*Would I be willing to take less child custody? Not even no - oh hell f**king no. Bailiff: No swearing in court! SP Himself: sorry, don't tase me, bro.
OK, sorry Coach. Your record for the "Funniest post" lasted about two and a half minutes.
*Would I be willing to take less child custody? Not even no - oh hell f**king no. Bailiff: No swearing in court! SP Himself: sorry, don't tase me, bro.
OK, sorry Coach. Your record for the "Funniest post" lasted about two and a half minutes.
Feel like I was just crowned Miss America and then they found those photos on-line.
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
So. As I write this, my head feels... I don't know -- light. As if it's above the rest of me. Got back from Court about 7 hours ago. After a brief STBX interlude, I was left alone -- STBX and Themselves are off to National Park for a long weekend. (Of course, the babysitter is going, too, but that's another topic.)
Another hearing in 30 days. The Mouthpiece seemed upbeat afterwards, but then that's her job (went with a She-Mouthpiece, fighting fire with fire so to speak).
Something is definitely going on with STBX. Of course, as soon as I arrived at the courthouse, there she was -- she looked up briefly and muttered, "in there."
Afterwards, though, she found an excuse to talk to me (in front of her lawyer, 'natch). I replied civilly, agreed to let her take the SUV on the trip (I intended to anyway), and complained a bit about the other sitter, who'd sent me a text message suggesting -- well, no, saying -- that she'd left Themselves "just for a few minutes" to go check on some dogs she was dog-sitting. Pointed this out to STBX who said, "You can't trust an interpretation of a text -- people misunderstand written things all the time," which, if you've been following the (mis)adventure, was a nice little snarky dig at SP Hissef, to which her lawyer issued forth with a not-successfully-suppressed sh*t-eating grin.
Well, once again, bait not taken, just said "see you at the house" and went on my way.
But what was weird was that, after the 2.5 hours of laywerly meetings, she was grinning this odd grin -- not a "what happened" grin but a "nyah-nyah, I know something you don't" kind of grin. And she grinned it again at the house.
And what The Mouthpiece reported was also weird. STBX is giving up a lot of positions that, between us, cost roughly $40,000 to take during the long and fruitless letter-writing campaign between my Old Mouthpiece and hers. Positions that would have cost me something like $30, maybe $40K. The only really bad thing to come out so far is that the house has to go on the market ASAP, which is going to pull me -- at best -- about $5K because STBX did some tricky-tricks while we were married and switched the note over to interest-only. So this asset is worthless.
But what are you going to do, eh?
Maybe she's just capitulating. Maybe the war of attrition has taken its toll. Maybe she made so many kazillion dubloons from Big Developer that she doesn't care. But I think I have to be careful for the next month -- if it sounds too good to be true, you know, it usually is.
So that's the empirical bit.
Emotionally? Honestly, I don't know. I didn't feel nervous, per se (though that might be because I was inhaling Xanax like they were Gummi Bears -- Oh I am Gummi dope, yes I am Gummi dope, oh I am Gummi Gummi Gummi Gummi Gummi Dope, o-wo-o).
And I didn't feel sad, per se, though I haven't found the energy to do anything more substantive than wash the cars since.
I just felt like this whole thing is such a waste, and there's such a long road to go. She still can't bring herself to apologize for anything. The closest she's come is to "take responsibility" for having expected me to mind-read and for not telling me I was a lousy husband. Beyond that, every time she's called out on some misdeed, she just refuses to engage it. As if she can pretend it away. And there's been no change on the mind-reading front -- I'm still expected to do it. And no change on the attitude front -- she's still deeply in Blame Mode.
Walkaways. They need -- literally need -- to redirect and rewrite to rationalize. I can understand that, but now? At this point? I don't see there's any need, but then I'm a normal person.
Kids are loading up in the ride to go on the Road Trip, and before she gets in the driver's seat she sort of leans over the hood of the car and says, "I will never understand how you were able to just stop liking me."
It -- Still Not Gotten. And maybe it never will be.
Whatever. I feel very alone right now, empty house, kids gone, future uncertain. Plus I could really do with some good old-fashioned, no-strings-attached, sweaty sex. But that's another topic, too.
Thanks for the Gummi Bear link. It's a great song to hear in the background of my mind.
At some point, it's no longer about the divorcing spouse.. it's about you. Where your energy goes. What brings you joy, growth, fulfillment. It's a beautiful world when life stops being about the emotional trauma and upset the divorcing and/or divorced spouse brings.
As far as the "It" goes.. I'm not looking for validation from the former spouse, not that it would happen. And on the off chance it did.. well.. it wouldn't matter. I've changed too much to want what was so flawed and never jointly resolved.
Good to hear the divorce is getting closer to being finalized. And great sign that you know what you need... and/or can substitute for.
Yeah, I bagged the whole "about her" thing on New Year's Eve.
Like you, I'm not looking for "validation" from the STBX.
What the "It" that is not gotten (and that I find so frustrating/mystifying) is, is her continued, absolute lack of any emotional intelligence whatever -- she simply cannot seem to understand her impact on others, me or the kids. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that, from my point of view, she's not able to do that.
Proverbial bull in china shop.
You know how little kids don't really have a sense of spatial relations and either get too close or too far away and tend to knock things over ("it was an accident!")?
