Moving On

[may22]

Curtis, Scout, Wayfinder, Pommy, Unchien... i have been thinking quite a bit about what and how to tell the children. (I think it was on Scout's thread that I posted my friend and I were joking whether or not it would be age-appropriate to say "Daddy couldn't keep his wee-wee in his pants, so we're getting divorced.") I am comfortable for now telling them that Mommy and Daddy have some things to work out and Daddy is going to sleep (ideally offsite) for awhile. I think eventually it will need to be something along the lines of what Chumplady espouses, when you get married you agree to not have any other boyfriends or girlfriends, and Daddy has a new girlfriend, so we can't be together anymore. For awhile I felt like making him say Daddy doesn't love Mommy like that anymore, which is also true and maybe what they should hear. I don't know. But for now I am comfortable not throwing all the blame on him for this first step. For a long time I wasn't. And as much as I wanted to protect the children from having to know any of it, I just don't see that as a viable possibility anymore. We are here. H is incapable of letting his AP go on his own, and therefore incapable of working on the MR. Under these circumstances, I see no course other than needing to go our separate ways. It breaks my heart to have to do this to the children, but I simply see no other option at the moment.

Alison-- I can take the baby 2x4s The sad thing about his last visit... no, I didn't know it. I am an overly trusting person, I think. It is a fault of mine in the workplace. I am a terrible interviewer as I tend to like everyone and never can pick out the bad ones, and then am always shocked when something goes wrong. I have colleagues who sit in on interviews now who have better spidey senses than I do. Now that he says it happened, it isn't shocking-- I'm over all the shock of each new drip drop of truth-- but I guess I wanted it to be true so imagined it so. I do think it also had to do with the fact that I hadn't fully acknowledged to myself the extent and depth of his R with AP. It is so clearly to me a fantasy that I don't get why he can't snap out of it. Whereas to him it is True Love, leaving her is breaking promises to her. Earlier in the week when we were still talking about this kind of thing, he said to me, if a spouse dies, no one says you'll just get over it. They say eventually, you'll learn to live with the pain. That is how I feel about losing her. It has taken all of this to finally believe that our M is over. It isn't just a crack. It is shattered on the ground and he's been building a new R with someone else in his head if not in reality for two and a half years. Time for me to accept what he's been trying to tell me and move on. But at the time when he broke it off with her, I didn't want to see that-- I wanted to believe that we just had a crack and it was fixable with enough effort and glue and TRYING on my part. I didn't realize that deep down, he didn't really want to fix it.

(Side note. He just came into the office where i'm working and asked to tell me something. He said he wanted to say it in a vacuum and not have me respond with anything. I said OK. He said, "I never should have let another person into our marriage. That was wrong and I shouldn't have done it. I should have dealt with our issues in another way. I want you to know that I realize that and I'm sorry." I didn't say anything for a minute and then said, ok. thank you for saying that. He said, I know I did it and we are here now. But I know it was wrong and I wanted you to hear that from me. I said, ok. He said, it never meant I stopped loving you or love you any less. I said, I don't think that is love. He said ok, nodded, and left the room. Was this interaction OK? Should I let him say this stuff to me as long as I can listen and not respond?)

On the Shirley Glass book, you're totally right. But we had that conversation the night that he told me about the reconnecting (ugh, is that BD#4? really, people? what am I still doing here?) and I ordered it from Amazon the next day. It arrived Saturday and I left it in the Amazon packaging, didn't open it. He asked what was in it and I said I thought the Shirley Glass book. When I was gone in the afternoon he opened it and read it himself. Again, I know I pushed him to do this. But it was before all our conversations about boundaries and me realizing that I am/was still trying to manipulate him. I'm not anymore. (Or I'm trying my very best not to.)

Other things I can fill my headspace with... lots of plans for a puppy or a kitten. D8 would be insane with joy. Trying to refocus on my actual job too even though I'm really sick of it and dealing with some real a$$holes there too...but short term I think probably better to stick it out here for a bit. I have a session with my executive coach tomorrow to work through a lot of this. Looking around at rooms and what will stay and what will go, how can I reclaim this house for ME and the girls. I planted a vegetable garden during this time and it is going nuts. Yoga. Maybe a big fat juicy fun novel. All last week I have been pretty mopey and H has picked up most of the slack with cooking/cleaning/laundry. I am back in it and taking care of things myself.

Steve, I 100% hear you, not making decisions out of emotion is really important to me and I could actually hear you and others' advice on this topic in my head yesterday as I was coming to this realization. No need to make any big moves. I think the best thing I can do is to continue to keep my head down, interactions to a minimum, no R talks (or at least none where I say anything), and try the best I can to turn the focus on me for awhile. Not the kids, not my H. Me. You and Scout are also totally right that he is really invested in the narrative of him not being the bad guy. (At one point early on when we were fighting and I said everyone would know he was a total cheating a-hole, he said you don't need to tell people that, you don't want people feeling sorry for you. I said, I'm not going to lie to my friends. He tried to go the kid way (do you want to scar them like that, people knowing this?) and then when that didn't work said, ok fine, I'll just have to tell people that you didn't sleep with me for seven years and I'll be the one they feel sorry for. I was like, OK, that is fine with me.) I think he hopes that somehow this can all work out when she moves out here and no-one will have to know she was his side piece for the past three years, that our M just didn't work out and how lucky for him to have found true love a second time around.

Another sidebar question-- he thinks that if he stays in the M, it will be out of fear and he'll become a cliche, the man who could have had happiness and didn't have the b@lls to take the step.. Whereas I feel like him leaving for a 34 year old AP is like the total stereotypical cliche. Am I wrong? I was wondering if it was a female-male thing-- women think the cliche is the H leaving for his secretary and men think the cliche is letting the light die out of your eyes slowly every day until you die??)

FS, your post is so true. It is incredibly difficult and I'm not good at being fueled by anger in the long term. Also because in the day-to-day he is not, unfortunately, a complete and unrepentant a-hole, it is difficult to reconcile that H with the lying cheater. I have to keep it running in my head. I can see how I could easily do this in tiny blips of interactions for a long period of time... it is hard to keep up when you are in the same house. But I'll continue to work on that and also actual detaching. Those phrases are perfect.

Thanks everyone. I think it takes me some time to get around to where I need to be but I think I'm on the right path. Just need to figure out how to stick to it now and not backslide.