Burning Bridges

[SubduedBlues]

I've been here a few weeks, and there have been a few instances, this is just the latest of many, but here goes...

Normally on Monday mornings the ex-wife takes our youngest child to school, but yesterday she decided that she'd rather not. She sent me an SMS message at 8:15 asking if I could take our daughter this morning, but I was already on the train to the city. Since the train was already in the tunnels, the message was not received until after we exited just before 8:30. By then our daughter had already telephoned her asking her mum where she was. Now the ex was angry that I had not responded to her text.

This morning the ex sent me an SMS telling me that I need to communicate to her if I am not going to be available to take our daughter to school when she needs me to. Accused me of being bad at communication.

First, why do I need to tell her if I won't be available to take kids to school on days that she normally does, just in case she decides to have a last minute day off? Second she is the one who left, so I see no reason why I should have to report any of my movements to her. 

Anyhow, I responded to her SMS about communication by saying "OK, but are you the pot or the kettle?" in inference to the age old saying about 'the pot that calls the kettle black'.

A bit later she asked, "what do you mean?" I don't know if she did not understand the inferrence or if she could not see that her communication is perceived to as bad (or worse) than me not being available to immediately respond to her SMS messages. Whatever, I don't care. I simply replied: "Doesn't matter. I'm not interested."

_______

The other day I was speaking with my son; I asked if I could tell him something that he might not like. I told him how peaceful things have been about the house since his mum has been gone. "I said I would never leave her, and I didn't, she left me. But I never said that if she ever left that I would always take her back. And now that she's gone, I am not so sure that I want her to come back."

I think I am just about ready to turn that corner, to take that leap, and to burn that bridge. But before I do, 

• what am I forgetting? 
• what am I not seeing? 
• will I feel regret before I feel happiness again?

D'
 

[CMF]

Thanks for this insight. I can relate to everything in your posts so much it's unbelievable, but from both sides so I am trying to put myself in both your shoes. I need to think about it all a little more.  It's given me an insight into myself and I'm hoping maybe I can give you some clear insight... But I need to have a think...

i think I was destined to come across you here...

[SubduedBlues]

Hey CMF if you really want to get down and dirty in the psychology of our personality of ourselves,  try adding in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). NLP tells us how each of us prefers to interpret the world and communicate with each other. 

She is an audio primary and kinesthetic secondary; which means she relies on 67% of her inputs to be sound, 25% is intuition and 8% visual.  I am a kinesthetic primary and visual secondary; 67% intuitive,  25% visual,  8% sound. Being that we communicate so differently,  we struggle. I'm aware of our communicative preferences and endeavour to actively adopt when having a pre thought conversation,  but when not pre thought, I am me. She on the other hand is ignorant to other people's communication preferences and expects everyone to adapt to her style. 

When we become acutely aware of how we communicate and interpret our world,  our world and the people around us all fall into a new understanding of reality. We now know why some people are easier to establish a rapport with, others are easy to trust,  and still others are a serious problem. Unfortunately for me, I found my wife in the third category. 

In a way, I am happy that I didn't delve into the world of psychological self evaluation until after we began to struggle to be happy together.  I went down this path of self discovery in hopes of finding a solution to save us. I never expected to find me.

D'