I don't know about the significance of the notes but "Let's keep them" implies both a shared decision and a need for them in the future which is bound to feel good
As I was sorting through boxes, I found a pic of our son when he was about 2 years old. He's holding a little plant that was a gift for something like Mother's Day or Father's Day. I showed the pic to H, who gazed at it for a long moment and remarked how tiny kidlet was.
I turned around to a newly organized bookshelf and found a place for the photo. As I turned to leave, H called my name - I wasn't sure I heard him.
Dia: Yes? Did you call me?
H: When I look at that picture, I feel guilt.
He went on to express doubts and vulnerabilities about himself as a father. He asked me outright if he was a bad father. I stroked his shoulder and listened. Then I said that I felt the same way - that there were times when I felt I was a bad mother, that I had doubts and insecurities, too. I told him I didn't think he was a bad father, and I gave a list of the really great stuff he's been doing with and for kidlet lately. I told him how impressed I was.
Then I said that when I had those guilts and insecurities of my own, I used them to power change, to make me a *better* mother.
He listened. He nodded.
H: Thank you, Dia. Thank you for comforting me. I needed to hear those things from you because that's not what I thought. (i.e. He thought I thought he was a bad father.)
This makes twice in 2 or three days that he's felt comfortable sharing a troubling inner reality with me, a vulnerability, an insecurity.
My interpretation: He's beginning to open up to me. He's beginning to trust me, and more specifically, to trust that I won't hurt him when he's vulnerable. He's beginning to let me in.
This is very, very good.
The trouble with having an open mind is that people put things in it.
My sitch - Divorce Busted! http://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1804137#Post1804137
He's beginning to open up to me. He's beginning to trust me, and more specifically, to trust that I won't hurt him when he's vulnerable. He's beginning to let me in.
This is great progress Dia and a lesson for us all that this 'letting in' takes a long, long time. May patience continue to be with you.
It's certainly making me rethink my position......
It sounds like your evening was a magnificent success. You should be really proud of what you have achieved and where you are at in your R now. Well done!!
I've read back through your earlier threads and I can see the enormous progress you have made over the months. I am hoping some clarification about early days may help the rest of us.
I read of you and H having email contact in the days before you moved to H's home town. Were you always in contact and the quality and quantity of contact has ramped up over time or was there a period when the two of you had no contact? I understand there was a certain time when you thought you wanted to reconcile and wonder how you got to the stage that you would be able to stay over at H's place.
I left, taking kidlet with me, in August of '07. For the first several months, there was almost no contact at all between me and H. He didn't even call to talk to the kidlet between once-a-month visitation, and if I didn't take the initiative to schedule the visitations, they didn't happen. I'm pretty sure it wasn't that he didn't want to see the kidlet - I think it was trauma and depression. For my part, I was still blindly angry at him and was flinging myself fairly headlong into a PA with OM.
During that time, we were scheduling calls maybe once a month to try to come to terms on the divorce settlement. We weren't very regular about that, looking back, it was obvious that I didn't want to pursue the divorce because I was so lackadaisical about getting the papers done.
Also during this time, if I had weak moments where I missed him or my resolve faltered about the divorce, I took out the IM transcripts of his chat sessions with OW and I read them. And wouldn't you know that by the time I finished doing that, I was mad as hell - and wounded to the core - all over again. I know people say to get proof if you think there's an OP, but in retrospect, I think that my reading and re-reading of those chat logs was harmful, not helpful. If I hadn't done that, I think we'd have been back together withing 2-3 months, before he'd had time to meet OW2.
When we hit the holidays, the first Thanksgiving and Christmas apart, I backed off on the papers. Didn't want to ruin people's holidays with it. It was also during the holidays that I *really* missed him and started thinking seriously about reconciliation. I don't know if I asked him first about it during the holidays or around Valentine's Day, but I had actually put my wedding rings back on before I asked.
Whenever it was that I asked, he told me no, that he was seeing someone and not the original OW who had been my best friend. I was crushed. OM had felt my pullback and had really given me hell for not pushing to get the papers done over the holidays. And when I say he gave me hell, I mean that OM was verbally and emotionally abusive, not just then, but all throughout my R with him. So broken-hearted and hesitant, I said to H that if he was seeing a new woman, that I guessed there wasn't any reason for me to continue to hold back in my R with OM. H said he was surprised to hear that I had been holding back at all, but no, there wasn't any reason for me to do so.
So for the next several months, I tried to make it work with OM. HA! That R was DOA from the getgo. But then things got really complicated. OM had moved about 3000 miles to be near me. And he was pushing for use to move in together. I consented. I was fine renting a place, but OM was adamant that we buy something instead. So by the end of April, OM and I were in escrow on a house.
There was still only minimal contact between me and H. Visitation stuff and D settlement only. Kidlet and I moved in with OM in mid-June. To be honest, I knew it was doomed before we even moved in. One of OM's forms of abuse was to break it off with me a good 2 to 3 times a month, complete with screaming obscenities. He never did it in front of kidlet, and within 3 dys or so, he'd say he was sorry, he never meant it, etc. But see, by then we had this *&%@# house and I couldn't afford to move out.
