WAW...Again, Part II

[stumps]

You said you talked in a constructive manner, what happened? What did you solve? What was put in place?

Well, prior to DBing, we had been arguing about how often she went out and late she was getting back and, even more to the point, that she had started getting pretty bad about letting me know when she would back ([censored] when kids ask when mom is going to be home and all you can say is "I don't know").

Post-DBing, I stopped getting into it with her. Figured even though what I was asking for was fair in a mutually respectful relationship, now wasn't the time to be going over it.

But, as you said, DBing doesn't mean "no boundaries" and I really do feel like she was taking advantage of the fact that I'm a 9-to-5er and she works nights, so when she gets off work it's easy for to go out with her girlfriends while I'm already pretty much settled in for the night.

So, she came home pretty late for the 2nd night in a row, and I could tell she was expecting me to say something and when I didn't she came out and asked me why. So I took it as an opportunity to tell her very calmly, without any anger or attacking or anything, how I felt about the situation. That divorce or not we were still living together and taking care of two kids together, and while I didn't expect her to change her behavior based on my feelings, I still owed it to myself to honor those feelings and express them.

I think the clincher was that I asked her to imagine our roles reversed, and that I was behaving the way she was, and what she thought her girlfriends would say if she complained to them about it. I could almost see the gears turning in her head and the lightbulb go on, and she said "Wow...I never thought about it like that" and then agreed that when I spelled things out the way I did it totally made sense and made her realize that she had been being way unfair.

So, the upshot was she was going to continue to reign things in, and would go back to being good about communicating with me about her plans, etc.

So, that's the waaaaaaay condensed version. Doesn't really give a full picture of the convo, but I don't want to write a novel here (although sometimes I feel like I already have!)