Uncertain of What I Have (Thread 6)

[LH19]

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.

Great! I won't blow sunshine up your a$$

Some of the things I would try to work on; for whatever reason, I didn’t or couldn’t change some of those things.

Like Master Yoda said "Do or do not. There is no try".

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.

Your making changes for you. Who cares what she thinks!

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.

This sounds more like invalidating her feelings.

FWIW, my L doesn’t believe that it would necessarily qualify as abuse—for family law, there is a very specific standard.

Agree.

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.

Keep working on the things YOU want to change about yourself.

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.

Not because they bothered her but because you would like to change them.