Jim0987 #7 - rebuilding but can't tell what it is

[rd500]

Jim. Just read you last two pages of posts. Sh@t. That's tough. You are going through hell. Time will heal but that's not what you want to hear. You are a very young man and you will come through this because you have no choice. Your W is doing so much harm it's unreal Keep on with the mindfulness and relaxation Keep busy and bring up good memories when times get hard. I know exactly how you feel and it's horrible It can only get better. Take care and post often. Things can change Jim. They really can Life is never set in stone TAke care. Rd

[jim0987]

Jim0987: Have you read "Somewhere inside, a path to empathy", the New York Times "Modern Love" column from 2009 about love and Asperger? It's among their most popular of the last decade.

Not read those so i think some more reading to do. Thanks for the recommendations

[jim0987]

"We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are." Anais Nin

WARNING: Another bit of my random pseudo psychoanalysis and it’s quite the essay. It’s trying to explain me and why I do what I do. Not much that new but trying to explain things to others has always been a good way for me of figuring stuff and sharing it feels like a commitment device. If I’ve told people then its true kind of thing. Anyway feel free to skip this post if this kind of analysis isn’t your thing but if you do read it, thank you and I’d welcome any thoughts or insights you have.

WARNING: It’s really REALLY long, like 5,500 words.

I’m now 34 and since I was 19 I’ve had 2 relationships, both long term and both failed (9yrs & 6yrs). In both cases the major reasons for their failure was down to me and the ending was near enough identical just my role is reversed (WAS to LBS). Unhappiness led to an emotional affair which led to an ending of the relationship and quick movement to a physical relationship (whether it’s an affair or not is debating point). Anyway looking ahead to any future relationship it’s clear that ‘I’m damaged goods’ and that for a lot of people I will have too much ‘baggage’.

What ever the reasons in my current situation the reality is that in the next couple of weeks she will be moved out, we will be financially and soon to be legal separated and she is in a fully fledged relationship with another man.

I’ve talked about a lot of what my wife has said about me and the way she has described me to others with regard to why she has made this choice, but it is difficult to separate out what is script and what is genuine complaint. She has been very clear that our relationship is over because she doesn’t want to be with me even taking into account what that means for the kids and that it has nothing to do with the other man (which she denies anyway). She has also said that she hasn’t loved me for a long time and that without the feelings it would be pointless to try and make our marriage work. Given the long standing unhappiness and her behaviour since BD I actually believe this and that OM was a temptation which once she made the decision to go she had no reason to not pursue.

Whether this is true or not, it is clear that if I had been a better husband then the temptation for other man wouldn’t have been there (unless my wife has serious issues in which case I couldn’t have done anything about this) and I genuinely believe what MWD says about one person can do what is needed to improve a marriage and give it the best chance of success. It means I realise that if I want the best chance of future happiness I need to understand what went wrong and what I contributed to that and more specifically what I need to do to stop that happening again.

To be absolutely clear though, although I did a number of things wrong and can see how terrible some of my behaviour was, I always wanted my wife to be happy and I wanted (and still want) to spend the rest of my life with her raising our two children together.

Now I happen to believe that I am a good father. I am hands on and dedicate time to my kids. I am loving and nurturing toward them. Sometimes I get cross at them but then sometimes children test boundaries. I always shared the load (fun stuff and domestic stuff) when I was present although clearly my W took the majority of the burden while breast feeding and on maternity leave. I was only not present when at work. I also have a day a week where I look after the kids on my own. My wife and I have very similar views on how kids should be raised, what they should be encouraged to do and discussed and agreed the ‘rules’ we would teach the kids. I genuinely believe that if my wife believes I’m a good father (and I think she does) then the other issues must be even greater.

For the most part I believe the demise of our relationship stems from the dynamic between us and in particular how we managed difficulties and interpreted each other. The Karpman drama triangle resonates quite strongly with me regarding our dynamic. I seriously doubt this is a unique insight.

