Thanks for the advice everyone. The hardest part of all of this for me is that we both a Christians as well. Both believe (or did) that God brought us together, and he wants us to honor our vows, they were an agreement before Him for the rest of our lives.
It's been an eventful, and unfortunately very damaging couple of days. I took the position to separate my sitch with my W from my sitch with my children. There is absolutely no way I will roll over and not fight for my kids and deserving role in their lives.
She approached me about seeing a mediator next week. I told her that I'm open to the thought of mediation, but will not do so before talking to an attorney. She took this as a threat and ended what to that point was a very civil conversation.
When she first DTB, we both stated that we felt the other was a good parent and didn't want to fight each other over custody. Problem is, what I meant by it was I would not seek to take my kids from her. She took it to mean that I would give her whatever arrangement she wanted without a fight. I always assumed we were both thinking of some variation of shared custody. Obviously not.
I told her I intend to fight for 50/50 or very close to it. She claims I'm reneging on the earlier conversation. I said you must be nuts if you think you can turn your back on this marriage, ruin my childrens sense of family, and think you can walk away with everything the way you want it. She said fine, I'm going to fight for full custody. I said fine. Realistically, she has no grounds to say I am not deserving of shared, but I fear the unknown and the possible chance she could win.
Her last comment to me was "you have finally eliminated any lingering love I had for you". That obviously hurt.
I felt backed into a corner with this whole D talk. When it came to her and I, I sat there and took what she had to throw at me without fighting back. In regards to my children, I plan to fight back fiercely. She apparently didn't expect it, and think she's kind of panicking about the thought of losing time with her kids. My hope would have been that she might look at the life ahead and realize maybe the best scenario would be to try and keep the family intact. Unfortunately, I think she's reached a point where she could never see herself with me again, no matter what change, what commitment, or what work went into repairing things.
I may have lost her for good over the last couple of days. I'm going to do everything I possibly can to make sure I don't lose my precious little girls along with her.
