OK... 81 Days

[25yearsmlc]

Faith,

are we going to pretend nothing good has happened in Denver's sitch?

I GET that it's not all smooth and happy,

and the rainbow has not come out...

I promise you all, that I do get that.

But come on, this IS progress...

we have yet to see what it means and we're all

holding our breath and

advising Denver how to be careful but not to shut it out.


Of course Denver should be cautious. AMEN to that.

But still...

[FaithnAK]

Faith,

are we going to pretend nothing good has happened in Denver's sitch?

We don't need to pretend. A lot of good has happened. No question.

But come on, this IS progress...

Very much so. Enough to talk "piecing"? Not yet.

we have yet to see what it means and we're all

holding our breath and

advising Denver how to be careful but not to shut it out.

Trust, but verify. My opinion, he keeps up his change and his new understanding; but she has to prove that she isn't with someone else while she is willing to work on this relationship. Fair? I think so.

She is still very angry. Anything can happen. However, she does show interest, honesty, and she is testing him in a good way.

Words of caution, not the end all.

Didn't mean to come across as a ball of negativity; just cautious.

[Starsky309]

Faith,

are we going to pretend nothing good has happened in Denver's sitch?

We don't need to pretend. A lot of good has happened. No question.

But come on, this IS progress...

Very much so. Enough to talk "piecing"? Not yet.

we have yet to see what it means and we're all

holding our breath and

advising Denver how to be careful but not to shut it out.

Trust, but verify. My opinion, he keeps up his change and his new understanding; but she has to prove that she isn't with someone else while she is willing to work on this relationship. Fair? I think so.

She is still very angry. Anything can happen. However, she does show interest, honesty, and she is testing him in a good way.

Words of caution, not the end all.

Didn't mean to come across as a ball of negativity; just cautious.

Seems reasonable to me, on all counts.

Unless I missed it, has Denver's wife agreed to no-contact and transparency with Denver?

Starsky

[Denver_2010]

A few things. I take issue with your "Denver school s*ck" claim. My sister is a teacher in Denver. (mostly kidding)

er, sorry Harrier. I'm only going by what I hear.

If you were doing it to "show" W that you still had it, You were wrong and you push her button. Would you have done the same thing with two unattractive, overweight women, what about two grandmas? You went out of your way to tell us they were attractive. Relevant? maybe.

Ha! Nice call Harrier. You called me out and you are probably right. I didn't even think about this until reading your post. I am a sucker for attractive women. Always have been. W, of course, knows this. Thus, the reason for much of her insecurity in this area.

[Denver_2010]

I agree with 25 in that there is nothing wrong with talking to women.

IMHO alot of it is your W's insecurity. In the past, maybe what she thought was flirting on your part was you being friendly. There is nothing wrong with that. She needed another man to validate her and to feed her ego because she thought you were giving it away to other women. That's BS to a certain extent. It depends on the individual. If she was confident and trusting in you and herself, she wouldn't be looking for something outside to create that feeling.

What one woman might perceive as flirting, another would think of it as no big deal. Plus when you talked to the other women, her own guilt of what she did started playing on her. After all, she had an OM that she hid from you, so you must also have ulterior motives. To a certain degree, you can't keep apologizing for everything. She's going to have to start growing herself.

I agree Bond, but see my above answer to Harrier. In many ways, I have made my bed in this area.

[Denver_2010]

I finally said to myself,

"okay...objectively speaking, though H had his reasons, he was basically a selfish jerk for X amount of time...before then he wasn't, and now he isn't...and we have kids...SOOOOOO. He hurt me but doesn't seem likely to do it again, (not that way at least).....SO what now?"

Assuming, arguendo, that he was A BIG JERK...and that it was temporary--

do I HAVE to divorce him? Some think so...but

Why? To punish? See I don't think so.

[u]Of course if I thought he'd do it again or if he did....I'd be done. For me, a DB ordeal is a once in a lifetime thing...

I think that this is how I am looking at it as well. If I thought for one single second that my W would have another A in the future, I'd be gone right now. I probably would have been gone back in February. But I don't. I think that what has happened has been a perfect storm. I was not a good H, W met someone who was nice to her, and yes, probably began to manipulate her once he found out that she was unhappy with me... all the while W was already contemplating or already preparing to leave me. It isn't W's character to be unfaithful. Not at all. If I thought it was... I wouldn't be here.

Thus, for me to walk away, would be punishment to her for wounding my pride and my ego.

That is what my ego would like me to do... and 'he' is fairly strong.

I think it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said "every man is allowed to be an ass once in his life..."

