I have not formally met with an attorney but have spoken to a family friend who is a family law specialist. She has offered guidance in terms of reasonable amounts etc. Legally.
I can tell after tonights conversation it was a definite mixed message... She started on finances and then moved away. She was very curious about the other woman and tried to probe about all kinds of things I was unto in my life.
She then returned to general negativity and guilt tripping to try and make me feel bad. Before finally returning to the financial side of things. I just stuck with "hmm let me think about that" and " yes thats interesting" throughout.
I did though get her to agree (here in the UK lawyers are an expensive accessory not wait so much the commission based norm as the US) that perhaps before either of us agreed to anything we should go and speak to an independent legal advisor. A service that is offered free here in the UK, so we both know where we stand legally before making any decisions.
Having taken legal advice I know that she has un-realistic expectations of what she would receive, something not helped by "friends" offering school yard legal advice etc...
Stil despite that I took today as a positive.
It is one of the first times, she has spoken to me and I have been aware that she is trying to push my buttons and found it easy to not react.
Equally at no time did I agree or back down.
So baby steps, but I can see it was a struggle for her and really the whole financial thing was a smokescreen for her to talk to me about our R...
This post reminded me of something I had saved in my own personal archives, about the different "types of convos" and how most of them are pretty cheeseless tunnels when one spouse is wayward:
Types of Convos
Exactly. Here's the thing: if someone is in an ongoing, unrepentant affair, there are only a few types of conversations/communications they can have with their betrayed spouse, and ALL of them are cheeseless tunnels for the BS:
2) Seemingly POSITIVE ones. So long as they are still in contact with OM/OW and lying to their spouse about it, these are all "bullchit spin" at best, and outright GASLIGHTING and LIES at worse. And the problem is, the betrayed spouse inevitably sees this as "baby steps!" and true marital progress, when they are no such thing. They can lead to horrible strategic and tactical mistakes, esp. if the BS doesn't have a good intel system in place. Reading my old journal yesterday, I was BLOWN AWAY at how stable I was able to be in the face of my wife's deceit, simply because I HAD INTEL TO SHOW ME OTHERWISE. This can't be overemphasized.
3) LEGAL/FINANCIAL ones. These are best handled by your attorney, for the obvious reasons. If you start negotiating yourself, when you are way, way, WAY too emotionally entrenched in the situation (and also often running on too-little sleep and WAY too-little emotional needs of your own being met), YOU WILL MAKE FOOLISH MISTAKES and UNWISE CONCESSIONS.
4) FAMILY/LOGISTICAL ones. These are fine, but best handled via e-mail or text message. A cheating spouse will use these as a ploy to lure you into R convos and worse; SEE #1 ABOVE.
5) SMALL-TALK. This is fine, but only in RESPONSE -- don't initiate it if your strategy is to go "dim" and if it's to go "dark" you shouldn't even respond. If it's "dim," then only respond to one of every several communications, and usually delayed, because you're BUSY and GETTING A LIFE, remember?