That's her in pyscho-emotional terms -- she doesn't understand (or perhaps more precisely, though I'm merely hypothesizing here, doesn't want to understand) that the things she says "stick" -- she seems to expect that I'll forget them as soon as they're said ("when are you going to stop throwing that back in my face?").
So on Monday she'll tell me she's afraid I'm going to murder our children just to get back at her ("like the Blue Hills guy") and on Wednesday offer to go out of her way to give me a ride from the car repair shop and apparently see no contradiction whatsoever in those two behaviors. And then she seems -- literally -- not to understand why I might decline the offer ("I'm sorry to hear that you won't accept my offer").
And when I -- as I now very infrequently do -- call her out on this kind of thing (I wrote her that I couldn't comprehend why she would be "sorry to hear that" when she'd just called me a child-murderer 48 hours before), she doesn't respond at all. It's like I'm talking into a vacuum (which is why I hardly bother).
One reason why I muse on it a lot is because throughout the marriage one of her refrains was that she was so attuned to others and I was so obtuse, but if the past 18 months is reasonable evidence she had that exactly backwards -- it's as if MLC and A and D opened up the Pandora's Box of her inner sociopath (metaphorically speaking).
Plus, and this is really the point (and is also, I think, a source of our recurring debate, yours and mine), I'm trying to learn as much as I can from this experience and take as much away from it in a positive sense so that my next R (assuming there is one) is informed on a deep level by the lessons and experiences and analysis I've tried to do here and tried to take from others here. That's just the way I'm programmed, I guess -- I have to understand, even if I (know I) ultimately can't.
Anyway, macht's nichts. The real thing is just to maintain an even strain until the next hearing, let The Mouthpiece do her job, and see what the upshot is.
I do have to start DB'ing again, though, with a beginner's mind, at least insofar as GAL goes. In the past 3 months all of my new, post-S running buddies have got new jobs elsewhere in the country, so once again I'm alone in the house, alone at the movies, alone at the coffee shop, and hitting tennis balls against a wall.
As my brother, sister, counselor and those in the know reiterated.. I was beating a dead horse in trying to understand the former spouse's motivation, his manner of dealing with it, thinking that my delving through the morass of what the marriage became that I would find understanding and learning.
And over time, I'm embracing their direction. The former spouse is a poster child for unhealthy emotional behaviors.
In turn, I am becoming emotionally healthy.
Each wacky interaction with him is one more reason why it's good not to be in a relationship with him.. for me.
When mind reading is required, that means healthy communication as a couple is strained or gone. And the fear of rejection, anger, sense of anxiety has risen where it's safer not to talk.
If a couple is willing to work on it, the accumulated refuse of a relationship can be dealt with. Both individuals find what is is right about being a couple and survive the strain of how folks change over time, especially with the challenges and joys of having children.
In the situation when a spouse 'spontaneously' decides to exit a marriage and the nuclear family there's a Leaver and a Sticker. The Leaver creates a wall between themselves and the Sticker to justify why it's imperative to start a new life.. and justify their actions.
And Sticker tries to understand, in the process beating the dead horse to glue.
In the end, the marriage was broken and wasn't fixed, for whatever reason. And what hurts most is the manner in which the Sticker is left to pick up the pieces of the puzzle the Leaver fit together for themselves in the first place.
Personally, it's a slow painful process, especially when I focus on the drama of 'him'. But it's really me picking a wound. And this booboo heals as I change my perspective on what defines me.
Based on having been married to the former spouse, I won't date a guy who kicks dogs, tells me if it doesn't work out he'll be sad but will walk away shutting the door behind him and tells other people how incredible I am while belittling me at home.
The real challenge for me is getting out of my shell, ceasing to isolate and develop a life that doesn't center solely around the needs of others. The two and a half years I've spent maintaining a stable, emotionally secure home for my kids where they know they are loved unconditionally has been good. And they are all flourishing.
Now it's time for me to create my own stable, emotionally secure life that I own. One that does not focus on blame or victimization on what didn't work in a chapter of my life that's over.
And that's what it means to me to have my life to no longer be about him, understanding his motives because he's not part of my life. And I'm okay.. and in a better place because of it.
With a future relationship (if there is one) the naiveté of love will solve everything is gone, replaced with an understanding and need to heed the good with the bad and being willing to deal with what doesn't work.
As far as the debate goes, as long as I don't read, "Gypsy you ignorant slut." I'm good. And even if I do, it's not a problem.
Go figure. I'm just looking forward to the day that no strings attached hot sweaty sex isn't so damn scary.
Plus, and this is really the point, I'm trying to learn as much as I can from this experience and take as much away from it in a positive sense so that my next R (assuming there is one) is informed on a deep level by the lessons and experiences and analysis I've tried to do here and tried to take from others here. That's just the way I'm programmed, I guess -- I have to understand, even if I (know I) ultimately can't.
resonates. a lot. sometimes I wish I didn't do this, didn't have to do this...but apparently I do. Mine, however, seems to be focused upon what I did wrong to end up here--no, not that it was all my fault, but how I contributed; if I have no control over anything but myself, then I must nail that piece down. and the best I can ever seem to do is: I made a really, really lousy choice of mates. And I should have seen that and I chose not to. will I ever trust myself again? who knows--that's the big question.
M60 H52 D20 M14 yrs OW-old gf from 1986 bomb-5/18/08 H filed for D-9/10/08 D final 4/24/09 xH remarried (not OW) 2012
