it gets old after a while. I became needy, clingy, jealous and insecure. I started doing all the improper things. I began snooping (we all know it’s not right and it doesn’t make us feel better). We also stopped laughing together. In essence, we were no longer a team. We were in a poor M in sooo many ways and MC did very little. Everything just became so serious between us which is odd because I am a jovial, happy go lucky person. As nasty as things became over the years I’ve always kept the mindset that the grass isn’t greener on the other side.
You also made a comment about doing what works. Ok, I know being financially stable is important. Another thing that could really change is my W wants me to do more “acts of service” I didn’t fix everything around the house, cleaning etc…. It’s interesting because I’ve implemented a couple acts of service recently and I noticed a change in W. I took D to dentist the other day, that’s something I used to never do. W was very appreciative of that. I was also recently at the grocery store with the kids and I was about ready to take them back to W’s apartment. I decided to call W and give her the heads up that I would be dropping the kids off shortly. I then asked her if she needed some things from the grocery store, she told me she didn’t. Then I dropped the kids off and W wanted to talk, she started crying a lot and talking about how tough things have been. I think my small act of asking her if she wanted anything at the store struck a chord with her. Maybe it’s a “act of service” or maybe I was just being nice and it made her feel guilty, what do you think? That’s a tough one for me to identify.
To summarize, I need to work on the 180’s.
Work on getting things straighten out financially.
Try and identify more acts of service (they are hard to find though) I can’t just go over to her apartment and start cleaning it up for her.
I would love to get her laughing. I don’t even know how to start with this one. Doing a kids drop off and then busting out a joke just doesn’t seem right. It would take a good amount of brainstorming.
Along the same lines, make sure things aren’t serious. I always smile when I am around her but I have a “somewhat all business mindset” when I have interactions with her, so this is another really hard one.
