I got locked out of my previous thread so here I am.
----------------------------------------------------------- Outline of sitch: Me - 38 - living in the "house" WAW - 34 - moved out into an apartment with D3 One spunky, gorgeous D3 Bomb (Hiroshima): June 2003 - WAW manual stuff - you know the speech Bomblet (Nagasaki): May 2005 - WAW says she cant make it back into the M and is going to D ----------------------------------------------------------
I must thank all of you on this forum for being upstanding and constant in your support.
So, where am I?
Mentally I am in an okay place actually. PMA is high, GAL activities continue. WAW has not supplied me with any documents to John Hancock yet and while I may not have thwarted a D, I do not see the D monster hovering conspicuously around either. I have had too much business travel lately and in fact the next semester appears to be quite busy with travel as well. And with a heavy teaching load I am going to be toast for the next six months. But I am still looking forward to the marathon in October. All this travel has made training a bit of a challenge but I think I am still doing okay.
Some of you may recall that the latest curve-ball in my situation was the advent of the MIL to live here in town. I actually get along well with my MIL and under ordinary circumstances I would have welcomed my MIL's presence. Well, she is lonely and both she and WAW could use familial bonding, D3 would benefit from intergenerational bonding etc. Coming from a tightly-knit family myself, all of that is very appealing. However, my fear is this: WAW has already been talking about all the things that she will do to spend time with MIL. Since the time she has spent on relationship repair (or even self-repair) has been vanishingly small, I am afraid that it will simply become zero after MIL arrives. Secondly, caring for D3 has been burdensome for W and if MIL takes over doing that W will not face the burdens of the single life and reality will not bite her. So, I fear that the R with W will continue to fade after MIL arrives. On the contrary though, as some of you so kindly pointed out, I can serve as a buffer if MIL drives W up the wall (inevitable due to generational gap) and be a good listener and maybe that will bring W and me closer? Like we say in math, too many unknowns, not a problem that can be solved. So, I have determined to go past the problem and continue to GAL.
Recently, W went to her hometown and had a great trip. She made it a point to reconnect with family and friends. That is all good for her (and hopefully for the R). I sense that there is a lot of 'who am I?' questioning that W has been doing in the past six months to a year and I should count this as self-work. If she is in MLC, this is part of her process of individuation and is very good.
I want to end this first post my listing positives in my sitch:
1. D3 is a pleasure, she is doing as well as any kid emotionally. 2. No OM yet. 3. Sporadic baby steps from W interspersed with retraction into hole. 4. W's spirits seem to be on an up-trend. 5. I am able to maintain my PMA. I feel much stronger, calmer and self-assured. 6. In the past year, even after Nagasaki (May 22 R-talk when W said "I cant make it work, I guess we should just D. I think I will talk to a lawyer") we have celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, and other events together (W, myself and D3). So there are still some threads by which we are hanging on. 7. W treats me with much more deference that before, I mean even better than before the bomb. This in the last six months or so. Before that I was the anti-Christ. 8. W has become comfortable with accidental physical contact and sometimes the contact is not as accidental as it appears to be. Physical space has shrunk, for some inexplicable reason since Nagasaki (May 22). 9. I see flashes of different personalities in W and lately I have been seeing a lot more of my old W, in her voice, demeanor etc.
The 3 laws of DBing:
1. PMA is critical to DBing.
2. Since drop in WAW's PMA leads to drop in LBS's PMA and vice-versa detachment is critical.
3. Validate to raise WAW's PMA and GAL to raise LBS's.