Reading through various literature I can discover all kinds of theories about who I am and my profile. For those of the Myers Briggs persuasion I’m an ENTJ. Certainly the reading is useful and when looking at the descriptions and seeing what fits I realise I can describe my self as an ‘Egotistical, Co-dependent, low self worth socially anxious nice guy’. There is a also a small possibility that I have some element of an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADD, AD/HD, Aspergers or similar)

Whilst these are great to understand and certainly interesting, having a descriptor is not the same as understanding what drives it and more importantly what to do about it in the future. So to that end I’ve tried to understand my key issues, how they manifested themselves and therefore how I need to adapt my behaviour.

Before I go into this I will briefly say that a lot of this stems from my childhood which although wasn’t bad (certainly compared to a lot of people) it did not equip me and educate me for the kind of man I want to be. My family dynamics were such that I felt like I did not matter and that conflict (or asking for something) was to be avoided as it resulted for me in shame (Mum and Gran), Violence (Brother), belittling and humiliation (Dad).

School was not much better, let’s just say I was seriously uncool, academically good but didn’t try and bullied quite a lot. I found it really hard to tell if people were just playing me, if they were nice I wanted to believe its because they liked me and then eventually they would turn on me in some way (or got involved in drugs but that’s a whole other story). I have never been good at understanding the whole social rules thing and even though one of my LLs is physical touch, handshakes and hugs make me really uncomfortable.

For reference my Love languages for receiving are physical touch and quality time although I give gifts to show love (this is what I learnt from my parents and my dad will still congratulate himself on the great job he did because of the toys we had)

Low Self Worth
Now there is one key issue that underpins everything about me that has caused me issues and that is I have low self worth. I do not value myself and fundamentally do not believe anyone else does – I am not worth the effort. I know this to be a ridiculous statement, every ounce of my logical, rational mind tells me this is stupid but it is how I feel and it is the filter through which I see the world. For example in typing this out my instinct is that it’s just going to annoy people who take the time to read it because why would they care what I think about me. I hope it doesn’t.

This low self worth drives my fears, warps how I interpret what is happening around me, and manifests itself in a whole bunch of negative attitudes and behaviours.

Now if I could rationally convince myself that its nonsense I would but that’s the same as trying to rationalise with my wife about working on the marriage. It is ingrained in me and without it I do not know who I am. The only thing I truly ‘know’ about me is that I’m not enough and so to let go of this is a scary prospect no matter how sensible that might be.

I wrote a bunch of stuff on GGGs thread on this which was meant as my interpretation of her H and how low self worth distorts things but for me it was easy to write as I realise it is a lot how I see myself. The link is here if you’re interested but it’s another essay.
http://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2512085&page=5

Negative Behaviours
For me the low self worth is the elephant. I do not know how to take it down, what I can do is look at some of the negative behaviours that it gives me and try and address these in the hope that it weakens this core belief.

So what are these behaviours that need addressing or more to the point what is the intermediary between these behaviours and the core belief of low self worth. Well I’m just going to list the behaviours first (no particular order)

Sulking, Sarcasm, sneering and smirking, Rumination, Barbed remarks, Leading questions, pettiness, Passive aggressiveness, excessive monitoring, Snooping, Procrastination, Forgetfulness, Tardiness, Insensitivity, Silence, Withdrawal, Avoidance, Guilt manipulation, judgemental, shame, secrecy, anger, resentment, dominant in decisions.

Now I didn’t think I did this or certainly wasn’t willing to accept that I did but the more I reflect on this the more I realise that this was always in me and present but as my relationship deteriorated this kind of behaviour escalated. I’m now much more aware of when and how I did this. My wife had said a number of times that I ‘chipped away at her self esteem’ with my ‘little remarks and sneers’. Again this is something I refused to see and would just come back with a ‘yeah but.....’

I will say though that I have never hit her, threatened her, raised a hand toward her, or physically intimidated. I think the most physical I’ve ever got is to slam a door behind me as I left a room (twice in 6 years maybe) and I kicked a footstool on BD. I’ve rarely raised my voice (if ever) and I don’t recall ever directly criticising, insulting or verbally abusing her.

In terms of the intermediaries then what are the problems/issues/attitudes that need to be addressed. I’ve identified seven major ones, though this may be too many. These are:

1) It’s not fair, It’s not my fault, and I’m the victim here.........
2) Unreasonable expectations
3) Emotional awareness/intelligence
4) Avoidance and withdrawal
5) Poor communication skills
6) Negative rumination

For each of these I’m going to try and explain what I mean, give an example and then make a suggestion for what I think I should have done differently. I hope that by doing this I can better understand these and more importantly change my behaviour in the future.

