He Knows

In the course of negotiating a settlement with my ex, I finally found out that he knows that I am seeing DB, and that he knows who he is.  Truly, I wasn't really trying that hard to hide the fact that I'm seeing someone now, 2 years post separation.  I just didn't want him to know about the affair.  More than any legal or financial consequences, my biggest worry was that he would think that was why I left him, and it wasn't.  I shouldn't have had the affair, but I would have left anyway, and for good reasons.  Equally importantly, I didn't want it to interfere with co-parenting.  We have a good relationship as parents.  We can both go to our children's events and sit together without gritting our teeth.  We communicate about issues relating to the kids, large and small, long-term and short-term.  We've built up a lot of goodwill, and that can only help the children.

But, I'm pretty sure he does, on some level, know my relationship with DB started before the separation.  At least in hindsight, he has to know.  The signs were all there - the jumpiness, the increased texting and IM-ing, the distraction, the irritability ... I was like a textbook case, and the timing fits.  In fact, my ex said that he could certainly speculate about the timing of the relationship and whether it related to our problems, but he didn't care about that anymore.  I don't think that's true - he has to care.  It's more likely that he doesn't really want to know, that he doesn't think the information would be helpful.  And it wouldn't.

In the end, it was a productive conversation.  My ex wasn't angry; he just wanted me to know he knew.  I'm relieved that I don't feel compelled to hide a big piece of my life anymore.  I see his acknowledgment that I'm now in a relationship as a sign that my ex is starting to move on, and that is healthy for him.  If he is a happier person, my children will have a happier father, and I want that for them, and for him.

Now, underneath it all, he still wants me back.  I know this because he said so.  But, in the same sentence, he said that he would no longer obstruct the divorce settlement because he had realized it was what I needed.  Sort of an "if you love something, set it free" approach.  He has finally accepted that he can't force me back into his paradigm.

I truly don't hate my ex.  We were not well suited to each other, or rather, we were too suited to each other in the exact wrong ways.  [Cue in Prince's "When Doves Cry"]  He married someone like his mother, who would cushion him from taking responsibility for himself or others.  He emulated his father, a brilliant but absent minded and socially and emotionally inept professor who has no way of conceptualizing people on their own terms.  I married someone like my father, who always gets his way.  I emulated my mother, a chronically depressed martyr.  It's a typical codependent cycle.  Eventually, though, it seemed like I had learned whatever lesson I was supposed to have learned from that experience, and the situation wasn't going to change, so it was time to move on.

Now, what have I learned?  That's a question for another post.

Sleepless in the Suburbs

I'm marooned on the couch by my insomnia.  DB is sleeping peacefully; Stepdog is sprawled out on the floor beside me, snurffling through dreams of chasing rabbits; my children are resting up at their father's house for a cub scout snow tubing trip tomorrow.  I have a work event in the morning, but I can't sleep, and I'm realizing it's because I'm worrying the same set of thoughts over and over again.

DB is tortured by the fact that he is not part of his children's immediate daily lives.  He Skypes with them every day, helps them with homework, reads books to them, and hears about their days.  He is as present with them as he can be from 2,000 miles away.  He visits them as often as finances allow.  It kills him that he can't be with them more.  DB is in the military and must live where the military tells him to live.  When his ex took the children and moved across the country, unannounced, he decided not to put his children through a custody battle he might lose, and so now he is trying to be the best father he can be given the limits placed on him.  The day-to-day is tolerable, but he is deeply mourning the loss of the relationships he had wanted to have with his children.  I don't know how to help him, or if I can.

DB has to decide whether he wants to stay in the military, and this affects all kinds of other questions that in turn affect me.  There are big reasons to stay:  retention bonuses every year, possibility of promotion, and in not many more years, he could retire with a full pension.  Free healthcare for both of us for life (if we marry), and for his children until they're out of college, lifetime commissary privileges, good stuff.  Very low likelihood that he would be sent into the line of fire or for a long deployment at this point in his career.  We could probably designate a location and pretty much stay in and around there.  I support DB's desire to continue serving our country, and his career in the military is a big part of who he is, and for the market in his line of work, the military is sounding like a good place to stay.  If he doesn't want to stay in, I support that, too.  Not being in the military gives one much more flexibility and choices.

But, either way, I can't leave the place where I live.  My ex, the father of my children, is here.  I can't take my children away from a father who loves them and wants to be involved in their lives, however infuriating and inept he might be at times.  And DB could, via the military, relocate across the country, closer to his children.  I want DB to be closer to his children, not just for DB but also for his children.  There's an off chance that I might be able to get my ex to move, but it's a huge disruption to ask of anyone, and I've done enough to disrupt my ex's life already.  Also, my family (and also DB's family, and my ex's family) are all on this side of the country.  I can't realistically see how it would be possible or even beneficial for me to leave.

So I'm in knots.  It's not that I expect anyone to feel sorry for us, that we betrayed our spouses and now don't get to have a love-nest in the location of our choosing.  It's that I honestly don't see an outcome that doesn't involve a load of hurt.  DB tells me that he doesn't see a future without me, and that is reassuring.  But I don't want any children to suffer, and I don't want DB to suffer.  If he tells me that he has to move closer to his kids, and we have to be long-distance, I will do it.  If I can't be with him, I don't want anyone else.  I can't ask him to choose between me and his children, just as I know he would never ask that of me. But I want only him.  This is it for me.

Bottom line, I am glad I left my ex, but I still have to co-parent with him.  At the same time, DB wants to be a good father to his children, and I support that.  I wish DB's ex hadn't chosen her own professional and political interests over those of her children, but it is what it is.  I know that in the end, I have to do what's best for my own children and support whatever DB needs to do for himself and his children.  I will love him, and only him, for the rest of my life no matter what.  So here we are.