Not sure what I have

[Guzzard]

Email came from W which always sets me back and makes me anxious on response. She is just looking to drop off some papers and said she'll be in the area so could swing by my house or we could meet somewhere. And she told me a blurb of her weekend plans. We have little to no contact as there are no children. No words or actions of reconciliation or really caring about me at all which is disheartening.

Do I have an opportunity to take advantage of anything in my reply? I would like to see her. I would like to know how she is and interact in person. I sort of want to ask her if she swings by, would she stay for dinner.

[Guzzard]

Makes me wonder if she is fishing for something, but reality is I shouldn't / can't read into it. Unfortunately, for stuff like this its backed off from a phone call to just an email. A least with a call one can have a sense of emotion (if any, which lately with W is none).

[Guzzard]

Plus hard to know right move when also dealing with mental health potentials.

[KGuy]

Stop worrying about what she is thinking.

I would suggest not answering her email right away. Maybe meet her somewhere other than the house, say you will be out and about and not at the house. She can't get in the house can she? Leave the health issues alone and keep them in your mind, but don't say anything that lets you know you've been looking into it (that would be pursuing IMO). At this point you won't see anything showing she cares. Good luck!

[Guzzard]

Thanks, I waited to reply this morning and just stuck to the facts - I'll be out so W can leave stuff or we can reschedule. No, she can't get in the house. I won't / haven't said anything about the health issues.

GAL'ing this morning, some work to do this afternoon, hoping a friend will come by later today. Tomorrow is GAL in the morning. At some point I have to work on some divorce paperwork which is going to be sad. I should go shopping which is my least favorite thing to try on some new clothes as I have lost a bit of weight with lots of exercise and better eating. I am happy about that at least.

The weekends are very hard as more often than not W and I would be doing things together. Some of my GAL is stuff I like and W adopted to do with me, so trying to reclaim those as my own has been hard. I am doing other GAL that is new to me so its not something we shared.

I miss her and our fun times. I don't miss feeling that she wasn't there with me and she was emotionally attached in real or fantasy with old OM....the fact is, she isn't here now and doesn't really care or value me or the M enough to be here.

I have to keep working on detaching. Right now, I'd by lying if I didn't want her next email to say "oh, I was hoping to see you" though seeing her would be a further setback for me anyway.

She's no words and no actions and continues to be all about her. It is frustrating because she is appearing helpless and forgetful about items for D, but the rest of her life she appears 100% functional. One's real and one's a fake...which one. I can't know.

[Guzzard]

Nothing much changed, W hasn't replied to email. Suspect she will not reply and drop things off while I am not here. W is moving slowly on D paperwork. My therapist tells me even though I don't want D that I will need to push W along. It's frustrating, she is an intelligent woman who is able to do things for herself but with the D, I have had to push for simple tasks.

Friends tell me that is because it's a responsibility and she isn't interested in and doesn't care about responsibilities right now. She only cares about herself and things that make her feel good right now.

This morning I felt good, but backslid as I look at paperwork. Hard to keep detaching. I have GAL in a short while and GAL again later. I hope to get the morning feeling back. W is completely uncaring about me or M. I feel hopeless, I am impatient and know I would not want limbo though. Also, I need to man up a bit and remember a number of her choices in the last few years did cross a line and boundary for me that I let slide due to health. She can be 2 or 3 different people sometimes and always had that ability, the actress that was really lying a lot... to someone, not sure of lie vs real... so trying to ID what was real vs fake in our M gets me into trouble. I have to drop thinking about that, I guess it shows she doesn't even know who she is and just changes in situations to get validated and approved.

[KGuy]

Sounds to me like she may feel the same way about the D paperwork that you do, although your friends could also be partially correct. It appears her focus is on the EA/her hobby and what is making her feel good at the moment.

Taking it another way though, wy are you working on the D paperwork? Seems to me if you both have excuses to not do it, it will just postpone it further giving more opportunity to turn it around.

Still GAL and detach though.

I am in the same boat with the D paperwork and just haven't had the heart to review and provided comments to make it happen. The W and her L are really pushing it through to make it fast. I disagree that such a life decision should be done so quickly.

[Guzzard]

Sounds to me like she may feel the same way about the D paperwork that you do, although your friends could also be partially correct. It appears her focus is on the EA/her hobby and what is making her feel good at the moment.

Taking it another way though, wy are you working on the D paperwork? Seems to me if you both have excuses to not do it, it will just postpone it further giving more opportunity to turn it around.

Still GAL and detach though.

I am in the same boat with the D paperwork and just haven't had the heart to review and provided comments to make it happen. The W and her L are really pushing it through to make it fast. I disagree that such a life decision should be done so quickly.

I don't know really how she feels about the D paperwork. She is doing it but slowly and missing information.

I guess I am doing it to protect myself and keep L out of it. If I don't do it, W wanted to use L.

Also because limbo isn't a place I want to be and plan B is not for me (though I would consider relaxing that if it is health driven). Without a hard cutoff date, I think I would give in on any personal time boundary I set.

My therapist and friends advice is to keep pushing through it for my own good. Though only W knows, they suggest like you said that (a) W is only interested in EA/Hobby so all responsibility is bottom of the list, (b) there is no impact to her in the D, she is already checked out of M, gone and living a new life, and doing her thing so the D is of no concern or consequence for her, or (c) she knows I will handle it. In the M, I handled these things because I was good at them and W handled things she was good at. We were a good pair with life skills that complimented each our in M.

It is also provides the only opportunity where I interact with W at all. I have only seen W once in a month, talked once, and traded one email. We don't run in the same circles, so w/o D actions we wouldn't communicate until D day. So its the only way for her to see me and my personal improvements and for me to watch for changes in her.

Otherwise, I don't know, I guess the answer is that I'm doing it for my protection.

I was thinking that I help complete the current set of papers in front of us, but that I tell W that she has to be the one to physically file them which lets me leave it in her hands to to act on time or not.

[KGuy]

Hmm,

Well how about this, let her own the process since she is the one that is leaving the M? The more you read around here the more you'll see people being told that you aren't in limbo, you ARE moving on and doing what YOU need. I was told that too BTW and they are right. You may being equating limbo to not in a relationship and they are two different things. Just my opinion of course.

Perhaps her leaving out things in the paperwork is a way of having to interact once again. Not only that, but if you are the one that always follows through with the ppwk, then why not do a 180 on that? Not only that, but you are providing her a reason why she left. She has already posted on FB that you are the villain for doing that. Drag your feet and just detach and let her continue the process.

[Guzzard]

Thanks for the advice and good points.

We had agreed to do this set of paperwork by a certain date. Now that I think about it though, first of, W didn't hold up her end of it on time or in complete fashion and technically, it doesn't have to be done until a few week later than what we agreed to.

So I think what I will do is nothing right now. I won't work on it, I won't update her on it, I just won't do anything.

If/when she happens to ask what's up, I will just say I've been too busy (which is somewhat true) and at that point I will have three options...

1) Say I'll get to it by xx date and blow it off again
2) Take the protect myself route and finish this set but tell her she owns submitting and the rest of the D
3) Tell her it is her D so I'm done doing it

My mostly likely choice right now is #2. In our current status, I am protected decently in the D because we've agreed to a fair split. If I follow #3, I risk that she won't do it and will involve a L and the L will convince her to go after more than we agreed to which can hurt me more.