Save me from myself, need true guidance.

[Corbean]

Thank you Starsky that honestly clears it up a lot for me.

I can be loving and friendly, but remained detached. I obviously wouldn't say what you said to her, so what specific actions are good examples to strike that grey area you hit on. One thing I did before and I think was a mistake was telling her that as long as she was in an R with the other man I was nothing more than a father to our kids. I refused to talk to her at all unless it regarded the children or something else that couldn't be avoided. I think this was farther on the black side of things and I'd like to live in the grey that you described.

Also, as far as validation. I've realized that I am a talker, whenever we'd have relationship issues I would talk it to absolute death. I mean I could literally go on for hours. A 180, and a huge one that she would notice is that if we get into a discussion would be to shut up and validate. Wonka really helped with the post above, and I'm going to do a lot of studying up on shutting up and validating. I did get a small oppurtunity earlier and was wondering how I did.

We have an agreement that when she has the kids I will call at lunch to talk to them and she will call me before their bedtime. When I have the kids, I call at lunch time (on daughter's therapy days) and she will call before their bedtime. Today was a non therapy day, but I went home to play with the kids anyway and decided to be nice, I called and she didn't answer. Here was the following text conversation about an hour later. Please let me know if I'm getting the hang of this.

W - Did you call for me to talk to S?

M- Yes, I went home at lunch to see them, and figured I'd let him talk to you.

W - Oh sorry I was in the middle of something. How was he?

M - It's ok, I understand that you have a life lol. He's good, just silly.

That was the end of it. How did I do? Thanks for any and all feedback.