Alpha Step At A Time #5

[alpha99]

I woke up feeling generally a lot better this morning. With all the apps and things to check gone, I feel like I finally have a clear head.

I took the kids back to W. The dating site issue did come up. A funny thing happened - we both laughed quite a bit. We agreed it seemed a strange thing to see each other on there. I did shrug it off and say that I was just doing it out of boredom.

W insists her cousin created the account for her. She says she is not interested in meeting anyone. I said that's up to her and none of my business. She said it is full of desperados. I agreed.

The kids went and played elsewhere and we spoke for a few minutes. A few things came out of this conversation.

* One stumbling block to R is that W thinks my family have turned against her (not so) due to knowing about her A. She says no one has visited/contacted her/her with kids since we split up(she asked them not to). I told her this was not the case.

* She's in no rush to divorce. At this point says she doesn't want to meet anyone else. Would only divorce at some point way off in future if she met someone else. She just said we are separated...but the next step would be divorce. I acknowledged this and said it can either go one of two ways; yes we divorce, or we one day work things out.

* OM has left for a new job and she insisted that it is well over with him now.

* Doesn't want to give me false hope as she feels R is unlikely.

* She is struggling financially and doesn't have a lot of money and can't really go out much.

* She apologised for the affair. She said her mum was aware of the flirting and warned her not to proceed. She said at the time of engaging in the affair she hated me and although initially felt guilt, after a few liaisons no longer felt any. She says she knows she should have ended our R first now.

* She says I was controlling and I drained the love from her. She says she doesn't love me now.

* She says we weren't compatible together but acknowledges we are getting along very well now we are apart.

* She acknowledged the sitch is very hard and she is not happy that we are in it...followed by 'but there's nothing we can do.'

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I did not plan on having this R talk, it just sorta happened. The good news is that there was no emotion involved. We just talked and what she said did seem to be a (mainly) honest account of how she feels and where things stand.

I largely just listened to her and validated her feelings. I did chip in with with a few comments along the way but no outpouring of emotion or anything, just acknowledging what she'd said and extended the point on occasion. Although things were said that on the face of it should leave me feeling hurt, I don't feel so at all.

I'm back at home now working (having a little break to write this out) and just getting on with things. Last night I realised that if I hang on every word, action, email, app etc then I will be forever strapped to the rollercoaster of emotions and never be able to move forward in my life. Despite everything said by W today I do feel optimism, not just for any potential R, but also for my own life. I hope we work things out of course but I am going to largely let time and my actions independent of my W be the determining factors here from now on.