The one thing I know for absolute certainty on this board, is that dads make awesome parents when their WW goes wayward or absent. (Of course mums do too).
From my standpoint, dads who put their kids first and foremost in their lives have the happiest and most successful lives. Irrespective of their M.
I see it time after time here. Over and over, they have success and love.
They find the depth and care within themselves to heal, grow and meet challenges. They shift and detatch.
They nurture the lives they brought into being and cherish. There is compassion.
This spills into love for themselves.
So it will be for this fabulous dad called Si.
V
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose. V 64, WAW
Thank you for your post V, I am just trying to focus on my kids and me. Making their lives as stable and loving as possible. Picked up some books on activities in our area so I can plan my weekends with them. Going to get back to playing hockey to as I've been getting more of a routine in place. If my W wants to see me as a family man in a negative way then it will be her loss, I chose to have children, I am a family man because my kids deserve it. There is no shame in being a family man.
Thank you again V, this was a wonderful post to wake up to this morning.
So, was out with a friend who also has contact with W occasionally.
According to him, W is happy with some things but not all but couldn't say what, she got her phone ID fixed. Is apparently looking for her own car but is taking care of her budget. I still don't know exactly what the other guy is, and no one seems to know. If he is some friend or more, however, how she talked about him to me was like she was planning something with him. I know, Sandi, you have said WW and I still believe that. I guess I see some control of what she is doing but still a lot of anger and wanting me to be friends with her. I guess, I questioned tonight if I'm on the right path of pulling away but friend also agrees that I shouldn't be including her in family things.
I am going to stay on the same path for me and I do understand that this could be very early in my situation, guess I was just questioning if I was really that poor a husband. I understand my errors and where I didn't learn the right relationship skills at the right time or soon enough, and am doing that now to become a better me for whoever may be next. I know that my relationship with my kids is so much better than before when I was away too much building our house.
It did help my confidence that I have had a 29 year old, and a 30 year old interested in me. I'm not really looking for anything else right now but it did feel good.
Have had a good weekend in general, out with different friends last night watching some handball. Did some work on the car yesterday. Today was away playing hockey all day today, sport I played for 15 years before moving to Canada for my W. Have played it on and off, should have been doing it more but with the house build and getting told I was not spending enough time with the family, I stopped playing last year. So many things just don't make sense and I've always been someone that feels the need to understand what went wrong. As an electrician working on aircraft, it's always about why something stopped working and fixing it. Think I have done way too much of that in my MR, been the one to fix everything because that's what W wanted me to do.
Felt anger and frustration today towards W, I'm shocked with myself sometimes how I can love and hate someone in equal measures at the same time. Still need to get better at mentally detaching, although I did get round to putting that frustration into my game. We won and I scored one which helped. Felt fitter with all the training I have been doing as well which again felt good.
My IC also gave me a talk about 'letting go' and the difference from giving up. I wanted to share some of it:
It’s trust. It’s trusting that if you do the right thing, think the right thoughts, do your work well, take care of others, give back, always care, things will ​ultimately be all right.They will work out the way they are supposed to​, which may not always ​be ​the way we want. But that is part of letting go. Sometimes we have to let people go. We have to let them find their way. Sometimes loving them and caring about them does not work, they can’t let it in. They, themselves have to get to the point where they can accept it. Again, it does not mean we stop caring, sometimes we have to walk away, stop forcing the issue. In those moments letting go is an action. It’s not a declaration of defeat. Though it sometimes feels that way. It’s just a release. It’s saying I will let you go. I will let you figure things out for yourself. I will be here, caring if you decide to come back, if you decide to fix the places I cannot fix for you.
Sometimes that means while you care, you could wind up caring more for someone else. In letting go, we sometimes find what we were holding on to, was not at all what we wanted, be it a person, a job or a way of being in the world.
In those cases letting go is an action of freedom. We are allowing ourselves the freedom to find something else, or for something else to find us.
Mentally is still a struggle for me, I do see my W as no one I know, someone that is not attractive to me and I need to keep remembering that. As I saw BluWave write, do I want back who she is right now... No, I know I don't. Will I see any of the W I fell in love with, we don't know the answer to that and until that time, as I have seen Sandi mention, if she is prepared to put me on the market for someone else to possibly find, that is a risk she seems willing to take. As I did say to a friend, i can do, and have done many amazing things for my W. I have made my mistakes along the way that I can learn from.
I should be living up to my thread title a bit more, here's to new adventures!
Sandi, in the selfish mindset, do they know they are playing games, temp checking etc or is it just their thoughts at the time. Like my email were you said she is pulling the guilt card. Now many times over the years my wife has given me the line 'I need to get to know you again', she just says it her expressing her feelings but I've always seen it as a guilt trip and trying to get me to prove myself over again. In he ealrier days I didn't think about it but now I see more and more little things like that. I know many times I put her first and that's probably one of the reasons I'm here now. I know women test men generally from time to time, how different is it when the mindset has become what we face now? I recognize many more things now than ever before but I know it's an ever changing landscape.
Also in my last email exchange with W last week, she made a point of telling me she was 'out of office' , had been since the end of the previous week and would be till this week. I felt at the time she was fishing for me to ask where but I just ignored the comment. Found out from friends that she was ill all week. For someone that said to me she was feeling good a few weeks ago, she has been ill 4 times, that I know of, since the last week she was in the house (about 7 weeks ago). It was always common for her to become ill when very stressed.
So have sorted the phone stuff out, W doesn't have much work to do other than finish filling out a form to take her contract off mine but so be it. Not that I was trying to be difficult anyway, at least it's another thing for her to take care of by herself and of my chest.
So woke up this morning thinking about interactions and how some don't make sense. So WW's potential OM, she told me after BD that she was going to have an affair, going to sleep with him, could start a relationship with him and that he was bisexual and the last person he was with was a man.... Now something that has bugged me is that a lot of this was said in anger, and for me it just seemed way too much information. Like if she wanted me to have 'closure' and wanted to hurt me, why not just say it was already happening and she already had.
Also on the day she moved out, a mutual friend helped her. Potential OM was at her place helping her, he said to mutual friend that he was there because he was worried I would hurt WW because when I confronted WW at his place he thinks I tried to punch him, (he hid behind W the whole time) Now, my latest thoughts were, would someone that has pursued a married women and having an affair really expect that nothing would be done to him.... That I should just let them get on with it... I have wondered for awhile, if my W has got attracted to a gay man and only found out when she went to start an affair and then really screwed her head up....
I know it doesn't change my direction, my path and I don't want to waste energy trying to work it out as her thoughts and feelings are the real issue.
Anyways feel free to ignore or comment. I just needed to write it down somewhere.
