My WW and the Great Sandi2 Experiment

[Chris73]

Why don't you set goals that are within your control? You can't use her out of her fog - a better goal is to be in a healthy R. It's much easier and more fulfilling to work towards that goal. Otherwise your actions will tend towards trying to influence her and not focused on you.

You're right darkness. This has been my problem for the past 7 months and clearly the biggest challenge of detaching.

Last night after I got home and finished talking with my son, I immediately went back to the project I had started over the holiday weekend of recaulking the bathtub. This is a definite 180 for me because not only was it 9:30pm and I had to get up at 5 this morning, but during the 9 years that we've lived in our house I never took ownership of any home maintenance. I even think that at one point my W may have recaulked the bathtub on her own. So there I am with my painter's tape and my caulking gun, zoned in, trying to do the best job possible and all while I waiting/hoping that my W will walk in to talk to me (or at least walk by to see what I'm doing).

So there's the difficulty with detachment right there. I couldn't just be happy with the fact that I finally finished the job and it came out well. I wanted praise, validation, and to reinforce with my W the fact that the changes I'm making are sticking. The good news is that I didn't let any of this show. I cleaned up, said goodnight and went to bed.

...there is no path to reconciliation through in-house separation.

After 2 months of living like this I have to believe that it's true. I've heard stories of people who live this way for many years, typically because they can't afford to separate finances or they want to wait until the kids leave the house. I can't believe that my sitch will end up this way. Without the kids I'm certain that my W would have left by now. But neither of us want to leave our home knowing that doing so may hurt our chances of custody and will definitely send a message to our kids. Sometimes it feels like a game of chicken, but that's no way to live your life.

Maybe I missed it but did you read DB or DR?

I have both and I've spent more time reading DR over DB. I've read the chapters on LRT in both books many times over. I need to revisit the other chapters again soon, but quite honestly I'm so exhausted from thinking about this day in and day out that I need to put these books down for a bit and read something else.

I have an IC session this afternoon and I really want to focus the discussion on me instead of my W and my R. We'll see how it goes.