Well, it's gone from an "just talk" to "getting real" a lot quicker than I'd anticipated that it would. Just a few days ago, Sally and Rick agreed that they'd start handling their finances separately.
The way that I see it, this is the first step in a number of steps that will (likely) eventually lead to their being divorced.
Of course, it wasn't without it's share of discussion with me...
The fact is that Sally is very conflicted right now. She told me that she (almost moment-to-moment) alternates between wanting to leave and wanting not to.
It's funny, because there's lots of things that she tells me about how she's feeling, what's going on for her and the kinds of issues she's dealing with are (in large part) the same that I had to deal with when I asked Sandy for a divorce. At the same time, there's no amount of my saying that I understand that is really going to have her understand that I really do/did experience those things in a manner that is similar to what she's experiencing.
I think back on it and I'm clear that right up until the very moment (that I suggested that we get divorced), I was a nervous wreck. I wanted to go, because I was not happy, I knew that it was over between us and there was no going back. At the same time, I was comfortable with the lifestyle that we'd built. Hell, she'd even given me permission to sleep with anyone that I wanted to. Yet, I knew that even that was just her way of grasping to hold something together that was spinning apart at high speeds.
Think about it from my perspective. I was married in my mid 20's (yes, pretty young) and then spent almost twenty years together (we were a couple for almost 22 years!). That's almost half my life spent with the same person. To say that I began to identify myself with my relationship with Sandy is not an overstatement -- it was reality for me. I wasn't me, I was Sandy's husband. When that really hit home for me, it was the beginning of the end.
As I listened to Sally describe how things were between her and Rick, I couldn't help but have flashbacks to being with Sandy. It was all way too familiar. Like it happened yesterday.
As she was going through this, up until the conversation that they had regarding their finances, she made a good faith effort to try to talk to me about how things were going, but ultimately found that she was unable to do so. I can understand that, really.
There's no mystery about it -- I am not impartial in the matter. At the same time, I don't press the issue with her. I never pressure her to make a decision now or attempt to move her to my point of view. If she's going to leave, she's going to do it for her own reasons and under her own steam.
One of the things that she told me was that if I wasn't in the picture, she'd not even be entertaining this action. It was both a compliment and a slap at the same time. It confirmed that, while I was trying to be generally supportive of her, I was also an undermining force for the status quo (re: her relationship with Rick). A part of me is pleased about it, yet another part is disappointed.
What makes it worse is that, as the stress increases on her, she holds it in and it starts showing up as physical symptoms (headaches, nausea, colds, etc.). And I hate that.
With every passing day, my outright contempt for Rick increases. I have to work to contain it, so that I don't burden Sally with it. It's my issue and it's not fair to add my working through it to her burden. So, I keep it to myself and work through it in the best way I know how -- punching a punching bag!! Yes, it's true. I visualize his face (I do know what he looks like) on the bag and I punch the shit out of it.
It's not much, but at least I am not stuffing all that emotion inside of me.
Final comment for today is that I can tell that she is changing for the better. We were together a few days ago and at the end of that time she got "hooked" by something that she was thinking about and go very upset. She left mad and by the time she had gotten home and cooled off a bit, she realized that she had overreacted and there was no reason to be "mad" at me. She sent me a text and apologized and I graciously accepted.
The thing that really hit me was in the conversation immediately afterward. She said that she started wondering "who am I?" (as if she was unrecognizable) to herself. Why? Because she was unable to convince herself to continue being mad at me! If this had happened a year ago, we both know that this would have been the reliable outcome, whether it was deserved or not.
The fact is that Sally has taken an incredible amount of ground over the time that we've known each other and I am incredibly proud of how she's grown and developed herself.
It's one of the reasons why I love her more with each passing day.
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