This is a gift #2

[unchien]

Alison, may22 ~

Thank you for your feedback. I can tell you put a lot of careful thought in your replies.

We all face a choice. Do we continue with the patient approach and endure our situations? Do we focus so much on self-improvement that we become happy regardless of what happens, but also continue in relationships that do not bring us joy, love, and emotional fulfillment for some indefinite amount of time (days, months, years, decades)? Is that an acceptable life choice? Can we heal from the thousand paper-cuts and deeper wounds inflicted upon us during the situations? Can our partner? This decision is personal for every one of us, and there is no right or wrong answer. And we may never get confirmation for the remainder of our lives whether we made the right choice. Such is life.

I like the saying "Life is a place of abundance" - there are a gazillion potential futures out there for each of us. Many of those futures involve a divorce and our kids going through a difficult transition. DB (as I see it) is about reframing our lives -- the goal is not to pick one future and aim for that. The goal is to be happy regardless of which of those gazillion futures our lives leads towards.

OK enough philsophical indulgent rambling

You can give evidence of a pattern of behaviour. I know the letters worry you, but you have done what you can on that for the time being. I think this situation has gone well, well beyond you earning her trust - given that if what you say is right (and I have no reason to think it isn't) she's being irrational and her trust in you would mean nothing anyway.

Right. I have concluded that I will face the consequences of the letters. I can't run from the past. I can't fix it by being patient and waiting. I tried that for 6 months and my W did not budge. If the past affects my future parenting rights, so be it. I am hopeful that long-term my situation with my kids can be no worse than it currently is (4 days every 2 weeks, W making the primary decisions) -- and even now my relationship with my kids is higher quality than it was before!

Take it this way - from a mother who had absorbed more verbal abuse and toxic, emotionally dysregulated behaviour from a man than was sane or reasonable on my part (and that's on me) if this woman - a mother - truly and honestly believed you were a physical risk to your children you wouldn't be having them at all. No sense of wanting to be kind would let any sane mother put her children in danger.

I am sure she would do the same. Absolutely.

Reading through this (and I haven't read your entire thread but will do so) I will tell you that my impression is that she is emotionally abusing you. This is gaslighting and trying to make you think there is something wrong with you. It is NOT OK. No one deserves to be treated like this. I absolutely believe that you are doing the right thing in no longer participating in her toxic and unhealthy narrative. If she were a physical abuser, would earning her trust be a worthy goal? After reading through these last few posts, I don't think it is possible for you to earn her trust at this point anyway. She'll just keep moving the goalposts. The part about she's doing you a favor by not moving away with the kids and by telling you what is wrong with you in MC just kills me. That is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I agree that our dynamic is toxic and unhealthy, and that the goalposts will move. I recognize gaslighting techniques. Because of what I've gone through, I resist labels, but labels do help understand and can point us in the right direction to learn more. Gaslighting implies that the other person is maybe calculating or malevolent -- I think more often than not it's just an extremely toxic way they have of relating to the world, and some of us fall prey to the techniques. It is confusing as all get out when it happens.

Last summer I read a book on emotional abuse. It was incredibly fascinating. There are clear-cut cases where one partner is flat-out abusing the other. Calling them awful names, taking away their spending money, etc. But there is so much gray area and this book explored the gray areas at length, including the dynamic where both partners are hurting each other but perhaps in different ways. The fact is... relationships require vulnerability. And with love comes the potential to hurt. It is a risk we take when we jump into the deep end of the pool.

I think Alison has a couple of really good points here I want to reinforce. One, even though I know my H is a great dad and I trust the kids with him 100 percent, I struggle with the thought of not having the same level of input and control that I do today (and frankly, I think this will bother him too). For someone who is a SAHM and might have had a lot of control over all these aspects of the household and the children, this has got to be terrifying (and probably part of the reason she made you be the one to move out, and is hanging on so dearly to this notion that you are somehow untrustworthy because that is the only way she gets to keep that level of control over their lives in a D situation). I also agree that you simply can't enable that anymore by validating or participating in any way.

I absolutely empathize with my W on this level. She has been a SAHM for 2+ years now. She is in a new city, will have to ramp up her career, and will almost certainly require a change to her current living situation. That alone is terrifying as you said.

I also know she likes her control, and will grasp it even more tightly in this situation. I think there are areas of our kids' lives where, going forward, I may be okay with her having that control. I'm not sure. I certainly empathize that she knows she is facing a difficult transition. I also worry about her - I think she has an unhealthy narrative running in her head that will make this transition harder for her and the kids. There is not much I can do to change that, and by starting the D process I imagine it will only get worse for some time. But... I don't think I can help her anymore. I think if my goal is earn her trust back so we can have an amicable D, that alone will take another year. In the meantime, I will have a lot of uncertainty in a continued limbo, no reasonable chance at more time with my kids, and we will continue to be financially wasteful. And my end goal would be to avoid a nasty D, which again may or may not happen regardless. I certainly don't want that, I want something that is reasonable and fair within the guidelines of the law.

Your plan-- going dark, GAL, moving forward with the mediation process to resolve the financial and custody issues-- seems to be the right one. I can't remember, are you in IC?

You are a good person and a great dad. Don't forget that. You're doing the right thing for them.

Yes, I am in IC. My IC doesn't necessarily dole out advice -- we explore options and then evaluate the pros/cons and he leaves decisions up to me. I like that approach.