Outside of kid stuff, I am ramping up my nights out with friends, from a few nights a month in the past to weekly now - usually after the kids are down. Local music, hanging over a friend's house for a few beers, etc. Planning on some bigger things as we go forward - concerts, weekend away with some friends, etc. It's just a little tougher because of the kids, so a good portion of GAL will involve them. I'm trying to schedule some events - dinners, hikes, camping - with some dads of the kids friends - kind of a daddy-kids thing, no mommies. Also i'm back in the gym lifting weights (used to be a huge gym rat) and getting a new mountain bike and joining a few dads I met through the kids on some trails. Again, I want to GAL but balance it with kids time, I know you get it.
Awesome! Either you come by DB'ing naturally or you are picking it up really quickly, but you are definitely doing all the right things. Well done.
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W has a lot of positive qualities and is viewed by most as a great catch (including me at least until a few years ago), beautiful, great shape, successful, social, on and on. She has that nasty streak that really [censored], but that is not 100% of who she is. There are a lot of great qualities in the mix, but when the nasty comes out it is bad.
Not sure if you've read NMMNG but strangely SHE sounds like the one that has NGS in your relationship! Appears to be the perfect little wifey to everyone else but treats you like dirt behind closed doors.
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I am no choir boy and I want to make sure I am not overplaying a victim card here - I have many positive qualities and do believe I am a great catch as well, but I have the capacity to be an ahole depending on the circumstances. If I am challenged, criticized or attacked in a way that I deem confrontational or aggressive, I am going to counter with some level of force, using sarcasm, pointing out the hypocrisy of my attacker, challenging the truth of their position, on and on. I am working on a better way to be in these circumstances. Work in progress.
Yeah I do get the sense you are owning your part of it and working on that which is great.
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Regarding the MBR, yes I am in it and W just moved to a guest suite after her sister and her husband cleared out after visiting for Christmas. W wanted the MBR for the IHS, I told her I was not moving out of the room and that we had 2 other empty bedrooms to choose from. She was seething.
Of course she was, how dare you not cave to her every whim and demand! You did the right thing, as you said even if the alternate is more comfortable for her it is a big symbolic move.
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W really wants me out of the house but I told her very calmly and assertively that I have not decided what my plan is as far as future living sitch and that I am not moving right now and perhaps not at all.
Good. My ex did the same. I told her that I wasn't going anywhere, it was my home and if she wanted to abandon the marriage then that was her choice to make and I wasn't going to try and stop her. But I certainly wasn't going anywhere, and if she decided to stay then she needed to do so with the understanding that she would work on the M. She did choose to leave of course, but I'm glad I kept the house. I'm an architect and have done a lot of very personal hands-on work to the house over the nearly 20 years I've been in it. Why should I be the one inconvenienced by having to find somewhere else to live, and lay awake at night wondering if some scuzzy OM was sleeping in MY bed in MY bedroom washing my wife's sex off of himself in MY shower. No, that was not going to happen, EVER.
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I told her she is free to do whatever she needs to do to get her space, including moving out herself. This led to a brief discussion regarding future plans for the house, which we both want and both agree would be best to keep for the kids as it is the only home they have ever lived in. The issue is going to be the buyout as we have owned the home for 7 years, bought it at the bottom of the RE crash and we now have massive equity.
Yes, that was another thing is the house was home base for the kids so that was another reason to remain there. It was their place of comfort. We bought it in a new development and over the course of our M it doubled in value. It was paid off well before we got D'd. I had to take out a mortgage on it to pay my ex her half of everything. Get this, the mortgage amount was identical to the penny to the original mortgage amount. So I was quite literally starting all over again, except this time paying everything by myself. Man that irks me, LOL! Still, like I said I'm glad I stayed in it. No regrets at all.