1) It’s not fair, It’s not my fault, and I’m the victim here.........
I actually wrote this from the starting point of saying my intermediary issue was that I make everything about me. I’ve been told this many times and it’s something I could connect with because I do tend to make everything about me. I wrote out a fairly convincing explanation of this but when I came to my ideas for corrective behaviours the most obvious was to think of alternative explanations and I realised I already do this. In realising this I realised that saying its all about me is not the whole story, I should have said ‘its all about me the victim’

The major difference is that when I look for alternative explanations I really look for those that mean I don’t really have to own the responsibility for what is happening either because it’s not my fault or because it’s something I can’t change. These are the ‘yeah, buts.........’ and can include escalation to make the other party seem so unreasonable that I can shift the blame and guilt onto them.

It’s because you don’t understand me
It’s because you reject me
It’s because you did X, Y or Z

This is particularly affective if you can give the appearance of taking some of the blame yourself for something minor on non-specific. You’ve said sorry for something small and so you can ignore the big stuff because you’ve already shown contrition.

So a good example is my tardiness, I’m always late for things and I’m quick with the excuse that the traffic was bad or that something held me up, when the reality is I was just late because I was being inconsiderate or what to just do something first. This means my apology is and I’m sorry but [ITS NOT MY FAULT]. Most people accept this but I know the truth and its a little bit more guilt to add to the pile and further lower my opinion of myself.

This then extends further so that when my wife was telling me she was stressed I made it all about the unfair pressure she was putting me under and how unreasonable that was with all the other pressure that was on me. Rather than listen to her issues, I made myself the victim. My wife was unhappy and I focused on how her unhappiness was affecting me.

All of this can be nicely summed up by a question I asked at BD:
‘Why don’t YOU love me?’

The solution here is on the face of it relative straight forward.
- Recognise and acknowledge the other persons hurt,
- be honest about my actions,
- be clear about and own the things I’ve done wrong and
- Be sincere in my apologies without making excuses.
- Actively seek positive and constructive solutions rather than focusing on hurt and blame

2) Unreasonable Expectations
NMMNG refers to this as covert contracts and is certainly something I do. I would act (or not) in certain ways based on my expectation of how it would influence my wife’s behaviour, how I expected it to make her feel and most significantly what i expected her to do in return for me. When any one of these was not met i would take this as rejection or some sort of slight all based on my initial assumptions and expectations. Sometimes the expectations were not covert but instead were inconsiderately or inappropriately stated which at best contributes to confusion or at worst sounds like an ultimatum

Having these kinds of expectations leads to frustration and resentment when they aren’t met. In my case that in turn became unhealthy behaviours such as sulking and withdrawing or efforts to try and have these expectations met through more manipulative behaviour.

When linked very closely to this is a lack of gratitude and acknowledgement even when expectations are met, or a comment on the bits that weren’t quite right, this conveys a sense of ‘not good enough’ and can easily be interpreted as criticism. Especially if small routine ‘acts of service’ and kindness are taking for granted or imperfections pointed out.

The best example here is without doubt in relation to our sex life. Our sex life came to an abrupt and complete halt on medical advice 4 years ago due to pregnancy complications. Through this period I understood what was happening and why, but it did not stop me feeling the gap in intimacy between my wife and I. After a year of this the first tentative starts of a returning sex life were appearing and (it was at this point my wife met her ex and lied about it setting off a whole cascade). Over the next 3 years we had sex maybe 30 times, always at my wife’s discretion and she was very controlling with it all – I started accepting bad anxious sex because at least it was sex. Initiation by me was met with rejection and normal affection was assumed to be an attempt at initiation and so met with rejection.

I became resentful about this but always looked for why it wasn’t my fault (see 1 above) and so put it down to post natal hormones and assumed it would ‘just come back’ (it has but for OM1). As I got more resentful I made comments here or there to say I was dissatisfied, I would make jokes about the things that had seemed to work before saying we should do more of that, and I bought lingerie and cooked romantic meals thinking it was a mood thing. When I did ask my wife about it she always said it was a body confidence issue following two babies, I dismissed this rather than validating and reassuring.