I was in the house with OM for pretty much a full year but I slept in the guest room for most of it. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but eventually, when OM would break up with me, I just told him "Ok." Later he'd say we were back together, and I'd just look at him. He'd refused to put my name on the papers for the house so in addition to breaking up with me, he was also threatening to throw kidlet and me into the street a few times a month, too. When I'd finally had enough, I just walked out and went to my parents with only an overnight bag. (Kidlet was away on visitation.) OM and I tried to live in the house as roommates only, but that didn't change anything. The abuse continued. He only ever laid hands on me once, but he threw things (including at me), kicked things or punched things (walls, doors, the bed) that were right beside me, usually w/in inches of my head. And yes, I called 911, and yes, I was an idiot for staying as long as I did (and for moving in in the first place, and for the whole EA/PA period).
But back to contact with H...
So somewhere in all of this, after the first year of separation, kidlet told me that H was standing in his bedroom and kidlet heard him say out loud, really sadly, "I miss Dia." He didn't say it *to* kidlet. In fact, H didn't know kidlet heard it. This was my first indication that he even still had feelings for me.
Actually, I suppose that's not true. Sometimes I'd call H from my office (couldn't let OM catch me), and despite the immense pain, we'd said "I love you" once or twice. About every 3 months or so, not planned and not regular, I'd be up in the middle of the night unable to sleep and I'd write long emails to H. In them, I started taking responsibility for my role in things, apologizing for stuff, sharing reflections. H never really wrote back to these, so to this day I don't know what effect they had. I asked him more than once to consider reconciling, and he kept saying no. He had too many negative feelings, he didn't want to be hurt again.
Backtracking, I made a secret email address so I could talk to H w/o OM knowing. There definitely started to be more contact after I did that. Little stuff. A link to an article or a funny picture - stuff like that. And those long 'dark night of the soul' emails I mentioned above. This was about a year in, maybe.
H knew the R with OM had gone sour. He was worried about me, though he still doesn't know the extent of OM's abuse - and again, OM never did it in front of kidlet, not until once or twice at the very end as I was walking out.
As we came into spring this year (approx. 1.5 years post-sep), there was a lot more casual contact between me and H. Calls that started as stuff about kidlet, but lengthened into half an hour or 45 mins of pleasant chatting. Sometimes I'd call him just to talk. The manner between us became ... friendly.
Toward the summer, I started seriously job hunting and H knew I was (secretly) planning to move out of the house with OM, but to do that, I had to have a decent job. There was nothing available near me, so I mentioned the possibility of widening my search and maybe including H town. That's when he said it - "It would be nice to have you back up here."
From that point, I stopped looking anywhere but H's town. He told me that if I got any interviews, it would be ok to 'crash' at his place to do the interview. So I started going up for interviews at first, then I went up w/o any interviews scheduled just so I could job hunt on the ground, so to speak, from up there.
There was a blow up in the middle of all of this - the job hunting days. It was getting close to school starting and I didn't have a job lined up. I needed to make the decision about where to enroll kidlet for school. I asked H if we could move in temporarily while I continued my job search. He said no. He said I should just let him have kidlet and me live down south. I said no. I told him that I needed to reconsider the move then because I wasn't going to put that much distance between me and kidlet.
I had an apartment down south all lined up when I went up for what was to be my last week job hunting in H's town. If there was no job by the end of that week, I was moving into the apartment down south and enrolling kidlet down there. I had told H several weeks earlier that I wasn't going to be pursuing the divorce anymore, so that if he wanted it to happen, he'd have to divorce me. Initially, he was annoyed about that but he hasn't said word one about it for many weeks.
I had been apartment hunting up north, too, but with no job in hand, it's not like I could actually have rented anything. I talked to my FIL about the apartment sitch, the fact that I was competing with students because of the time of year and FIL offered to talk to H to see if I could stay here 'temporarily'. Keep in mind that H had already told me no a few weeks earlier. Well, when FIL talked to him, he said it would be ok.
So in the final week of job hunting, I landed a temp thing and my grandmother died suddenly. In all of the resulting chaos, I didn't follow up on the apartment down south. I packed my car (again) and here I am only now I have a permanent job.
H and I have never had a direct conversation about how long I'm staying. In fact, H never told me directly that I could stay - it was all third hand through FIL. As a matter of fact, I don't even know what FIL said to H. All I know is that I'm allowed to stay but it's allegedly short-term.
The reality is that my current salary won't allow me to move out by myself much less with kidlet. That's a blessing in disguise, really.
So to summarize, there was very minimal contact for the first 6-9 months. After a year, we could talk more easily to each other, and by a year and a half, things felt friendly.
As far as the divorce, we did get all the way to filing the final judgement, but we did the papers ourselves and they kept getting kicked back on technicalities. The last time I filed them was mid-January, and I told H then that if they got kicked back that time, I wasn't going to file them again because it meant that the Universe didn't want us to get divorced. And it doesn't!
Not sure if that's what you wanted to know, and it's dam& long-winded, but there you go! Hope it helps.
Last edited by Dia; 09/06/0902:13 AM.
The trouble with having an open mind is that people put things in it.
My sitch - Divorce Busted! http://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1804137#Post1804137
