Wow, friends. Thanks for all the support and encouragement. I'm overwhelmed by all the insights and thoughts and questions... and I'll do my best to respond and update without taking all the available BB square footage.
We had T this morning, and the weird thing is, the T and I avoided the SM conversation while S. kept trying to bring the discussion around to it! It was like we were avoiding it in tandem, and I'm not sure why. However, we recognized this and made another appointment for tomorrow morning expressly to talk about it.
First, though, I have some thoughts about the dreaded call and SM's e-mail. I do believe that S. told her about our no-contact agreement as a sort of excuse, to soften the blow of not having been in contact with her (and making it not his fault - his hands were tied). And I do believe that she said something along the lines of what S. said she said, which was taking issue with it on the grounds of it being controlling. And I believe that he probably agreed with her and said so, and that's why she thinks it's OK to keep right on keepin' on. And I also believe that she still doesn’t understand (because S. ain’t tellin’) that her involvement with S. was actually an infidelity in my R. You see, it would be too painful (cf. H2H’s thread) to tell her the truth (I mean, why hurt her?), and so she just believes that her R with S. was something that was outside (and OK with) whatever it was he was doing with someone else – in fact, she perpetuated a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy (Mr. Clinton sure has a presence on my thread today!).
Yes, Betsey, my esteem for her has hit muck bottom, especially the old memories and sweet nothings she is evoking to draw him in. What kind of person writes this crap after she's just been told he's about to have a child with someone else?
Michele, my goals are indeed to have a vibrant R with S. And my goals are also to purge my R with S. of SM and her long shadow. I don’t intend to confront him with this e-mail if he doesn’t disclose it to me – I am a snooper but I’m a dishonest one! You are right to ask about control – it is an issue I work on. I don’t want to be controlling, and I certainly do not want to be held up in comparison with this woman, which I am well aware is a real and imminent danger. So I am at the moment mulling over how to file this information and what to do with it should it not come up. He has been very consistent about telling me about every contact from her (though the good will doesn’t extend to NOT responding to the contact in the first place).
In fact, he has not opened her e-mail as of the time of this post, although I am pretty certain he has seen it there, lurking like so much black mold in his Inbox. I know this because I sent him some links after her e-mail appeared and he opened and read my e-mails. He would NEVER just delete it. This is a man who has saved every letter from every XGF and every e-mail from time forward. My guess is, he is either waiting to bring it up in T (which he wasn’t able to do today), or he is waiting until AFTER T to open it so he doesn’t have to bring it up in T (that’s the little known Don’t Read, Doesn’t Exist policy). I guess I will know more about that tomorrow morning.
Today’s T was a bit of this, a bit of that, but the important things to recount here, I think, are that he reiterated how he IS here in the R, that he HAS BEEN here all along, that he IS trying, and that I don’t “see” the signals that he IS here, and he’s very frustrated about it. Now, I am willing to give him this one, with caveats. I agree that he is working very hard to provide a place for us to live. I agree that he is making a real effort to spend time together, even as our schedules are impossible and sometimes it’s only to eat before we go back to work, then right before bed. He has been instrumental in arranging QT for us. I agree that he is making a real effort to make sure we go to T, that our T sessions are productive (and he has been very honest therein) – he in fact insisted we go, found the T, and set up all the times. Today he was very eager to go back to T tomorrow so we could talk about SM. These are all things I can put in the “S. Is in My Court” category.
Here’s a caveat. He refuses to see SM as a destructive force in our R, preferring to see her as “just a friend,” “someone who has been very important to him in his life,” and “just another friend of his whom I have not yet met” (and may I never meet her!). He would rather fight for his “friendship” with her than see how destructive she IS in our R and hear how important she is from my POV, which is a key thing our T is working on with us – seeing things from the other’s POV. The thing is, folks, he is focusing on the PA with her, which technically (very technically) happened while we were broken up, but doesn’t know what an EA is. Where the infidelity? He wonders.
Here’s another caveat. He is doing all these things, all these signs that he is IN the R, in his own LL. Now, he’s read 5LL, and really liked it. So show me the money! The reason I am feeling like his heart isn’t in it is because he refuses to speak to me in my LL. It’s the classic excuse that Gary Chapman cites in the very book: “I’m just not feeling it, and I can’t just do something I don’t feel.” (GC’s response to the clueless man who said he couldn’t give his wife affection because he wasn’t “feeling” it? “Do you have two arms? Can you put them together?” -- A loose paraphrase, as I can’t find the book at the moment – I think it’s at S.’s!) Now before you all get out your frying pans, I realize that MY job is to recognize S.’s acts of love, even if they’re not in my LL. Check! Done that, do it all the time (though I could be a lot better), now I’d like for us to move on to the next level. I am trying to speak S.’s LLs, and in a vibrant R with the partner I deserve, he tries to speak mine (or certainly doesn’t refuse to when I ask).
So, tomorrow we go back to the T, to duke it out over SM. Good lord, if I thought that one year-plus after we split up last year (over what? Hmm? SM!) we’d still be locked in the same power struggle, I would have thrown out that plea to take him back like last week’s compost – right in the bin with all the other rotten cores and peels. Of course, S. isn’t all terrible, He said the other day that he was “so tired” of SM being in the way of our working on the now of our R, that she has “outsized importance” (and I agree!) in our R, and that we have much more pressing issues to contend with. He said he just wanted us to resolve it once and for all.
Now, we have Little Miss Thang on the way, and I have to look at things differently (can’t throw him out with the banana peels). (Aside to Merrick: I am covered after my D. I’ll have COBRA for 36 months, and S. and I are splitting all baby and other costs. No court order needed – he is actually eager to write checks for things.)
I’m exhausted from all this, and again, looking forward to tomorrow’s T. Again, thanks so much to all who chimed in, whether in a well-placed rant, a thoughtfully posed question, or just plain old support.
In the words of the inimitable Governor Swartzenegger, I’ll be back.
You are right to ask about control – it is an issue I work on. I don’t want to be controlling, and I certainly do not want to be held up in comparison with this woman, which I am well aware is a real and imminent danger. So I am at the moment mulling over how to file this information and what to do with it should it not come up. He has been very consistent about telling me about every contact from her (though the good will doesn’t extend to NOT responding to the contact in the first place).
