When I look at my W now, I don't see my W at all. I see the OM's mistress. She just happens to live here, sleep in my bed, and I pay all her bills. My feelings range from neutral to contempt. In some ways, it's making it easier to not pursue and to detach, because I just don't want to be involved with whatever she is now. She seems consumed by hatred whenever in my presence, and she's not as good at suppressing that as she might think. Some of that spills over to D12.
So now, I guess I treat it more as an experiment to see if my changes have any impact on this person; whether I would ever want to reconnect with whatever she becomes is just too full of assumptions to even be considered now. I don't dream of R anymore. Right now, I stand by because that's what I vowed to do, and at least I still value my word. And if this turns out to be a phase rather than a permanent state, I will have proven my endurance and commitment, if only to myself and kids. It's also an exercise for me to prove that I can be kind to someone who continues to disrespect me daily in the most personal way. I absolutely hate this exercise.
And now I GAL like I mean it. For reasons I still haven't figured out, I had completely relinquished control of my social life to her, perhaps because I'm a natural introvert and she's a natural extrovert, but she has completely shut me off now, and disparaged me with at least some of those people. It's actually been quite liberating to socialize without subordinating to her.
And I did a quick back of the envelope calculation. If I compare her spending to child support, I think I'll come out ahead on cashflow in a D. Don't get me wrong, I still think D is a horrible thing that codifies problems rather than solving them, but I fear it less each day.
Looking for a vet to 2x4 me here if my thinking on any aspect of this is taking a counter productive turn, please.
