I guess I'm in recovery, but I'm staying in GQ - 07/04/00 12:37 AM
A good news update...A success story not for the marriage, but for Plan A.<P>Just past....<BR>W told me a couple of weeks ago that her attorney had called asking what he should do, as nothing has been done since the draft separation agreement in January. She tried to return his call, but couldn't reach him. Over the weekend, we discussed this and what we should do. W said, after some thought, "Maybe we should just blow it off". I was rolling, I was laughing so hard. It just tickled my funny bone to have that comment made about our divorce. When I recovered, I asked if that was what she really wanted to do. No answer. A couple of days later, I left for a week-long trip to Virginia(during which I had the extreme pleasure ot meet Lori(lostva), her husband and daughter. Finer people you will never meet). I returned on a Tuesday night, expecting to hear what she had told her attorney. Actually, I had been expecting it for the entire week I was gone, but nothing was said, and in the finest traditions of Plan A, I didn't make an issue of it. Well, by Friday, Plan A be damned, I decided to ask her. She told me that she had told him as long as the court didn't object, just to leave iit on hold.<P>Yesterday....<BR>We had a long discussion starting with the divorce issue. W was totally resistant to "officially" working on the marriage. I asked if it was due to feelings for OM. She said it wasn't. When I asked about how her "distancing" was going, she said not well. I had never been told what this "distancing" was so I asked(fully prepared for 'no answer') and to my surprise she said that she had intended to completely stop talking to him except for strictly work-related issues. She said that she realized that she didn't really want this so they did talk very occasionally. I asked if she had told him that a few weeks ago she had told me that she wanted us to stay together. She said she had. Next question was how was he handling this. He is accepting her decision, but has some tough days. I told W that this was totally understandable and I felt sorry for him.<P>After further discussion, I realized that it was the issue of actually making the "decision" to work on the marriage that was holding her back. So I pressed a very calm, but surprisingly convincing case that ended with me saying "Why don't we give it a try. Then, when it's all over, even if we split, we can both feel good that we did our best.". I asked that if the marriage could be mended, would she want that and the answer was "yes". I won't bore you all of the conversation before my closing argument, I'm just proud of how I handled it. Anyway, after four or five minutes of thoughtful silence on both sides, W said, "OK, let's do it". I asked her if she was sure and she was. I asked her if she felt I had pressured her into this decision and she said I hadn't in any way. We talked a little more and she brought up the "freedom" issue that has been bothering her for some time. She told me that even if we work on the marriage, she may feel the need to be "free".<P>I asked what her desired "freedom" entailed and she said she didn't yet know. My point then to her was that even if we had been happily married all of this time, that there was no guarantee that she(or me, either for that account) wouldn't have found this need and acted on it down the road. I asked her to think of the consequences if we split up to give her total "freedom" and she found that that wasn't what she had really wanted, instead something less. Wouldn't it be better to work on the marriage now and find out later that maybe we did need to split up than to split now and find that it wasn't necessary. I gave her an analogy(actually, a really bad one). Take a canary inside a house in a cage. It is always looking around the room wanting out of the cage. Someday, the door to the cage is left open and the canary flies out. Once out of the cage, the canary notices that the front door is open. So, instead of just investigating the house to see if that is all the space it needs, it immediately flies out the open door to the outside world....Where a hawk notices it and grabs it for an evening meal. My point was that maybe it was best to see first if being in the house and out of the cage was enough before flying outside...(see, I told you it was bad)...She got a little kick out of this and asked me if I thought a hawk was going to "get" her. I laughed and said I didn't know, but it was possible.<P>After all of this, we were talking some more and I asked if this meant that I could "call off the hounds(stop the divorce)" and she agreed that we should do this...<P>All in all great news....We needed another good news update on the board right now, so here it is<P>Love you all....<P>--DeWayne--<P>