Just saying hello.

[Papa4Life]

Hi Pro. I'm pretty sure you'll get most of the basics from DB. DR is a newer book and offers some feedback following on from DB reader feedback etc.

It's funny what you said about "feeling as if time is running out". I spoke with a good friend of mine who has been a major support throughout my sitch. Now it turns out that HIS GF has told him she wants to leave and bring the kids to live with her mother. He has been in a panic because he is unemplyed, living off of dwindling savings, can't get on the dole because he's still got some savings, like me he's a foreigner here with few friends and no relatives nearby, he's 53, has a foreigThank you, sandi, for your valuable advice. I've been posting on other threads so much, that I seem to be neglecting my own thread. But then again, there's not much to report - my W has her heart set on a D, and while I don't share that goal, I'm okay with it.

You are right about W's motivations for telling the kids that I would still come to family functions. She did want to reassure the kids. But then again, in the very next breath she told them that we each take a week with the kids at the campground where we're heading on vacation, but then again maybe she's planning to have someone else come along, who knows? I couldn't care less, really, because I always have a great time on vacation with the kids. I play things by ear, she wants to plan everything, and then the kids just complain about being dragged to the local tin figurine museum when all they really want to do is spend every waking moment in the pool!

It all goes back to what you wrote about not expecting things to change post-D. When we talked this past weekend about the whole issue of family functions, she opined that co-parenting means being friends and doing things together for the kids. I just had to smile sadly and tell her that we can never be friends. That in order to move on with my life, I have to pull the curtain on this part of my life and keep moving forward.

She actually cried a little, saying that she feels herself being pulled in so many directions at once by people telling her what she should do. For a second there I wondered if she meant that she felt that someone she had been getting advice from was actually manipulating her somehow, but it immediately dawned on me that what she probably meant was that perhaps people have been telling her that her expectations are unrealistic, but she doesn't want to stop working to achieve them so that the new situation will be easier on her.

On a separate note, I dreamed last night that I did something selfless and 'saved' my W somehow and that she was grateful and wanted to be just boyfriend/girlfriend (paging Dr. Freud!). When I woke up, I realized that today would have been our 12th wedding anniversary.

It's like that old Smiths tune, "Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me". No hope, no harm. Just another false alarm.
n-sounding name, and his GF accuses him of being an abusive drunk (he's never laid a finger on his kids or her, does like the 'occaisional' beer but the last time we went out, he slipped and fell so she accuses him of being blind drunk, which was emphatically not the case).

At any rate, he spoke to the local legal-aid agency and they told him that his GF can't take the kids out of school w/o his consent, can't move more than 50 km away, they can't take away his house, he will be eligible for assistance if his savings drops below a very reasonable amount, and unless anyone has ever reported him for abuse or child neglect, she won't have a leg to stand on (he really is a good guy, and his sons love him and would hate to move to their grandmother's house).

So what's the moral here? Tomorrow is never as bad as it seems and things always work out one way or another! So don't obssess about everthing bad that might happen and instead focus on the good things you're working on right now!