Awaiting Actions (LB55 #5)

[LB55]

So just had a 2 hour phone call with W. She mostly vented a bunch about all the stuff I’ve written about before. Nothing changed there, just listened and validated her feelings.

She did talk about herself and some changes she has made regarding eliminating negative people, doing things she wants and taking care of herself first. All stuff you’d read in most any self help book out there. She talked about our communication issues and a desire to improve how we talk to each other. A lot of what she said are things I’ve been working on for myself too. She claims she is fully healed and ready to move forward in life. I’m skeptical to say the least. I’ve seen very little action from her outside of playing the victim and just generally being rude towards me. All in all a productive conversation, she did agree I can ask for more 3 day weekends to spend with the kids and that I can have Labor Day weekend with them too. She expressed desires to restore her relationship with my sister too, how much she misses her but doesn’t think it can happen. I just validated and left the door open; I’ll talk with my sister and see if she is amenable to that. I did tell W that we need to make a lot more progress in trusting each other before I can endorse her having any relations with my family.

The initial point of the conversation was to discuss getting my things from the house, initially we were going to do it together, now she wants to not be there but have her dad there to supervise me going through stuff. I told her I’d have to think about it. On one hand it’s an opportunity to get it done(there is nothing there is really ‘need’ right now), on the other hand she is trying to remove her responsibility in getting it done and I feel like I should hold her feet to the fire.

Additionally, she told me she would like to start having a weekly dinner as a family. I would really like that as well. I told her as such. No need to hold my hand close to the vest on that one. I’ve wanted that for a long time.

This is the big ticket item though...she asked me what my goal going forward is in regard to her and I. Where I see it going. I told her I need time to think about it and will resume the topic at a later time. She was ok with that. Her words say she wants a divorce still. Her actions say she is unsure what she wants. My ultimate goal would be to R with her and restore our family under a new and improved marriage. That will likely overwhelm her though so I’m not sure what to say. I did tell her a short term goal is continued communication improvement. Might be a bit vague but she agreed to work on receiving things better and I agreed to the same. Small manageable chunks is what I can do. I want her to know my goal is to iron things out and work on a new romantic relationship with her. She even laughed at a joke today and said she missed my humor...I told her I missed her laughing too...it was nice. Small steps.

Tomorrow she might be back to cold calculating WW but for today she was a bit better. The conversation ended well and I got off the phone before it could go off the rails.

Do I tell her my goal for the relationship? She likely already knows I’d prefer to get back together. Don’t want to state something she already knows but don’t want to be unclear on my intentions either. I think I’m gonna go visit my work bud and see what he thinks. He’s never met my W. He’s been through this divorce process twice and has some good perspective to keep me from doing dumb things.

Lastly I appreciate all of your thoughts and advice. Thank you!