I'm on my phone and get thumb-tied trying to type more. But I would encourage you to give a specific hour on Monday (noon?) for her to respond. That will eliminate wiggle-room for her ... and anxiety for you.
M: 40 H: 44 Married 14 years S11 & D6; D20 & D19 from previous M 2BDs/PAs, 8 years apart Piecing: April 2014
I will say that this is much improved from the first one..no? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'Over the past few days, I've been doing a lot of soul searching, praying and honest reflection on our marriage and specifically, these past 11 mos.
With that being said, I refuse to continue living in an open marriage. It is extremely disrespectful to me, to our marriage and family. You have some decisions to make here. Should you decide to work on our relationship, know that I am more than willing to put in the necessary work with you to establish a new, better, and improved marriage going forward.
Should you decide you are unable to end all contact with OM and commit to re-building a new relationship with me, I will move forward with initiating a divorce. We will continue to have a civil relationship with respect to the kids and that will be all. We will not be friends.
Please let me know your thoughts by Monday morning at 9 am on your decision... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I am sure Starsky, Bond, Sandi, and others have some ideas here.
Sit on this one for a while. Sometimes the next day, we have a fresh set of eyes and may think of other things that did not occur before. I usually do this when writing business correspondences etc.
Thanks for the support and advice. This version is definitely less emotional than my first draft.
I can't believe I'm sitting here even willing to give W one last chance considering that only 12 hrs ago I was firmly committed to filing for D. Wow. I'm still trying to block out the PA and will definitely need a lot of work on that should we decide to reconcile.
For what it's worth, I fully expect W's response to be along the lines of 'I've been doing a lot of soul searching...trying to find the right answer...this isn't about OM...I'm not able to commit to us right now.'
I take that back. Her response will be 'OM and I are not together, but whatever...I'm too broken..we're too far gone...go ahead and start the process...'
Planning on sending today with a Sun night deadline. That should allow her enough time to make a firm decision.
Sent the email about 5 hrs ago. Gave her a 10pm Sunday deadline. On a somewhat positive note, I haven't received a 'whatever, go ahead and file' response yet
Saturday morning and still no response. W text me yesterday asking if I could drop the kids off, but that's been the only communication since I sent the email. She has the kids all weekend, so I'm really not expecting any response until tomorrow night (10pm deadline).
What's going to be difficult is sticking to my boundary should I receive a wishy washy response (or no response at all). If she doesn't reply in a black or white, yes/no type of way, but instead an 'I need more time...let's maybe try dating...or I'm not sure how I feel.' I know I may struggle with moving forward with initiating D should I receive anything but an 'I'm ending OM contact, let's work on our R' response.
On a separate note, I'm proud of the father that I've been throughout this past year. I've always been heavily involved in my kids' lives, but I've taken on the typical 'motherly' activities during this time as well- grocery shopping, meals, cleaning, back to school shopping, etc. Took the kids go kart riding and to mini golf yesterday before school starts on Tues and we had a blast. When I dropped the kids off of W's place last night, I could see the sadness in D10's eyes- she hesitated when getting out of the car and gave me a hug before going to the door. I can honestly say when I look back on this 'mess', I'll hold my head up high in the father and leader I've become for them.
