Hello! 20 year marriage teetering... (part IV)

[AnotherStander]

It's only been a week, but here's a quick update. D18 turns 19 today Good grief, one more year and she'll no longer be a teen! Yikes! D19 wants to go to Medieval Times for her bday, I traded some emails with W and asked her if it was OK to take the kids this Saturday (it's her week to have them) and I invited her along. She said it was fine and said she wanted to go and offered to split the costs. I went ahead and picked it up and told her if she covers the birthday upgrade and tip then we'll call it good, she agreed. I asked her if she wanted to have the cake and gifts at my house or hers, she said mine so we'll go there afterwards.

Weather is getting really nice here and we're taking advantage! D16, S10 and I went out to eat Saturday, then went to play some miniature golf, then went for ice cream. This is the time of year that the top stays down on my Mustang Yesterday S10 and I went for a motorcycle ride and then caught Oblivion (pretty good movie). I also got a ton of yardwork/ landscaping done and the yard is getting whipped into shape! It's always a little depressing looking at my beautiful landscaping that I've worked on all year long getting ravaged by the winter weather, so when it starts coming to life again in the spring it really lifts my spirits

As I mentioned in the last update W is now saying she wants to proceed with D. She wanted me to get some info from my brother (he and his X did all the paperwork themselves). I did so and I sent it to her. When I sent it I did type in the following:

I’m pretty sure you know where I stand on this, but let me just say one last time that if this is what you want, then I support your decision and will sign the papers, but I still feel like we should at least give reconciliation a try. I don’t expect you to want to go back to what we had before because clearly it didn’t work for either of us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t build a new relationship and marriage that is far better than what we had before. I’m not asking you to make a commitment or move back in tomorrow or anything. I’m just asking for you to try a little, open the door to building a new relationship, and give it some time to see how it develops. I think we owe it to the kids and ourselves to at least try. But if you want to push forward with a divorce I won’t do anything to block the process.

I hope your day goes well!

The response (or really, lack of one) was what you might expect from a WAS- "thank you." No problem, I had no expectations but just wanted to maybe plant a small seed of doubt in her head that may or may not grow. That was last Thursday and I saw W a few times over the weekend and all seemed fine, no further discussion of D, and she's still reaching for hugs when we part ways.

As a side note, my brother's sitch was similar to ours as far as kids, house, ownings, investments, etc. Their D decree was almost 40 pages!!! It's not going to be easy filling all that out, if W does then I'll know she REALLY wants a D, LOL!

AS, again you show amazing DB strength. I understand what you mean when you say:

Thank you So far the going "not quite so dim" stuff has been working great. I sent W some pics of S10 at the miniature golf course and have been trading more texts and emails with her. She's been replying back pretty enthusiastically, so I'm going to keep it up.

Ugh I didn't until few days ago you had started this new thread after Retrouville and reading it with a smile until yesterday. I'm so sorry it's taking a worse turn.
But I love how you are not giving up just yet.

Thanks, I'm still leaving the door open but I think D is pretty much inevitable at this point. I'm in a better position now than ever before to deal with D, I don't want it but I won't just survive after D, but will thrive. I know that now

He left anyway but he explained to me he needed to do this and I agree with him 100% that he (we) needed this separation. I'm still hoping for R down the road but I'm truly enjoying my time alone for now.

That's kind of how I felt too, I showed W the best H I could be before she left and even though it didn't keep her from leaving, I was more at peace with it because I knew I had done everything I could to show her my changes. So when she left, rather than wallow in misery I took advantage of "alone" time to pursue interests I didn't have time for before Glad to hear you're doing well with that too!

DB always maintains, do what is right for your situation. You can only try and monitor the results. Since she texted back quickly, it looks good

I don't think it can stop the D, but it does seem to be helping our R and perhaps that will make D go smoothly and pave the way for a good R after D.