Separation at 17.5 months

[adinva]

I spent the next few hours thinking What Would Hamster Do to manage my anxiety. If that's you and you recognize yourself, thank you for unknowingly helping me through a hard time.

I did deep breathing, ate pizza, and counted to 10, and other things to try to manage my anxiety today. It's pretty bad.

Having a glass of wine, and hoping H gets home early enough that we can tell the kids and I can still make the last hot yoga class - I really need it. If the kids need me I'll stay home and get by without it.

Also a bummer of a day because I re-enrolled in WW and have actually gained 30 pounds in a very short time, while trying to eat healthy. Not happy about that, actually I'm incredulous and alarmed. I'm tapering off my A/D and trying to get the yoga going.

[adinva]

Oh yeah also I thought I'd tell my parents right after my kids, but my mom's checking into the hospital Thursday to have a biopsy because her cancer might be back. So I'll need to wait until Saturday assuming the biopsy goes well and she's home by then.

Back to managing my emotions on my own.

[adinva]

My sister says hey they'll be fine. They aren't losing a dad.

[labug]

Ad, I'm so sorry, this is very painful.

Your sons are blessed to have you looking out for them and loving them.

May the biopsy be negative.

I'm thinking of you.
((()))

[adinva]

Thank you Labug!

[NLW]

Ad,
I know how you are feeling.
It's something that can make you physically ill.

It's one of the hardest parts of all of this - telling your kids and parents and knowing that their lives will not be the same.

Your kids will not be fine. They will be devastated. This will be one of the hardest things they will face in their lives.

They will never forget. But they may forgive. And this will be a significant life lesson for them.

Also, they will know what it means to suffer hurt and pain but, more importantly, they will learn what it means to endure and eventually to come out the other side of something like this.

They have you as their guide and protector, and you are going to get them through it. You know how to do it. You can teach them how to overcome one of the hardest things life can throw at them.

They will, in many important ways, be better human beings because of what they have learnt from you through all of this.

I deal with late-teenaged boys a lot in my line of work and almost all of them are reduced to tears when they talk about their parents splitting up. Many of them, however, have a maturity beyond their years because of what they have endured, a strong and well-developed system of values, and an ability to reflect on how actions affect other people. And many have channelled their hurt into doing things with their lives that they would never have accomplished or thought of in 'easier' circumstances.

Cold comfort, i know, but with you there to help them, they will get through this.

[Am I Too Late]

I had to tell my Son, days after his 9th birthday and 2 days after Valentines day, because my W had been gone alot supposedly visiting her dad who had cancer and wasn't showing up at home very much.

One week after her last day at home, she called me and let me know that she had officially moved out and, Oh, by the way, also filed for D.

So, the next day i was driving with my S and said, I've got some news for you and its not very good news, but were going to make the best out of it that we can.

He was mostly unphased by it and when i gave him some time for the news to sink in, i asked him how he felt. After explaining a bit about lawyers, court and judges, he commented..... Well, i thought i would be sad, but I'm only a little bit sad and i don't think I'm going to miss her that much because she's never around that much and doesn't do anything with us anyways.

So sad that a 9 year old saw how little his own mom engaged in her own family and only child.

The kids already know more than we think they do.

Good luck,

Ed

[adinva]

Ouch, Ed, I'm so sorry. Your story pointed out something my sister keeps telling me she saw on Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil or some tv doctor: kids are better off coming from a broken home than they are living in a broken home. It took a while for me to "get it" but I see that they are already in a bad situation. Neglecting to deal with reality and face problems head on, is NOT saving them from a bad situation.

I am trying to be open to however they feel, but I'm scared I won't handle it with the proper amount of dignity or grace. I tend to cry a lot, and it tends to put men (ie my h) off and make them shut down.

[Am I Too Late]

When the moment comes for you to possibly have that discussion with them, i pretty much guarantee that you will be stoic and almost unnaturally calm.

You will be ready in advance.

The tears will come when you don't expect them to.

That's alright though, because the kids Will understand and you will see more strength and resolve in them than you thought they could muster up.

Have Faith that you will act responsibly.

Ed

[cat04]

Ad,

I have been reading along, waiting for something, I wasn’t really sure what exactly…

You have said that you don’t want people to blow sunshine…

And that is probably a good thing. Because I don’t have any sunshine. I will be honest, I haven’t really seen a whole lot of change with you. While I don’t condone your H’s behaviors, I can understand them a bit.

Maybe you have changed, maybe you are very different from who you were before the bomb. I don’t know because I don’t know you.