All of this just put pressure on my wife, communicated that she wasn’t fulfilling me, and that I was more interested in sex than her. After a while I backed right off in an attempt to not to pressure but by this stage (and with other issues going on) this was actually just withdrawal and carried resentment with it.

Looking back I also realise that over time I yielded more and more control in other aspects of our life, weakened my boundaries and became less assertive. I walked on eggshells out of concern that a misstep on my part would immediately be used as the reason for us to not have sex.

In this specific example there are whole books about what I should have done differently in this circumstance but looking back I think that the change in my behaviour that was needed was to show more understanding and give loving reassurance. When my non-initiating affection was rejected, rather than feeling the rejection and being snarky, I needed to recognise my wife’s anxiety and try to engage lovingly, positively and supportively with that.

So addressing this comes in the form of the following behavioural changes for me
- Act in a loving way without expectations
- Communicate openly and lovingly about issues and concerns
- Take responsibility for my own happiness
- Show more gratitude in general and for the things I like.

3) Emotional awareness/intelligence
I am not very good at recognising my emotions in the moment and therefore I am entirely controlled by them. Whether this fear or anger or upset I allow my emotions to override my behaviour At the same time I attempt to suppress my emotions and convince myself I’ve got it under control and that I’m being calm and rational. Sometimes it works sometimes it causes them to fester and worsen into more negative emotions and behaviours.

Recently I have started re-examining my emotions with hindsight and get a much better understanding of what was truly driving me at the time but I am still struggling with them in the moment. Although recent efforts are at least giving me pause and soothed some of my defensive reactions.

This same issue also exists when trying to read and understand other people emotions, although I might recognise their emotion some of my other issues mean I can often misinterpret these. What is more significant is that I don’t recognise the affect those emotions are having on me, often leading to an immature or insensitive emotional response. What I do sense is a loss of control and therefore significant negative emotions trigger a very strong flight reflex in me or instead frantic efforts to remove rather than engage with the issue.

In practical terms it means that when my wife has been emotional about something she has tended to get an unsupportive response such as
- Fix rather than support
- Defensive rather than listening
- dismissive rather than empathetic

Ultimately this failure to engage with the emotions has meant that I have taken many things literally when I should have read between the lines and more significantly missed the whole picture of what my wife was trying to tell me.

A good example here is the morning routine where I delayed made my departure for work to help my wife get the kids ready. This delay made me regularly late and caused other problems at work, I was frustrated as I felt my wife was quilting me in to staying and so blamed her for ‘making me late’. I dismissed her concerns, was defensive and accusatory about the affect it had on me (I was the victim), kept offering ‘fixes’ like ‘YOU should get up earlier’ and ultimately ending up sulking or making unreasonable statements about ‘defrauding my employer’

Because I did not engage with emotions healthily, I did not recognise the unreasonableness of my behaviour and that I was following the drama triangle (not that I had heard of this then). I also did not recognise that actually this was a cry for help from my wife to say that she was feeling pressured and that this was adding to her unhappiness.

Instead what I needed to do was to recognise my wife’s position but at the same time my own boundary and find a constructive and loving way to address this together. I believe that it would have been better to say something more like.
‘How we are working the mornings doesn’t seem to be working very well at the moment, can we make some time to see if there is a better way that makes it easier for both of us’

The problem for me is about recognising emotions at the time and then taking a different more positive path. With some aspects I have found that taking a breath and trying to consciously recognise what is happening emotionally on both sides is helping, but it is a struggle for me that will require more practice and more patience.

4) Avoidance and withdrawal
Personally this I think this is the biggest one for me. I will do almost anything to avoid confrontation and the risk of conflict which means most of the time I sit and stew until sometimes it explodes a high stress way, often frantic restlessness (on BD I sorted a giant box of filling because I had to do something). This avoidance extends to other areas of my life and causes different problems such as my very significant social anxiety.

If I do ever want to get into something my style is to be very unassertive and use falsely leading questions or statements laced with hidden implications. Looking critically at this I realise that I do this so that I always have an escape and plausible deniability if it doesn’t go as planned. However this meant I would say things to lead a conversation to a sensitive topic but not be clear about it, I would then panic and change the subject.

