It's funny, Irish, I was thinking the same thing -- chalking xW's behavior to insanity. And then realizing that meant I had been falling back into old patterns by treating her as a rational person and giving her the benefit of a doubt about her concerns. It's like I have been failing over and over again to understand and to "make real for myself" that my ex is truly a fractured, mentally-deranged person, despite the pretenses she puts on to the otherwise. I guess I just have a hard time with that because it sounds like just so much hyperbole, even to me when I am the one who's facing it. It still continues to amaze me the difference between this person and the one I thought I had married.
So I have determined to break my conditioning that seems to compel me to treat her as an average "normal" person -- she no longer deserves my benefit of a doubt. I keep backsliding in that arena however and I have to be more careful.
[Edit: This is not to say I will treat her as a wacko directly to her face. It just means I will practice a little more discretion and continue to secretly remind myself when I interact with her that she's sick. "Just smile and wave, NCB, just smile and wave. Buh-bye."]
...
I have decided to take S8 to the Cub-O-Ree. I am moving Heaven and Earth to arrange to do so, and it's going to cost me in multiple ways, but for my S's I will do what I must. I am going to owe xW a weekend day for this. I have threatened a couple of projects at work that have deadlines due today just to arrange for the time to get my car into the service center for some tires and alignment work, so I will have a safe car driving S8 down to the scouting event. It will mean picking up S8 in the wee hours of the morning in order to be on time for registration -- meaning I won't be able to catch up on my sleep that I lost this week being on-call and pulling late-night, early-AM duty. It will also mean being late to the Bible Study tomorrow night, if I make it at all.
I am recalling having been constantly under the gun and on the run like this back when xW was my W and she was dictating all our lives. It makes me think -- I am now so very glad that I am no longer married to a person like that!!! I am so sorry for my children, but I am now thankful that I am not regularly put into that meat grinder. Thank you, God!
[Edit: This is not to say I will treat her as a wacko directly to her face. It just means I will practice a little more discretion and continue to secretly remind myself when I interact with her that she's sick. "Just smile and wave, NCB, just smile and wave. Buh-bye."]
Heh, I think you an dI need to form a tag team at the current moemnt, my XW's is being all the sudden being all sweet and wanting to talk. We're to have a discussion at some point this week and I'm already not only trying to prep myself for whatever it could possibly be this time, and exactly which Xw will it be that I'm talking to?
Me 35/XW 33 S13 & S12 M: 10/17/98 OM & S: 07/08 D final 06/09/09 12/03/09 - 06/13/10 "Piercing" 06/13/10: Engaged to Re-marry 10/17/10 06/25/10: Expecting baby #3 2/14/11
Ya' Know, Dday, that's where my ex is different from yours, surely. Since the bomb, my xW has always, always been hostile towards me -- only the degree of her animosity varies. Sometimes she's even toned, condescending bt not overtly nasty. More often she treats me as if I were Quasimodo. Once in a blue moon she'll try to smooth talk me like she used to, and make it sound like she's a normal caring person who will sacrifice her own interests to do what's best for our children, even if it means playing nice with me. But I have come to recognize the mask she's wearing for what it is -- and now she knows it. So less and less does she even bother to try to sway me -- it ain't gonna' happen.
But it does seem that sometimes she attempts to put on aires with me as if to try to convince me she is still the type of mother who would really put her own interests aside for or secondary to her children's best interests. And I don't know why she bothers, because her actions, the fruit she bears, tells me otherwise.
For a very long time I did hold out hope that somewhere inside her was something of the person I had fallen in love with, married and had expected to live out the rest of my days with. But the last two, almost two and a half, years have beaten into my head the truth that that woman is no more, if she ever existed at all. Perhaps she was a fabrication all along.
Yes, you're right NCB, that is the difference, if you are certain yours just puts on an act, it's just an act. With my X, it's been almost clockwork that once every 3 or 4 months has an internal conflict where the person she was cries out for help to overpower the person she became.
