Moving In

[adinva]

I find this a difficullt stage. I feel certain our marriage is over, and i am ok with that. My life is moving along not without him but with him in the role of xh father to my kids. I try to be considerate of him and i have no expectation of him. When he acts decently it is such a positive that others tell me aww he still loves you. That is sad to me, that his love was so tepid that just entering my house is what looks like love. I dont read it as love, i read it as trying to be a decent guy in the eyes of his sons. But people then tell me stories of separations of 1, 2, or more years where the spouses reconciled. I dont want to reconcile, and i dont want to be closed off to the idea that h could change either. It is a vulnerable and painful position. It would be easier to say fine i dont want you either and move on to other relationships. And i do say fine i dont want you either. I do. I say that he was abusive, emotionally unavailable, severely limited by issues he wont face, he was not a good husband and shows no sign of ever being able to be one.

I wonder if those separated 1, 2 years that reconciled also felt that done, that closed off to reconciling, before they reconciled.

I'm moving toward divorce, want to get the ball rolling, move on, maybe someday remarry. But until that happens, if there was a .000001% chance h wanted to try, i don't want to be the one who says no i'm not open to exploring that.

But i do recognize that's very unlikely, and if he was interested our odds would still be pretty low and the rebuilding would be hard. But it has happened.

That's a painful spot to be in, no hope, no expectations, and no predetermined outcome, no control.

I talked myself through this discomfort yesterday by focusing on now, not later. I just told myself "nothing needs to get decided right now".

That did actually help, and until something actually does need to get decided, it may help to return to that as a little mantra.

One of the things about that which i find uncomfortable is that this line of thinking looks like i havent moved on or havent dropped the rope or am having expectations of him. I dont think thats the case. So feeling like ppl here are going to say i'm not making progress because i feel this discomfort, makes me feel misunderstood. I cant go back, i am going forward, but i'm trying to accept what comes even if what comes is a chance at reconciling. Which i dont even want.

So, after discovering my mantra h came over and it didnt go well.

I'm under incredible work stress and needed an outlet, step aerobics sounded good but i had already let h know weds was ok for him to come over and bring/fix dinner. Because s15 wanted to go to the gym with me, i texted h. I said i had planned on a 6:30 gym class and s15 might go too, did he want to come over at 7:45?

He wrote back this "go to the gym"

So s15 invited a friend to the gym, the friend was at our house, and h shows up at 5:30 with ingredients to cook saying "did you go to the gym?" I dont think he read my mesaage carefully. I was in a quandary and thought i should bag it but s15 wanted to go, and didnt want to eat right before, and i really needed it, and i had told h so he could plan around it, and when we got back h was gone and s13 was in his computer room. So i guess h at least saw s13 for a bit.

Also. When h had just arrived he stood at the stove and hollered to s15 who was in his room with his door shut with his friend, on the opposite side of the house. I told h s15 will not hear you do you want me to tell him you want to talk to him? H said yeah so i went upstairs and told s15 dad wants you. S15 comes out and h starts in telling him he wants to tell him how to run a mile in 6:30 for lacrosse conditioning. I would not have interrupted s15 and his friend for yhat, s15 was pissy about it and said i dont need you to tell me how to work out and went back in his room. H is intrusive, he comes in and doesnt look at what others are in the middle of, he is the center of his universe. That conversation should have been started when they were all sitting together at dinner, or h should have tried to find a time to connect and talk, not yanked him away from his friend. My takeaway is i should have kept out of it, and let h holler from the stove and take it from there. I assumed he had something time sensitive and i got in the middle and shouldnt have. Old habits die hard. But i'm aware and trying to train myself better.

After the gym i texted h thanks for the food it was good ( he left us a serving dish full).

I'm also struggling with anger. I'm exploring some stuff on the ssm forum that is painful to recall and makes me feel really mad at h for not being who i needed him to be. Our marriage was so knotted up with dysfunction. It stirs up really bad feelings to recall certain events along the way. I suppose the other side of it was it was clearly no picnic for h either. I so wish we had been able to get some help way back when it started to go off the rails. But the pain, anger, rejection, unfairness comes back when i try to get involved in sharing what a was might have felt, i could have been a was for sure, and did once start forming an exit plan, but i didnt want a divorce and so i tried to make the best of things.

I need mantras to get me through the next couple of weeks. Nothing is going to happen in my sitch, and the kids and their school will survive. I need to focus on the present and be at the top of my game and not allow discouragement to take the wind out of my sails.

Todays mantra will be,

I dont know.