With All My Hopes and Dreams

[soldier]

Thank you Nettles, I already went to your thread and see that you had a very good weekend with your kids and W. I am happy for you. My weekend was busy and fairly good. My W had gone to West Virginia with her mother and me and D5 got to do all sorts of stuff. We went to 2 different parks and painted eggs and my sister came over with her D and the girls got to play and have a sleep over. We got to go to a special Easter festival that my sister’s place of work sponsored and they had face painting and pony rides and a petting zoo and all sort of stuff. Saturday I and my sister made baskets for the girls and Sunday morning the both had a great search and find. I ended it with a family dinner Sunday and a special Easter egg hunt that was just me and D5 and the eggs we had painted earlier.

Daughter wise it was a great time but doing all of the family events did make me miss my wife greatly. I did several hours of exercise throughout the weekend to help take my mind off of things and I also did a bit of meditation for the first time ever. It helped but Sunday night when my wife made her normal call to say goodnight to D5 I picked up the phone and it felt really good to hear W voice so I attempted some small talk because I was missing her so much. I was missing my friend. The conversation became awkward and I accidentally drifted into R talk for just a sentence or two and she became quickly annoyed and very short. I realized the mistake I was making and ended the conversation immediately but the damage was done.

I know that I am not supposed to let me heart take control but it always seems to get the best of me and it is really messing things up for me on this one. W called back later for D5 and I saw that D5 had a small fever in between calls so after the conversation between W and D5 I took the phone again and I told her I was sorry for letting the old me creep back up and that I just want to do what it takes to get us all in a better place regardless of what that meant. She thanked me for the apology and we did have a short ten minute conversation that was much better than the first one. I excused myself from the phone at that point and she asked if I still wanted to do lunch sometime this week. I said that would be nice and right before she hung up the phone she said something that was probably a slip of the tongue but it felt good none the less. She said “I will talk to you soon baby” which is how she always used to talk to me.

Again I know it was probably nothing but I am going to use it as fuel to continue the fight. I know that my first call was counterproductive and I need to continue to emotionally detach more but other than that brief 10 minutes bad conversation I did very well as far as the last 5 days are concerned and am looking forward to our lunch some time this week. For safety I have also started to get my mind right in the event that W chooses to not invite me after all and will take it on the chin and not let it get to me.

So as promised here is the next book review that I have for “The Emotionally Abusive Relationship: How to Stop Being Abused and How to Stop Abusing”. I am half ways through this book now and I enjoy this one very much. Although the title might imply that it is more geared towards the person being abused that is not completely true. It is written for both abused and abuser. There is much insight within this book as to how to help you find the root of why an abuser might be behaving in this manner and it has inspired me to dig into my past a bit and see why I have been behaving the way that I have. All and All I would give it 3.75 / 5 only because half of the book is written for the person being abuse and although this is helpful insight it is not as helpful IMO as the chapters geared towards the abusers as this is the category that I fell under. I think it would be a good candidate for a library read.

Moving forward from my little mess up I am going to take this week to really concentrate deeper on emotional detachment. I know that this is an ongoing process but I think it needs some special upfront attention currently and then I can maintain and build from there. If anyone has any good sources of info on the subject that they would like to share, this would be great.