Merrick--You can disagree with me all you want! Because I think we meant to get to the same place as you wound up in your post.
Thank him for divulging, snooping, etc.? I guess I'm not against the snooping or for the thanking--it's a reaction to his continous desire to hold Jennifer at bay and not make any decisions about them. Of course, I don't advocate snooping, however, it's not like he's going out of his way to reassure her either.
So I'll fast forward to your extremely well stated questions.
Carry on!
Bets
"There are only 2 ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
My point was that Jennifer needs to keep her goal in mind. We all have opinions from what she's posted (or direct convos with her) whether S. is "husband material" or not. That's Jennifer's business, not mine.
Jen, I think you need to figure out your priorities and hew to your goals. Merrick is right -- there will always be a threat to any M. The threat might be a third party, or a lack of honesty, or gambling, or addictions, or whatever.
There ain't no perfect down here on this planet.
I agree with Betsey that SM's decision to continue contact with S. is probably a reaction to his lukewarm support for the agreement. If he had been adamant, the tone of her message would have been more final, if she had sent one at all.
Girl, you got your hands full. All I'm suggesting is that you go into the next couple of days with a clear head -- clear on your priorities.
I would have to admit that S shows some serious warning signs about being a husband, but I wouldn't be ready to throw in the towel just yet.
A baby is on the way. A baby will thrive best in a loving hosuehold. The baby's arrival could have a positive impact on S in that nurturing and caring for his daughter could be the most important thing/woman in his life. In fact, I could see Jennifer becoming very jealous of the affection S lays on that girl if her needs are ignored.
S has had the ability to run away from any problem is his life. The day of reckoning, however, is coming with this baby and he will either have to grow up that day or continue wandering aimlessly (perhaps even happily) for the rest of his life.
And I have to add that no one, least of all me would have thought that my W would have an A and we would get divorced. I fell in love with W in no small measure because of her deep down commitment to family and against the modern "do as you will culture." Yet here I am.
This is why I mentioned earlier that I wish someone other than Jennifer could give S this speech on responsibility and being a man.
My concern is that S will never make a choice until he has to--and on this R front, that's not a good thing.
Quote: My ongoing prayers are with you--and H2H as well for good measure!
Just wanted to pop in and say Thanks Merrick! It means a lot to me. AND because of you, and Betsey who validated that you were OK to meet offline, I got to meet Jennifer - and since then we've become good friends and trusty confidants!
You asked about what I was trying to say in your previous thread when I said to put the snooping aside and judge S's actions as if you had no "snooped" info.
The picture I see is one of a guy trying to eat cake. He has one foot in the R with you, not yet in an M with you, and one foot somewhere else. Whether it's Swiss Miss, or NY's finest twenty-somethings, there are never two feet firmly on the ground next to you.
I get the feeling that S will let you make decisions, "suffer" in silence a while, and then ??? He was part of the agreement that contact with Swiss Miss was to be limited to telling her about you, your R, your baby, etc. Now it's "too controlling?" Yeah, like I was too controlling when I kept asking that STBXW stop working at the market with OM-0 from 2002. (She did stop, a few weeks after he was fired, and a few weeks before hooking up with OM-1 last summer.)
What would you tell a friend? If your friend was carrying a baby and the father was acting as S is acting, had a track record like S has (good and bad), what would you tell this friend when she gets upset over her sitch and the father's seeming indifference to her feelings? From where I sit, S seems indifferent to your feelings now, as you carry his child and he chafes under the "burden" of cutting inappropriate Rs.
I guess I'm encouraging you to detach a little and look at your sitch from a step or two back. With his partner six months pregnant S needs to show in consistent action what his plans are. I get the impression his consistent actions show he plans to stay on the fence. If he were my friend, I'd give him something like the talk Merrick mentioned.
Whatever he chooses, I'm sure you will be a good Mom for your daughter. You're a smart, strong, good person. She's gonna like that.
Thanks,
K
My sitch More importantly, Light A Million Candles
Part of me wants to smack him upside the head with my really big frying pan. What the heck does it take to get through his thick skull?
Another part of me thinks the clever interpretation of "no contact" is so outrageous that it doesn't deserve discussion. Just turn around and walk away from those childish attempts at explaining and redefining things. Reward positive nehavior and ingnore bad behavior. Don't engage in arguing about non-negotiables. "We made an agreement in T and I'd rather discuss it there." Give him a chance to get over his guilt and apologize on his own without forcing him into defensive mode.
Whatever I'm saying is clouded by all that smoke coming out of my ears. You probably already knew that.
Thwack, thwack, thwack, S! This is not a skewed cherry!
Wow, friends. Thanks for all the support and encouragement. I'm overwhelmed by all the insights and thoughts and questions... and I'll do my best to respond and update without taking all the available BB square footage.
We had T this morning, and the weird thing is, the T and I avoided the SM conversation while S. kept trying to bring the discussion around to it! It was like we were avoiding it in tandem, and I'm not sure why. However, we recognized this and made another appointment for tomorrow morning expressly to talk about it.
