Jim0987 #13 - Its life Jim, but not as we know it

[Sotto]

Jim - you are a the social butterfly - good for you....

Really pleased to read your post, and glad you are feeling so positive. As RD said, whilst we may feel sad over what has happened, it's good to feel the present and the future has much to offer.

Sounds like S had a good week - Easter and birthday all in one. I can imagine he was a bit dismayed with peas and carrots after all that...

Jim, I am sure that in time if you want to, you would meet a lovely woman who would feel blessed to build a R with your kids. But for now - who knows how things will turn out, but it's good that your life contains many lovely elements.

Hope you enjoy your night out!

T x

[Pink17]

Hi Jim,

You sound really good and stronger. You have been spending really good time with your kids and is blessed to enjoy this time with the innocence of their age.

Looks like you are take a day at a time and your GAL is fantastic.

But, one thing that strikes me is that you seem to start giving up on this difficult situation. I know how hard it can be if there is no communication at all. But why is your WAS so mad with you after all this time? Was she always like this? A person that holds grudge for a long time? Or was there reasons that she can forget and forgive?

And what about DB? What are the changes on you that she can notice? What are the 180s that may not pass without notice? Is there anything that reminds her of the man she fell in love once? Because she did once, so it is in her memory somewhere.

Is there any way you can shake your sitch?

I do not see any D papers being served, why is that? If she wants you out of her life for good, why she did not serve you yet? Can this be a little sign of her commitment to her new R?
Or maybe she is testing the waters on the other side to see if this is what she really wants?

Do you have any clue of what is going on with her? Was she depressed? Is this other man very different then you?

Maybe I shouldn't be asking all this. Maybe it is a bit rude from me to make you recall all what hurts, but it seems all static, like the cheeseless tunnels.

Do you think you could share some info with us and then we all storm some ideas to start going where is the cheese?

Just some toughs to make you think a little bit. The first reason you came to this board was an attempt to save your M, your family. So, maybe time to time we all need to look at our sitch and analyse what is working and what is not.

It's not too late for your M. But sometimes, I feel that it may be too late because you already gave up on it. Is that the case?

I apologize if my questions are inconvenient, it's up to you to answer them or not. I just would like to understand where you at at this moment in time.

XOXO
Pink

[jim0987]

RD, Toots,

Thanks - yes I am feeling more positive. For me its very much about disentangling my M from the rest of my life and taking stock there.

When I did I found it was OK, I've made some changes and made much more of an effort to be outgoing and sociable and its improved a lot of things. The biggest shift has been to concentrate on what's going well.

I will also say that as a part time parent I'm much better rested which has helped.


Pink, you ask a lot of really good questions so thank you and in my case don't ever worry about asking too much.

I will do my best to answer but that'll be a bit later today, when I can use NY laptop rather than my phone.

[gan]

Gan, yes having all of Europe within a couple of hours flight is amazing. Door to door I can be in Rome, Paris, Berlin, Monaco, Prague, Geneva etc. Etc. All within about 6 hours

Well that just makes me jealous. I am en route to Tanzania via Dubai. At 6 hours I was not even west of Indonesia!

Looking forward to seeing your answers to Pink's questions.

[Vanilla]

Jim

WW is frightened of facing her actions I think. Contact with you may hold a mirror to herself. In order to protect herself from introspection then she is keeping distant. Looks to me like the ostrich position.

I think you will just need to let this run its course in WW. Jim still can work on Jim though.

Keep on detaching.

I am very interested in those exciting work plans of yours and career goals, so that is where my interest is at the moment.

What are they Jim?

V

[Vanilla]

Gan, yes having all of Europe within a couple of hours flight is amazing. Door to door I can be in Rome, Paris, Berlin, Monaco, Prague, Geneva etc. Etc. All within about 6 hours

Well that just makes me jealous. I am en route to Tanzania via Dubai. At 6 hours I was not even west of Indonesia!

Looking forward to seeing your answers to Pink's questions.

Oh Gan, how exciting!

V

[jim0987]

Gan, north africa is that much further and Athens is about a 4 hour flight. Tanzania is somewhere I'd like to go though

V, I'm trying to work on Jim but at the same time accept who Jim is (and talk about Jim in the third person apparently)

In terms of the career stuff its a bit hard to explain, but the short version is that there is a lot of austerity enduced restructuring going on and I have an idea of how I can use the opportunity to basically restructure my whole industry. Even if it doesnt work the steps i need to pursue are going to be good for me and good for my current employer and it should be fun

[jim0987]

Pink,

I'm going to try and answer your questions

Hi Jim,

You sound really good and stronger. You have been spending really good time with your kids and is blessed to enjoy this time with the innocence of their age.

