No more denial, time to get to work

[MRay]

It's been a few days, so it's time for an update: it's still pretty much the same. W had IC last night, and I took the kids out to dinner. W is normally pretty tired on Fridays as they are very busy days. She is normally emotionally exhausted after IC, plus she hasn't been sleeping much with S3 going to sleep with her in the middle of the night the last 3 nights. I was expecting her to be exhausted when she got home, but she said she was feeling pretty good. Nothing beyond that. She makes a big show of telling the kids goodnight and goodbye and she loves them, and then purposely ignores me. Usually I'll tell her have a nice day or have a good night or something like that, with no expectation of it being returned. Unsure if I should continue that or just give her the silent treatment like she is giving me.

Thinking back I'm pretty sure she was temp-checking me last weekend, and I failed. She hasn't done any temp-checking throughout this sitch, so I was unprepared. We used to enjoy watching tv shows, reading books, etc. together and discussing what happened and trying to figure out what's going to happen next. All of this has stopped except for one show, but we hadn't watched in a few weeks. When the kids go take their naps or go to bed she immediately goes to her room. She never watches tv in the living room, but this time she put the next episode on in the living room while I was working out. She knew full well that I would come in from the garage and see her watching without me. She knew this would bother me as it's the last thing that we did together that doesn't involve our children. She looked at me when I came in, and immediately asked if I would like her to stop watching. I told her that I really would have liked to watch together so I don't fall behind, but if she wanted to watch she should go right ahead. I went back to my workout, and she decided to go back to her room and watch the show there. I should have left it at that. Feeling like I was losing the one thing we had left, I went back to her room and told her I'd actually like to watch together and I'd appreciate it if she'd give me 15 minutes or so to finish what I was doing and we could watch together. This led to her turning off the tv, getting angry, and initiating a fight about why she didn't understand why I'm always trying to start a fight. I didn't want to fight, so I told her you do what you want, and I walked away. She never went back to watch the show, she watched something else and made sure to let me know it by thanking me for prompting her to watch another show she had fallen behind on. Since then I've watched the episodes we had missed by myself and have told her they're really good and she should watch them. Long story short, she obviously temp-checked and I took the bait. I think I should have said you should watch whatever you want, and returned to the garage to finish my workout with a smile on my face.

In the future I'll be more prepared for this kind of thing. I've read a lot about temp-checking, but I hadn't experienced any of it yet as far as I know. I know I handled it poorly, but I just have to move on and do better in the future. I've continued to GAL, and I'm trying to make some friends at my new job. I've got a couple outings planned with these people next week. I'm looking forward to taking my kids to an amusement park in a few weeks. We're going with my parents, my sisters, and all my nieces and nephews so it should be a good time. I'm loving getting into my workouts. It's perfect. Watching my body transform week to week is a slow process just like dealing with my marriage, but at least I can see results and know that I control what is happening with my body. I still hate cardio, but I've got the best motivation I can have.