14 Months Secret Separation: talking mediation

[adinva]

MIL called today to ask what I was doing for my birthday this weekend. My sister invited me rafting on Saturday, and on Sunday I have my guitar meetup, so I suggested Sunday early dinner, but found out MIL's not available and we'll get together some other time. She asked what was going on in our sitch, and said she was afraid to ask H and he doesn't volunteer any info.

I told her it was not going real well, that our year separation was done and it was just a matter of paperwork now, and H seems to be determined that this is what he wants to do. I told her there hasn't been any point of no return and if he wanted to work on things we would, but it didn't look promising. I suggested that she could feel free to ask him questions, he'd answer them and wouldn't likely be swayed either way by her input. He and I talk weekly and he's somewhat open, at least about the administrative details, so I wanted her to feel like she could talk to him and not just me.

I told her things were friendly between us and that I would be sure that nothing changed between her and the kids. She said I was a very strong and good person for putting up with this. I said if he weren't who he was I might not have; he's certainly a good person too. She suggested that I was being so good about this that I should talk to Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, and she suggested that they got their D so fast maybe we could too. I let that slide as kind of random blathering. I don't think she was trying to offend me. I'm not even quite sure what her point was about that.

I feel like it's hard to talk unemotionally about this stuff with her, but it's probably harder for her and I can take it. So I try to answer her questions as objectively as I can so she can feel less anxious about what's going to happen.