woodlandlost

This past Wednesday my newly sober soon to be EXAW and I arranged for me to pick up the family dog from her apartment. I prepared myself, and arrived and she was standing outside with the dog. We shared a look, one of sadness. I put the dog in the back of the car and she handed me a gift for DD. She started to cry and got frustrated and said, "I miss you", I said I miss you back and I got in the car and she left. It felt horrible at the time, I was bursting with emotions.

Thursday am, I get an email from my lawyer. She has finally gotten a lawyer. In the email it outlined that I had terminated visits 2 months ago because she was engaged in a personal relationship. The letter also stared that she has been sober since Jan 22, which from my personal observations was not true. I had counted 4x slips and those were only when I saw her. And that she be returned to unsupervised visits immediately, and no mention of sobriety monitoring. When I saw this email, I felt sick to my stomach. In my mind, yes I was VERY upset when I discovered her affair, after trying to reconcile since she finished her 30 day program at the end of January of this year. I was overcome with GUILT...was this my motivation....partially yes and also I was so frustrated dealing with my wife because she was pushing me around and for a time I didn't know what to do...that was at the start of April. I called my lawyer and said that I wanted my wife to work directly with her. I laid out a plan that she has 1 month supervised visits, with random testing and when successful, move to unsupervised visits. All this was laid out and she delayed for a month, DD missed my wife's birthday and I was blamed for this too because of my unreasonable demands. Once the birthday was missed my wife contacted the lawyer and agreed to the terms and said yes, she would do it. Then another 3-week gap of no contact and then I get the letter from her lawyer. I fully understand her wishes to get a lawyer, I have no issue with it.

So anyway, Thursday we have a conversation, wife and I. And it resembled more an argument, pointing out each of our sides and neither of us seeing the other person's perspective. My wife's perspective. She is sober, she is making living amends, she did not feel respected in the process and that she misses DD and is in anguish and my reasons for ending her visits were punitive and not based on DD's best interests. My perspective, which when I tried to express it was, that she went to hang up on me: my points were, you haven't been consistently sober, you have been absent, or drunk for 14 months and drunk for years before and ya, the affair, shows me ho I can't trust your word. To this she was infuriated and again, told me that she is sober, everyone knows this, and everyone can see that my actions are without reason.

Then the conversations shifts to the sadness of our marriage ending...and I found myself asking the question, does this have to be over? I go to bed that evening, didn't sleep a wink, thinking of her. Am I the bad guy, was I being so unreasonable??? Next day we meet for coffee. It ends up being a repeat of the phone conversation and then she says she loves me, but because I will never forgive her, we have no hope as a partnership. To this I said, well I have a hard time getting past the stuff from the past. I felt that at one point she said, if I could show her that I could work with her on the DD visits, then she would see that I am trying and maybe we could move on together. I started to get pulled into this line of thinking. What's wrong with me I thought...she is sober, trying and I am being so darn harsh. She said, its not like I am some heroine addict, you know me!!

I went home and was swimming in my own thoughts. I spoke with my lawyer and she is a family law specialist and has many addicted and formerly addicted clients. In all cases she said, that they willingly do sobriety monitoring and many of them have resumed 50/50 custody arrangements. My lawyer, said again, in Canada, the court cares absolutely nothing about affairs, or hurt etc...all they care about is the well-being of the child. And my wife's lawyer's assertion that we back off on supervised visits and monitoring is nothing short of funny.

I wondered if I just got caught up in the moment, wishing for the person I married. I looked at her while we were talking and she seemed so sinciere. But something was missing. she said sorry and shed a few tears, but a part of me wondered if this was her attempt to have me back off on my approach to visitation.

I bet lots of eyes are rolling.

Thanks for reading