I'm going with that.

(I'm positive F. Scott Fitzgerald said "forgotten is forgiven." And though you don't realize it now,

for long periods of time as you re-build,

with her or with someone else,

the guy on the toilet will no longer have the power to hurt you at all...

this is true.)

Very nice. And true. And again, you are correct, OM will no longer matter to me in the least bit at some point in the future... whether I am with my W or with someone else.

Thanks 25.

Denver

[Harrier]

i always get the Grandma-types who want to talk to me.

Keeps me out of trouble, but then I'm pretty clueless.

[Denver_2010]

I'm not going to give any advice to you Denver, just a word of caution.

I don't mean to rain on the party for hope, but countless times (Not all) on this board I have seen the WAS all of a sudden seem different and "honest", with the LBS later discovering the WAS just took their "A" deeper underground.

Granted she's a little different since this is "kind of" the second time you have witnessed this. I see a lot of positives but a long way to go.

Thanks Faith... trust me, I am being VERY cautious right now. I find it too good to be true that just 2 1/2 weeks ago, W was pushing me away and spending time with OM... and now, seems to be leaning towards working on the M.

I don't trust it.

[Denver_2010]

UPDATE...

I will make this fairly short.

W and I had tickets to see Peter Gabriel at Red Rocks last night. I let W be the one to ask if she was still going... I let her contact me to find out what the plans were ... I was prepared to go alone if she hadn't contacted me.

She brought it up on Sunday night. Acted like she just assumed that she was still going. I just went along with it.

Monday she called me in the afternoon to find out what time I was picking her up and if we were going to eat dinner first.

The concert was GREAT. See this show if you have the chance.

W and I had a really nice time.

On the way to the concert, which was about 45 minutes from our suburb, W began talking about the possibility of us taking SS and my D to Disney World in July. Some of you may recall that this was a trip that I had looked into and brought up to W back in March or April.

So W gets on her phone and starts looking into packages to Disney World. Rooms that had 3 beds... 1 for SS, 1 for D, and 1 presumably for me and W (unless W plans on me sleeping on the floor or with Goofy somewhere)...

I have to almost laugh out loud at this happening as it is just SO frustrating. I am happy in the sense that W seems to be leaning towards working on our M, but it also made me really sad. It made me sad in the sense that I was looking at this trip back in March and April... and since that time, she resumed her A with OM... and hurt me very deeply.

I know that she knows that we have some issues that will need to be addressed if we are to reconcile. But right now, she's acting like the things that have happened in the past few weeks happened in a different reality... or didn't happen at all.

I mean 2 1/2 weeks ago, I found OM taking a cr*p on her toilet... and somehow managed not to kill him... NOW... W is wanting to go to Disney World with me and the kids just like NOTHING happened!

Ugh... very frustrating. And difficult to know how to even process everything right now.

It stormed at the concert for about 20 minutes. W and got very close under her umbrella. That was nice.

On the way home, W began to talk to me about how I make her insecure with how I am with other women in my life.... all friends, co-workers, ex-girlfriends, etc.

She told me that it makes her feel that she isn't good enough for me.

She told me that 'when' she is in my life it can't be like that anymore.

I told her that I know that I had made her feel like this, and that I had created the problem. But at the same time, I didn't think that it would be right for her to be too controlling.

W said that her feeling on this subject might change in the future, "in 6 months, 5 years, or never." But that she can't feel like she did bc it made her extremely unhappy.

I dropped W off at her house. She told me that she had a really nice time. I said that I did as well. We hugged and said goodbye.

----

I am still proceeding with a lot of caution. As I said above, things have almost flipped too fast for me to feel comfortable.

I mean, what has changed in the past three weeks? I caught OM at her house, told her that I was done, that I wouldn't be in her life if any OM was, and went dark on her for 3 days...

Was that enough to really create this kind of change in her? Or was she really being honest with me when she told me that she had already made a decision about her life BEFORE all of the above happened?

Rhetorical questions... just thinking out loud.

BITS
Denver

[LearningPatience]

Denver,
I'm very cautiously optimistic for your R. Part of that may be because I see you as a little further into the process than me and some vicarious living by me through your drama.

The blowup and the darkness may have sparked a little something inside her that was (and probably still is) hiding under all of her doubts. A little ray of sunshine cutting through the fog of her mind.

My W contacted me today after 25 days of darkness and me stating the same thing about the OM as you. First thing she asked was what my plans for the U2 concert were Told her I'd like her to come with me.

Tread cautiously but confidently. I really do have a good feeling for your R with your W.