Ok, W just called me. SHe's at the 'Hawaiian Massage' friends house, the people who put on the retreats where she met OM. To refresh your memory, they like her a lot, knew she had problems with our marriage and were very much against her pursuing OM because it was wrong, and they thought he was a total loser. I see them as very nice, not perfect and a reasonably realistic view of life and spirituality. And they like me and see I am a good person.
During the months of OM she didn't talk to them about us or him because she knew they wouldn't approve.
Today she is taking care of their 18 month old son so she went to go pick him up. Apparently they had a talk about our issues this morning. When she was leaving our house she just yells upstairs 'bye frank' in her 'neutral' voice and I reacted. I went downstairs and sarcastically said "BYE W". I just think her attitude is very impersonal.
Anyway, she got mad right then and said I was being 'passive aggressive' (I was) and I said I just feel like she doesn't really care but I was echoing her attitude. Well we couldn't talk because of the time, so she left.
I think her friends must have talked to her about this situation, and her relationship building because she wouldn't have thought of discussing it on her own.
Anyway, she called me from their house, actually while on a walk with their child, and said a lot of things, which I responded to. Basically here are the points:
- She thinks we are both not trying to make this work. And that if we ARE going to make it work we have to both actually make the effort.
- She asked what it is that stops me from putting in the effort
- I told her that when I DO put in the effort, I get very little in response. She asks if the reason I do anything is to get something in return? I said 'no', but I usually get rejection as a response.
- She recognized that she isn't making an effort and has fears. So we talk about that. She says her fear is that she'll make the investment in our relationship, trying to do all the things we used to do but do them 'right', and it'll just be a failure because of old behaviours that will slowly creep in.
- I told her that I have a fear that she will just try half heartedly and I'll get hurt again because she'd just go run off with someone else. I reminded her that my hurt is fresh in my mind still.
- I told her that I also feel like I'm constantly being judged, and that I'm being expected to make all these things happen with no help. But most of all that I'm going to say or do something NOW that makes her think that when tough times come again that I'll go back to taking my 'medicine' (drinking) so I can feel better. I'm not going to do that, I said, because I want the rest of the years ahead of me to be filled with the things that really matter to me, not pleasing others. I went on to talk about the time I spend with my daughters that I didn't do before.
She says she wants that too. She's very afraid it will go 'bad' again and then she's older, and she can't live like that again, she can't be hurt any more.
And I mentioned our trip last week to the snow. We didn't have any fights between us all and it was just pleasant. I had FUN. I hadn't had fun in so long I forgot what it's like.
I said that the only thing that was missing from our sledding experience was that I couldn't grab her and roll in the snow with her and laugh with her.
I mentioned that one of the things that was always great was when she and I would just go places together. We would talk about our interests, our dreams and just have fun. No sex, just being best friends. I missed that.
She did too. So where we're at NOW is wondering how we can 'get started'. How we can stop witholding from each other. We're going to talk later about this. I'm glad (and surprised) that she talked to her 'sane' friends.
At least it's in the open now. She says she wants to make it work still. What to do next, well, I still don't know.
