After the Storm...

[Treasur]

I honestly don't know what I was or feel, OwnIt. (If BluWave is around I'd welcome her advice as some things in her sitch seem similar.)

He made the call to me following up on an email from me 3 weeks ago. He had been chasing me to talk since the end of June, wanting to 'chat' on the phone while we dealt with legal stuff, to 'keep the communication doors open' as he said. I thought about it and said no, and my email said why and what I needed if that were to change. I expected him to do nothing and was braced for Court. A bit of me was hoping he'd do nothing because I'm tired of the mess and drama. In my email, I said to earn some trust back enough to talk, I needed three things. To reach a financial agreement. For him to tell both Ls he was pausing on finalising the D for 6 months to make a space for us to talk. To call me and set up a time to meet. Has he done those three things? Not quite, but what he's proposing is quite close bar pausing the D. (I feel strongly for my own wellbeing that once we are D'ed, he is nothing to do with me. I won't see him, speak to him or want to know what happens to him.)

Am I done with him? I don't know. I don't know if there is any 'him' left. I think I have forced myself to be done with him, but I loved him deeply. The only way I could get my head round how I felt was to see it as if he had killed himself. It felt similar, that I would still have lost him and be full of questions with no answers and find a way to live with that. Because I was grieving for my parents too, it broke me. I felt very alone and that the only way to survive was to think of him as dead and come up with my own story in order to move forward, if that makes sense. I always knew something in him broke and that it wasn't my fault, even if he was acting as if it were. It helped that he was actually diagnosed in Dec 15 because that was an objective fact.

The D behaviour has been illogical all along. He said he wanted a D by text a few days after we had seen each other and he'd said how good that had felt. He was obviously still pretty ill then - dead eyes etc. Of course I didn't know he was in the early stages of his A then. After he said he wanted a D, he refused to communicate at all for about 3 months. Then reappeared in Sept/Oct wanting to talk, then cut me dead. I got the D papers in Jan with no warning (at the same time as I was waiting on scan results after cancer surgery!) and again he refused to communicate directly with me until about 6 weeks ago. After he filed, he didn't really engage with the process until about May. Of course it made no sense...if you want a divorce, why would you not get on with it? But I really didn't want to con myself so I assumed that his mental health made it difficult for him to do the detailed work rather than assuming he didn't want the D. I just taught myself to accept it as it was and not mind read.

It really feels as if he has popped up just as I had bolted the door.

So I'm trying to be logical and honest with myself. I'm frightened of looking back into limbo again or inviting his chaos into my head. I'm frightened it will hurt me and that it will be a distraction from real GAL without my M. I see he wants to talk; I can't know why. (Actually the list of things I don't know is huge...I survived 2016 by having a large mental wooden crate marked 'I have no f***ing idea' and throwing stuff in it!) Do I think he wants to hurt me? No. Do I think he is so focused on his own stuff that he would do it anyway? Yes, maybe. I think his 'conversation' is more about what he wants to say than a dialogue. I don't see him thinking about my needs other than assuming I have questions. He did say he wanted to 'man up and take responsibility', that his behaviour has been 'far from good' (!) and that he knows what he's done is 'unforgiveable'. (I said calmly that he'd never asked for my forgiveness so how could we know. He went quiet and then moved the conversation back to financial stuff.)

Heart? I loved this human being, flaws and all. I know he has suffered and blown up his life, as well as mine. I still love who I thought he was and I believe he loved me too. Part of my M vows were about better and worse, and being kind no matter what. I promised him last year that if he ever was ready to talk, I would listen. But I'm angry and scared and almost 2 years of silence is a big space to fill.

Head? I can see and feel that something has shifted with him in the last couple of months. Dealing with the financial stuff without litigation is in my interest. He has a point that it is difficult to talk about emotional stuff at the same time as being in an adversarial legal process. If I was where I was a few months ago, I would see it as a cunning opportunity to slowly re-open communication and connection between us in a structured way, slowly over a couple of months. I also see that he is still with OW, has said nothing about even wanting to try to reconcile rather than finalise the D process.

Ok, here's what I'm thinking. Step 1: with L help, we go to mediation to finalise the £ stuff. We both want to do that. It will probably be 2-3 meetings and take about a month. (Yay, just in time for our wedding anniversary!). I stick to my boundary. If he wants to talk, he emails both Ls that he will not apply for the absolute for 6 months. We find an appropriate C in an appropriate place, and meet every 2 weeks or so to talk and listen. That would take say 3-4 months. Between sessions, I would be 'dim' contact about other than the house sale etc so I keep this stuff on the edge of my life not the centre of it. And we see where that takes us. If he won't agree to pause finalising, then that suggests he wants a one-way communication rather than a dialogue and I will say 'meh' and live without it.

How does that sound?