Hey Ballast, you're on page 11 so time for a new thread!
Originally Posted by ballast
I miss her today. I miss her every day. I know we say all sitches aren't unique, but I am curious. in the time we've been apart, we've not once spoken verbally about our sitch. our only communication has been by text/email. maybe 3 times I've gone pursuit, we've texted, she had no interest and I dropped it. IC has said in her exp, men usually don't want to do MC, she has had women come in who simply got angry and fought, but it was very rare for her where the woman did not want to go. IC also told me that in all of her years counseling my MR is the first where a couple has never spoken verbally. Stander has told me in the past that his eW was much like this, but I was reading last night his story and saw that he and his eW did in fact try to recon, but apparently he was past the point of wanting it.
I think you might be referring to the Retrouvaille thing. We were separated, I think she had already drawn up the D papers (but not filed) and then suddenly out of the blue she emailed me asking if I would be willing to go to Retro. By then I had started seeing another woman although it was pretty casual, like just going out on a date with her here and there. I only mention it because I think it impacted my "investment" in this recon attempt, if it even was one. XW had shown zero interest in reconciling before that, and in fact had told me many times there was no chance of it. So it was very unexpected that she wanted to do this. Anyway we went and it was a very emotional experience. We shared more thoughts and feelings than we had in probably the previous 10 years. I wish I could say it made us fall back in love and we went on to live happily ever after, but obviously that's not what happened (although that is what happens for some couples). After Retro they encourage you to meet every day to continue the exercises that they gave us (it's supposed to be a life-long thing that you never stop doing). There were also followup meetings with the rest of the group. Well with the two of us living apart and both working full time and such, it was very difficult to make the time to do the followups. We did for a while, but I don't think either of us were really trying, we were just going through the motions of the exercises. At some point I just flat-out said to her I didn't think it was changing anything and did she want to bother continuing and she said no.
It was all very confusing and even looking back now I'm still confused. Did XW want to recon? Or did she just do it to check off her list of "things I tried to save the M but that just proved it really was over"? Was I the reason it failed, or was she, or was it both of us? Not that it matters now, but it was just a strange time.
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in my sitch I have no proof of OM/EA/PA, all I can guess is that W's complete lack of talk is because she does have OM. thing is if she does, so what...I mean there's tons of those sitchs on here where there is still verbal communication face to face. like in our sitch...how much worse could it be such that she completely can't even talk to me? I can guess guilt/shame/whatever, but like Sandi once said men can't understand rational women, so likely we aren't even close to understanding a WW...LOL so with that said I don't even pretend to think even my guessing is close. the whole thing just seems weird. IC believes that W needs IC for several issues, maybe that explains it. as I have no experience I take her opinion, but it's hard for me to believe. anyway just curious folks thoughts.
Well, as you said my XW was also one who never talked about the M, why she wanted to end it, what went wrong, etc. So I can relate to your feelings of confusion. I don't have any answers to you, all I can say is after asking myself "why" ten thousand times I finally understood I was never going to get an answer to that and eventually I just quit asking. It may sound silly but you do get to the point of telling yourself "it is what it is", you just accept it and move along.
