Wow, 2 months has flown by. I have equal time with my kids, and with remote school and work and dealing with my second job (legal work) I am super busy. It's a circus at my house sometimes.
My D is still creeping along. There is movement recently away from litigation and towards a settlement on remaining financial matters which would be incredible. I don't want to jinx it. Some of the recent legal developments have probably pushed things in this direction.
I still lurk from time to time in Newcomers but I'm finding I don't have much to add. I wish everyone the best, but at the same time, I am grateful to be out of my MR. I'm likely to say "Don't put up with lousy treatment" but many of you likely have some chance of R, whereas I think my chances were nil. I can probably give a lot of great legal advice for people but that's not really the purpose of the forum here.
I'm in a new relationship now. In my previous relationships I tethered my emotions to the other person. If she's happy, I'm happy, that sort of thing. Probably due to a combination of NGS and CEN. I don't think about it that much anymore. What an awful way to live. It certainly contributed to my MR falling apart, but there's a lot of other more prominent reasons that things devolved. Other people's emotions and reactions don't impact me the way they used to anymore. I'm not bothered and stressed when someone's upset. If I feel they have been wronged, I apologize. If I don't, I validate. Self-differentiation is an amazing thing.
My GF is D'ed and has kids of her own and we both have busy lives. We enjoy time together and we give each other space for self-care and there's a heavy dose of reality. We both like being active outdoors and she is incredibly easy-going. It's just... really nice. If I feel like doing something, I say "Let's go do XYZ!" instead of "Hey, is it, um, okay, if sometime, maybe, we spend a little time doing XYZ?" I haven't told my kids and don't expect to for quite some time.
Most of what I've learned here I now apply to parenthood and work and friends and this new relationship. I'm always learning and I love that part of my life.
At some point I may jump over to the "Surviving" forum and post. In the meantime, I doubt I'll be updating my own sitch here. Things are great. Not perfect, just great. Things could have turned out much much differently. I could have much less time with my kids. DB helped me immensely in not reacting to the bait and handling my own sh*t.
