Thoughts, Swordsmen..

[AmsterdamAssassin]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Mr. Amsterdam's point is that in warfare, having space is crucial for troop alignment and maneuverability. The more space available, the more complex hus strategy can become. Since the books have so much information it is hard to pinpoint what the advice is.

No, my point is that even if love is not a battlefield, you still need to be strategic when interacting with women. And there is not a single strategy that works all the time, so you have to be able to shift to another strategy when your strategy fails or just isn't applicable to the situation. This is how Japanese businessmen started to apply The Art of War to business negotiations.

Take, for instance, the strategy of No Contact after a break-up (or non-compliance). Great strategy: you retreat to rethink what you're going to do, meanwhile you're not giving your ex what she wants (attention / validation), creating opportunities to either re-engage or find someone else. In most cases, finding someone else is the better goal, because there's always a reason why someone becomes your ex.

But, what if you cannot go 'No Contact'? My wife initiated a divorce because I was sick and no fun to be around anymore, so she wanted to separate and find happiness elsewhere. We couldn't have a clean break though, we had young children still in primary school and we had to co-parent them. Which means you have to communicate, even if you want to go No Contact.

And since my ex-wife isn't the greatest parent (one of the reasons why I went with early retirement to become a Stay-at-Home Father), she sent me messages 'about the kids' every day.
And because she didn't want to accept responsibility and be accountable for breaking up our marriage and family, she became downright hostile towards me to assuage her own feelings of guilt. In her messages she tried to accuse me of 'everything', even blaming me for how she got financially screwed by her mortgage broker when she bought herself a house after the divorce.

I had never dealt with this before. I've had plenty of relationships and break-ups, but there was never a need to stay in contact, so with most exes I stayed in friendly contact and some of them I ostracised from my life.
With my ex-wife I couldn't do either. However, I knew that I shouldn't respond to her hostility and I shouldn't allow my emotional self-control to slip and respond in the emotional turmoil caused by her hostility.

Since I couldn't freeze her out, my post-divorce strategy was based on the martial principle of Fudōshin, the State of Imperturbability. On the battlefield, you have to stay emotionally detached from the outcome and ignore the screaming soldiers getting killed right next to you, in order to keep your focus on your goal.

So I emotionally disengaged from the hostility in my ex-wife's daily messages, and only addressed issues about the kids, who stayed with me during the school week and went to stay with my ex-wife (outside Amsterdam) on the weekends. I only responded to logistics, appointments, parental duties like parent-teacher conferences, doctor/dentist visits.

Her hostility just fell flat without my resistance. You cannot fight with someone who doesn't respond. After three months, her hostility increased (partially because she was furious that I had fun on the weekends when she had to take care of the kids), but I kept up the Fudōshin strategy of no engagement. You can fight against the wind, but the wind doesn't care about your anger, so you'll punch yourself out eventually.

The hostility waned after six months and she wanted to 'have a real conversation', because things didn't sit right with her. I told her I wasn't interested in setting her things right, that's what her friends were for (which was a deep cut, because it was her friends who gave the bad advice to divorce me and look for her happiness elsewhere). She tried a few more times to engage me in private conversation, but I kept declining her invitations. After nine months, the hostilities ceased, but I still declined.

I had moved on, I was dating several lovely women, I wasn't interested in being friends with my ex-wife, I didn't care who she dated (as long as there was no negative effect on our children) and I didn't want to talk about my private life post-divorce.

We've been divorced since 2016, but we still only communicate about the children (now teenagers). The four of us go out for dinner "like a family" when the children have their birthdays, but the children celebrate their birthdays separately (lucky kids, two birthday parties, and going out for dinner). I sent her a birthday message on WhatsApp, but I'm not going to her party. And she's not invited to any of my celebrations. All in all, sticking to my Fudōshin strategy worked out fine for me, and for the kids.

As for my ex-wife, she's not as happy as she hoped she would be, cries in public to complain about 'feeling burned-out', and struggles with her relationships. I heard through the grapevine that she feels regret about divorcing me and blaming her mindset at the time, but I think she deserves to suffer for betraying her marital vows, so she can seek help elsewhere.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

Do you think I’m best off laying it wait as it were and waiting for this other guy to **** up?

