SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

With thanks to StrongButBroken for the terminology.

I am struggling with the last grubby tentacles. Waffle is in waffling overdrive. The texts with only the most tenuous kid/finance connections aside, I met him 20 mins before DS7's IEP meeting today to be sure we were on the same page. Business-like meeting like in a neutral location. DS7 is having difficulty in several areas, plus the first meeting with the new post-S district, so it was a doozy. Waffle buys me a coffee, we sit down and have a perfectly reasonable conversation about DS7. We leave in separate cars (obviosuly) and then arrive at the school. He waits for me, we go in together.

Yesterday, he falls off his road bike and needs xrays and stitches. He calls me. I still had to squish the instinct to want to go pick him up and drive him to the hospital. He wasn't with MOW--there's no way that woman would be on a bike.

All else being equal, I am happy to go through days/evenings without saying a single word. I don't agonize over it. It is just when something unexpected happens, like the bike fall, or we're thrown together like the IEP meeting that I feel the grubby tentacle effect. He seems to act like a reasonable human being, and then I am thrown back into wondering how we got into this situation when he can act so "normally"

If he acted like an asshole, or at the very least stop fucking waffling, it would be so much easier to cut those last ties.

[This message edited by roughroadahead at 9:57 PM, June 3rd (Monday)]

I have absolutely no advice but I hear you loud and clear! It sucks when they get back into your head, even though you've done all you can to remove them from there. Big hugs to you; we all can use them

I so remember this part in the early days after D.

X helped me with some stuff around the house and all I could think of is what a good team we had always been. X hit a crisis point in his professional life and called me for support/advice and I would get sucked into the support role feeling important because he reached out to ME.

There wasn't one big thing that changed it. Over time there were little things he did that made me realize that his idea of us being friends only worked because he got the parts of me he wanted without having to deal with ME. That's not friendship in my book. When I realized that it became a lot easier to ignore and eventually not feel those grubby tentacles. If you work at it, you will get there eventually too.

Congrats on not going to the hospital. I did that when WH hit a raccoon riding home from work one night.

Yah know, he didn't really need me. It's just a little physical pain and that's what we have friends bandaids and slings for.

Let somebody else be the KISA.

I think you typed the words that are your answer: He is ACTING normal.

And I think people who are really screwed up know how to act the best.

And am I the only one that first thought the title was grubby testicles?

grubby testicles?

Equally relevant....