Fighting my way out of the dark Part 5

[Holding]

Thanks, Acc! I'll try to resist the labels. It is tempting though.

Met with IC yesterday, and she helped me see that I'm looking to others for validation. I want someone to tell me I did everything I could to save the M, that I gave so much of myself for this M and a cr@ppy W, only to be rejected by that cr@ppy W in the end. My IC asked me, "Holding, why do you need to hear that from someone else. Why can't you just believe it inside yourself?" Hmmm...

Time for another episode of "Crazy Sh1t my STBXW Does"

Had another talk with her last night, ostensibly to discuss the schedule for the upcoming week. This one was a real doozy - get some popcorn, folks.

I started out with the mindset that I wasn't gonna let her rattle or intimidate me. I put my feet up and leaned back. I was going to be relaxed and positive.

Things seemed to be going civil for a while in the convo, then we got to a particular day where she and I both had something to do. I told her my plans were tentative and I wasn't sure yet. I had a smile on my face (she claims it was a smirk), and she sarcastically said, "What, do you have a date?" She had crossed my snark boundary. I got up and said "I'm done with this conversation. I'm not going to deal with snarky comments." As I walked away, she started yelling that she wasn't done yet. I walked into the MBR, closed the door, and locked it. I could hear her slam something down and say "I can't wait to get out of this house!"

10 seconds later she starts knocking loudly on the door and telling me to open it. I told her I was done talking. She said "I'm going to make a note of this." I'm thinking, ha, whatever. I wandered into the closet to start pulling my clothes together for the next day. In the distance I could hear her knocking and saying something.

Eventually she changes her approach to a calm knock. I go back to the door and say I'll continue our convo if she can agree to refrain from snark. She said ok, so I let her in.

We wrapped up the schedule issue (she let me have the night in question), and she moved on to legal matters. I told her there's nothing new to discuss. She didn't like that; she wants to get this over ASAP. Then she told me she made an offer on the house she wants to buy, and she hoped the L's could sort out me signing the waiver to title, so she can close within 30 days. I was dumbfounded. (Dusty, watch out for this!) I had told her before that I wouldn't be signing it, and she went ahead and made an offer anyway, with a deposit I'm sure. She really can't accept that she's not going to get her way here. I reminded her that my L told me not to sign, and that she's free to rent a house or apartment.

For some reason she asked me about Divorce Care (I told her last weekend that I was going to the meetings). It turns out she's not going after all. She'd read up on the program and asked if it was helping me, what we talked about, who else was there and what their sitches were, etc. She asked if it was helping me see her side of things. I said it was a little. This led into a convo on my favorite dead horse - THE FAILURE OF OUR RELATIONSHIP.

Now you might ask why I let this continue. I guess it's mostly a morbid fascination. And I was honestly having a little fun in this whole encounter. With my new perspective, it's interesting to see what buttons she tries to push.

We talked about the SSM. I mentioned how her constant rejection had broken my libido. She tried to justify it by saying I was never affectionate. Then she admitted I had been affectionate early in our R. I told her the affection and sex were part of a cycle (like yin yang), and it obviously used to work earlier in our R. She had no response for that.

She brought up the emotional abuse. I admitted that I was emotionally distant and closed off, but I refused to accept that what I did was "abusive". I recently talked to an old friend who when through an emotionally abusive M, and my friend got really angry when I said STBXW has accused me of the same thing; my friend said STBXW has NO IDEA what real emotional abuse is.

STBXW told me if she came back into the M, things would be good for a while, but we'd just be back to the same place in 3 years. I told her that's just her projection of the future. She asked if I could really keep up these changes for 3 years. I thought about it, and said yes. She angrily asked how she could be sure I'd be able to do that. I told her there wasn't anything I could say to convince her of that.

She asked why I had to wait until she was leaving to start making these changes. I said I didn't know, I guess I needed to be shaken from my funk, but she had my FULL ATTENTION back at BD, and I was completely committed to work on the MR. I said it was her who decided to walk away. She said she'd tried before, and it didn't work. I apologized for that, but I said again that it was her decision to end this, not mine. Maybe pointing that out is not DB'ing, but I refuse to let her claim that I was an emotionally abusive a-hole who forced her to run away to "save herself". In my own heart, I need to stand up for who I really am.

It was getting late and S10 was waiting for us in the living room. So I got up and told STBXW that I was putting S10 to bed. As I walked out of the MBR, she followed and said "I guess you're done talking now and you're just going to walk away like always." I said "Yes I am done. And what you just said was more snark." She denied it.

She went back to her room. As I walked past her door to put S10 to bed (yes, this is something I routinely do, not STBXW), her door was slightly open and I could hear her talking on the phone to someone. She was recounting what we'd just talked about. Maybe it was a friend. Maybe it was her L.

Who cares?