WAW...Again, Part III

[stumps]

I felt exactly like your wife. Appreciating what H does isn't about ignoring my unmet needs; it's about putting myself in a position to assume love so I can be more constructive about explaining my needs.

Hmmm... I'm kind of surprised you weren't the WAS in your situation then! Or that you hadn't thought about it at least. There was some other stuff at work in my sitch, but the main one for my WAW seems to be that she went so long trying to accept what she was getting and ignoring/not asking for what she truly wanted that it ended up poisoning her entire view of the marriage.

Now we're in a situation where I more fully understand her needs, and she is more able to articulate them. Our communication is so much better, and we're both doing what we can to meet each other's needs as we understand them. The "unfortunately" in my situation is that despite this progress...despite what my wife describes as our marriage being "all but perfect" the past couple of months, there hasn't been much change in her emotional state...there is an emotional aspect/connection that for her got killed and has yet to return, although in the weeks leading up to the trip she is currently on those feelings seemed to be coming back a little bit.

Journaling a little bit here... I am wrestling quite a bit with "expectations"...and hope/fear. Regarding this trip my W is currently on, things between W and I had been going so well in the weeks leading up to it that I allowed it to feed into my hopes and fears about what would happen when she was gone. My hope was that she would go on this trip and miss me, helping her to realize that ending this marriage isn't truly what she wants. My fear was that she would go on the trip and not miss me at all, helping her to realize that ending the marriage is what she wants. This leads me to engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics as I look for evidence one way or the other... evidence that could only be gleaned from what have only been two very brief phone calls that we've had since she's been gone. But the self-defeatist, negative part of me says "see, she hardly wants to talk to you, she's being cold and distant on the phone, she's realizing she doesn't miss you and doesn't want to be with you...".

To my credit, W knows none of this line of thinking on my part because I've managed to keep it to myself. But whether she's aware of it or not, I know it's not doing me any good. It's falling into that trap of "If W felt/thought ______, then she would be doing/saying ______". The rational part of me knows I have no idea what she is thinking or feeling...certainly not based on our brief phone interactions. But the irrational part of me chimes in with "if she was missing you she would say so, if she loved you she would tell you".

On the up-side: I haven't been contacting W at all; I'm letting her contact me while she's gone and will continue to do so. Our calls have been short, I've been upbeat during them, and I've been keeping busy while she and the kids are gone so W knows I haven't been sitting around twiddling my thumbs in her absence.

I've done a great job of keeping my mental battles hidden from W... I think where I need to make some real progress is in not engaging in those battles in the first place. The outward appearance of peace of mind is great...but I need to develop some real inner-peace of mind for my own sake.

It sounds kind of cheesy... but I read somewhere else on these forums someone saying they kind of imagine what would James Bond do or say in a given situation...and that oddly enough has been some help to me... I've never really given the guy much thought before, but he's the epitome of the cool, calm, stoic man that seems to view so much with a sort of mild bemusement. One could do worse than to adopt a demeanor/outlook like that.