Affair discovered 2

[STH17]

So nothing came of the suitcase. It may be a just-in-case thing for her if she feels she needs to leave, or maybe just because she doesn't feel comfortable having all her clothes in the bedroom while I'm sleeping there. Don't think it's worth worrying about right now.

Weekend was fine, we rode together but didn't talk much either way. I drove going out, she drove coming back, didn't really even have to discuss it much. On the return trip I was trying to plan travel arrangements on my phone for a couple of weddings coming up in the next two weeks. When we were almost home I told W we needed to talk about it so that S4 was taken care of. That conversation went fine. I probably could have been a bit more mysterious, but I'm a little bit over playing those games too. If I can just be myself and not worry about what to say or not say to W, that's an improvement for myself.

This morning W brought up wanting to buy a car for herself again. She wants to sell our older vehicle that S4 can't ride in, and asked if I wanted to split the money from selling it. I was a little puzzled, and probably showed it on my face. An odd question when all her spending has been out of our joint account. I used the opportunity to say if we did that I didn't think it would make sense to keep sharing accounts, and we should take care of splitting those first. She agreed to that, and to taking herself off of our joint accounts. This was the conversation I'd been worried about having next.

She also wanted me to clarify what I meant when I said I would work on negotiations with her. She thinks if she files by herself, we'd have more court dates and the process would take longer and cost more than if we filed jointly. I told her I don't see much difference anymore between us filing jointly or her filing separately. In the end I told her I still couldn't file jointly with her, but she can file separately and I would work on the settlement agreement with her as if we were filing jointly. I think we both still are assuming a lot about the process, but she doesn't want to get lawyers involved and neither do I. I do think I'll be asking one some questions and make sure the agreement will be approved in court though.

She said she doesn't want anything other than to take her stuff, and I can keep mine. Seems a little simplistic to me. But I guess we have to start somewhere with negotiations, and that's a good place I think. I've been wanting to separate our finances for a while now. I wish I had this conversation with her 3 months ago.

We talked a bit about custody too, and where we'd be living. A lot of things I'd been worried about. I asked her if she thought we needed to make decisions about where to live together. She said it would affect primary custody. I think talking about that made me decide that if W chose to move back to our home state (something she still sounds sure of wanting), I probably would too, just because I wouldn't want S4 to be far from either of us.

Anyway, throughout the whole conversation I think I was pensive with furrowed brow. I don't think I felt much fear while having the conversation, even though it was one I have been afraid of having. I feel good about not avoiding it when it came up this time. W teared up a bit when she asked if I would wait until she was done with her therapy to remove her from our insurance. Which got me tearing up, and I said "I'm not going to keep you from getting healthcare. You know I care about you." That made me think of how in the past I've judged what was important for W to have or not have. I told her so, and apologized.

Divorce is stupid. It seems like we're just going to both go through these settlement agreement negotiations being the nicest and most compassionate we've ever been to each other, for the sole purpose of destroying a future that we had once promised to fill with love and compassion for the rest of our lives.