Thank you for your thoughts, and I’ll try to respond to as much as I can.
Let me first say, you’re not offending me—I understand you mean well, are a person of faith (though there are differences between Catholics and Christians in general, and teachings on BC can be one of them), and you are trying to help me, so I’m not going to react poorly. It does take a lot to offend me, unless someone goes after something deeply personal, or rather maliciously attacks a personal belief of mine. I don’t think that’s the case here. I also understand that you believe my W is not a WW, at least not yet, and you’ll treat her more as a WAW, which is fine by me.
I really, really don’t want to see the mistakes of your MR in ours. I also don’t want to see the mistakes of our parents’ MRs here too (her parents divorce when she was 6 or 8–I forget which, and my parents had a pretty unhappy marriage on the whole and finally S / D when I was 22). I vowed to make sure that that wouldn’t happen to me. And here I am.
For your first post, with respect to BC—I’ve basically laid it down and have not pursued it since October. I spoke my peace to her about it when she told me she was getting the IUD, and I basically told her “I don’t like it, I don’t think it’s a good idea, I’m morally opposed to it, and I won’t support you on it, but I also won’t blow up our marriage over it and that I’ll pray for your conversion in time.” And that was the end of it for me. I’m not totally okay with it, but at the end of the day, I also realize that it is her conscience—I didn’t push her to do this, I expressed my feelings about it, I tried to get her help and community for Natural Family Planning (NFP), prayed for her A TON, but......nothing, not yet. I’m not going to force her on it, and I’m not going to try to convert her on it any more. And you are correct, she will not be convinced by moral arguments against it. So, since mid-October, I haven’t expressed my views on the subject.
I fear that my W is close to leaving, but I hope that is not the case. Today she’s seemed different—seemed a lot more invested in me. She’s talked a lot today about doing things around our place later (we should put this in front of the fireplace for when YS starts crawling / walking), talked about sending me breast milk for me to use with YS while she is at training in the fall. She just seems different. I know, I know—believe nothing they say. And I’m trying not to get myself sucked back into things with her—c’mon Bo, don’t get sucked back in, don’t fall for it, or her.
I just don’t know what to believe—it’s hard for me to trust her. Like she’s buttering me up to knife me in the back emotionally later.
For your second post: Her mom (my MIL) lives out here—but that’s it for close family, for either of us. It’s always kinda been us on our own out here in SoCal, for the most part. She does have some female friends from work, but I think she needs some good, quality sisterhood (which I also tried to get for her for the whole NFP thing). We really don’t have too many visitors—now with 2 small kids, her having a busy work schedule and me having the demands of a teacher’s life, free time is really hard to come by.
With respect to the compliments, I’m not doing it, because I’ve given up pursuing her at the moment. Sometimes she looks amazing, like last weekend, or even today going to the story where she wore blue jeans, a cami underneath, and a tighter Nike black jacket over the cami. And she smelled great—really put on the peach body spray hard-core, and it smelled like it was concentrated towards my side of the bed. She tried to get out of the house more while she was on leave, but it was touch and go.
I’ll have to revisit the validation cheat sheet—I do understand that some of what I say / express can come across as cold and callous—it’s not totally my intent, but part of me doesn’t especially care right now. Though the PPD quote was genuine—I truly can’t save her, it’s not my place, not my battle.
It’s hard to want to pursue or emotionally embrace someone who has her finger hovering over a button that could nuke our marriage. Sounds harsh, but it’s where I’ve been at.
I’m sure she’s ripe to having an A....and I probably am too. But this guy has been in her life for the last 3.5 years or so. I’ve had to learn to swallow it and accept his presence in her life for work. But I’m not okay with it, and will probably never completely be.
I hope this helps, but please ask / comment if I need to clear anything up. Thank you!
