I’m checking in, and trying to reality check myself. I am focusing on (but not yet succeeding fully at) detaching. I felt really good when I let for my dinner on Tuesday, I focused on me and on my daughter and then on going and having fun with my friend, and it felt so good! I saw my H checking me out before I left, and when he saw me see him he winked at me super nervously and awkwardly. Who knows, but it gave me a boost. He lingered a bit when I got back but I didn’t bite. At my therapy session on Wednesday I told my therapist that I wanted to talk about anything but him, so that was new, ha!
Yesterday I took my daughter to the beach, always a favorite family activity for us. It was a lovely time, then at about 2 pm, I see my H walking up with his buddy and his surfboard (he’s a lifelong surfer). My heart sank and I was frozen in shock. He goes there a lot but I didn’t expect him in the middle of the work day. My daughter (she’s 3) was insanely excited to see him, he said hi to us and played with her for a moment. Then he casually asked if he could just take her from there when he was done surfing. It was his evening with him, but this was super irritating to me given the circumstances. Like I’m gonna turn my beach day with my daughter into waiting there for him to surf so I can hand her off?? I had so many emotions as he walked off to surf, but they didn’t matter because my daughter was beside herself. She was so upset, confused as to why he was there and not playing with her. She cried hysterically for an hour, just saying I want daddy over and over. It was absolutely heart breaking and I was (perhaps irrationally) PISSED. But as I was comforting my daughter on my way home, I realized that despite all of my valid feelings, he hadn’t in fact done anything “wrong” to me. I knew that when he came to my house afterward that he would be expecting me to be angry and punish him somehow. So I decided to flip the script. I comforted and talked to my daughter and got her settled. Then I freshened up, has a glass of wine and greeted him with a smile. He offered to pick up dinner and asked what I wanted, I thanked him kindly and let him know I’d be going out. He apologized to our daughter for upsetting her and to ME for leaving me to deal with it. This is basically UNPRECENDENTED. The man has apologized to me properly less than 5 times in the nearly 8 years I’ve known him. I thanked him and left. When I got back he was sitting rather close to me on the couch, casually chatting with me about an article he’d read. He said to my daughter “ you smell really good, like coconut” and I said oh actually that’s me and he seemed embarrassed. I’ve been wearing the same scent for about 20 years so I’m fairly sure he knew it was me but who knows. He left after Daughters bed time without mentioning anything divorce related, and that alone felt like a small victory.
Now I just need to be VERY careful not to attach any meaning to any of this and keep myself free of expectations. It is very very difficult and leaves me feeling like...I don’t know how to feel, I suppose.