What I see in your writing, is still a lot of attempts to control the situation and a lot of judgement with little compassion. As well as you still giving him your power.

I was disappointed that he didn't speak to me face to face about the draft he had completed. Not that it matters in the long run, but I lost some respect for him in the way he's handling this. Considering we still live in the same house and sleep in the same bed, it's not that hard to talk to me. I decided I would talk to him about it.

When I went upstairs to not allow my H to get away with separating from me *via email* (insert outraged emphasis), and I simply started out by saying, so you sent me a separation agreement by email, I admitted to IC this was probably passive aggressive. I thought so because I wasn't saying what I meant, I was hoping to convey by my tone and word choice that I was angry about what he did.

While I understand wanting to talk about it, this is generally something better left for lawyers. And the way that you approached it, was probably anticipated and difficult for your H, which would explain why he emailed it. YOU think you aren’t that hard to talk to because of proximity, but I doubt that your H feels that way.

And you pushed yourself on him because YOU wanted to talk about it. Regardless of what his feelings were.

I feel waves of urges to include in my statement that "he's leaving us." or "he decided to" or in some other way subtly make sure that I look like the good one and he is clearly the bad one. I feel so angry with him. I know there's a lot more to it that he-bad and me-good, a lot more. But I don't feel yet like I would present this to a friend as if I had an equal part in ruining my marriage. I was ignorant and so was H, but as soon as my eyes were cleared I got to work and I worked hard. I feel like I got the short end of the stick.

It has come up a few times in my reams of threads, that he is deserving of compassion and understanding, has been going through a hard and painful time too, the best he knows how, etc etc. I keep trying to feel that and I keep falling back into feeling like this - meaning the start to finish totality of it - is HIS FAULT. and WRONG.

I was trying to express that I played a role in our breakdown and many of the missteps that got us to this point, but I gave a good faith effort to repair the damage, to become a better partner, to be as humble and open as possible, and another person in H's place could have repaired this based on how I've been. So the ultimate failure of it, is in my view, his fault. For being a person who can't express emotion, who won't learn to relate with me, who won't speak his mind, who just doesn't want to be with me. It may be out of his control, but I believe I'm the only one of us two who made a good faith effort.

AD,
Have I or anyone else ever explained “but” statements to you?

When you say something, and follow it with a but, you are negating everything that came before the but. You are riddled with buts, qualifications, and explanations.

So what I read from the above statements is that your H is leaving you and the kids, he is the one who is wrong, and that he failed. He is the responsible one. Not you.

You made efforts to fix the problems, not him. You became a better partner and he wouldn’t work with you on it.

And you have a lot of anger oozing out of you about that.

You had expectations that if you attempted to change that he would too. And you are angry that he didn’t.

If we are really honest, you don't know what he has done or not done. Because he hasn't done what you think he should have, you believe he hasn't made an effort to fix this.

Something we need to realize is at some point in this process, is that they believe they made an effort. Usually that is before we ever hear the bomb. And that effort, rarely looks like the effort that we make post bomb.




Throughtout many of your last posts, you have talked about wanting to tell the kids. You even told your H to let you know when he was ready. And then when he said he was ready, your response was…

I was heading to hot yoga at 8 and H said do you want to tell the kids tonight? I said I needed a little more notice as I was on my way out and S14 wasn't home; I wouldn't be home until 10:30. Could we tell them after school tomorrow? H said ok.

I realize telling the kids isn’t easy. It isn’t fun. And you attempted to control the situation for your comfort. After complaining that he was avoiding it, when he finally decided it was time to do it, you had something else to do.

S12's new ipod arrived today. It shattered on the first day of our cruise trip, and I unilaterally ended up deciding to replace it with a refurbished exact same item for $170. It arrived today, and S has been anxiously awaiting it, asking every day if it's here yet. So I decided to try coparenting. I brought the box to H first and told him I had decided to get it and how much more it was than just the cost of the screen repair, but I suggested we make it his main Christmas present. If that was ok, could we give it to him now? H said it was ok, and yes, so we called him upstairs and gave it to him together, and told him it was going to be his early Christmas present.

Even this was a bit controlling. And probably a bit how you were during the M. While it was something that needed to be done, was it what your H wanted to give your S for Christmas? Would he have rather just done the screen repair? Do you even know?

I’m going to stop now. I am not trying to make you feel badly. I just want you to really look at your words, your actions, what you may be continuing from the past, what you may be still expressing even if you feel that you aren’t.

How much have you really changed?