I am titanium

[Raine]

Things continue to move, or crawl, or kind of sway from side to side and back a bit. I’ve been getting ready for his parent’s visit. I’ve asked him for help, given specifics even, but nothing yet. It reminds me of being a teen myself and avoiding the job list from my parents. Maybe I need to ground him from his games and TV? It’s getting done and I’m getting happy about seeing the progress. Yup, I’ve been carrying 50lb boxes up the stairs and 40lb bags of salt down the stairs, each time walking past him while he continues to perfect his sedentary life. I’m not waiting around for him to pitch in. I don’t feel annoyed about it. It just is. I would rather be doing what I'm doing than doing what he is doing.

I think he is pretty worried that I might be making moves to file. He approached me (unlocked the door and came in) within minutes of hearing I needed a notary, and was worried and wondering why. It was for a different matter. I’ve backed off him in any kind of pursuit or reconnection. I haven’t done anything PT in a week and a half. He’s done enough to irritate me lately, and I don’t feel it.

I am super nice to him, happy around him, ignore the things that are annoying, but I’m also doing my own things. I’m not punishing him for anything or giving him any cold shoulder, but I have given him full control of pursuit stuff, even to the point he has wondered why I stopped playing a certain game with him. To which I told him he never started it up again and I’m just letting him control that.

He has developed a new "friendship" with someone safe. Married, young, and clueless and she views him as a friend. She does not flirt back at all. I don’t see this going anywhere, but I do see his persistent need to mentor, be superior, be adored, and be flirtatious. This girl seems to really like me and wants to hang around me, but I’m so done with the high school vibe. And it’s hard to be around someone he is more open with than me. It’s hard to be around her and her husband and watching my H touch her on the arm to get her attention and talk to her. I’m letting it go. Whatever the crap is for why he needs this kind of friendship or whatever it is, I hope he can get it worked out. I know he is trying super hard to keep the boundaries and I also know if I raised any issue, he would cut the girl out. My problem, like with everything else, is that decision and action has to come from him.

There has been hinting from him. Hinting that he is going through withdrawals from ow1. He said because he needs that "intimacy" and he said, "I can’t have that with you, can I?" My response to him was, "What do you think I’m supporting you through this because I’m a good friend?" At one point he said he feels comfortable hugging me, being with me, spending time together, and kissing me on the cheek, but he doesn’t have that "intimacy" that he needs and that he doesn’t know if it’s always been that way or just now or just the last year. I’m glad this convo was on the phone, because you better believe my eyes were rolling. I’m not sure how a 20 minute booty call here and there in the past severed as intimacy, but there you have it.

I do think he wants that with me, but he has no clue how to fix it or get to that point. And I think he’s got plenty of stuff to figure out within himself without worrying about that. I of course am just letting it all be. Let him figure it out and then see where I am when he does.

There is an expiration date. I have a pretty good idea when it is. But, he also tends to change things up. I can see him being at a place to move on D, once his parents visit is over. I can see him pushing me over the edge. I really don’t have any expectations that reconciliation will happen or will happen anytime soon. There are just too many things that would be hard to deal with in a R mindset, so hard to even think about that.

I really despise his need to spend hours and hours and hours with his friends, and so very little time with his kids. He would spend more time with the kids if we were D, and that’s pretty ironic to me. That’s something I really hope will change through this process. Right now I realize that in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years’ time, it's very unlikely that I will spend any time with the friends I’m spending time with now. Especially the crowd I would deem "his friends" And I won’t have any regrets about the time I didn’t spend with them. I’m realizing that my oldest is at the halfway mark of when he will be out of the house, and it feels like yesterday I was bringing him home from the hospital. My boys are the only ones I even care about spending time with. That's where I know I will have regrets. I already feel that this last year has taken way too much time away from them.