Still here. Still not detached... (Part 3)

[Chris73]

Sometimes I feel like one of the kids from the Nightmare on Elm Street movie who are so afraid of their dreams that they don't want to go to sleep!

Not that I'm necessarily afraid of my dreams, but the last 4 nights haven't been fun. Sometimes I dream about my ex and we're back together and happy. Other times she's doing her GGW routine. And sometimes she's angry with me. But regardless, waking up and realizing how much she is still on my mind is pretty depressing and it certainly doesn't get me all psyched up to get out of bed and start my day!

Today we had a quick meeting to discuss the holiday and birthdays (both kids have birthdays in December). The original plan was for her to come to my house xmas morning so we could do gifts together. But now she's decided that she'd rather not do that at all. She wants to do two completely separate xmases and other than one or two big things that the kids want, we will be buying gifts separately.

As it stands, the four of us will still share a meal on both kids' birthdays, but that's about it.

I suppose I'm in the "acceptance" stage now because I didn't put up any kind of fight. I mean, what is there really to debate about? She can't make it any more clear that she doesn't want to have anything to do with me, so why protest? It's just such a hard pill to swallow, especially since my thoughts linger too much on the past and how different things were only a few years ago.

There are plenty of people who insist that I shouldn't feel responsible for the decisions she's made to cheat on me and abandon the marriage. That it doesn't really have anything to do with me and that there was nothing I could have done to change her mind.

But there's always that little voice in my head that reminds me of how many opportunities I had over the course of our marriage to show her how much I valued her and our relationship. And every time I missed one of those opportunities, a little more of her love/respect for me leaked out of her bucket, until one day it was bone dry.

I suppose this is all great mirror work for me in the hopes of eventually starting a relationship with a new person. But right now I just wish I had a time machine...