Second roller coaster ride (2)

[Card29]

All of the lying is going on behind my back. To my face, phone, text, whatever, it's mostly only S1 business.

It's an ugly situation with her parents. FIL is basically reliving his own D from 20 years ago, which apparently got very nasty. I'm guessing MIL is, too. He has said some nasty things about MIL on the phone that I've never heard him utter. I'm sure it was things he said during their D. I'm not leaning on him as a pillar of support, but I've had a phone call with him about once a week so far. I've encouraged him to give W space, and he's agreed. He's totally in the dark with what's going on with her, so are her siblings. If he loses his (bleep) on MIL or W, it won't do anyone any good, including S1. I acknowledge I can't control him, he's not my responsibility, but I'm just trying to be an influence. If it helps, great. If not, it's on him.

I've sensed projection not only from him, but also a friend I recently hung out with. Friend was with a woman for 5 years who sounds like she legitimately has narcissistic personality disorder, or something very similar. He lived through hell before he finally left. They have a daughter together. He was telling me all of the similarities he sees in my W compared to his X. It got me to research the topic. While I do think she shares a few traits of some different narcissism issues, it mostly just felt like projection from him. It felt like you could find narcissistic traits in anyone, if you wanted to. He also described a woman he dated for a few weeks earlier this year and acted like he spotted narcissism in her, too. Seems like he's seeing ghosts. These are just some of the psychological or seemingly unhelpful advice I've been given lately, and I thought I'd share to see if anyone had thoughts. I know people will mean well but can give bad advice or assessments.

Last week, she said she was filing for D this week. But now she says she has "1,000 things going on" and is going to wait a bit to file. She seems completely hell bent on filing, I'm not holding out hope for a miraculous turn of events right now. We agreed yesterday what to split (furniture, etc) and she agreed to put it in writing and for both of us to sign before she takes anything.

I have my second grief recovery class this Thursday. We're working through The Grief Recovery Handbook (J. James & R. Friedman). I've finished the homework for this week and have a good feeling about the class. I think it's going to help and will be very educational. So far, the reading has been about misconceptions about grief, the error of the "5 stages of grief" (it describes someone with a terminal illness, not someone dealing with a loss like death of someone else, or divorce) and common yet unhelpful coping strategies. Those are:

1. Don't feel bad / it's ok
2. Replace the loss
3. Grieve alone
4. "Time heals all wounds" (my in-laws are evidence against that)
5. Be strong / be strong for others (kids)
6. Keep busy

I've definitely been taught or learned #2, #4, #5 and #6. The bonus one I'll add is "Maybe it's for the best". Yeah maybe that's true, but nobody wants to hear that while they're grieving. I've been told that 2-3 times already.