Hello! 20 year marriage teetering... (part IV)

[bustingout]

AS,


I am sorry to hear about this turn of events. I am so inspired by your strength and calm disposition. I too understand about the strange changes the WAS makes with the OP...things they used to have strong passion about (not liking camping) to all of a sudden being ok with it. I have seem this with my H and and his OW as well.

Anyway, thats neither here nor there I suppose. Take care of S10...this is what pains me the most in all of this...our children.

Thank you for always offering support and guidance to us all.

[Tallula]

Sorry to hear about this, AS. As many have said, you have been a huge source of support and knowledge throughout my sitch. Mine is for sure ending in a D, but I will be great. And it's with help from people like you.

You are wonderful!

[AnotherStander]

Thank you all for the wonderful support and kind feedback, I greatly appreciate it I've been kicking this development around the last day and think I may need to try something else. MWD does say in DR to take stock of things now and then and make adjustments if required. I've been largely dim with W for quite a while, 4 or 5 months. Texts and emails have been very rare and usually centered around kid coordination, no phone calls unless it was something urgent about the kids, very little face-to-face contact which again has been centered around the kids. I think I am going to back off of the going dim stuff and reach out to W a bit and see how it goes. I'm not talking about full-on pursuit, but just send her more texts and emails in a friendly way. For example, a mutual friend of ours is buying a new Shelby (I hate him now, LOL!) and sent me some pics, so I forwarded them on to W today and also told her about S10's scout meeting last night. She replied right away and favorably which is frankly pretty unusual for her. We've since traded several nice emails today. Not reading anything into it, but I'll take it as a sign that she's not against the idea.

I'm not saying that going dim didn't work, but I am saying that maybe it has lived out it's usefulness in our case and it's time for something else.

Maritimer- sorry to hear about the mediation, my thoughts are with you!

subguy- glad you're enjoying the bike!! I took S10 out for a short ride on the Street Glide to grab dinner and you'd think he had won the Lotto! He loved it! I need to remember to take him out more!

Inside Out- DB pool party! That would be awesome, it doesn't look like much right now but by mid-summer when the banana trees are leaved out and the flowers blooming it looks pretty amazing Plus I have a margarita machine It's not a real big pool but there's a giant curvy slide (7' off the ground), a big stone waterfall and a grotto with a shelf over it that spills water. There's a tanning shelf with a mosaic of a shark and he has water spraying out of his mouth. Fun stuff!

Intact- I've certainly had my unsteady times But the dips are much smaller these days than early on. Early on they were like giant chasms and now they're just little waves. Before it was hard to see anything to be thankful for, but now the bad times don't prevent me from seeing the good things all around me.

Papa4Life- "hellish roller coaster ride", LOL! Funny but unfortunately accurate too

cbtdad- I've got to constantly remind myself not to read too much into what W says, you know the DB rule about not believing anything they say. Even 10 months in I don't know that she's REALLY as convinced inside as she pretends to be outside. I don't know if you've read Mandy's sitch, but (I think it was after 8 months of S) she pretty much told her H to quit bugging her and get on with his life because she was DONE, and no sooner had she said that then she started second-guessing her decision and by the time she decided she wanted to reconcile he had moved on to another woman. I'm trying to keep all these things in mind.

jp787- thanks you, S10 is resilient but we're keeping tabs on him and asking the school nurse to do the same so we can pull him into therapy if he needs it.

bustingout- yes the children is what tears me up too, because I still remember the hurt from my parents divorcing. It has stuck with me my entire life. I don't want them to bear those scars too, but in my case my mom (WAW) basically abandoned us and thankfully my W is still quite involved with the kids, so I think it'll be easier for them than it was for me and my siblings.

Tallula- so sorry to hear you're heading for D Thank you for the compliments though

[bustingout]

AS, again you show amazing DB strength. I understand what you mean when you say:

I think I am going to back off of the going dim stuff and reach out to W a bit and see how it goes. I'm not talking about full-on pursuit, but just send her more texts and emails in a friendly way.

that is EXACTLY what i spoke to my coach about.

And I still remember the hurt from my parents divorce too. It has always been a a part of me. I know what you mean. Hopefully we can not let our kids know it too.

((((( )))))

[stilllookingup]

Ugh I didn't until few days ago you had started this new thread after Retrouville and reading it with a smile until yesterday. I'm so sorry it's taking a worse turn.
But I love how you are not giving up just yet.

I think it's great that you are going to try new approach. I remember when I first started DB-ing I detached and tried to be mysterious but it wasn't working for my H. He seemed more distant and I felt like he was doing the same to get back at me. With an unfortunate event (his beloved grandpa passed away) involved in Feb, I completely changed. I hugged him many times a day, I let him know where I was and what time I was coming home, what I was doing with friends, hugged him every morning before he went to work. And I noticed he was so much closer. He hugged me back really tight and long.

