Her mother did not mention dinner? She did not invite you? Your W waited until her mother left and then told you she was going to her mom's? This was after them spending the day shopping?
Correct. See my additional post about why I though that dinner was coming at our house.
Her mom said "So I'll see you at my house." before she walked out. At that point I thought "you" was both of us.
I asked W if she is going there and she said yes. I asked if she would stay there for dinner, she said yes. I never asked if I was invited because I was not expecting that.
Her mother stopped coming over after the bomb was dropped and W started seeing her mom without inviting me.
I can see how that can be awkward under the circumstances. Her mom and I have been the best of friends.
I'm afraid that I am dealing with the text book case of "family having good intentions with self interest" as described in DR.
Her mom has said repeatedly that she loves both of us and wants to see us happy. It is highly possible that she is standing between us with her "best intentions" and trying to keep the separation on track in hopes of "us" becoming happy without each other.
That is a tough obstacle. I have to see what mood W comes back with and what tomorrow brings. I hate to see all the little things that have happened this past week to cut back at the roots.
I hope I can keep "undoing" that kind of damage, because I now know some stuff that seems to work and some stuff that doesn't.
W came home from her mom's house rather early. I asked whether she had a good time. She said yes. Her mother is widowed and has had a boyfriend for 5 years now. I asked about him. She said that he was there and he asked to say hi to me.
I'll take it for what it's worth.
I enjoyed my quiet time with my dogs on the couch and treated myself for 3 course dinner. I know it was better than hers and I had unconditional love around me the whole night.
I will sleep very well tonight. I don't need her to feel good and she does not know that yet.
I posted the following in A_Goodman's thread. I wanted to move it here because I haven't really talked about that. Goodman's sitch just scared the heck out of me and reminded how my world could shift on it's axis too.
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Oh boy,
This is hitting me too close for comfort. I feel for you my friend.
I am approaching the possibility of a similar event. My W also has health concerns. The symptoms point at MS and the doctors have not done serious testing yet.
It scares her and scares me too. I held cool last time she was talking about it as well as the first time she told me. I am also afraid that heavy DB would backfire once the diagnosing gets more serious.
For some reason doctor is reluctant to push ahead with diagnosis and she is so scared that she does not even want to know.
I have a deadline coming up for telling her what I want to do about the separation. The situation makes is so much harder to decide exactly what to tell her.
If it was me in her shoes and I did not feel love any more, I would still appreciate a long time "friend" to stand beside me while I am going through the health crisis.
I would like to put the R talks on hold but she is demanding an answer by the early September and I just don't know what to do.
Hang in there.
I did not mean to hijack your thread here, but your situation is so similar to mine.
Let us know how things work for you. I'll be visiting here often.
I asked whether she had a good time. She said yes. Her mother is widowed and has had a boyfriend for 5 years now. I asked about him.
Perhaps you saw this as just good manners, IDK. However, stop showing interest in what she's doing when she's out.
What you should have done is glance up at her when she came in and said, "Oh, hi", then go back to watching TV or whatever. Let "her" ask questions about "your" evening, and give her one-word answers. When you are dealing with a WAW....you don't give her that kind of importance when she's having dinner where you aren't invited.
I doubt if you can see what I'm talking about.
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
I know exactly what you are talking about and I have been doing that. Perhaps not consistently. It was not my initial question. She started the conversation telling me who else was at the dinner.
Yesterday afternoon we lost power. I purposely did not jump up and hooked up the generator like I usually do. I was working on my laptop and power outage did not interrupt what I was doing.
She was sitting on a couch fiddling with her phone. After awhile it started getting dark and I got up grabbed the flashlight and headed for the door. She asked if I was going to hook up the generator. I said no, I'm heading out to have dinner. She got up and started getting ready. I just stood there thinking - who invited you to come, but I did not want to be mean and let her tag along.
We went to a restaurant which we have not been for a long time. She wanted to take it slow so we would have a better chance to return to the house with power back on. So we stretched the time between courses and hung out.
We talked about her work which is always a stimulating conversation. Again I made sure I listened and made eye contact when she was speaking. I am getting very good at that. I let her finish all her sentences before butting in. I made my responses short and to the point. She seemed to enjoy that.
As we were waiting for the main course she shifted the topic to current politics. We don't usually have any disagreements in that area and sometimes it sort of makes the whole topic not worth discussing. This time however we did disagree.
I was holding to my opinions strongly but reasonably trying to explain why I see things differently. She started arguing that I don't know the whole story and I am missing facts. I agreed that I do not claim to know everything. I asked her to fill me in on the facts. She tried but came up short. I politely suggested that we could carry on the topic once we both have educated ourselves a bit more. She agreed, but was irritated.
Silence followed. I felt very uncomfortable. Being a smoker I have a very easy way out of moments like that. When I returned from my short break the food had arrived.
She immediately started complaining that it is not the same as it used to be and started laying out every little thing that was wrong with it. I just let her complain. Finally she was done and I asked if there is anything right for you today. She stopped, looked down and said that the soup was okay. I said that I was glad that something was right and that she looks really miserable today. I was totally ready for her to start blaming me for all the misery in the world, but she didn't. She only said that she has one of those moments (referring to her health condition) and that she does not want to talk about it.
Moments later she started smiling again and started asking me how my food was. I said that mine is as good as always and offered her a piece. She said no thanks.
Only minutes after that she started asking to get a piece of everything I had on my plate. I agreed to it.
I felt like I was out with a teenage daughter.
After she finished, we stayed for one more drink and she looked like she had gotten over her misery. She was asking all kinds of questions about my friends, who I have seen or talked to lately. I know she misses them.
She talked all the way home and at that point I tuned her out. I was just drained from her mood swings and energy I had to use to hold it in check.
The rest of the evening was nice and uneventful.
If it keeps going like it has lately, we have turned to pre-bomb period. That would be an achievement but I don't want the old status quo either. Maybe it is time to start thinking about "post war rebuilding".
I like your thought process. I also like how you weigh detachment with kindness and think it through like when you took her to dinner uninvited. I am trying to find my way on those decisions too.
Me 44, W 39, S 6, D 6, M 21 Bomb June 18, 2010 I filed D July 20, 2010 W filed counter suit Aug 2 Rings came off Aug 5, 2010
Your interactions with your wife are downers. You can be attractive without pursuing. Go back and look for the opportunites you had to lead, look at how you stifled the conversations and look at how your negative attitude permeated the whole night.
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If it keeps going like it has lately, we have turned to pre-bomb period.
It's been how long again?
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Ghandi
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
[quote]Your interactions with your wife are downers. You can be attractive without pursuing. Go back and look for the opportunites you had to lead, look at how you stifled the conversations and look at how your negative attitude permeated the whole night.[/quoate]
Can you be a little more specific?
Isn't the idea to not to engage in silliness while maintaining a civil attitude? Not falling into traps that I have before?
Please tell me where I went wrong by stifling the conversation. I have done a lot of "I am sorry that you feel that way", "How can I help you feel different?", listened with open mind, not interrupting when she talks to me. Disagreeing only when it has nothing to do with us or our R and doing it with respect.
Help me here Coach. It was her negative attitude that was permiating and I managed to stop it from spreading so that neither of us could talk for hours.
