Hey,

A quick update, but mainly a question. My ex asked this morning if I'd watch the kids a bit so she could go to the gym. I agreed, but her parents asked if I want to go play bingo so I called her back and asked if I could move the time to watch them. She said to just forget it. Anyway...of interest she said "maybe tomorrow. Although maybe you won't want to see me tomorrow". I asked why not and she said "because it's our anniversary".

Yes, that's right. I forgot. How do you like that? Anyway, I called several times for no reason tonight. Interactions were fine. I still feel guilty that she remembered tomorrow is our anniversary and I didn't. That's got to say something. Oh well...that day is meaningless to me now. The day I started a marriage that wasn't good. If I had an anniversary now it might mean more. Anyway, happy early anniversary to me. Do you suppose I should do something?

But that's not the question. I have got myself thinking really hard about my ex-wife. I'm not sure I know her. She isn't the woman I met and married. She has gotten completely different in some ways. She writes on these web sites and in e-mails to these other moms and she sounds like she wants to be a twenty something..or eighteen year old. She writes like she's a cool teenager instead of nearly 40 years old. She is spending quite a bit of money on clothes for herself. This is a woman that only works 20 hours a week and gets child support, but eats out quite a bit, spends quite a bit of money on herself and also has really done a lot of spoiling her kids since she moved out. Granted she just got a bunch of money from me, but she spends like she is still with me. Her kids have gotten a lot worse behaved since she moved out. They are acting out a ton and being quite rebellious and I anticipate it will only get worse. They are really disrespectful to me anymore.

Which leads me up to....Seriously what does she bring to the table? Why am I so interested in this pursuit? Is it just because I can't have her? I started this on Jo's thread and I've been wondering ever since why this woman is so important to me. Does she in fact deserve me? I'm not trying to be conceited. I'm just thinking that I have come a long way in treating people better, that I could be a good partner to someone, and I think I could grow even more if I had someone that was interested in growing with me. I don't know if my ex-wife is there. She's going in a different direction.

I mean, that seems to be the situation with a lot of us. Gabriel, Jo, Bruce, JRB, UD, Koshka....to me it sounds like all these people and more have worked hard to make vast improvements in themselves, yet the spouses carry around anger, resentment, baggage, and a belief that they are somehow better than us and our best efforts could never be enough. Meanwhile, with very few exceptions our spouses don't actually make any changes or improvements to themselves. Almost makes me wish I had been the one to walk away while she still loved me so that I could hold all the cards.

Yes I know...I'll get blasted for this. Plus it's not really in character for me. I'm introspective tonight. Just answer me....why am I doing this? What would I do if she said she wanted to move back in? What would be different this time around except for me? Even with my best DBing I don't know if I can just sit back and take whatever is thrown at me. Just let her kids do what they want and talk disrespectfully while my wife defends it? Or watch my wife spend all her free time on the computer while everything else goes to pot? No thank you.

The scarey thought for me as I was thinking....is part of the reason I continue to pursue, call, do sexual innuendos,etc because I don't care if I succeed? Or maybe that I even want to fail but have fun doing it? Do I really just want to be a friend with perks and if she really wanted to be married again I'd crap my pants?

Well that's probably enough deep thought for tonight. Wish me a happy anniversary for tomorrow. I think I should get out and do something.

Thanks for listening. Probably the only one that will offer any agreement here is Dogma. Aint that right Bruce?

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
Abraham Lincoln

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Theodore Roosevelt