W and I had a chat yesterday while handing off D3 (other 2 kids were at school). D3 was in the car, and the conversation escalated because W wanted to wait until spring to sell the house for a better price. And it is my fault for renting a second house which is causing us to spend into our savings.
And then, at some point, she hit me with it for the first time:
She resents me for us moving 2 years ago.
I put this in bold because I believe it is the truth, and also cannot believe she never told me this. Not once.
We went to 4 months of MC1 last year and she reassured me that she was fully on board with the move and that it was best for our family. It never came up as a source of friction. Instead she closed me off, and periodically would lash out at me about finances, or kids, or housework, or what have you, and I felt like I could never please her. And then she tells me she left her heart open to me, that she still loved me, and was waiting for me to "win her back" (same language as last week).
Had she brought this up a year ago, I would have been open to trying to move back and telecommuting to my current job. But she didn't. She explicitly said the move was not a problem. She thinks I wanted to move here and basically coerced her - what I wanted was security and stability for my family, in a lifestyle according to my W's wishes. That couldn't happen where we used to live. The insane part of this is after a year of establishing myself in my job up here, my employer would GLADLY allow me to telecommute from where we used to live. We could EASILY have made that move, had she brought it up. Instead, we spent MC1 detailing how I would do more laundry and housework...
I am extremely aggravated by all of this. I loved my W dearly. I would have jumped through hoops to win her back, had she given me any indication of what I could do. But when you are fighting outright resentment, and the other person has built up walls around their heart... it's a hopeless cause. I am also grateful for going through this personal hell because I have changed and I will be a happier person than had we worked through things then. But still... I don't know if I will ever be able to understand what has happened.
There are things I want to say to her but never will. I will probably make a post about this soon just to let it all out. Rather than communicating openly, honestly and respectfully, she hid behind her resentment and then mindread me in the worst possible way:
- Pull over the car to talk about our marriage crumbling? UC is about to run me off the road!
- Take S7 out with a pellet gun to shoot at a target? UC might go on a rampage!
- Go play guitar by myself to relax? UC is losing his mind!
- Write a love letter? UC is emotionally imbalanced!
- Respect the need for time and space in our separation? UC is not making an effort to win me back!
- Bring up that financially this separation is problematic? Money is a huge emotional trigger for UC!
- Lose some weight because of the pre-BD stress? UC may have borderline personality disorder!
"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." - St. Augustine.
This quote resonates for me constantly. I am not the world's greatest communicator. I probably was too passive, and DB in some ways is a passive approach to communication, for good reasons. But I did try in my own clumsy way. I tried. My W bottled up her resentment and periodically blew up at me, in ways that confused me. I knew she was unhappy, but I felt completely powerless to fix it. We went to counseling. I tried to talk to her but felt shut out. I wish I had figured out how to just talk with her in a way that worked for both of us. I did tons of research on couples communication last year - podcasts, reading - I tried out the techniques. It just... didn't... work.
Lately I've dropped some of the DB techniques. Yesterday during this chat she said she spent all weekend crying and mourning the loss of her dream of living near her family. She went on and on. I said, "Yeah ... I spent the last 6 months crying a lot mourning the loss of our marriage." I know this was a DB mistake. But... my feelings are valid and I don't have to validate her with "Oh yeah that must be hard not living near your family... " I tried validation for months and it got me through the separation, but I'm tired of being a blank canvas for her to project all of her feelings onto. Maybe she needs to hear that I'm hurt, that I feel, that I have actual human emotions.
She also said "I know you hate my family." I told her that was really harsh. I had a close relationship with her dad, and even last weekend D5 wrote a spontaneous note to her grandma that I helped her put in an envelope and mail. She said "Well you seem really cold because you don't ask about them." (sigh)... there is literally no winning.
She brought up again that if she asked me to move back in, would I? And I again said, like I did last week, "No. I would tell you we need to work on things." This was a weird thing to ask a second time. I didn't take it as an honest ask. I think she wanted to see this as confirmation I am done. She can spin it however she wants...
I'll wrap this up with some honesty: What I am grieving is this all seems so .... fixable. It seems like a communication breakdown that went horribly wrong. And I know viewing things this way shows me that I still hold onto a thread of that rope.
