Guilty as charged.. I am a WAW.

[Bridgestone]

hi need to make this quick as I'm headed out for a friends birthday party tonight. The Big 4-o for her.. Should be fun.

You have given me much to contemplate & yes I have considered some of what you have said.

To answer your first question, which is the easiest...
actually he calls quite frequently at that time of day.

The 2-3am phone calls have lessened in their frequency, but initially (like the first 6 months) it was almost a nightly occurance.

Now maybe 1-2x a month, with the early morning (5-6am) being almost daily. No- I am not an early riser, not by habit..I'm actually a night owl.. I guess in some respects that is one of the steps I have been willing to do, keep answering the phone no matter what time of day or night he calls.

Maybe I should do a 180 on that, huh?

Later!

[lodo]

have fun bridgestone.

Personally, I wouldn't have tolerated the phone calls. If they had continued, I would have bought a phone with a ringer that could be turned off. And I would have explicitly told him, "I'm hurt, this has been a long time coming, but discussing things at wee hours doesn't help and I won't talk to you at all if you continue."

That said, there is always a little tingle when my phone rings and I see that it's W (I only have cell, no land line). I hate it that I do, but I do. And I almost always answer.

So, I don't think it's a 180 as much as a boundary. People need sleep.

Regarding the other stuff to contemplate, remember that you're striking close to home. I found it extremely hypocritical that W said she'd support me when I started working long hours on grad degree, then became withdrawn from feeling like I was ignoring her and wasn't providing her needs, and then reinstated in her PhD and told me she just needed time to concentrate on her work and didn't have time to deal with a relationship. Difference is that I'm willing to place a long-term relationship above work, she isn't. And what do my PhD-holding friends say (who are profs at a prestigious univ) - if they had to do it over again, they would have tried harder to balance the relationship.

Okay, this is becoming about me, not you. But I didn't want to get you riled - just understand where I'm coming from.

Hope you're having a great night! I'm, of course, working on my talk ...

BTW, since you're now becoming one of us (quickly checking threads before you run out again) there is a group of us on facebook. We can't share certain things here, but search on fb can be a wonderful option. Just ask an almost WA who posted something that really moved you! No pressure, though.

lodo

[smartcookie]

Hi SC
I was a medical transciptionist during summers when I was in college... I remember the first time I heard oophrectomy.(procedure that removes the ovaries).

I think I re-wound the tape (yes it was a cassette) and replayed that word about a hundred times before I finally went & found the patients chart & looked it up.

Not fun!

Too Funny !!! I had no clue that I'd be learning this much stuff. I am having a good time though. It keeps me out of trouble (well, mostly).

Sort of like my day today.. It started with a 5:45 am call from H. He's doing some things that work for me, (he is- empathetically listening, just letting me vent, quit fixing my problems)

he wants to know when am I going to start doing things that he needs (sex, move back home, sleep in his bed,bring his family back, etc.).. he understands that I can not do them RIGHT now. but when can he expect me to be able to??

How do I explain the allocation of resource issue to him? I have tried. What I hear back is.. I'm doing what you need, now you have to do what I need. His idea of the golden rule. give as good as you get. I heard this as part of his defense of his anger issues. Your mad at me so I get to be this mad at you.

He is giving me what I need, now I need to give him what he needs.

I suppose it's a matter of priority.

Giving him what he needs will take resources that I'm just not ready to give him yet. Without jeopardizing things for me & my kids that I'm not going to jeopardize. It will require emotional risks that I'm just not ready to take yet. When will that be? When I'm ready. And for him, that is not good enough.

So It has been a day of letting myself feel 'not enough', insufficient, and basically a bad person for H. Am I a good person to me, yes I was. To my kids, yep. To a friend who I will celebrate her birthday tonight.. yes again.

So why do I let his negative defining words impact my mental attitude and tear at my self-esteem so much more than my own positively defining words? As the tootsie pop owl, wisely said.. the world may never know!

My H did something similar too. It was like he expected me to heal & repair on his time table. I just told him over & over, it doesn't work that way. I get better when I get better, & the more you pressure me, the longer it takes. & Lodo is right (about a lot of stuff) and especially, it's not tit for tat. I love the idea of 1 month for each year. I hope you had fun at the party tonight. Hugs.

[Bridgestone]

thanks for the invite. I have been frustrated with what is apparently a new policy on here, however, after doing what you suggested I have eliminated the obvious search options (sc, db, waw, etc) without any success.

More hints?

[lodo]

sc - texan style

[lodo]

unabbreviated

[Bridgestone]

got it.. thanks.
was looking under groups.. my bad!

nice time at the b-day party tonight. "former' friends; old, used to hang with but not anymore, but nice still nice to see friends, and current friends were all there. The friends were a big issue with H & I when I left last year.

Still not good about how he 'handled' it with some of them, I can not control his actions, but that doesn't mean I have to like them!

