Life Is What You Make It.

[Underdog]

Hi Pink,

I see you asked me some questions, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to login...

I find them all kind of sad to be sitting in a pub when they could be at home doing stuff with their families.

I agree! But it's not up to us to make value judgments about others, is it?

Why did you see your Mr.W. friends a s a threat Betsey?

I'd like to make a distinction here before I answer. I have never seen Mr. Wonderful's real friends as a threat. Ever. However, after he left he got himself a new group of beer buddies. He did hang around some of his former friends, as long as they followed his rule of "Betsey-free conversations." Most of his beer buddies--particularly the single ones--do not know me.

This was a threat to me, Pink. These guys were more than happy to accommodate his rule of a Betsey neutral zone (they had nothing to add, anyway). Furthermore, they weren't holding him accountable for his crappy moods (which I understand now were the rule rather than the exception), and Mr. Wonderful is generous. That means they were reluctant to lose their drinking buddy, so they weren't going to encourage him to head into counseling or re-think his plan.

I do know that his friends were (are?) bothered by our sitch. His 2 closest friends were LBS (one has happily reconciled with his W and the other is D). And they have made numerous attempts to talk to him about things. As a result, they actually talk to me more often. The D friend of his is one of my annulment witnesses... and I'm talking one of Mr. Wonderful's most dear and cherished friend, Pink.

Could he be blaming you for that?

No, at least I hope not! I had nothing to do with his avoiding his good friends and making immature ones...

Why do you think that people who engage in Rs where there is no intimacy or depth, it might be a smokescreen for a really huge issue?

Because those types of Rs are not generally the types where soul searching and evaluation takes place. (See my comments about Mr. Wonderful above.) If one continually seeks out shallow Rs, what incentive is there for growth and accountability?

I don't know if you read my post about our charity golf tournament in September? Some of Mr. Wonderful's more recent work friends (who I'd not met until then) joined in. I met one of his bowling friends at the silent auction table. Now mind you, this guy knew that Mr. Wonderful had separated and divorced and not much else. He also knew that Mr. Wonderful wasn't really happy and had been moody all year. This guy is married with kids, and I have no idea why I'd not met him before. Pink, when he introduced himself, he asked me how I knew Mr. Wonderful? I was as stunned as I was amused. I told him I was the XW and his jaw dropped. He assumed I was his GF, just from the way he observed Mr. W. looking at me. He gave me a look that clearly meant, "What was he thinking?" D11 told me awhile ago that another one of his friends said to him (within her earshot), "Betsey's a fine lady, and I have no idea what you're thinking there."

I can promise you that when I contemplated leaving him, my friends all stopped me dead in my tracks. They told me what I didn't want to hear. And although I really didn't want to hear it, I did. Had I chosen to inform some new GFs who only knew that I was unhappily married, do you think I'd have received the same advice?

For the record, he's not blaming me at all anymore. Right now, he's absorbing the guilt and also projecting it on to his parents. We're slowly working around that issue...

Does this clarify things?

Betsey