Divorced-not done-But wondering ?

[JJAC2005]

First off I want to thank you all for your advice….I take in a lot from other posts as well, but I was absolutely reaching out for something specifically related to my sitch.
The F2F meeting was requested as a way to give me the chance at closure that I had requested back in January some 4 months after the door was closed on my relationship by my wife making the sitch a classic combination WAS/MLC
Initially I was shocked at her request, and was very nervous as to what might be coming as this was all happening right after the boy asked me to come watch his baseball game. I had been blocked from the kids for some time, and the last time that the boy had reached out to me she was very upset….
I accepted her offer for the meeting….waited to see what the guidelines would be, as last time she only wanted to do a coffee thing, and be in a public place so she could leave at her leisure or not feel trapped.
When she deferred, and the choice was up to me I made her an offer of a drive up to the lake and back (this is where we first started our relationship) and to my surprise she accepted….that meant it was going to be at the very least a 3 ½ hour conversation…and she was ok with it…..and when I asked her what it was she really wanted to talk about, she basically stated that she wanted to give me the chance that I had requested before, and to hear about all the info that I wanted to share back at that time.

I admit that my practices (haven’t been the greatest) of going dark were basically limited to a once a month attempt at some email for contact….as well as struggles with patience, and learning to detach as well as I should have been doing. But, like I heard, its wasn’t that I was actually hurting my chances, but I wasn’t helping them and most certainly was prolonging the process.
But as it turned out….all of the walls that she was erecting to keep me out, regain her self esteem, and move on with her new life, were in some way damaged by each and every attempt at my contact…and it angered her more and more that I still could do this to her.
I was blamed for any and all of her self esteem issues, I was at fault for her loosing trust in our relationship, she felt under appreciated , undesired/unattractive
ALL of this was based on my actions not my words…

I showed up with a handful/bouquet of asparagus (instead of flowers), and there was an immediate grin on her face. From that moment on I knew it wasn’t going to be an all day bitch session…The day turned out to be filled with all sorts of surprises, as I listened to her assessments, her gripes and her points of views from the day we said “I Do” to the last day we said good bye.
She covered it all, and I took it…trying not to defend myself too much with explanations, or turn it around on her, like I would have done in the past….The bottom line was I was wrong for anything and everything I did that made her not feel as though she and the kids were the most important thing in my life.
I will say that the day wasn’t all filled with heavy rehashing of the past…it gave me an opportunity to explain and show that I was indeed very sorry, and very changed from all that I had been learning since we had divorced. We had lunch together as if we always did, we laughed, we cut a few jokes and the few hours of that day turned out to be 10 hours together.
I was glad I didn’t have any expectations…as I ended up collecting to very nice long embraces, and a peck on the cheek as we parted at the end of the night.

I’m so impressed with DB’ing….even when I’m not the best at it…the little that I had been doing seems to be yielding a softening in the heart of my ex….one can always have hope!