Should I be proactive and ask W how long she plans to be gone, so we can plan for childcare, or wait for her to bring it up herself?
STH17,
I understand what Steve is saying, but it's important that your child is taken care of with as little strife as possible. If I were in your shoes, I would assume your wife is moving out and say something like, "Since you're moving out, we need to discuss child care." Also, if your child stays with you, then your wife will probably have to pay you child support even though you're still married.
I could be wrong about the best way to approach this, but I'd say children trump DB.
She's unemployed, so fat chance of her paying me anything. She was the one who asked me last night after confrontation if I was watching our son today, and said she wanted us to be on the same page with him, without him getting stuck between us. I thought child support only came into play when one parent is spending more time with child than the other. That hasn't been a problem yet, so I don't want to be the one make it a problem. I'm just pretty exhausted with all this at the moment. The next thing on my mind is the 2-hour trip tomorrow. I thought I could handle it like the bed, she can ride in the car or not, but I'll be driving with son at the previously agreed upon time.
Me:30 W:31 S:4 M:7 T:12 PA: 5/6/18 - ? W moved out 7/18
Pity about her being unemployed, but as for your child i believe its best to play it cool, only be demanding if she is always never coming home. Keep things as simple for your son as possible.
DB'ing isn't really going to save your marriage, this is what almost everyone here can attest to. We all came here looking for the solution, but when we realised that the problem was us, the want-away spouse didn't matter anymore.
Have faith in the process, and in yourself. You really can't [censored] this up anymore than it already is - so relax, just relax.
Just cos things are going right, doesn't mean that they were always wrong.
oh, and one more thing. When it comes to love, we cannot decide whom we love. And if we cannot decide whom we love, then inversely, we cannot decide whom we do not love.
So if your wife is in love with someone else, it cannot be your fault, if you still love her, it cannot be your fault. The "easy" part is accepting your fate, and you will be able to do this by accepting hers.
Just cos things are going right, doesn't mean that they were always wrong.
Quick update: W asked if our plans had changed for tomorrow. I just said I still planned on going to the baptism. She said ok. I expect her to have an overnight stay with AP (or longer, with the packed bag I saw) but I'll be staying overnight with my son at my parents' house. Or maybe she's planning on staying with her family. Pretty sure her original plan was mischief though. Kind of feel like we're back to don't ask don't tell, but at least I'm not making undue sacrifices. She doesn't like to drive, but also thinks I'm an unsafe driver. I am thinking of asking her to drive and sitting in the back seat myself with my son. That saves me from her sitting there texting and facebooking and making plans with AP, which I think is what she did for her first encounter. If I have to I can be direct and say I won't have her in the car disrespecting me. But I know she is taking the car tomorrow for a date too. I guess I could say plans are changing and I'm keeping the car if I'm keeping our son, and she can borrow her parents car. Let her lie to them about why. Hm, wonder if that's worth it. It would be like trying to stop her from seeing AP. Not really worth my energy, is it? She'll find a way and just resent me more. Or maybe just maybe she'll respect me for not enabling her. Doubtful. Plan was she drops me off with my family, takes son to her family's party, then drops off son and car seat off with me to put in my mom's minivan. Then she would take the car off by herself and pick us up Sunday, no time set. I don't want to be at her mercy for when she chooses to pick us up while I suspect she is meeting with AP. Sigh.
I'm going running tomorrow morning with my church men's group. stopped going to church a while ago but the men's group is good. Excited for that.
Me:30 W:31 S:4 M:7 T:12 PA: 5/6/18 - ? W moved out 7/18
So nothing came of the suitcase. It may be a just-in-case thing for her if she feels she needs to leave, or maybe just because she doesn't feel comfortable having all her clothes in the bedroom while I'm sleeping there. Don't think it's worth worrying about right now.
Weekend was fine, we rode together but didn't talk much either way. I drove going out, she drove coming back, didn't really even have to discuss it much. On the return trip I was trying to plan travel arrangements on my phone for a couple of weddings coming up in the next two weeks. When we were almost home I told W we needed to talk about it so that S4 was taken care of. That conversation went fine. I probably could have been a bit more mysterious, but I'm a little bit over playing those games too. If I can just be myself and not worry about what to say or not say to W, that's an improvement for myself.
This morning W brought up wanting to buy a car for herself again. She wants to sell our older vehicle that S4 can't ride in, and asked if I wanted to split the money from selling it. I was a little puzzled, and probably showed it on my face. An odd question when all her spending has been out of our joint account. I used the opportunity to say if we did that I didn't think it would make sense to keep sharing accounts, and we should take care of splitting those first. She agreed to that, and to taking herself off of our joint accounts. This was the conversation I'd been worried about having next.
She also wanted me to clarify what I meant when I said I would work on negotiations with her. She thinks if she files by herself, we'd have more court dates and the process would take longer and cost more than if we filed jointly. I told her I don't see much difference anymore between us filing jointly or her filing separately. In the end I told her I still couldn't file jointly with her, but she can file separately and I would work on the settlement agreement with her as if we were filing jointly. I think we both still are assuming a lot about the process, but she doesn't want to get lawyers involved and neither do I. I do think I'll be asking one some questions and make sure the agreement will be approved in court though.
She said she doesn't want anything other than to take her stuff, and I can keep mine. Seems a little simplistic to me. But I guess we have to start somewhere with negotiations, and that's a good place I think. I've been wanting to separate our finances for a while now. I wish I had this conversation with her 3 months ago.
We talked a bit about custody too, and where we'd be living. A lot of things I'd been worried about. I asked her if she thought we needed to make decisions about where to live together. She said it would affect primary custody. I think talking about that made me decide that if W chose to move back to our home state (something she still sounds sure of wanting), I probably would too, just because I wouldn't want S4 to be far from either of us.
Anyway, throughout the whole conversation I think I was pensive with furrowed brow. I don't think I felt much fear while having the conversation, even though it was one I have been afraid of having. I feel good about not avoiding it when it came up this time. W teared up a bit when she asked if I would wait until she was done with her therapy to remove her from our insurance. Which got me tearing up, and I said "I'm not going to keep you from getting healthcare. You know I care about you." That made me think of how in the past I've judged what was important for W to have or not have. I told her so, and apologized.
Divorce is stupid. It seems like we're just going to both go through these settlement agreement negotiations being the nicest and most compassionate we've ever been to each other, for the sole purpose of destroying a future that we had once promised to fill with love and compassion for the rest of our lives.
Me:30 W:31 S:4 M:7 T:12 PA: 5/6/18 - ? W moved out 7/18
STH, I think you are missing a potential opportunity here to shake her from her fantasy fog. My W wanted a quickie, no lawyer, even filing online (yes there are websites claiming they can make it that simple) D. I wanted to know how to proceed legally with documenting some of her behaviors just in case, and contacted a lawyer. When she found out about that I could almost literally see that part of her fantasy bubble burst. I also said that I would be filing due to infidelity on her part (not really a thing anymore in our state, but still something I would be stating to people when they asked what happened).
That was one of the first moments I really saw her questioning her proclamation on BD other than moments of regret about what it meant for everyone including extended family. Her grandmother had just went on about how much she loved me at Christmas time and that pulled at my wife's heart strings.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