First, though, I have some thoughts about the dreaded call and SM's e-mail. I do believe that S. told her about our no-contact agreement as a sort of excuse, to soften the blow of not having been in contact with her (and making it not his fault - his hands were tied). And I do believe that she said something along the lines of what S. said she said, which was taking issue with it on the grounds of it being controlling. And I believe that he probably agreed with her and said so, and that's why she thinks it's OK to keep right on keepin' on. And I also believe that she still doesn’t understand (because S. ain’t tellin’) that her involvement with S. was actually an infidelity in my R. You see, it would be too painful (cf. H2H’s thread) to tell her the truth (I mean, why hurt her?), and so she just believes that her R with S. was something that was outside (and OK with) whatever it was he was doing with someone else – in fact, she perpetuated a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy (Mr. Clinton sure has a presence on my thread today!).
Yes, Betsey, my esteem for her has hit muck bottom, especially the old memories and sweet nothings she is evoking to draw him in. What kind of person writes this crap after she's just been told he's about to have a child with someone else?
Michele, my goals are indeed to have a vibrant R with S. And my goals are also to purge my R with S. of SM and her long shadow. I don’t intend to confront him with this e-mail if he doesn’t disclose it to me – I am a snooper but I’m a dishonest one! You are right to ask about control – it is an issue I work on. I don’t want to be controlling, and I certainly do not want to be held up in comparison with this woman, which I am well aware is a real and imminent danger. So I am at the moment mulling over how to file this information and what to do with it should it not come up. He has been very consistent about telling me about every contact from her (though the good will doesn’t extend to NOT responding to the contact in the first place).
In fact, he has not opened her e-mail as of the time of this post, although I am pretty certain he has seen it there, lurking like so much black mold in his Inbox. I know this because I sent him some links after her e-mail appeared and he opened and read my e-mails. He would NEVER just delete it. This is a man who has saved every letter from every XGF and every e-mail from time forward. My guess is, he is either waiting to bring it up in T (which he wasn’t able to do today), or he is waiting until AFTER T to open it so he doesn’t have to bring it up in T (that’s the little known Don’t Read, Doesn’t Exist policy). I guess I will know more about that tomorrow morning.
Today’s T was a bit of this, a bit of that, but the important things to recount here, I think, are that he reiterated how he IS here in the R, that he HAS BEEN here all along, that he IS trying, and that I don’t “see” the signals that he IS here, and he’s very frustrated about it. Now, I am willing to give him this one, with caveats. I agree that he is working very hard to provide a place for us to live. I agree that he is making a real effort to spend time together, even as our schedules are impossible and sometimes it’s only to eat before we go back to work, then right before bed. He has been instrumental in arranging QT for us. I agree that he is making a real effort to make sure we go to T, that our T sessions are productive (and he has been very honest therein) – he in fact insisted we go, found the T, and set up all the times. Today he was very eager to go back to T tomorrow so we could talk about SM. These are all things I can put in the “S. Is in My Court” category.
Here’s a caveat. He refuses to see SM as a destructive force in our R, preferring to see her as “just a friend,” “someone who has been very important to him in his life,” and “just another friend of his whom I have not yet met” (and may I never meet her!). He would rather fight for his “friendship” with her than see how destructive she IS in our R and hear how important she is from my POV, which is a key thing our T is working on with us – seeing things from the other’s POV. The thing is, folks, he is focusing on the PA with her, which technically (very technically) happened while we were broken up, but doesn’t know what an EA is. Where the infidelity? He wonders.
Here’s another caveat. He is doing all these things, all these signs that he is IN the R, in his own LL. Now, he’s read 5LL, and really liked it. So show me the money! The reason I am feeling like his heart isn’t in it is because he refuses to speak to me in my LL. It’s the classic excuse that Gary Chapman cites in the very book: “I’m just not feeling it, and I can’t just do something I don’t feel.” (GC’s response to the clueless man who said he couldn’t give his wife affection because he wasn’t “feeling” it? “Do you have two arms? Can you put them together?” -- A loose paraphrase, as I can’t find the book at the moment – I think it’s at S.’s!) Now before you all get out your frying pans, I realize that MY job is to recognize S.’s acts of love, even if they’re not in my LL. Check! Done that, do it all the time (though I could be a lot better), now I’d like for us to move on to the next level. I am trying to speak S.’s LLs, and in a vibrant R with the partner I deserve, he tries to speak mine (or certainly doesn’t refuse to when I ask).
So, tomorrow we go back to the T, to duke it out over SM. Good lord, if I thought that one year-plus after we split up last year (over what? Hmm? SM!) we’d still be locked in the same power struggle, I would have thrown out that plea to take him back like last week’s compost – right in the bin with all the other rotten cores and peels. Of course, S. isn’t all terrible, He said the other day that he was “so tired” of SM being in the way of our working on the now of our R, that she has “outsized importance” (and I agree!) in our R, and that we have much more pressing issues to contend with. He said he just wanted us to resolve it once and for all.
Now, we have Little Miss Thang on the way, and I have to look at things differently (can’t throw him out with the banana peels). (Aside to Merrick: I am covered after my D. I’ll have COBRA for 36 months, and S. and I are splitting all baby and other costs. No court order needed – he is actually eager to write checks for things.)