I think the problem there is that since she convinced everybody around her that what she did had to be done, she really has no-one else to turn to and win that conflict, just me. Maybe that is why she has sent the request through the kids every now and then to reach out to certain members of my family?
I don't know. The company she keeps could care less of the truth. They are pretty much all divorcees and just want to live it up. Her immediate family are all money hungry, especially her father who she'd be at serious terms with should she finally kick OM to the curb, especially if the reason were a desire to put this all back together. I'm convinced her father only saw me as an investment, and when the M started going sour, so did that investment. How else can a father allow his married daughter to move in to his house with her "boyfriend" directly in front of his own grandchildren?
You see, there's just a lot of things that STILL don't add up at all. And when she gets the the look she has like now, last seen in July, where she questions what she's doing, and is open and truthful with me, I can safely say, it's not an act.
Me 35/XW 33 S13 & S12 M: 10/17/98 OM & S: 07/08 D final 06/09/09 12/03/09 - 06/13/10 "Piercing" 06/13/10: Engaged to Re-marry 10/17/10 06/25/10: Expecting baby #3 2/14/11
But the last two, almost two and a half, years have beaten into my head the truth that that woman is no more, if she ever existed at all. Perhaps she was a fabrication all along.
I could have written that post! I wonder though, I mean I think my X had horrible parents; self-centered, alcoholic mom, etc. But I think some of who you are as a person is who you associate with and what kind of actions you do. When X was married to me, I wonder if I helped him become kind of a better person, better character, he was a Sunday School teacher, etc. The last couple years he hangs out with immoral types of people and his actions are well, you know. I think hanging out with OW and his self-centered friends have been a bad influence on him. But that's what he chooses to do/be, so I just pray for him.
Anyway in my convoluted way, I was trying to say that maybe she was a better woman when she was married to you because of you.
You know, I can take some pity on a person for having a damaged upbringing -- my own ex had/has a flake of a self-serving mother and an alcoholic, mentally-vacant father -- but at some point each and everyone of us needs to take responsibility for the person we are today, who we choose to be, for our own words and deeds. Nor can one blame their faults on those they hang out with -- if you hang out with the wrong crowd, then that's your responsibility.
But I do agree with you, Karen, that often our spouses become better people through their relationships with us, for however long that lasts. My ex when we were dating told me many a time that she was proud of herself for choosing to be with me, for being with someone who for once would not treat her badly, unlike so many former boyfriends before.
It's funny how the history revision she spouts today reverses all that. She now claims that from the very beginning of our R she had to tolerate my "insufferable" personality and mannerisms, how I would always try to suppress her own thoughts and true personality.
What that tells me is that she has been a stupendous liar either now or in the past -- either way, in the end, it just proves she's just a stupendous liar.
So I tend to agree that perhaps she was indeed a much better person during the time we both tried to maintain our R. I look at what she does now, the very things she used to hold in such disdain and contempt -- carousing in bars with her new circle of "friends", drinking and carrying on like she has no need of acting like a responsible adult with two small children (things she would have chastised me for had I ever even so much as suggested such activities when we were married) -- and can see how far she's fallen with our R now dead and buried. Such a complete hypocrite she is.
The posts that you and Karen made are so RIGHT ON!! My H had a mentally abusive up bringing by both of his parents and that has spilled over to our relationship, but I the same lies here with me, that I have somewhat changed his personality in a good way, but as you know his bad side comes out often. Too often.
I have knowone to blame though. I knew he had some issues when I met him, so that is my own fault. I was young and was really attracted to him and the rest is history. It amazes me though how different a person I am today then I was when I met him. I was only 17, he was 24. Things have changed drastically.
I don't believe anymore that people should get married that young. I know for me, I didn't know what the heck I really wanted until I was in my late twenty's. Can't do much about it now.
As far as her hanging out in bars etc.. that is just inappropriate. Once in awhile to go out with friends are something is one thing, but on a regular basis is not responsible when you have small children at home that need your attention. Just my .02
I'll talk to you later...
me: 37 H: 44 Married for 18 years this june S7 S3 porn issues, and much more... since 7/06
Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
I think I need to explain a little more about my comment. I am pretty sure (or at least really hope) that xW does not participate in any questionable socializing while our S's are in her care. That I would not ever tolerate.
