I thought everything was okay....(Part 4)

[MCS]

TLEE86,

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Not sure if I said it here, but many times D4 will come downstairs in just a sundress and will put on crocs or something. They just don't have any concept of the weather outside. The thing in this sitch is that as a parent, we would correct that before we would leave the house. Its just a simple "D4, its too cold out to wear that dress, can you go get something else on"

So, W not correcting it is where this is just weird and not like her at all. I think that she is not 'parenting' from the aspect of providing guidance (and discipline) to the kids. I have no idea why its this way as its different than how she was before. Not that its wrong, but it leaves me wondering why? I think it could be a number of things: distractions of OM, depression, over-compensating for feeling she's put the kids in this sitch, not caring anymore, counter-acting how 'we' parented, etc.

Its one of those things that I would just ask her about when we were together if there was anything, but I see that things like this were used during BD about how I 'disapproved' of how she did things.

_________

As far as intimacy and emotion, I have no clue on how to show this to W. Its part of what I was going back and forth a couple days ago. Do I pursue to the point of showing some of these 'acts of kindness?' That's where I had the thought of maybe inviting her to lunch. Although the more I think about it, its too early in this different phase of communication to do it. I'm starting to see that more of the NC is starting to creep back in. Not sure why, but since I don't have a lot of trust in her right now; I think it may be that she's doing what the MC says to do at the sessions, but not sincerely doing it because I don't see the follow-through afterwards. It's just like a dang High School relationship. It's all mind-reading and she'll need to make a couple more moves until I feel comfortable with this recent change.

So I'm not sure how to show it, but I see that intimacy is the one area that from a completely objective point of view that I was lacking in our M mainly because I became comfortable. Life caught up with us and the intimacy went away. Interestingly enough our Anniversary last year, W wanted to 'mess around' in the car in a parking lot or something after our dinner. We hadn't done that type of stuff since before we were married, I said I wasn't comfortable (like you, citations are not taken too fondly in our jobs) and she was upset about it. It was just weird, but I look back and I think that was her trying to 'mix' it up in our marriage. OM R had just gotten started and I think she was trying to get that same feeling from me that she was getting from him. I actually found out during my work to see if it was an A after BD that she did get cited for messing around with OM in a park at night.

So, I can see that she was looking for more intimacy. The other areas I listed, while are things that I need to change would not affect a healthy relationship; those attributes were all small in nature and are really refinements to my personality; not substantial changes.