What should I be doing now? (Filing for D soon)

[Coconut]

You nailed it Blu, I completely relate with almost everything you posted. I will do my best to answer these (will require some mind reading), but I think I can get pretty close to a “true” answer.

Okay, I think I what see what you are saying. So there is an element of her being self-centered that has always been there. Now at a time when you are asking for something simple, and very delicate, it is a trigger for you?

She is and has always been pretty self centered, got worse as we went further in our M. My nice guy tendencies put up with a lot more than I should have, and I did harbor a lot of resentment from it.
As for it being a trigger, yes. When she previously told me she would call “in a little while”, it was a Saturday morning and I admittedly spent a little time “waiting” for the call. As the hours went by, I got more and more into doing my own thing but checked my phone periodically to make sure I didn’t miss the call. After about 5 hours or so, I knew she wasn’t going to call and went about my day. I was slightly perturbed that she didn’t follow through on the call, but I dropped it and didn’t say anything to her. By the time she called a week and a half later, I had already talked to my son and we agreed to discuss it when he got up to my house (which I felt would be more effective to working through it with him), so I just decided not to talk to her about it. It’s not like I didn’t talk to her about it because I was upset with her, just that by then I had decided it would be better for me to talk to him man to man, rather than saying “your mom told me…”.
As far as the text with the information I needed, this was the first time in Months that I contacted her about something I actually needed, and I felt like she was disregarding what I needed and that triggered me, because I had no choice but to get from her. She had the control (I admittedly didn’t like that) and I felt she was ignoring my request at my expense.

Not only is this a big decision, but it is an emotional one, so perhaps you feel further rejected that she is not giving it the attention it deserves?

Yes, definitely. Doing this process now isn’t that hard for me, but I do carry some emotion with it and feeling like she is ignoring it at my expense did/does make me feel further rejected. Like I’m not even worth the effort to think about the divorce or do what needs to be done to get it done.

Does it also trigger you that you are doing all of the work? You are only asking for her to add in info and she can't reliably do that.

This isn’t a problem, the form only took me 5 minutes to fill out, and it’s all we have to fill out for the procedure. FL really has a very easy cheap ($400) solution to dissolution of M as long as you don’t have kids together and you agree that assets have been split agreeably (don’t even need to fill out financial forms). But it does trigger me that she couldn’t respond to the questions I asked. I understand that deciding to change your name may take some time to think about, but again, if she would have acknowledged my request for the info I would have waited.

There is something about your sitch that saddens me in a different way. All of our sitches are chalked full of rejection and heart ache, so that is not what I mean. I know she had the ea--the lies and betrayal--and then she didn't show remorse, initiate R talks, and she wasn't committed to the reconciliation, nor would she give up the fire station. I get that. I would (and do) definitely need those things too.

I know what you mean, I recently referred to my wife’s A as very minor, and in the scheme of things it was but only because I was so aware of the changes and acted on my instincts. With that said though, the wayward mindset doesn’t subside easily, and my anger and inability to DB really hurt the opportunity to reconcile. There was a lot of love there at the time, she never got to a point where she “hated” me, it was about how much she had been “hurt”.

I still sense that even though she was entitled and turned away, that she hasn't fully given up on the M. I also see that you have been torn emotionally. I recall that you both somewhat came back together, however there wasn't much movement. It has also only been a year and some months right? It seems from the sitches here (my own included) that the time line can be so long, and sometimes several years.

She’s never mentioned wanting to get divorced, I’m the only one that has ever brought it up, and the previous time I brought it up, she actually said “It’s not what I want, but if that’s what you want I will agree to it”… ha, DB’d by my WW… She said several times that she always saw us getting back together in the future. I think my problem with that is, that I know the only way it would work is if we BOTH put in work, and her inability to reach out at all in the last year indicates to me that she either isn’t willing, or able, to do that work. I know that it can often be several years before reconciliation occurs, but Blu, I really don’t think I want to wait anymore. And it’s not about me wanting to find someone else, because I have no desire to try and seek someone else out right now, but I just feel like this is something I need to do for myself. I can’t really say why I feel that way, I’m trying to figure out what makes me feel like I want to be divorced, and I just can’t put my finger on it. It’s almost like I don’t feel whole, and I feel like finalizing the D will help me get back to being whole. Of course it could also be that I’m the type of person that if something needs to be done, I’d rather do it right now rather than put it off until tomorrow, so maybe knowing that it’s going to need to be done at some point, my natural instinct is to just go ahead and get it done. I was listening to the radio a few weeks ago, and they were discussing divorces getting back into the dating scene, one of the people mentioned that a lot of older people on Timber, Tumbler (I’m not sure of the name of the dating app) put in their description not to contact them unless they’ve been divorced for more than 2 years… so maybe I’m just trying to get that 2 year countdown started 

I am not saying that you should wait and that you should not file for D. Not what I am saying. It is just that from my perspective, your M is one of the few on these boards that I see hope for in the future.

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t know enough about her to know if the waywardness is still there, my son’s description of their R makes me believe it is (but that’s only his view, and could be exaggerated although I don’t know my son to exaggerate), but for some reason I feel like the waywardness has past (lots of mind reading and guessing there). With that said, I do kind of feel it’s past, and there is a part of me that believes she is at a point that if I pursued, I could possibly get her back. I’m not afraid of rejection, and if it was something I wanted, I would at least contact her and have some conversations, but I don’t have any desire to do so. I talk to lots of people that know her, and I never even have the desire to ask them how she’s doing to try and gain insight, I just don’t have any desire to try and get closer to her. I’m happiest keeping minimal communication with her, and just keeping it about son. But as I write this, I realize that I would love for her to contact me to have a deep conversation about how she feels about everything.. hmm, ok. That literally popped in my head, and now I’m wondering if everything, most or some of what I wrote could be defenses put up to protect the walls I’ve built.,.. I’m gonna think about this for a while and finish the post later.