I spent most of the weekend with the kids and it was great. W was out of town visiting her sister/friends.

Friday the kids and I stayed in and I spent about an hour with S8 drawing cartoons from one of his favorite books. While we drew we talked, joked, and laughed. It was such a great micro-experience within the weekend and I felt so connected to him. In the blink of an eye he'll be a teenager and have much less time for his Dad, so I am greedily collecting these moments.

W came home y'day mid morning looking worse for wear. We chatted pleasantly and I went to a friend's to watch the Super Bowl. The party was attended mostly by people I didn't know, but I had a lot of fun meeting and getting to know them.

I look at these weekends as dry runs for D - alone time with the kids, then socializing without W or kids as a "single guy". Despite the focused time and attention I had given my kids all weekend, and the fact that we were only apart for a few hours, I did feel myself missing them and being sad that we were not together as a family during Super Bowl. I acknowledged and allowed myself to feel those feelings.

I've decided to stop drinking alcohol for a while. I had 3 beers at a basketball game last Tuesday and nothing since. This is something I had first considered in October of 22 when I heard the Huberman Lab podcast on alcohol and its negative effects, and W's drinking was really becoming a problem. Prior to that I had never considered it a problem for me, because I don't have an addiction and didn't exhibit compulsive behavior while drinking. Once I listened to the podcast and dug deeper, I realized that there is almost no benefit to drinking. I kept doing it because I was worried that W or others would judge me (she likes to tell people I'm boring, a NARC, etc). At this point I have grown way past caring about that. My main motivation is that alcohol can interfere with emotional regulation and I want to be as even keeled as possible in the coming months. I've already been in two or three social situations without it and really enjoyed myself.

Originally Posted by MrP
Trust is extremely difficult to restore, and from what you described your W isn't anywhere near a place to even think about truly re-earning it.

This captures the essence of why I've decided to take the next steps, MrP. Looking objectively at W's behavior I can see she does not want to make efforts to repair things right now. I know there are a lot of folks here who wait it out, even when OM2, OM3, etc enter the picture, but that is not for me.