22 years gone

[rooskers]

From Ready2Change in another thread.

Stop judging her. How hard is it for you to change your behavior? How much harder do you think it is to change someone elses behavior? She is not going to change until you change the way you interact with her. Even then, it will take her significantly longer. Why? Because you KNOW you need to change and she does not know she has to change. You have a whole team of people supporting you. She does not.

I love reading R2C advice and really looking at myself deeply. It is very difficult to not judge how my XW treats D13. I journal here about it but do not engage XW ever about any of it. D13 has a therapist who works with her and I try to just listen to D13 when she talks about it and give advice only sparingly.

The most difficult thing for me is I am not sure what I need to change about myself. I am not sure what the 180's should be or the big changes I need to make for myself.

-I am learning to listen better and take off my hat as a teacher when I am home with D13.
-I am reading self improvement books but have always read these and tried to implement portions of them in my life.
-I have added more exercise to my life, but don't feel I have to go to the gym to get "ripped".
-I have scaled back the work schedule in my life to spend more time with D13 but I had been making those changes for a couple years now. XW complained I didn't work when I was a stay at home dad but then was upset I didn't spend time with her when I did work?
-I have been working on not procrastinating. Example I have been putting off fixing all the leaking faucets in the house so couple weekends ago I just got it done.
-I have definitely been working on not letting my job stress me out as much.
-I have really tried to alter my communication style to include a lot more validation.
-I am learning to forgive myself.
-I am learning to forgive my XW.

Well Rooskers you just wrote a huge list of changes so why are you asking this, because I have always been working on these things. XW never complained about much in our R and when she did, like the working to much, I tried to make the necessary changes. She said I was too controlling of the finances so I let her take over the finances. Friends, family, and, coworkers said she never said anything negative about me and was always thankful for all of my contributions. The only exception to that is when she was having her first affair and possible second affair I was completely demonized. I look inward and try to reflect as much as I can on my 50% and can certainly see lots of things I could have improved on but I also realize there was no way I could have been perfect. I guess it just hurts when I reflect back the biggest complaint which she shared with her counselor during the first affair and with D13, was that I didn't build D13's crib when she was pregnant. If I could turn back time I would have built the crib a thousand times but I don't think it would have made a difference.

After second BD she said she didn't love me, broke up with me a long time ago, had been faking it for years, didn't want to tell me the reasons, wanted a divorce, never wanted to see me again, never wanted me to call her, for me to raise D13 but let her see her sometimes, and then she left. So I gave her the space she wanted, the divorce she wanted, am raising D13 like she wanted, and all I receive is utter hatred from her. D13 says that XW believes I am the most horrible, disgusting, nasty human being on the planet. Last time I tried to fight by talking, MC, working on our love languages, begging, pleading, working on just me and a whole host of other things but this time I fought by just letting her go. In some way I feel as if I have hurt XW so deeply that she felt forced to just walk away to start a "clean slate" as she put it. It is hard that I feel like the person I loved most in my life, other than D13, I some how hurt that badly and have no idea what I did.

I am sure there is some women's group that would read this and say "typical stupid male ego, they never know what they do and deserve what they get." Well all I can say to that is I am willing to learn but never deserved any of this and neither did my daughter.

For whoever reads this, thank you for listening.