Also I forgot to mention that although I am unsure if there is OM, her doing things such as changing her phone password and texting a lot more than she use to make it pretty clear to me she must be talking to OM. I kind of came to this last night.
Not necessarily, WAS's always pick up an enabler or two and share EVERYTHING about how unhappy they are, how they want a D, how if they could only get rid of their H then everything would be great, etc. etc. and they don't want their spouse to see those "secrets". My XW suddenly clung to her phone day and night, like would literally fall asleep with it in her hand which was not at all normal for her. I snooped (this is before finding DB'ing) and it was all exchanges with her enabler friend who had recently left her husband.
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She then said something like if we don’t end up getting back together in a few months maybe we should just see a mediator. Seems like she’s looking for an easy way out, however the week of BD she expressed no interest in getting back together. Seems like she is considering it though now with my changes. Or she is just being nice so I don’t fight back who knows.
Probably a little of both- trying to keep you on as Plan B and also soften you up for D negotations by "dangling the carrot".
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Next I forgot how we got into it but she started talking about my laundry list of problems. “I tried to get you to buy new clothes for years and now you buy them”. “Every time we went shopping you would come after me to give you money.” “You can’t just be involved with our kid a lot for a month and think you are a super dad now”.
To all of these complaints I didn’t get up set but responded with something along the lines of: “I have made these changes for myself. I understand these changes are too late for you but I have realized the person I want to be.”
Great, that's a perfect response.
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She then started getting upset and really started tearing into me: “you were never there for me, you were such a terrible person to me” all this stuff that isn’t true in my opinion. I tried to validate saying that I didn’t give her enough attention and didn’t speak her love language but I did defend myself as well.
Don't defend, just listen and validate. defending will just escalate things into a fight.
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I told her “you saying I wasn’t there for you isn’t true. I was all you had for many rough years. I was your rock, when we had to go get your mom from the hospital multiple times, I was the only one there for you.” Her mom is an alcoholic and hit rock bottom and fell off the wagon every few months. She is doing much better now.
I know it’s typical for WAWs to change the MR history so everything is negative. But this really hurt me.
I understand that, but you've got to get over it. Just remember that "her perception is her reality" whether you agree with it or not. She's being truthful, she really doesn't think you were there for her. She BELIEVES her version of rewritten history. So when you "defend yourself" all you are telling her is "you are wrong and I am right" which to her looks like "more of the same" behavior. If you listen and validate you are not AGREEING with her, you are merely acknowledging that's how she feels. It defuses the situation because you are not taking sides. Work on that, it's very important.
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I tried not to show too much emotion but at some point tempers flared. I brought up that she was talking to an OM: she replied angrily “there’s no OM”! I replied “sure keep telling yourself that because I don’t believe it.”
OK so I hope you can dissect this and see that up to this point things were going well and this was a turning point where it all went to crap. You stopped listening and validating and fell into old habits, right? So what did you learn from it?
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I made an error here and started texting some friends. I turned on my phone volume and started texting loudly. She got super angry and maybe was projecting that I was texting a girl or something. She then started calling me a d*ouchebag repeatedly. She got so mad that at one point she said “let’s just file for D”. I replied “that’s not what I want but go ahead. I’m not stopping you!” She was so upset that she was crying. Not sure why she was crying though. Self pity? We both had done some drinking and I don’t think she really meant this about getting D”