H was there.. he was nice/polite/even accomdating getting me a bottle of water and some mosquito repellent. I smiled and brought him back a piece of cake with the extra frosting off mine, just as he likes. He noticed... just a small smile when he saw my extra frosting scraped onto the side of the plate, but he noticed.

Little things.. maybe he appreciates them a bit more now. As do I.

[MaxP]

Bridgestone:
Your description (and that of SMARTCOOKIE) of a WAW's mental state are poignant and undoubtedly accurate in the vast majority of cases. The LBH's anger and hurt are just as real. The only way back is via FORGIVENESS...on BOTH SIDES. ACTIONS must be allowed to precede FEELINGS and actions are a CHOICE you can both make. Most WAWs are told this yet ignore it (mine certainly did, was told many times in C). They simply feel that "I have lost my feelings and can't get them back." While understandable, the opposite approach is futile...no one can recapture "good feelings" by avoiding personal contact and stubbornly maintaining an emotional wall while hoping to just magically "feel it" again first before doing something.

Many WAs will say "I would just rather be alone..." but this is a cop-out; most will (if they haven't already) find themselves soon in an EA/PA and usually with someone they would not ever consider being involved with (married, vast age, values, social differences) under "normal" circumstances. They will justify their betrayal of their own moral/ethical standards in any way possible to soothe the guilt and convince themselves that "this just feels soooo right".

AZdoc, great summary. This is such an accurate portrayal of my WAW and her reaction it is truely frightening. She wanted to be alone, live the single life, wasn't attracted to me, it was all wrong from the start, broke off all contact, then claimed it didn't feel right any more (why would it if you never see the other person after you leave) and finally - surprise, surprise - ended up in another R, which probably had started as an EA before she left.

I also pointed out that feelings require actions and actions are under people's control. However, I was the wrong messenger. So, so frustrating.

Vent over.

Max

[Bridgestone]

Max
I can hear your frustration with trying to get your WAW to see your perspective on the feelings/actions piece.


I guess I can understand that having the feeling of lonliness (for example) there are some actions you have the option to take to act on that feeling.

1- ignore it
2- look for a way to connect to your partner to alleviate it
3- look for someone/something else to take your mind off it, until it passes

So it seems to me (althouh I haven't read your sitch) that your wife did choose an action to 'deal with' her emotions.

You just don't like the action she chose. Which is entirely understandable.

Did she try 1 & 2 first? I don't know.
Did she try #2 often enough & not have a response that helped alleviate the lonliness that she then tried #3? I don't know.

Maybe her trying #2 often, made you feel nagged on or clung to, and you chose to act on that feeling of annoyance by ignoring her.

I don't know that either, but those are all actions that follow emotions.

As I read somewhere, life is 10% of what really happens to us and 90% of how we react to it (which does include feelings).

Peace

[MaxP]

Hi Bridgestone,

Not to hijack your thread, but ...

... thanks for your comments!

She certainly tried igoring her feelings over about the course of a year - she said as much once. I don't remember her trying to connect to me during that time. I only remember a couple of things she said about herself that seemed out of character and slightly disturbing, which she wouldn't be drawn on. As for taking her mind off things, well, she worked hard and talked to her friends, just not to me - by then I think she felt I was 'too different' from her. I believe that in doing this she became aware of new, exciting opportunities* and decided I was boring and reflected things about her that had since changed. She also went to individual counselling (I told her it might help her come to terms with some of the stuff she was saying but wouldn't elaborate on). I'm fairly certain that helped end our R.

Note, she has never admitted anything about seeing someone during that time, but there is a lot of evidence that would fit.

As far as I was concerned it felt like:
1) Irritation with me preceeding bomb by about 2-3 weeks.
2) Bomb. No attraction, all physical contact stops immediately and never resumes. List of minor annoyances about me.
3) 8 weeks of stress living under the same roof, not knowing how to make any progress. She talks about the fantasy of a single life during this time. Some IC (both) and 2 or 3 MC sessions.
4) An announcement that she has signed the lease on a new place and is moving out in 2 weeks.
5) She moves out.
6) During the next 3 months we meet only 3 times. All meetings are arranged by her so that they are on her terms. In each case she always has somewhere she needs to be which causes her to leave.
6) We then meet for a final time and she tells me it's over - "It no longer feels right".
7*) 5 weeks later I receive letter through the door addressed to her and another man (whom I know) - an old university friend of hers.
8) A week later I bump into them shopping in town. NB he lives a long way away from where we live.

There was no wavering at all from her after the bomb. She felt I was trying to find a fix and there wasn't one. Any issues I had with how I was being treated were my problems, not hers. She had grown and I hadn't. End of story.

We haven't met since then, although we still get on fine when we have other contact. However, we may meet in the next month or so once the house is sorted.