I think you should emotionally disengage from this woman, accept that she found someone else, and move on. Go find yourself another women to make mistakes with. And make sure they are different mistakes from the ones you're making now.

 

[Orbitron]

Thanks all for the advice.

The last contact we had was the text I sent asking "So what exactly would it take? What would you ask of me? Cards on the table..."

My instinct is telling me to just give her space and if there's any rescuing the situation then she'll get back to me and in the meantime I'll go about my life, meet other women as and when they come along and wait for this other guy to inevitably mess up once the honeymoon period is over.

She says she doesn't love him (yet) and she was utterly besotted with me most of the time and right from the beginning so with six years of mostly good times and some beautiful memories (holiday in Venice being the most recent one) I'm hopeful that she'll come back to me at some point.

 

[zekko]

I think this is a very sad story, for both of you.

 

[The Duke]

I’m up for that for sure.
Would you advise proposing that to her if and when she gets back to me?

Yes, but only if its something you are serious and ready to do. Don't ever do something like that to keep a girl.

As many have said and I will say it again because it carries a ton of weight...........its probably best to just move on.

Can your situation be fixed? Probably. You'll have to give up some freedom and give her something more to keep her.

There are now some serious cracks in your relationship, some will never be repaired. Its like when you have an injury and nerves get damaged. Some of those nerves never work again. You are still able to function, but its never as good.

I'd hate to see you end up living together, consolidate furnishings, etc, and then 1.5yrs down the road she isn't happy about something else. Insecure women are like that.

 

[Orbitron]

I think this is a very sad story, for both of you.

Amen to that!

 

[Sega Genesis]

I see her message as somewhat of a guilt-trip disguised as honesty. A bit of a manipulation actually to get you to cap without directly demanding it or presenting a direct ultimatum.

If she were truly serious that it's over, she would have just said the relationship no longer works for her and wish you well. DONE. The End.

The irony is IF you DID give her what she "says" she wants, her attraction for you might eventually die even if she doesn't recognize that herself.

Meaning, she stayed in this uncertain ambiguous situation with you for SIX years which tells me she was drawn to it, attracted to it AND you despite her protestations that she wants "more."

What's also clear is that she is still madly in love with you after six years of this uncertainty and off/on chaos so what does this tell you?

@BackInTheGame78 posted recently what women "say" they want and what they actually "respond" to are often two different things.

Heed those words and proceed with extreme caution.

Something else to consider. She may have passive commitment issues herself which is why she was drawn to the uncertainty and chaos and why she stayed. For SIX years!

Like attracts like after all. Your commitment issues are active, you're the runner.

At the end of the day, this relationship might have just run its course and best to simply move on.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

There is no healthy relationship where people get together and then break up repeatedly.

This is a toxic relationship. She even TOLD YOU AS MUCH. Walk away. For your own sanity and so you stop wasting your time waiting for something that is never going to exist with her.

You had your chances, whatever the reason it didn't work. Maybe neither one of you understand how to compromise properly in relarionships long-term for them to work, who knows.

In the future when you date someone and one of you decides to break up the first time, ensure it is the last time as well. One chance per lifetime per woman. This on/off nonsense is simply a time and energy suck that drains your lifeforce.

Also her reasoning for being with this guy is going to lead to problems within a few months, IMO...the dude is acting like a chump and she doesn't respect him. Obvious by the stuff she is saying.

Either she will start cheating on him or will end up treating him like a doormat or dumping him. She is trying to convince herself she actually is into this guy when she knows deep down she isn't. He sounds like the prototypical "nice guy" from the way she describes him. He is a placeholder guy for someone she actually wants to be with.

 

[Manure Spherian]

This is a toxic relationship. She even TOLD YOU AS MUCH.

I agree with this and what @The Duke wrote.
An on-and-off relationship of six years, especially in people’s forties seems like sheer torture, and although I don’t want to bash the OP, I cannot fathom why people would partake in such a situation.

Also, routinely accusing someone of actions not done is emotionally abusive.

If the woman is wife material, to be lived with happily ever after, why was this not established at the two-year mark instead of what turned out to be six tumultuous years.

I don’t know this woman, but are we to believe a beautiful woman was staying alone all the times such a relationship is on hold, generally speaking?