And I believe that her carousing is done each weekend she is with OM and the boys are with me, which means it's only periodic socializing in sports bars and pool halls -- i.e., away from little eyes and ears. I myself do not have any problems with folks taking part in such social gatherings, as I will myself participate with my own circle of friends once in a while.
What I find particularly hypocritical of xW is that all the time we were dating and while we were married, she acted like such the tea-totaling prude and would never, ever think of going to an establishment whose main attraction was beer and spirits, if she had a choice. The most she would ever allow either of us to share in was maybe a wine tasting once, maybe twice in the entire 17 years we were together. She frowned on alcohol in all forms and grudgingly tolerated me infrequently bringing beer or wine into the home to share with guests. The only reason she allowed the occasional bottle of red wine to pass our threshold was because of it's purported health benefits at one time. Even before we had children, i.e., before it made more sense to "act like responsible adults."
Most of this huge aversion to alcohol and all of the social aspects that go along with it in drinking establishments has to do with the fact that her father has been a serious alcoholic for all her life. It caused her so much pain through much of her formative years, being neglected by her father for the bottle. So at no point during our years together did I ever allow myself to become fully inebriated (drunk), out of sensitivity to her painful childhood.
Now, to see and hear of her behavior with this OM, to see just how far she will compromise her stated life-long system of values -- just to mold herself to his particular personality -- it makes my head spin. All those years trying to act responsibly for her sake and for the sake of my children, for her to just throw that away. It just convinces me how psychologically bent she has become.
What really gets my goat is that the same sensibilities that in her became overzealous prudishness at times are not curtailed to the "bar scene". She was while she was M'ed to me just as restrained in the bedroom too -- but I am just as thunderstruck to now realize she has loosened up a tremendous amount in that department too.
Seventeen years... <sigh>
It all makes me feel like such the fool... on so many, many levels...
You are not a fool, she is the fool who chose to ruin the family instead of trying to fix it. It was easier to take a different route instead of sticking through it with you and maybe letting herself go and be open for new things.
17 years is a long time, I hear you on that. Although you have gotten something wonderful out of it (your boys) its like I wasted all that time on someone who would just assume to throw it away when things got bad.
Its depressing, and sad. But I know that there are many people out there who have the same views as you do (you just have to find them) and you have to believe that you will be happy again with someone whom you can trust and live the rest of your life with.
The fear of the unknown is the worst.
Im not much of a bar person either, but if H was to ask me to go out for a bit, I would go, just to get out and be alone.
What's going on for tomorrow??
me: 37 H: 44 Married for 18 years this june S7 S3 porn issues, and much more... since 7/06
Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
Back in my past, before xW came into my life, I used to be a lot more social, used to be open to meeting friends at pubs, bars, etc., used to regularly partake of a beer or a glass of wine at home or at friends' places. I used to do a lot of harmless and sometimes not-so-harmless things prior to dating my now ex. I began cleaning up my act as I got more serious about my career, and then it was about that time I met xW -- after which I eventually began to give up a lot of things I associated with my "youth", as an effort to improve myself and act like a mature, responsible adult.
By the time we got married, I had also given up a lot of innocent but costly hobbies too. Not just alcohol and carousing. I tried to replace them with healthier stuff and tried to involve my young bride in those too. Things like sea kayaking and other paddle-sports. But when I became a father, I gave up the riskier ones too.
I say all this because it appears to me, in retrospect, that I consciously let go of a lot of my old habits, hobbies and activities for the sake of pleasing my W and for the sake of my children.
Some would say I allowed my W to tame me. In that, I'd have to say that she got what she demanded -- only problem is that is not what she really wanted, not really, or so it now would appear. She thought she wanted me tamed and domesticated, but achieving that was likely what led her to lose interest in me, ...and to seek some of the "old me" in someone else.
