W came home an hour late, didn't answer my call, nor return my text. I struggled with that, as I had made dinner reservations for the whole family, and that is an old behavior of hers. When she did get home, she had been drinking, another old issue. She said she grabbed a beer on her way home, but I honestly just assumed someone took her out for her bday. Either way, I wasn't thrilled. When I asked her about drinking on her way home (which is weird to me), she said "in case you didn't know, I'm miserable." Awesome start to the evening!
Anyway, we had a quick talk, I told her I was a little panic'd because of the dinner reservation, she was pretty patient really, and we both agreed to start fresh a few mins later.
Scavenger hunt was a huge success. W got the kids involved and it was great fun for everyone. In the prize card, I wrote:
A ring for today, A vacation for tomorrow Let's turn a new page And leave behind the sorrow
I didn't realize how strong those words would be when she read them aloud, but everyone started crying, me included. She hugged and kissed me and told me thanks and then we piled in the car for dinner. Dinner was great...she held my hand for much of it.
Unfortunately, on the way to dinner she was texting and at dinner she again checked her phone. I noticed OM's name and asked about it, and she showed me the email. I said, that wasn't what I saw, and she showed me her text. He had left her a VM about losing money in the market and she text him about how she just finished a great scavenger hunt and was going to dinner with the family. WTF?!
I made a decision right then to just leave it alone and have a nice evening, but when I woke up early, I struggled with the whole concept. I told her very clearly I would not be in a M where OM was involved, and yet, the relationship continues.
We both were up at 4am for some reason. I dressed and left the room and she came and asked me to come back to bed. We talked for the next couple of hours and I basically told her I was struggling with whether or not I should continue to fight for our M. The discussion wasn't bad, but it wasn't really helpful either, at least not to me. A couple of times she was explaining how she felt and I asked some deeper questions (i.e. W: I don't know how to let it go and still "win" and I asked "How do you define winning?"), and she told me how different I was now.
She said she was struggling with who she was versus who she wanted to be. This is similar to my own journey so I told her how I had approached things.
We also talked a little about forgiveness. I told her I thought she should forgive herself (she continually says how she's upset she didn't stand up for the M she wanted sooner) and she basically said that wasn't the problem. I asked if she refused to forgive me because it meant losing track of "the score" and that seemed to hit a nerve.
