First, anyone who takes the time to personally answer everyone else’s posts is CLEARLY a very classy, very grateful and very caring human being. THIS IS WHO YOU ARE. Please remember this with everything you got because it is too easy to fall into the drama and be something totally different.
I just hung up the phone with my mom who was incredibly insightful tonight. We got into a long discussion about values. While at one time my H and I shared a similar value system, that is no longer the case. He lies, he cheats, he drinks, is too wrapped up in himself to care much about anyone around him, he’s a narcissist… I could go on and on. With incompatible values, it is impossible to make this thing work. Your situation is exactly the same. You are classy, you are grateful, you are caring… values he doesn’t share RIGHT NOW. Will he one day? Maybe. I don’t know. No one can answer that. But right now? You are incompatible and you need to proceed based on the knowledge you have right now. It’s the manner in which you proceed that I want you to pay attention to…
You ever hear of the doctrine of clean hands? Loosely, it says that when you go to court, in order for you to have a chance of winning as a plaintiff, you must have clean hands. So, if you are a drug dealer who got beat out of some money, don’t go looking to the courts for help, because your hands were dirty in the first place. I like to apply that here. No matter what your H does… no matter what this horrid OW does, you must keep your hands clean. You are absolutely entitled to your anger. And I think it is helpful in some ways. However, you must mind your actions carefully. AT ALL COSTS, keep your hands clean. It will help you because you are not doing anything that is incompatible with your value system, which only serves to further erode your self-esteem. It will help your children who will always view you with absolute respect for how you handled this situation. It WILL eventually make your H and OW think more closely about their own actions because you did nothing to harm them but they did harm you. And finally, it will help you if this does eventually end up in court. I don’t care what the laws are or what anyone says, things will be easier for you if you show up with clean hands.
With that said, I am not going to give you the bullets to shoot yourself. Your anger and your outburst is perfectly understandable. This does NOT make you stupid. This does NOT make you bad. And it does NOT make ANYONE better than you. But what it does is hurt you. Your “outburst” didn’t hurt them. Heck, they probably loved it after they sat down to think about it. But it was one more thing to hurt your self-esteem, it hurts your emotional state… I want YOU to take care of YOU. And I want you to stay away from anything or anyone that hurts you. And if you have another run in as you most definitely will? I want you to remember the best thing to do is walk away. That is the best way for NLW to take care of NLW. This isn’t about getting control of your anger or proving to ANYONE that you are a better person, this is about YOU taking care of yourself and not finding yet another way to beat yourself up. Make sense?
NLW, you have a lot going on and all the suggestions about your financial situation are so helpful but I don’t want you to get overwhelmed. I can’t stand the fact that you are clearly scared. I hate seeing anyone fearful. You need to do exactly what you are doing. Make small goals and achieve them. Do whatever you can today and try to distract yourself from what you cannot do. A warning on this fear thing, though? Your H WILL use it against you. He will try to scare you further. I suggest you engage in no further conversations with him regarding a settlement. You want to go to mediation, you go to mediation. If he wants to argue with you about it? Allow him to argue with the dial tone. Be kind, but firm. You will NOT be talking about this with him any further.