Looks like you are take a day at a time and your GAL is fantastic.

But, one thing that strikes me is that you seem to start giving up on this difficult situation. I know how hard it can be if there is no communication at all. But why is your WAS so mad with you after all this time? Was she always like this? A person that holds grudge for a long time? Or was there reasons that she can forget and forgive?

I dont know if she is still mad with me or if its just she doesnt want to engage with me. She isnt nasty to me when we see each other she just wont intiate conversation and shuts anything down unless it is a specific about the kids - which is then minimal

was she always like this? Not to me, but thinking back there have been plenty of people she has simply cut out of her life because of some percieved affront. Its one of the reasons she doesnt have many friends.

I've also seen her family (W, SIL & MIL) spend an entire day in indignent outrage about how some service was atrocious (by which they mean it didnt meet their, sometimes completely unrealistic, expectations)

I struggle to think of acts of forgiveness on her part at all. But there have things that i have done wrong and although i've apologised (repeatedly) I was never forgiven - She has said she has tried she 'just cant'




And what about DB? What are the changes on you that she can notice? What are the 180s that may not pass without notice? Is there anything that reminds her of the man she fell in love once? Because she did once, so it is in her memory somewhere.

I'm not sure anything i've done to improve myself would be noticed by her. some of it is about how i react to things but that would require her to engage. we dont have enough contact for her to notice that i'm doing more social things or feeling good about work. I've always been relatively slim and healthy and perfectly domesticated so again not sure there is much to notice.

And again I've always been an involved Dad so no real change to see there.

So i guess i'm saying my changes are about how i interact and that involve some level of engagement between us. Its also much more difficult with my wife because 'emotional flooding' is one of my biggest issues to contend with and this is much more pronounced with her


Is there any way you can shake your sitch?

Not really sure i can think of one so i'd welcome suggestions

I do not see any D papers being served, why is that? If she wants you out of her life for good, why she did not serve you yet? Can this be a little sign of her commitment to her new R?
Or maybe she is testing the waters on the other side to see if this is what she really wants?

I think the reason she hasn't served is to do with the UK system. within 2 years its a fault based system and she would have to legally document her complaints and then i have the opportunity to either accept them, challenge them or make counter claims. My honest opinion is that in every other sense we are seperated - she has even legally reverted to her maiden name and so i suspect she just doesnt see it as worth the hassle when instead she can wait 2 years and then go for a no fault divorce

As for her commitment to OM1, well he was properly hokey cokeying with their relationship and yet she kept pursuing him and so she is fully on board with him, i suspect irrespective of what he does (not that i have any way to know apart from about 6 weeks ago when she said they were dating)

Do you have any clue of what is going on with her? Was she depressed? Is this other man very different then you?

When I see her she looks happy, and at she has a certain 'glow' which to me suggests things with OM1 are going ok. She is certainly happier than she has been for a while.

She has built a really strong friendship with PF (poisonous friend - for those that dont remember) and she is back running again which she always loved but stopped when pregnant with D(STB4).

She was depressed for a really long time, I thought it was post natal depression and us having 2 young kids with no support network. I also think she never properly grieved for the loss of her dad. what i know now is she blames me for all of this (and i was rubbish/awful when it came to her dad's death)

As for OM1 I dont know much about him. He's relatively senior at work but no more so than me. I assume he's taller (W did complain i'm not tall enough - not that im short), I know he's dark haired, brown eyes, rougher edge, where as i'm blonde hair, blue eyed, clean shaven and look young. He does triathalons and cycles massive distances - I dont, i get bored with that kind of stuff and prefer squash.

She has described him as the Macho rugby type and thats in keeping with her exs who have generally been of the older, tall, dark and ruggedly handsome type which is a long way from me.

He lives in London and is apparently the centre of a big social circle so again quite different to me in that sense.

beyond that i know very little about him

Maybe I shouldn't be asking all this. Maybe it is a bit rude from me to make you recall all what hurts, but it seems all static, like the cheeseless tunnels.

Do you think you could share some info with us and then we all storm some ideas to start going where is the cheese?

Just some toughs to make you think a little bit. The first reason you came to this board was an attempt to save your M, your family. So, maybe time to time we all need to look at our sitch and analyse what is working and what is not.

It's not too late for your M. But sometimes, I feel that it may be too late because you already gave up on it. Is that the case?

see below

I apologize if my questions are inconvenient, it's up to you to answer them or not. I just would like to understand where you at at this moment in time.

XOXO
Pink

Pink, you asked if I've given up. The answer i think is both yes and no which i know doesnt make much sense but i'll try and explain.

