I have elected not to reply to this message. For several reasons.
Sotto, your words are very on track with what I would have said. The problem with talking about one incident with taking speed is that it engages this way deeper than I'm prepared to get. If I was going to respond it would be with a couple of sentences. I can't say I never took speed due to that one incident. But going into details of an incident is just taking the bait as far as I'm concerned. It starts some dialogue about something I have no interest in discussing. Not defending, not debating. Who knows what follow up questions or accusations or challenges she throws at me. Not to mention I feel like anything I do can and will be used against me in a court of law.
Had she asked me civilly, "Z, I heard something that was upsetting and I'd appreciate understanding what happened", I'd be fine replying. But my boundary is that I am sticking to essential communication regarding our children, and I'm not responding to communication delivered in a disrespectful or antagonistic way. I'm not going to tell her that boundary. I'm just living it.
Juju, your post on your thread said a lot. It makes sense that it's easier for her to remain angry at me and make me responsible for her situation than it is to feel the loss of where she's put herself. I regret that I acted in ways that caused her pain during our marriage. There are certainly valid reasons she can be upset with me for things that occurred years ago. And I can see how if she clings to those as the reason she had to divorce me that she can therefor rationalize any and all consequences of the divorce as my fault. It's odd to me that these WAS's will file the D paperwork and be convinced their LBS left them no alternative and therefor forced the divorce, but I can understand they do.
Where I draw the line though is when my boundaries are crossed. She's entitled to her anger, it's a real emotion that serves some purpose for her, right or wrong. But when she lashes out with such hostility I am going to protect myself from it. If a man attacked me with a knife I wouldn't have time to care whether he was hurting inside. That suddenly takes a backseat to the fact that I must act to preserve myself. Well, her tirade and accusations were nothing less than her doing everything she could to stab me with an emotional knife. So regardless of what role I played long ago in her emotionally wounds, it ceases to be relevant today. We all have wounds and hurts. We all don't go around trying to destroy each other emotionally. That is her choice, and given that she's capable of this type of behavior there is only one reasonable response- none. I understand you weren't suggesting otherwise, you made this point as well. I'm just working through what you were telling me and I agree.
Jelly, thank you for your words. You're right on with the phrase "Personally I would ignore her attempts to be an important and influential person in your life." You are correct. I need to take this to another level. I thought I had already, I mean I haven't spoken to her verbally in over 2 years, nor have I shown any emotion. I've just been sterile businesslike. For me she has already crossed enough lines that she has become nothing more than a bitter person I have to navigate around on occasion. But there is no limit to how many lines someone can cross. I may think she can't do more at this point, but she could try to undermine me to the children, or she could assault me physically, or she could kill herself, or she could start driving drunk with the kids in the car, and so on. Not only is it possible she could cross more lines, I am starting to think it's destined. In any case, each new line she crosses just puts another nail in the coffin of the feelings I had for her in another lifetime.
My feelings are obviously mixed up, with some hurt and anger from her attacks though most of that has faded quickly, to shock at what she would stoop to, to a bit of sadness that it's come to this. I feel like I had a farm dog that bit one of my children a couple of times and I had to put it down. I've lived a lot of life and am fine without my dog, the regret and grief I feel won't stop me from doing what I have to, but it's never fun to have to pull the trigger and put a bullet between their eyes, and bury them in the backyard. That's how I feel. I regret that she's crossed over to where I have to take this person that was once my wife and reduce her yet again to the point that she is nothing more than a dangerous raving animal that I avoid on my way home. It's sad to know that dog is in pain. It's sad that we are given the opportunity to rejoice in what we've been given and celebrate a life together and instead we go down this road. But I won't allow that moment of silence to interfere with me taking the action I need to in order to protect myself.
As I've said before, there are a lot of tragedies in the world. This is just one of them. The positive is that I've been living in the space between for so long it doesn't burden me.
I did chess tactics with my daughters tonight. They learned how forks don't have to just be attacking two pieces, they can be a fork between a piece and a key square. It was cool to see D6 go from needing a lot of help on the first one, to solving the last one on her own so quickly. They get king safety and protecting pieces in a new way, plus they've gotten better at tactics.
But the other half is the funny stuff that comes up in the middle of it. When D9 lost a game the other day she was sad, and I talked about the tournament before when she lost a game and then immediately lost the next two as well. I reminded her how after the tournament I had talked about how important bouncing back quickly was. And now that she had lost a game it was the perfect time to practice getting good at bouncing back. Then I asked her "Do you want to be a bunny, or do you want to be a LION?!?" To which her eyes lit up and she shouted "BUNNY!!!" At which point I rolled my eyes because of course she wants to be a freaking bunny, she is my 9 year old daughter, she loves cute bunnies. So then I settled for the Monty Python bunny and we laughed remembering the teeth like THIS (Holy Grail Killer Rabbit for anyone that missed that reference). My D9 laughed both about the killer rabbit, but also because she thought it was so funny because she knew what I was trying to get at with the lion thing and how she picked bunny. So now she keeps referring back to it, "Remember dad, I'm a BUNNY!"
This is just one tiny snapshot of my life, and as you can see it is pretty amazing. I'll do an update soon, but really it's just a string of moments like this that I cherish.
Hope you all are enjoying some good ones too and thanks again for the support!
Me:38 XW:38 T:11 years M:8 years Kids: S14, D11, D7 BD/Move out day: 6/17/14, D final Dec 15