He left anyway but he explained to me he needed to do this and I agree with him 100% that he (we) needed this separation. I'm still hoping for R down the road but I'm truly enjoying my time alone for now.

Anyway what I wanted to say is that I don't know how he left if I hadn't tweaked my DB-ing in Feb. He might have left with much different impressions of me.

[JuneReN]

DB always maintains, do what is right for your situation. You can only try and monitor the results. Since she texted back quickly, it looks good

[AnotherStander]

It's only been a week, but here's a quick update. D18 turns 19 today Good grief, one more year and she'll no longer be a teen! Yikes! D19 wants to go to Medieval Times for her bday, I traded some emails with W and asked her if it was OK to take the kids this Saturday (it's her week to have them) and I invited her along. She said it was fine and said she wanted to go and offered to split the costs. I went ahead and picked it up and told her if she covers the birthday upgrade and tip then we'll call it good, she agreed. I asked her if she wanted to have the cake and gifts at my house or hers, she said mine so we'll go there afterwards.

Weather is getting really nice here and we're taking advantage! D16, S10 and I went out to eat Saturday, then went to play some miniature golf, then went for ice cream. This is the time of year that the top stays down on my Mustang Yesterday S10 and I went for a motorcycle ride and then caught Oblivion (pretty good movie). I also got a ton of yardwork/ landscaping done and the yard is getting whipped into shape! It's always a little depressing looking at my beautiful landscaping that I've worked on all year long getting ravaged by the winter weather, so when it starts coming to life again in the spring it really lifts my spirits

As I mentioned in the last update W is now saying she wants to proceed with D. She wanted me to get some info from my brother (he and his X did all the paperwork themselves). I did so and I sent it to her. When I sent it I did type in the following:

I’m pretty sure you know where I stand on this, but let me just say one last time that if this is what you want, then I support your decision and will sign the papers, but I still feel like we should at least give reconciliation a try. I don’t expect you to want to go back to what we had before because clearly it didn’t work for either of us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t build a new relationship and marriage that is far better than what we had before. I’m not asking you to make a commitment or move back in tomorrow or anything. I’m just asking for you to try a little, open the door to building a new relationship, and give it some time to see how it develops. I think we owe it to the kids and ourselves to at least try. But if you want to push forward with a divorce I won’t do anything to block the process.

I hope your day goes well!

The response (or really, lack of one) was what you might expect from a WAS- "thank you." No problem, I had no expectations but just wanted to maybe plant a small seed of doubt in her head that may or may not grow. That was last Thursday and I saw W a few times over the weekend and all seemed fine, no further discussion of D, and she's still reaching for hugs when we part ways.

As a side note, my brother's sitch was similar to ours as far as kids, house, ownings, investments, etc. Their D decree was almost 40 pages!!! It's not going to be easy filling all that out, if W does then I'll know she REALLY wants a D, LOL!

AS, again you show amazing DB strength. I understand what you mean when you say:

Thank you So far the going "not quite so dim" stuff has been working great. I sent W some pics of S10 at the miniature golf course and have been trading more texts and emails with her. She's been replying back pretty enthusiastically, so I'm going to keep it up.

Ugh I didn't until few days ago you had started this new thread after Retrouville and reading it with a smile until yesterday. I'm so sorry it's taking a worse turn.
But I love how you are not giving up just yet.

Thanks, I'm still leaving the door open but I think D is pretty much inevitable at this point. I'm in a better position now than ever before to deal with D, I don't want it but I won't just survive after D, but will thrive. I know that now

He left anyway but he explained to me he needed to do this and I agree with him 100% that he (we) needed this separation. I'm still hoping for R down the road but I'm truly enjoying my time alone for now.

That's kind of how I felt too, I showed W the best H I could be before she left and even though it didn't keep her from leaving, I was more at peace with it because I knew I had done everything I could to show her my changes. So when she left, rather than wallow in misery I took advantage of "alone" time to pursue interests I didn't have time for before Glad to hear you're doing well with that too!

DB always maintains, do what is right for your situation. You can only try and monitor the results. Since she texted back quickly, it looks good

I don't think it can stop the D, but it does seem to be helping our R and perhaps that will make D go smoothly and pave the way for a good R after D.

[BC39]

Thanks for updating your sitch. Its obvious why you're revered for your strength and determination. And despite everything you have going on in your life you always take the time to share your wisdom to help countless people on here

[stilllookingup]

I really hope the small sees of doubt will grow in her head.
I would if I were to read the email!

[BFloat]

my H and i went to RV as well. last year as a matter of fact..

i think it's great that you changed up your game to "not quite so dim". if what you're doing is working, do something else.