I’m exhausted from all this, and again, looking forward to tomorrow’s T. Again, thanks so much to all who chimed in, whether in a well-placed rant, a thoughtfully posed question, or just plain old support.
In the words of the inimitable Governor Swartzenegger, I’ll be back.
Sorry to hijack here… but your previous post there led me to think about something, and I need some feedback on it.
I have to just mention here, that this post is about sex (rather… the lack thereof), so if you don’t want to read it, I understand (no details, blatant or overt mentioned however). My W was never really willing to ML (or “fool-around”) with me practically the entire time were (are) married. We would generally only have sexual contact maybe once every 2 or 3 months… and definitely not now for over 7 months! I would pout (NOT adult) about it, and eventually have a conversation about. She would state to me, that why would I want to make her do something she didn’t want to do. I asked my T about this, and he said that I should have respected her boundaries… that I should not have pouted (I agree with that)... that I should have just accepted it for what it was (I am not sure I truly agree with that). I feel that there are things that we do (or stop doing) for our S because we love them.
However… your post got me thinking about the 5LL book (I am still reading it, but missed the quote you said came from there (whether actual or sort-a-like-it)) and that quote:
“I’m just not feeling it, and I can’t just do something I don’t feel.”
Is the scenario I posed about something that should be one of those things you “feel” or not. And… if not, then it will cause me to have to reevaluate if my W really loved me or not. Part of me, however, thinks that part of it comes from ignorance.
Case in point… me, and what I did for my W, thinking it would make her happy… when it wasn’t her LL. Now that I know what her LL is (and say doing chores is not something I “feel” like doing)… I would do those chores, because I love her, and want to make her happy. Does that make sense? I have to say that without know there is such a thing as a LL, that we tend to do things for the S that we would want done for us (though in my case... I don't like getting gifts... WOA are all I really want... mainly, I think, family-of-origin in nature).
Anyway, just looking for some feedback on this topic.
Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past. – Alexa Young
KGBKK, I responded to this on your thread. Very good questions, and I hope I helped in some way.
Update: Big major boo-boo backslide on my part. I criticized S. for his choice of priorities while working on the house today.
Pro me: * I did not start by criticizing, I started from a place of teamwork, where we had worked together to come up with a master schedule for working on the house so that everything absolutely essential could get done by D Day (31 August). * When S. got immediately defensive, I remained calm and validated and tried to keep the conversation about me using I statements.
Con me: * When S. continued to be defensive, I allowed him to raise my ire and started to argue with him. * When S. said he didn't have the time to sit around in the middle of a workday and talk to me about priorities over at the house, I said (and this is one for the anti-DB books, folks), "You had two hours to sit around and talk to [SM] in the middle of a workday, and you don't have time to talk to me for 5 minutes about the work?" * When S. continued to be defensive, I said he didn't hear a f***ing word I'd said and that I was trying to share my feelings and he had made this all about HIM.
Con S.: * He got immediately defensive and couldn't hear a word I said. * He stormed out of the room and carried on the conversation from the next room, where he was angrily washing up his lunch plate. * He threw up his hands and started to raise his voice, then at the end of the conversation, stormed out saying over his shoulder (and this is for the immaturity books, folks), "I'm sorry it's all about me." and promptly slammed out of the house.
A little background: If I wash my hands of what goes on at the house, S. blames me for not being involved. This happened last week, before I sneaked over there while he was at the coop and ripped out all the drywall in the kitchen, broke it down, removed all the wall screws, and packaged it up for the trash trucks. All in about 4 hours' time. This also happened before I spent 5 hours at Ikea picking out kitchen cabinets and trying to make an impossible layout work. Also before I helped him make up this priorities schedule (at his behest). All things I involved myself with, though I have my own deadlines to contend with, and all things that were immensely helpful to S. (he was absolutely floored at the drywall stunt).
If I try to be involved, I get this - it's none of my business, I'm not over there all day thinking about this stuff, it all needs to get done, etc. Then I get blamed because of the tight schedule, and the time he spends with me is taking away from working on the house, and everything else.
Either way, I get blamed. Now, I'm not sayin' I was a model DBer in that conversation relayed above. I had left my chartreuse duct tape over at the house when I ripped out the drywall, and didn't have any handy. But given the damned if I do, damned if I don't, should I apologize?
(By the way, not that it really matters, but the decision I was reacting to was that he was spending time hanging curtain rods in an apartment with no kitchen cabinets or appliances at all, no kitchen walls , holes in the walls above the fireplaces that have to be plastered, screw holes all over the walls that have to be spackled and sanded to prep for painting, a bathroom that has to have the toilet, vanity, and sink replaced and the ceilings replastered...)
Bets 
You are right to ask about control – it is an issue I work on. I don’t want to be controlling, and I certainly do not want to be held up in comparison with this woman, which I am well aware is a real and imminent danger. So I am at the moment mulling over how to file this information and what to do with it should it not come up. He has been very consistent about telling me about every contact from her (though the good will doesn’t extend to NOT responding to the contact in the first place).