keep_going & Arsene, thank you for the kind words!
jbnati, LOL! We've had a few things that had the potential to be fights, but so far we've managed to work things out quite calmly.
Grateful, not long at all. I hardly ever initiate a call/ text/ email myself, but I get them regularly from W (once or twice a day usually). I'd say the longest we've gone is maybe 24 hours. The vast majority of them are related to coordinating things dealing with the kids.
Journaling update:
GAL- went for a nice lunch ride on Saturday with some new friends. 4 bikes, 5 people. Man it was AWESOME!! I haven't been on a ride with others in 10+ years. We took the back roads and the trees are changing colors. Yellow, orange and red leaves were blowing across the road and swirling around our bikes as we cut through them. One Harley sounds great, but you get several of them together and you can feel the thump thump thump like a heartbeat. It was about a 200 mile trip with a great lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall place in a small town thrown in for good measure. And these were all great people, felt like I was having lunch with old friends!
I also went to a motorcycle show on Friday with an old buddy of mine, that was really cool too!
Nothing, and I mean nothing to report regarding W. Zero progress, zero baby steps, nothing over the past week. We're kind and civil towards each other, but I'm giving her loads of space and she's showing no interest at all. We've been going to D15's performances each week and frankly I think that pushes us together too often. The season is coming to an end so we'll be seeing less of each other soon enough.
I have no idea what W is thinking about regarding Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I'm pretty sure she thinks we'll do our usual family activities together. If she's thinking that, then the email I sent her this morning should throw cold water on that. She has the kids the week of Thanksgiving, so I told her I expected she'd want to take them to her mom's on Thanksgiving day (our yearly tradition) so I would like to have them the next day, then she would get them back for the weekend. In return I told her I wanted them at my place on Christmas day (Christmas falls on the week that I will have them) but that she could have them the day before or after. I suspect this is going to be a slap in the face to her because basically I'm telling her we will not be sharing the holidays together as a family. Not sure how she will react, but it's time for her to face the reality of separation and looming D.
And to be clear, I am not doing this because I want to "wake her up" or anything, I am doing it because I am frankly tired of spending so much time with her. I am doing this for me, I need the time and space away from her just as much as she needs it from me. For that matter I may need it more than she does because she seems to enjoy our time together just fine and she acts like everything is normal.
Right now I'm still at the point of wanting to reconcile, but it's slipping away. I just don't love W today like I did at the time of BD. As we've talked about here and in other threads, love is a choice. Love is an action. Love is something we do, not something that just happens. And when the person we love doesn't love us back, then our desire to love them erodes. When I started this whole process, detachment was hard work, I really had to force it. Now it's become what I want. I WANT to be detached from W. I WANT time and space away from her. I WANT to pursue my own life. I'm ready for her to be less a part of my life. I know a lot of people here are really dreading the holidays without their spouse, but I can honestly say that I'm not one of them. Frankly I'm at the point where I'd rather spend the holidays without my W.
I hope that doesn't sound cold because I don't feel cold towards her, it's just that I can't continue on pretending we're a happy couple that just happens to live in two different homes and doesn't have sex. For me sex is an integral part of marital happiness and so is living under the same roof. Anything less is not a marriage, much less a happy marriage. And I'm not going to tolerate it forever.
