Affair discovered 3

[STH17]

Thanks joejoe1, I found a short version of the parable. Something I think I do is to feed neither the good wolf nor the bad, just waiting for something to happen in my life instead. GAL activities are good for feeding the good wolf for sure.

When W left on Saturday, the only thing that really surprised me and hurt a little was finding that she left behind her house keys. She still has a garage door opener, but we had never talked about whether she would come back or not.

Today W came to the house to pick up son for the week. She wanted to talk, and asked if we could talk outside so our son wouldn't interrupt. That shows her respecting my boundary of not talking about us in front of son, which I appreciated. She wanted to tell me that if I removed her from our car insurance and closed our joint accounts, it would "reflect poorly on me in court". She could be right, but it felt like scare tactics to me. Bothers me because both things were things that she had agreed to herself in the past. I asked if she would sign something to show she agreed to be removed from the policy, but she refused, saying she was still an owner of the car. I didn't think that mattered since she wasn't going to be driving it anymore (also her choice). I also asked her when she was going to start paying for her student loans. She started to choke up a little then and began telling me how I was leaving her with nothing and she didn't have a job and couldn't afford rent. She did acknowledge that she spent money to make herself feel better, and she acknowledged some of her own behavior problems like explosive anger and negative thought patterns. She says she only learned this month that she had depression. None of this was news to me, I'd known it for years. I would have thought she did too. I don't think I heard an apology towards me for anything though.

She thought me being fine with her leaving was a sign I didn't care about her, and wanted to know why I didn't tell my mom she was leaving. I just told W she left me months ago, and I felt insulted that nobody thought I could take care of myself, that her dad thought I needed him to call my mommy for me. I know her parents were just showing concern for me, and I do appreciate that, but I'm a big boy. W just thought I was being an "island" isolating myself and keeping my feelings bottled up. Oh well, I get to feel how I feel and tell those feelings to who I want to tell.

We talked for at least an hour. Too long I know. But I'm in the "I've got nothing to lose" mentality now, and I saw it as an opportunity to check in with W and where she's at with her own processing of our relationship. I'd say it's improved marginally, but she's still set on divorce. She said she wants to start over with our relationship, as acquaintances, so that we can be friends and be good parents for our son. My first thought was "not so fast, you're not getting off the hook that easy!". I asked her what being friends meant to her. I don't remember what she said, but she asked me and I started to get emotional, saying she hasn't been treating me like a friend. I said a friend is someone you can talk to, who you can trust to be there for you to help when you need it. She said she always felt I treated my friends better than her. Thinking on that I believe that could be because my friends treated me better than she did too. Meh. I know W and I both treated each other poorly. I'm happy to try to do better, but I'd like to see some effort from her at building a relationship now.

So when she asked if we could start over and be friends, and not rehash the past anymore, I thought for a while. I don't think the past has been adequately or accurately resolved between us, and I don't feel comfortable sweeping it under the rug and just moving along like it never happened. That's exactly the kind of thing that led me to emotionally abuse my wife. And the biggest obstacle for me is W's affair. So I told her, "If you want to be friends we have to address the fact that I worked hard to try to repair our relationship, and you chose to have an affair instead. We need to talk about that." She looked down, and the first thing she said was "our relationship has been broken since the beginning". No admission, no denial, similar to before. Then she started to instead tell me how I had not included her in the relationship repair work or my own self-growth or something. This time I knew it wouldn't do any good to argue, but I know that is not true. Even if I did fail in some critical ways during that recovery, it was only because I had not yet progressed far enough in my own journey, just as she had not progressed far enough in her own to join me. I don't understand how she can now claim I didn't involve her enough in something she clearly wanted no part of at the time.