Here I thought I was empathetic towards you, Tom! Crickets. Just kidding. I'll work more on my empathy. I'll generalize and say women are more empathetic than me. I think all men need to work on it. My girlfriend took a test, and the results stated that her number one quality was empathy, so I have a lot of catching up to do. I'm going to let others try to help you out with empathy. The women can probably help you out the most
My question for you, Tom is: are you used to winning? I get the feeling from your posts that you are used to winning, that you are competitive, and that you are a little tightly wound. I wonder if that plays into the difficulty you are having with the divorce. Part of it may be you feel like you lost at the marriage thing. I know I did. I felt like a failure, and I hate losing.
FYI - nobody on this forum is getting paid to help others. We all came here as broken people looking to save our marriages. I've stuck around because the help I received was valuable to me and because I'm interested in knowing how the situations turn out for the people who were on the board at the same time as me.
Harvey, you're pretty close to being on target there. Yes, I have been in senior leadership at companies for a long time; I am also a part-time college instructor in management and leadership. While I am not accustomed to winning per se, I am accustomed to being in charge and and being front and center with groups of people. So .... when a bunch of new DB friends are virtually standing around me with their arms crossed, glaring at me, telling me to confess my word crimes ... yes, I don't give in to demands like that. Such is my nature. Think that one through a minute. If you raised kids, and you demanded they say "sorry" or insisted they admit to a failing, how effective was it?
And absolutely yes, I feel like I lost at the marriage thing. I've said multiple times I feel like an utter failure at the thing that I treasured most -- my marriage and my intact family. I weep about it regularly, still, 14 months later. I expect that my children will be impacted permanently by this, even though they are all legal adults now. At our 20th anniversary, the ex and I renewed our vows and dedicated the ceremony to the kids and to "being a family forever!" [Whoops, the other half forgot about that promise, I guess.]
The kids and I have had several deep family meetings about things since BD last September. While we always had family meetings, since they were small, these were unique in that for nearly the first time, Mom wasn't there and I went 100% vulnerable with the kids. Bared my soul. Talked about my failures, about the hopes and dreams that were dashed (yet not blaming their mom). My critics might find this hard to believe, but this was huge movement on my part. The four of us were all crying together.
I'll get into more details about the empathy part in another comment here. I need to give it some thought.
Final point, Harvey. Please don't talk about me in my own thread. You and Ben went on like this a week or so ago, talking about me as if I were invisible or unable to understand English. To me, this is unconscionably rude. It's bad enough to talk about someone behind their back. It's worse to do it in front of them. I ask this very politely. Talk directly to me if you want to figure me out. Thanks.
