Anyway, it does apply here. I think the main area that our M broke down that I was accountable for was the perception that I had requirements on her. Now, I look back and know that wasn't my intention ever, but that doesn't matter. We are where we are right now.
I can see that as we got busy with life, that my W was starting to feel that she could never 'live up' to my expectations. Now, it was quite the opposite and I always, always thought that she was a good wife/mom/professional. I never got angry when things didn't get done, especially since we did have a fairly good balance of work share with the kids and at home. However, I'm sure I'm guilty of showing that I may be annoyed once and a while. Normal marriage stuff. However, my main issue (she confirmed) with this is that I would just say that things needed to get done. I always used it as a generic statement with no expectations.
For example, if the kitchen was messy; I would say: "Oh, we need to clean the kitchen." Well, for her it was received as "Oh, you need to clean the kitchen." I can tell you there were really no expectations in what I said, I can say for me it was just listing a task that I didn't think needed to be done right away and furthermore I didn't feel like doing it at that point anyway. If I had the motivation later, I would do it. If not, I didn't expect her to do it.
Also, I knew that complacency took hold for me and I see that the positive reinforcement wasn't there from me. I guess from my standpoint that we had hit 'stride' in our lives. We had some ups and downs, but overall everything was going just fine. Well, that was from my point of view. Then as she was getting overwhelmed with things....and she felt that I expected her to do things like the paragraph above....and the intimacy was at a low, her self esteem started to drop. Well, then the friendship with OM started.
Anyway, that's the past. For now, I see that part of my struggle was that after BD, we went NC for a couple months. It was definitely dark as night. I knew that she needed 'space.' So I let her have as much as she needed. However, then she started to make some pretty hefty decisions that affected both of us without me at all. The house was the first huge one and that's when I confronted about OM. Well, OM took center stage for our interactions, until I realized that she wasn't ready to reconcile. However, since we had re-established communication; and she was still making pretty big decisions w/o me, I got reactive and guess what....expectations kicked back in. However now it was on her parenting. This was compounded with the destruction of my trust in her with me, but more notably with our kids. Especially, because from my point of view, I saw her putting OM above the kids both after BD but over the last year of our marriage. I
Well, since I put the temporary separation agreement together, I feel that those 'expectations' (really boundaries) are on paper. Before this, it didn't feel like she was honoring my verbal and email boundaries (she wasn't) and that's what got me in such a reactive situation especially as I was forced to be that way when she was making these huge decisions.
Anyway, for now my approach is to STFU with regard to her decisions, unless they violate our agreement. I debated if I could jump right into positive enforcement of her decisions; but a) I still don't agree with a bunch of them and b) if I did, at this point it would appear to be 'fake.'
Since she is just settling in the house and the holidays are coming up, I think I'm going to readdress adding some positive reinforcement after that. That's not to say, I'm going to shy away from any of it, but definitely try to keep it as reserved as possible.
So, MC (mediation) is tomorrow for us. She sent an email today saying she was going to talk about Holiday plans and her travel plans to her family. So, its good news because those both were part of the agreement. So it does look like she is honoring that right now.
Side note:
I do read over at HP thread right now and it feels to a certain extent that I'm being too accommodating if I act this way based on some of the Vets input to him. This change in me needs to happen, don't get me wrong. I'm just confused if I should be pushing for her to get her stuff out of the house and make like I'm moving on...
The difference I suppose its that, I do think that W realizes that the R with OM is over or won't go any further. So it may be that I'm in a different place in our sitch right now. IDK
M:36 W:37 T: 15 M:11 S6 D5 BD: 8/10/14 IDLY: 8/12/14 S: 8/13/14 (she left, I stayed w/ kids) D Mentioned: 10/15/14 Confronted about OM: 10/15/14 EA: ~4/13 PA: ~10/13 She filed: 8/15 (not final)