On a number of occasions I would say something like ‘you just want someone taller’ which unsurprisingly my wife took as me saying I didn’t trust her and thought she would cheat on me (which ironically she is) but I don’t think I ever believed she would cheat. On reflection when I said this, what I was actually trying to say is

‘I’m worried about your unhappiness and worried that its something I’m doing, I would like to fix it but I’m scared what your going to say especially if its something I cant fix’

My fear of being open meant I avoided this topic and many others, in the same way my fear of further rejection meant that after a while of my wife saying no to affection I simply stopped offering (and was not grateful for the affection I did get). In the end my determination to avoid rejection meant I was working really hard to maintain the distance I thought my wife wanted when all the time she was desperately lonely. And most ridiculously of all I still felt hurt and rejected, before suffering the ultimate betrayal and rejection of my wife’s affair.

The avoidance and rejection is symptomatic of my low self worth. The corrective behaviour for it is to act confidently, assertively and from a place of love. So using the example above ‘you just want someone taller’ would have been better expressed as ‘I’m concerned about us and I would like to talk with you about it’

The basis of the difference is the underlying assumption about the person’s feelings towards you, if you assume they love you and do not wish to hurt you then it easier to approach openly and without fear. Obviously this is different when they decide to reject and leave you.

This is a tough one to resolve for me as I have not found a way to suddenly become confident and assertive. I think for the most part it is about recognising the fear, understanding that avoiding it isn’t any better and possibly worse and so finding the courage to do it anyway. I used to be nervous about public speaking but I have now done it so many times I am fine with it – I need to adopt the same principle in other areas of my life

5) Poor communication skills
In addition to what has already been said about the how I said the wrong things and engaged in the wrong ways, it is important to say that I also have some difficulty with communicating in general, especially when I’m feeling anxious or distressed. I would try to explain but this extract from an article I read sums it up pretty well.
....(he) seems hesitant or unsure while he searches through his mental file cabinet for the right word or phrase. During this time, the "lottery ball effect" takes over. Instead of numbered balls flying around until they drop down the tube, a word, idea or fragment of an incomplete thought may randomly and impulsively come out of the individual's mouth. If it is inappropriate, he may then respond by saying, "Oh, I didn't mean that!" Oftentimes, however, The recipient of the remark has difficulty believing he didn't mean it, especially if inappropriate remarks are made frequently.

Improving this is something I’m trying to explore options on but since I know it is anxiety and emotional stress that worsens this work to improve my emotional intelligence should help.

6) Negative rumination
Negative rumination and the inability to let things go has always been a problem for me. It is worse late at night when I am lying in bed without distraction. It was this and my inability to stop that led to me haranguing my wife about her sexual history shortly after we were married. It was the rumination itself and subsequent questioning that caused the problems rather than any of the specific triggers which started me on that path. I did a tremendous amount of damage to the already weakened trust and bond between my wife and me at that time.

I have yet to find an effective mechanism for controlling this, other than documenting and clarifying the thoughts in an effort to find a constructive and more positive conclusion (it allows me to apply logic). I have tried the mental stop sign and even tried a physical stop sign but they have not worked as yet. Following some advice I am trying mindfulness practice and more time with reduce external stimuli to try and better control my thinking.

Example
I want to wrap this analysis on me with an example which I think really highlights how my issues are a really closely intertwined set of problems. This example was the trigger for BD and one of the final straws for my wife’s decision to end the marriage:

On the Friday of BD weekend, I came home to find my wife crying in the lounge. This was not a new thing as she regularly had days where she said she found the kids too much for her. I took over on childcare duties and only cursory asked if she was ok (avoidance). I suggested she go and have a rest (emotional intelligence) while I sort the kids out (rescuing). Once the kids were in bed I went to talk to her, I did not approach and kept my distance (withdrawal and avoidance), I asked what was wrong and she said she was lonely, I hesitantly said (poor communication) that she should see if her friends would do something (emotional intelligence, backseat driving and expectations) and that she should lie down for a bit, while I go an do all the tidying and chores (avoidance and withdrawal). I didn’t ask any more but expected her to talk to me if there was a problem (expectations and avoidance) – she didn’t but I could sense something was very wrong (rumination) this rumination grew and fester until I couldn’t avoid any longer and demanded to know ‘why she was shutting me out’ (I’m the victim).

