Trying to detach from WTF world

[Treasur]

MrCAS
What are his motivations to want to "talk properly"?
Just what does "talk properly" mean to him?

First answer (without borrowing AndrewP's mind-reading turban!) is I don't know.

I asked. He said
"it's a horrible mess I've made and I want to salvage something kind from the mess, but I don't know how to do that and I worry I'll mess that up too"
"having the £ stuff to deal with makes some conversations awkward...finding it all very difficult"
"want to chat to keep the communication door open...not about anything substantive, just to talk every other day on the phone...we could set up a schedule and take it as it comes"
"it may surprise you that I think about you every day"
"completely understand your point of view (after I'd said no thank you)...the onus is mine....I hear what you say but I won't accept the paradigm that this will be the last time we speak"
plus lots of IDK..."I can't explain"..."it's just a feeling" standard MLC blah

So back to your questions...
What are his motivations to want to "talk properly"?
Just what does "talk properly" mean to him?
[/i]
The second? To chat on the phone every other day about the weather etc starting at 10 minutes and talking for longer each time...until the financial stuff is agreed...and then to start talking "properly" about "real" things (no idea what these are, he couldn't/wouldn't say)
The first? IDK...based on what he said? He wants to keep a door open. He's finding the £ stuff difficult. He wants to 'salvage something kind from the mess' (no idea what that means) He doesn't want to accept the 'paradigm' of never speaking to me again. (weird choice of word)

Mind reading? Obviously something had shifted in his head or situation that caused him to want to talk to me and chase me to do so. Maybe temporarily. He sees a horrible mess, doesn't like it but doesn't know what to do. The £ stuff of the divorce process has forced him to look at realities in black and white that he has been avoiding looking at for a long time and it hurts or bothers him in some way. Best I can do!

Me? I thought hard about it.
1. Talking would have helped with the limbo last year. Talking even a few months ago would have helped with some of the practical stuff after he filed (and then did nothing) in Jan. But given his refusal to communicate with me directly, I had found a way to press on regardless with both. So, too late to be practically useful really.
2. I'm tired of the WTF shockwaves...and I have been shocked & distressed by some of the facts the £ process has shown me. Detaching, other than the practical facts I need to deal with legally, protects me from more WTFs. But just as my accepting reality is part of my route forward, probably the same is true for him. It is an old 'fixing' pattern of mine to shield him a bit and I'd be doing no favours to the person I still love to do that now. If he is ever to 'recover', he needs to see the reality of the mess he's made and choose to deal with it or not, I suppose. Same for me. It hurts and it is hard and I'm sorry for both of us.
3. We agree it's a horrible mess but I can't change his bit of that, only mine. And his actions & responses in the legal process are just as unreasonable and less than honest as they were a month earlier. And my gran used to say that 'fine words butter no parsnips'...there are things he could do in the process if he wanted to 'salvage something kind' and no sign of him actually doing any of them as yet
4. On the 'quacks like a duck/you can't reason with crazy' principle, it just feels crazy to me that after almost a year of refusing to communicate directly at all, we start 'chatting' a few weeks from our D being finalised. And if it feels crazy to me, it's probably coming from a crazy place.
5. There was a risk that I would con myself into believing my own 'story' and it would hurt me more, the terrible temptation to see breadcrumbs as cake. My H has lied to me. I don't want to lie to myself. And his 'open door' is a door to WTF world for me.
6. And the biggest reason in the end I calmly said no thank you? MLC or not, my H has lied to me and treated me as not worthy of respect or value. IRL (just about remember that!), I wouldn't chat to someone like that unless I could see them doing things consistently to earn my trust. Even being compassionate about why they might have acted that way. To have self-respect, I have to not collude with being treated as worthless. It may be true that for my H, both me as a person and our M are worthless. It is certainly how he has behaved. But I don't believe it is true so I need to act like that. Which is what I said to him calmly pretty much, although I think he 'heard' something different...but that's not my problem.

So, I was/am comfortable that saying 'no thank you' was the right choice for me. For him? No idea what or why really, so I don't know if it is good for him. I suppose I think if it isn't, he has some different choices he could make.

And under all of this...I miss my H and (most) of the man he was. I hate WTFland. I hate having to accept that he is now capable of doing some of the things he has done, and that it has stained his life as well as mine. I mourn for our M, and for the real love and friendship we had.