I appreciate anyone that has taken the time to read my posts and help me through this. I am a work in progress, and I do truly wish to come out of this as a better man. I am working on it. I really am. I know a lot of you feel that I have made no changes, but that is simply not the case. I have grown, and I will continue to grow.
Wife has contacted me since the last text regarding D's birthday, asking for more time with her. She wished to have her on a Thursday for a few extra hours, as well as on a Sunday for Canadian Thanksgiving with her family. For Thanksgiving, she wished to have her from 2pm and keep her overnight so that W and OM would be able to join W's family in Canada. That was a hard pill to swallow, but I did it. I know that will more than likely be a fun day for daughter, and she deserves to spend time with all of her family, so I agreed to let her go. As hard as that was for me, I will let her go. I also agreed to let W have daughter for a while on her birthday. It is getting better with time.
I do get the post about empathy, and I am sure it does hold a lot of merit. I do however feel that I am not the only person to blame in the demise of my marriage. I have given this lots and lots of thought. And, I know, 25, that you feel that I have completely changed my stance on my role in this, but I haven't. I know I didn't do things right. I know it. All of those things I said in the beginning, I still admit to. I wasn't the greatest husband, far from it. The probable change in my attitude now is, that I later took the time to look at wifes role as well, and her side was pretty darn ugly. She was selfish. She was single minded and stubborn. She was not willing to compromise or negotiate at all. She was not dedicated to me what so ever, which should be fairly apparent with her decision to start dating almost immediately after our separation. During out entire relationship, she never WORKED on it at all. She expected me to make every change to suit her and make HER happy. She was FAR from being a loving and understanding W to me. She had her own agenda, and that is clearly apparent to me now. Does that make her a bad person? No. Doers it make it her fault that the marriage failed? No. Does it make me the one who should hold the majority of the blame? Absolutely not, and I am not about to go through life with the feeling that it was. I honestly feel that W holds a bigger part in it all than a lot of you care to acknowledge, and I also feel that she was the one to ultimately BAIL on the relationship when it no longer served her. That is something that I probably won't change my stance on. Does that mean I cannot learn to treat her with dignity and respect? Does that mean I cannot co-parent with her? No it doesn't, but I will need to learn to be an even better man to do so. My God, I am trying to be a better man, for my sake, daughters sake and wifes sake. I just have a whole lot of hurt to get passed in the process.