Had I done everything perfectly I don’t think it would have made much difference (there’s a chance it would have surprised her so much she would have considered counselling) but I think the example demonstrates the range of ways my negative behaviour influence what happens.

What I do know is that I should copy good examples where i see it. A friend of mine is a very caring and considerate person, and the other day she knew I was upset and came to find me. When she did she gave me hug and told me very clearly that she was worried about me and that she wishes there was something she could do to take my pain away. Her openness, honesty and genuine care was very comforting to me even though she didn’t actually do anything and I realise it is exactly the kind of comfort and support that i needed to show my wife.

So what does all this mean?
Well for one it means my wife has legitimate complaints. My behaviour and attitude were not what you would want from a husband or to live with and they are something I am ashamed of.

The core of her issue with our relationship is that she did not feel safe. I did not understand this before as you would see in my early posts but it is the common theme – she did not feel safe and did not trust I would be there for her. Now I believe she means that i did not make her feel warm, nurtured, cared for and protected instead ; That I would face the difficulties of the world with her or comfort her when she was sad. I suspect that instead she felt judged and feared that if there was ever a true issue like her fathers Parkinson’s or my mothers MS, then i would not be there to care for her.

Several times I have looked at the big occasions where I have let her down but having gone through this I believe it is the small consistent actions set against the back drop of those big let downs that have caused the greatest harm.

The route to forgiveness though is to learn, adapt and fix what needs fixing so that I do not repeat any of these behaviours. I feel I have made good strides since BD but I have not yet been consistent enough to really show true change. I am however confident that with perseverance and support I can make the small consistent changes stick.

To that end I intend to make a small list of values by which to live my life and use that as the guide for my decisions and my behaviour. Where i’m unsure I will seek advice.

Although I can identify ways in which my wife could equally have done more to help our marriage, that is her sandbox and not something I should concern myself with unless she decides to recommit to our family. Equally I cannot know whether, even if I was the perfect husband, she would have still pursued her affair or ever truly been happy.

What about reconciliation?
I do not know, I do still want this but I do not believe there is much chance of this. The changes my wife would need to see would not be seen outside the context of a relationship and living together.

Irrespective, my wife has now emotionally, physically and financially committed to our divorce and her relationship with OM1 and that having been made a cuckold I’m am now the unnecessary and inconvenient third wheel in her life. Therefore any changes in me will not be considered while the infatuation and new relationship glow remains. There is little or nothing I can do about this and therefore it is something I will, with great sadness, have to accept and instead try and do the best I can for our children.

My only hope for reconciliation would come from the failure and disappointment of her relationship with OM1 which given what she has invested in this would result in tremendous hurt. Even then there is very little probability that she would wish to return to a relationship with me. Given that and given the hurt she has suffered from me and the hurt she has suffered in the past I would not wish anymore hurt on someone I love so greatly and promised to always protect.

She is the mother of my children and she deserves to be happy even if that means accepting that is not with me. I will say that I will always be disappointed she chose to end our marriage and pursue an affair rather than attempt to work with me to build a stronger and better marriage.

With this in mind I need to move forward with my life without her as I do not believe that living my life in the hope her relationship fails so that I can be the second choice is a sensible or healthy prospect. It to me seems like a recipe for further misery, heartache and in the long term more disappointment.

We will always be part of each other’s lives and if we are meant to be then we will be.



And if you’ve taken the time to read all of this then thank you.

[Hoju]

Hey Jim, sorry to hear about you not having a good time at the Christmas party. I know first hand how hard it can be to hold things together on a good day, add a few drinks, the Christmas season and people who don't know asking about your W. It's really no wonder you broke down.

Like many have mentioned it does get better, the highs aren't so high and the lows aren't so low, thing do eventually balance out again.

Not sure if you've decided to file or not yet but has your W indicated to you that she is going to file or was this all mind reading? Sorry if I missed it but does having a fault divorce really add that much to your case? If not why do you want to do the work for your W especially if it's not something you want?

At the end of the day you need to do what is best for you and your kids. Just make sure with what ever you decide it is best for you and you aren't just looking for a way to try and punish your W or out her for her bad deeds.

[jim0987]

Thanks Hoju

not decided yet. I'm speaking to my solicitor after she has done the bits she needs to do. I dont even have to decide then.

