I know you think I am hard on you but I want you to come out of this knowing that you have things to work on. Your W crying in the shower is a big red flag that you were hurting her. Not sure if you are aware of the seriousness of it.
LH, I do get it, even if I don’t always sound or act like it—I know why you’re doing it, and I need to face up to some things that are at first hard for me to hear.
W has told me before that she would cry in the shower about things (I’ll mention that below).
Some of the things I would try to work on; for whatever reason, I didn’t or couldn’t change some of those things.
However, when I did try to 180 on some things or work on them, I don’t know if my progress was not sufficient enough for her.
Originally Posted by LH19
Did she give specifics on how you were abusive?
The areas that she asked me to continually work on were (if I recall correctly): forgetfulness, being more open to sex / sexuality (in terms of frequency / practices / talking about it), giving her direct answers to questions (instead of being indecisive), giving up doing NFP in favor of IUD as a form of birth control. My inability to change on some of these is what she labels abusive or hurtful.
FWIW, my L doesn’t believe that it would necessarily qualify as abuse—for family law, there is a very specific standard.
In any event, legal advice notwithstanding, these are things that I will need to work on no matter my future with W—whatever that looks like with or without her, so I can be a much better version of myself. I did believe that I made progress in several of these areas, but back in October she claims that it wasn’t enough—which is when she first proposed S / break.
Originally Posted by LH19
AS talks about this all the time, yes she is complained about this in the past but she doesn't want you to fix it now. That shipped has sailed.
Agreed that that ship has sailed. I tried to fix it to the best of my ability from January / February until YS was born. But yeah, that part is gone, and I’m becoming more at peace with it for right now.
Originally Posted by LH19
I took it as your lawyer suspects she is having an affair.
I am not saying this is your fault I am saying you need to own your side of the street and start to construct a plan on how the future is going to look for you and your children. Forget about intimacy, dating etc and first learn to stand on your own.
L is not ruling out another man, but it doesn’t really impact me legally.
You’re right—I do need to own my side of the street on this one.
For me, it involves continuing to address the things that bothered her, as well as act with my confidence and decisiveness, be a better father to the kids (I don’t think I wasn’t before, but I do have some room for improvement in that regard). I’m also working on aspects of NGS in my personality.
I also told my LMFT that I’m here to work on some things for myself, but also to have it benefit my kids / our family going forward.
