Gordie #16: walking away from from MLC W

[Gordie]

Butterfly—thank you. You deserve some sort of prize. When that happened, I was less troubled for having somewhat expected it. I wish you could meet my stbx in person and talk some sense into her.

Sotto—totally agree that R is only possible when that shift happens. When the walkaway or waywardn or MLC holds all the cards, there’s no way a healthy R is possible.

SBJ—thanks. I do get that WTF feeling often. Like DNJ asks—what happened to my beautiful wife? My family? My life?

DNJ—thanks. As Jack 3 beans says in his signature, experience is a brutal teacher? And I’ve been a slow learner but we’re all going at our own pace.

Journaling:

As Butterfly said, as I have pulled away more and my move out date approaches, stbx has pursued me more. She is trying to nice me back and talking about us and summer vacation together, etc. Because I avoid situations where we will be alone together, she has been trying to talk to me more when I am preparing food in the kitchen or playing with the kids. She even came to one of son’s sporting events and stood next to me which she hasn’t done in over a year.

Drama with D1 continued. Silence was broken but their dialogue is terse at best. I took the kids out for a goodbye dinner before I took her back to college and the little kids asked where is mom? Stbx showed up late and acted like everything was groovy and D1 just gave angry looks. I drove D1 back to college and we didn’t discuss mom or the situation but D1 knows I love her and she cried when it was time for me to leave.

Stbx initiated another R discussion and I mainly listened as I’ve already said repeatedly what I want. She has dropped demands for an open M (first time ever). She said of course she would break up with OM2 if she was trying to work on us (change from two weeks ago). She asked how long would I give us to work on our R or would it be open ended? I don’t know if I handled that one well but here’s what I said: a lot of damage has been done, things are more complicated now. I believe love is a choice and M is a commitment to “do anything” to make it work. The commitment isn’t conditional or set with deadlines.

The conversation ended and she said she has been thinking a lot about us and what she wants and if she can make that type of no turning back commitment.

All advice welcome.