Doesnt add that much to my case but offers me a little protection if she decides to get awkward later, plus it wraps up the divorce itself which means i'm more financially protected. there is no escaping there is a big ego side of this, and i'm not going to pretend that it wont force her and OM1 either together or apart and that plays into my thinking as well.

If there were no kids and i had no wish to reconcile i would have no hesitation in filing. but because there are I need to balance out the consequences of that decision and unfortunately to do so i have to mind-read in order to anticipate her reaction, interpretation and response

for example she may see me not filing as weak, where as she may see me filing as being manipulative and controlling. I cant know

To be honest its a bit like that bit from the dark knight with the two ferries and the bombs. If noone presses its fine but i have to trust that she wont press and shes proven to be pretty darn dishonest.

I've got time so i'm not rushing to decide.

[Vanilla]

anyways so i'm sat writing up a bit more of my personal development psychoanalysis stuff (unsure whether to post it) and watching TED talks in the background.

I'm posting now because I just watched a TED talk which for those who have followed my thread seemed remarkably appropriate and thought id share it

Getting Stuck in the Negatives - Amy Ledgerwood

Please do, post, your views are so insightful and help me develop my own thoughts. So from a very self centred point of view I would enjoy reading a different angle and perspective. Otherwise I tend to stay in my comfort zone.

Vanilla

[jim0987]

So I'm finally getting to the point where I want my wife to move out.

She just got home from her mums with the kids. Didn't say a word but was texting (of course). She was looking amazing and wearing heels (wouldn't for me because they are 'too uncomfortable')

Eventually said something about leaving me to my wrapping we then had a brief but pleasant exchange.

Just before she disappeared into her room i raised an issue with Christmas, this exchange went like this (ish)

M: can I talk to you about the Christmas schedule.
W: what about it
M: I'd like to change it so I can get an extra day with the kids
W: Well we agreed something in writing
M: I said on the draft that I wasn't happy with the disproportionate split of time.
W: its not disproportionate.
M: you've got a lot more time and I'd like to have an extra day. W: well ive only got extra time because you asked me to have them new year.
M: I can change plans to have them at new years if that's what you'd like
W: I've made plans now
M: id like to have them On the 29th
W: then I wouldn't see them from the 26th to the 30th
M: you'll have them to 1400 on the 26th
W: I'll think about it and let you know tomorrow
M: thank you
W: I'll let you know

She left in a bad mood and I think it just adds to her I'm horrible and can't be trusted script.

Should I do this stuff by email so that the personal interaction stays pleasant?

Anyway as much as I still love her, being in the same house while she continues her relationship with OM1 and I'm tortured by the lack of the relationship I want.

I think she needs to move for my sanity despite all the financial hardship and separation from my kids it will bring.

[Vanilla]

Jim

Get off that ledge. Xmas is an emotional time, so calmly work it through then make your decisions. Cooly and with detachment.

I am reflecting on your long post and believe that your analytic state makes you vulnerable to your own emotions at the moment. The ADD (etc syndromes) lead to introspection and looping and I am concerned for you.

Regards
Vanilla

[HeavyD]

Jim

I feel for you bud, mainly because I am i the EXACT same situation with my wife. I am dejected, and feel much like you do. The divorce is inevitable at this point as I am the enemy and the AP is the road to happiness. It just [censored] right?

Xmas is hard, went to a Christmas party last night and got even more depressed after the party. Oh boy.

I think it's both safe to disengage from our angry wives for a while, there is nothing to be gained but pain and I pray the distance will bring objectivity and peace.

Hang tough, I am with you.

[edz]

Can't comment on the add itself mate but I can easily obsess, goes with the analytical nature of my noggin but its only in the last 3 weeks w and I have started to get anywhere with s seeing me more often and you know the basket case it was before then.

In my case it was slightly different as w blames a lot of our issues on my relationship with s (which itself is related to relationship with w but that's never acknowledged by w at the moment)

Only advice I can offer is to discuss and validate and, in your case, be careful not to overanalyze and obsess, I know that one is tricky as I can be like a dog with a bone but I needed to work beyond it, still working on that one...

As far as w moving out, your sitch is obviously different but you know what a difference its made to my day to day PMA at least so far since I moved..