Just got caught up on your sitch. Emotional strength is a strange thing to qualify for men, but you need it.
It is time to move back. Don't take any crap from her when you do. Explain briefly and calmly. Then walk out of the room to the next thing you have planned.
Now is not the time to talk about a future when yall are divorced. Plenty of time for that, whenever you get ready.
For now you need to accept that you may never be with her again, then you go GAL and literally, physically, and eventually mentally and emotionally start moving forward.
H 34 W 29 BD 3/12/18 Divorce Busted Spring 19
It is not things that bother us, but the stories we tell ourselves about things.
I’ve been DBing as best I can - GAL and detaching so that I can make the best decisions I can. It’s been going well. Spending more time with the kids as given me strength and I can feel myself healing from the last salvo and growing stronger by the day.
I was triggered today though. D9 videoed W to talk to her. D turned the phone to me and W was in MB making shushing gestures elsewhere. I then asked ‘who she was shushing’, ‘no one’ was the reply with a hint of a smile. I’m now pretty sure S was in the house so it was likely him she was shushing for the call but I can’t be sure.
I was triggered but I seem to be recovering from the incident much quicker than I thought I would. I don’t know what W makes of the incident but I guess I’m not as fussed what she makes of it as I would’ve been previously. I am obviously still way too attached to outcomes but it was a trigger that I wasn’t expecting and was hard to avoid. I really didn’t need it at the moment.
These incidents remind me how hard all of this is. I need to accept the fact I don’t trust this alien who has taken my wife anyway and so must detach from it totally and utterly. I guess the best way to deal with it is to go on as if it never happened and keep on with DB. I’d gone totally dark with W until this incident and may have just undone all that work.
Just starting to read the book ‘Boundaries’ by Cloud and Townsend...
I think they wrote the ‘Controllers’ section about W...
I think it will help this NGS actually understand the dynamics of the MR and the toxicity of much of the last few years and how it got to BD without me really noticing.
Not sure what you meant by "trigerred". Were you saying you believed OM to be there for a moment? Of course, there's a way to avoid that from happening and it's moving back.
H 34 W 29 BD 3/12/18 Divorce Busted Spring 19
It is not things that bother us, but the stories we tell ourselves about things.
Not sure what you meant by "trigerred". Were you saying you believed OM to be there for a moment? Of course, there's a way to avoid that from happening and it's moving back.
I need to continue to have patience. continue to detach and continue to GAL. D9 is making the decision hard - I hate the idea that she will see me and W live like strangers in a house that doesn’t have a spare room for some amount of time until a likely D. Reading about Boundaries and how manipulative she is and has been over the last few years makes me wonder whether I even want anything to do with her anyway. She would need to change a lot and she is way too engrossed in her ‘new life’ to be interested in doing so.
W has messaged me assuming I don’t want to talk because I haven’t said ‘let’s talk’. I think she wants me to make the running to make it easier for her. Don’t really feel the need to jump on it.
2x4s welcome. As are any other comments on the worry I have about D9 on this.
Haven’t updated in a while...so thinking out loud.....
I still haven’t moved back. Still the same decision though - boundaries and self respect tell me I should go back as I have been lied to and manipulated out of my own house so that W can live some fantasy or other under the guise of ‘space’. Only thing stopping me is D9 and what expectations it will bring to her if I did. It is likely it will be the start of a D process if/when I do but that is probably just bringing forward the inevitable anyway. I need to go and see a new L about what the implications are for moving back and whether they ‘advise’ it.
W wanted to talk about ‘the future’ with me and I agreed to meet her last week. We had an hour and she didn’t have the heart/nerve/whatever to say anything about it. I was happy and surprised by how calm and detached I was throughout. It was like I was watching us both talking from another seat at the table. Next question is whether I listen to what W wants the future to look like (as selfish and delusional as it might be) before I go to see L and decide the next move or just see L regardless and make my moves based on that conversation.
I’ve been spending really good quality time with D9 - much better than when I was at home. Too often I was too influenced by the depressed mood of W and so didn’t did the things I should of with her. Not any more. The space is allowing me to grow and become a better more confident father.
I need to find new GAL activities but at the moment my main one is spending quality time with D. I need to take up golf again and do some hiking with a few buddies. The running, weights and good eating has made me feel as good as I ever have though. I just wish I could sleep a little better. Maybe now a fair few BDs have been delivered (and the big D won’t surprise me if/when it comes) and I continue to detach, this will improve with a bit more time.
S came out with me and D the other day. It turns out it wasn’t him last weekend morning as he said he hasn’t been awake early since the holidays. Seems that W asked S if I asked him any q’s and he said I had. She confronted me this morning about it and it took me by surprise. I made it clear that she should tell me the truth rather than lie and deceive. Hard to know whether this basic attempt to put down a boundary was the right approach or whether a more validating approach would have been better but perhaps that is me worrying too much about outcomes.
Had a great fun weekend with D - we really are bonding more than we ever could when I was with W - her controlling nature and depression made it difficult to do things I wanted to do as a family and so (mistakenly) ended up not doing them.
I took her home and was as calm and as relaxed as I have been since BD with W. Beside her normal venting about day to day problems to me (which I validated her feelings on) she also seemed fairly relaxed.
She still seems fairly adamant that all her problems and problems in the MR are/were my fault and the improvement in her mood recently prove that (she hasnt been tearful recently). Still on a fairly high dose of SSRI. I didn’t bother trying to explain to her that it takes two to tango and it doesn’t necessarily follow the improvement in her mood proves things were all my fault - time and space are great healers as are some of the changes she has started to make for herself. I also feel better in some ways but it doesn’t mean I want D etc.
I was happy with my level of detachment until I showed some beta weakness around how busy work is at he moment and how I don’t have the headspace I usually have for it. No idea why I did this. I guess I’m still occasionally treating her as my W rather than the alien she is and that the NGS is still alive and kicking. I still had a good shout and scream about the sitch and the alien herself on the drive back from the house though.
The more time that passes, the stronger and more confident I feel and the more I feel like I will move back and, however hard it will be, it will at least put the ball in her court and put me in a better place to start any D process. I then get times like tonight where I think I would be best not bothering, move to a bigger rental place and to get on with the rest of my life. I must go and see another L soon to help me decide.
I still have time though. It is a couple of months before I would go back.
