a young man with hope II

[lnlyshp]

I was supposed to pick up S last night around 8. She texts beforehand and says she'd like to talk when I got there. When I arrive, I tell her let's go for a drive. We end up parking in front of this little park a couple of neighborhoods away from her mother's house. She tells me that she has started the process of filing for divorce. I say okay, I understand. At this point we are both very calm and she is being very sensitive towards my feelings. I tell her that I understand why she is doing so, but that I needed to tell her that a divorce is not what I want and that of course I still love her.

We talk about things for a while. She says she probably just wasn't ready to get married. Eventually things start to get rehashed and stuff from the past is brought up. At one point she says, "Well, you should have thought of that before you treated me like trash for two years." I flip and say some hurtful things back towards her to the effect of "Well, you weren't so great yourself because you did X and Y." She walks out of the car. She yells that she hates me.

I try to get her to come back in the car, she says she needs to walk home and to meet her there. I do. She gets back in the car and we start talking about S. She says basically that our relationship as it was is dead and buried. We start talking about practical issues concerning who will take care of S. I say that switching him every other day like we have been doing simply won't work and that we may need to move to a move "conventional" one week on/one week off kind of schedule. She suggests daycare and suggests that he needs to be in daycare all of the time, even on the week that S is with me. I tell her that she should put him in daycare during her week, but that he and I have always spent the days together and if I don't want to put him into daycare during my week that I shouldn't have to.

She storms out of the car again. I follow her to her door and tell her to give me S (which is what I originally came to do anyway). She says no, I can't have him. I tell her that if she doesn't let him come with me that I'm calling the police. So I do. The police arrive and, after making sure everyone is safe and that there was nothing physical, they explain that no crime was committed. She agrees to let him leave with me. We have stopped arguing at this point and the conversation is calm again. S comes home with me and goes right to sleep. Important to note that none of this happened in front of him (thankfully) because he was inside with her sister the whole time and we never argued inside of the house.

I am still numb, I think. I have been mentally preparing for her to file for divorce for a few months now. Both her words and her behavior last night shows me that hope is dead for our marriage. Maybe I shouldn't have called the cops, but I have a strong suspicion that if I hadn't - she wouldn't have been willing to let S go with me.

She calls a little later to apologize that things got so heated. I say the same. We start to get into discussion about S and daycare again before I cut it off and say that there is really no point in discussing it tonight. She says she will probably never forgive me for calling the cops on her. I say I'm not asking her to.

Today, I'm going to schedule a consultation with a firm that works exclusively with men going through divorce so that I can learn my rights and begin to understand the process.

I failed with her. I will not fail with S. I am going to make sure that I get as close to equal time as possible. I am angry and scared.

- ship