If you listen to the description that my wife has given of me then I am far worse an abuser than Vs husband or Gg's husband or many of the other H's that get described her. and irrespective of whether i think this is true or not this is what she (and now her family) believe. When you put it in that context it makes sense that she wont engage with me or go through divorce proceedings because she would feel it just gives me an opportunity to abuse her more (not that i would/did but its how she feels).

When her mum was briefly polite to me, I know (from snooping at the time) that she had a go at her mum and that a month later she told her sister that she 'still hadnt forgiven her mum' because 'she let me back in'

Its clear to me that at the moment she wants nothing to do with me and the hurdles to any reconcilliation are enormous and would require a level of humility on the part of my wife that is beyond anything i've ever seen from her.

So I wouldnt say i've given up more that i recognise that its entirely unrealistic and that i should act on that basis. The damage has already been done there is nothing to save so now its about building a new life

This isnt the same as saying i'm closing the door to us as a couple or to say that i wouldnt want to see my family back together.

Right now all this means i'm trying to move forward with my life and to be the best person and best father I can. I will learn from my mistakes and i continue to go regularly to see my IC to try and understand some of the underlying things that drive and influence me so that i can be a truly good and compassionate person and to be comfortable and accepting of myself.

What I do know is that there is room in my life to share it with a significant other and that i want that. I'm also much clearer about the kind of person i want that to be. If my wife decides that she wants to be that person then i will gladly work with her to make sure we both have a happy and fulfilling life together but equally i'm not going to put my life on hold on the off chance she changes her mind and her current course.

And yes for me that might mean that somewhere down the line she does change her mind and want to reconcile but finds that someone else already has the position.

I know thats a lengthy post but you asked really good questions and i thought they deserved to be answered fully. Thanks for asking

[Sotto]

Hi Jim, I was interested to read your post above. And I must admit, your W's unwillingness to engage with you has always bothered me too. After all, things are resolved for the time being for you guys, and it is in the kids' best interests if you two are interacting as well as possible. There just doesn't seem to be any good reason for her to be like this - particularly as she has been the wayward one.

I can understand you about the D process, and that may be a reason to wait. I think my H may well go ahead and file as I have said I won't stand in his way. By that I mean I won't contest it if he files on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour (although it would be a bitter pill to swallow I admit.) If your W filed on these grounds would you contest it?

You say that there isn't an opportunity to see many of your changes. But I think your W will notice if you are feeling happier in yourself and enjoying life more. It may be in your sitch that 'life' will start to bring forth consequences for your W. Things may be going well in the R with OM for now, but we know the stats on this and the odds of long term success are slim. If things sour, this may be the point at which your W does break and start to feel some more humility. But I think your approach is right, and I'm pleased to read about the new things you are doing.

One other thing that stood out for me was her grief and your support of her following the loss of her dad. That is a difficult one. My cousin split up with her partner last year, following the death of her Mum. She felt her partner wasn't able to support her at all, and this was the last straw for her. Have you explored with your IC why you found this so hard. I can see that your W may find it hard to forgive, when you weren't able to be there for her at a time when she needed it. I'm not saying that to be critical at all, but I can see that must have been hard.

Anyway, I guess the overall message from me would be that there's always hope until or unless you decide to 'move on.' And it is clear from your posts that you are moving forward.

Are there ways to shake up your sitch? I still think it's not a bad idea to try interacting slightly differently with your W. Asking how she's doing one time. Not asking the next. Complimenting her on something one time. Being self contained another. Putting some cookies the kids baked in a little bag for her one time. And just monitoring how things go. I can't believe that she will remain so unresponsive for ever...

You're doing really well anyway Jim. And I always value your wise words and support on these boards. ((Jim))

[Vanilla]

Jim, WW will know if you really did abuse her or not.

Firstly women and men who are abused find it hard to accept that they have been abused. Most usually there is huge denial and secondly there has to be many incidents before the denial falls from the eyes. Zeldas story is typical, eventually there is intimidation and acceptance of abuse. Frankly it is a very unpleasant label to apply unless it's true. Very damaging.

Easy talking of abuse is not possible, it is painful and hurtful. Neglect of a child can be abuse but of an adult not so much. Abuse is an almost deliberate attempt to control through making another feel less. Abuse is not casual, it cycles, it rants, it calls names and there are five or six levels of abuse. at the lowest level blaming, name calling and failing to take responsibility for self are key. All the way to cold stonewalling and failing to interact with contempt and dehumanising effect. Intimidation physically and mentally.

Jim, you appeared to be concerned in case there is abuse which you did not recognise. From where I sit and from what you say about your sitch, there may be neglect and lack of support. These are holes in the soul damaging but deliberately causing pain and hurt to control? I just can't see that in your descriptions.

I would be the first to call you on it.

WW knows this is R failures not abuse.

V