In home separation? Off / On? Still WAW? Dunno

[breakdownbill]

Hi Yankee

Thanks for going back over my thread and calling me out on a few things.

Anyway...this is the classic pattern in soooo many relationships - mine included. I was communicating (I realise now), in a manner that did not enable him to hear me. It got his defenses up so quickly he never heard a word I said, and decided to also carry on down the cheeseless tunnels himself. Unbeknownst to me, I was reinforcing the very patterns I was wanting to break - but then so was he. But, a lot of people do this. Like, a LOT!

It's not just your wife Bill. I mean, how long was she complaining for, or hinting at things needing to change? Going to an OM is the last resort for feeling validated

I think I may have been coming over on here focusing on my wife's faults in the M, I know it wasn't so one sided & I have lived with that guilt since the bomb.

I'm not looking back anymore at seeing how or where I went wrong anymore, well at least not in a fixer's way of thinking anyway.

My W was the caretaker of the R and I did get lazy in terms of our R, but you have to remember my sitch is quite different. I got lazy with the R partly because my W got lazy with the day to day running of a house with 2 kids.

At the time of going back to UNI & up until the last few months of my course I was working 5 nights a week until midnight, doing voluntary teaching assistant work, plus doing pretty much all the housework whilst trying to study and spend time with the kids.

I was stretched & no matter how many times me & my W had a conversation about her pulling her wait more in the house of an evening, things never changed.

I was constantly tired, most of the time I couldn't be bothered going out & my labido was shot because I was constantly tired & stressed.

What made things worse in this situation was that if I had missed something with my cleaning / tidying up, my W would choose to criticise me whilst watching TV & then when I got home from work @ Midnight there would be loads of dirty cups & plates lying around & the kids uniforms & packed lunches were left to me to either do them in the morning or when I got home from work.

When your routine is this dull & draining it takes it out of you. I wish I'd have stopped trying to do everything & put my foot down then instead of avoiding confrontation with my W.

Sometimes a woman having her own life in a M (and not willing to really include her H, or not wanting to change anything for her H) is because she is asserting her own independence as a reaction to her H leaving her out of his life for so long. This is her resentment in action.

I'm wondering if this dynamic is playing a part in this scenario.

I'd go along with this observation, because after a few months in my 1st year at UNI is when she started doing the dancing.

I was thinking the other day about how I have this list of things that if my W does, will convince me that she is committed to giving it another go.

1. wear rings again
2. Stop dancing with OM & all contact
3. Ask's me to do something with her alone (even if it's just going for a coffee).

Now my W may or may not have some kind of list of things that she wants me to do before she would commit to giving it another go also.

This is going down the road of mind reading so I'll stay away from that.

What I am doing right now is re-reading the DR book since I have become detached to try & refresh my mind on DB techniques & understand them a bit better with how things are now as opposed to how they were when I first read them. (couldn't hurt huh?)

I've just got to remember that it's all about me and my kids right now (and my friends & family). Whilst my W is still in contact & dancing with the OM I am not prepared to commit myself to anything other than co-parenting & friendship with my W, regardless of how she's the sitch.

Thanks for the jolt in the arm though Yankee, I think I needed that & to look at my sitch again from my W's perspective now that I am detached enough to be rational about it all.

Bill