To all fellow DBers, thanks so far for comments, dialogue, and support so far! I've been at this for about 60 days and have changed a lot in my outlook, mostly because of you all!
But now I'm canvassing everyone for advice about communication -- communicating with my STBXW 13 months after BD.
Here's where things stand. We are entering perhaps the toughest part of the divorce process, trying to split up everything and, hopefully, avoid a trial.
First, I need to go back to last year. In the two weeks after my STBXW first filed for divorce, she was insistent that we could do the divorce without lawyers, using a mediator. I still wanted her back, so I agreed to it -- hoping beyond hope that my assent would warm her toward me. I couldn't have been more wrong; We had a 1-on-1 meeting 17 days after BD, and 11 days after that she went nuclear on me. Her lawyer accused me in correspondence of being hostile toward her, having violent tendencies and anger management issues, of harassing her, and threatening a restraining order if I so much as breathed a word via text or email. It almost put me in the ER. Here was the sweetest woman in the universe, presumably still calling herself a Christian, pulling the most dirty trick you can on a LBH who was still in shock from BD and desperate to do anything to reconcile.
Of course it totally poisoned the waters. Now there was zero chance that we would roll up our sleeves and work together toward an amicable divorce. Just what the lawyers want -- all communication being routed through them.
Her attorney never filed for the restraining order; in fact she fired him a couple months later and hired another one. I have speculated many times that she approved the "restraining order threat" against her better judgment, because she is naive and can be manipulated. And, when it didn't work, maybe that attorney wanted to fight harder and dirtier and she objected to the nastiness, and eventually fired him. I have no proof of this. Still, there is official correspondence on the record of this nasty accusation so I suppose it is still operative; meaning, if I sent her one text showing just a little irritation her new attorney could forward it to the judge as proof and thereby finally get that restraining order.
But my question here is essentially independent of the legal shenanigans. She has sent me a couple emails since August asking this and that and I have not replied. In not one of them did she say something mollifying like, "Let's put the fighting and division behind us, Tom, and try and work the details out on our own. I know we can do it." They usually say, "I'd like to know when I can come by this weekend to get some clothing" or "I understand you bought a new knife set, can I have the old one." I haven't answered a single one of the emails; maybe it's petulant of me but she set the stage for our communication at each step of the way and I guess it's my own little rebellion against her. Now I control how we communicate.
Does anyone here have any suggestions? What have you all been through? When a spouse, during the process of a divorce got nasty and played dirty, how did you turn things around? I just need some perspective. Thanks.
