Zelda - hang me up to dry

[Zelda09]

This is a long post, I don't know if it makes a lot of sense, but I need help getting my head straight.

An update in the sitch and a shift of emotions. A friend of ours met with my STBX last night to see if she could help. She is lawyer, and offered to diffuse and see if she could be an intermediary.

I haven't cried like this in weeks. Been almost an hour of sobs, getting it together, more sobs.

Apparently STBX is very, very angry. I heard this and it made me confused. What has he got to be angry about? He is out and about, to people that used to be his friends, acting like life is rosy...until she sits down to talk with him about all this. She says he felt like he really tried and sees the sitch very differently. I asked her if it seemed like false anger. After all he sat across from me that day at breakfast smug and cool, seemed to be showing me he was well at peace.

In any case, she shared with him that she had seen the texts and though he seemed like a nice guy, he had no right to talk to me that way, regardless of how communication with me made him feel. He made a frustrated face for a long time.

He reported he won't get his things b/c of a space issue (though he has told me it's fear of losing rights to it if he signs issue). He told her that my desire to be done so quickly marked a sudden shift and he worries what angle I'm working. (And we both agreed that is ludicrous, considering all I'm asking him to do is sign the papers he drew up - that detail how it all resolves - there's no more 'angle' to work.)

Supposedly in the course of the conversation he said "it'll be done, it'll be done soon enough," and she told me that if I go NC for a while and let him cool down he will probably move on it - just her impression. I haven't contacted him for a week and a half, I figure what's a few more.

So, this is what has shifted in my heart. I know that this board, and my counselor, and all kinds of wisdom says that it doesn't matter what your ex was thinking. How do you process something if you don't understand what it is you're processing?

I was better off in December, when I first read DR. And I thought of him teething, I thought I had a handle on what was going on. I would have been ok if we had divorced then, I felt like I knew WHO I would have been divorcing.

He became this monster to me the week his check came in, and he claims to my friend he was really trying - that is the essence of what is so traumatic to me, because I thought so too. I really believed despite the threats of leaving me again, that I saw equally weighted glimpses of him loving and working it out. It all seems so calculated now.

But it does matter to me, what exactly this was. I have thought so long on his apathy, cruelty, smugness, his words and actions and posturing. And in talking with her I realized he may* be hurting, as well. One doesn't cancel the other. He doesn't seem to understand why he got kicked out or see himself responsible for the things that happened that night, his own feelings of wanting to be 'done,' or demise of this relationship in general - the disappointment he felt in our communication, in me, the supportive person I supposedly wasn't, the unhappy person I supposedly was, he doesn't see his part in any of it. (victim)

but whether he is acting cool with me or acting angry with her - he has a mess going on and is human. Like me. I loved him. I must have feelings still or I wouldn't be such a wreck this morning imagining he is not so cold. I guess it goes back to what he always told me about not having the ability to have conversations with himself. My friend suggested he maybe was acting fine with everything that day at breakfast bc he didn't know how else to act...and wanted to hurt me for his own hurt.

I feel like the past may be resolving itself and things may be settling better in my heart because of this. But man, it hurts. How could he just not know it was not acceptable to treat me like this, that I didn't cause his abusive words, threats, actions?

If he really believes he was the nice guy and he was justified...it allows him to be the man I loved, that I knew, despite his actions and attitudes when he came home.

I don't know, I can't figure out how two people who say they loved, who are both angry, how we get here. If he is actually angry...that implies he did care. If we both cared, why are we here? Why couldn't he care when I asked him to get help for the anger management, to work at our marriage?