Wife #WotW

Hi everyone. No #WeekendCoffeeShare this week, so I thought I’d find another way to sum up my week. I’m joining Word of the Week. It’s often hard for me to pick just one word or phrase to summarize my week. This week’s is “wife”. I contemplated other words and phrases, like “divorce prep”, “stressors”, etc., but my wife is the one who’s pulled me through most of the stressors.

For those not aware, my wife and I, who have been best friends for over eighteen years and married for over fourteen, will be getting a divorce sometime in the next couple of months. The reasons are personal and mostly irrelevant, as we’ll remain best friends hopefully for life.

Last Monday, my wife found out that the practical part of the reason we didn’t go through with divorce when we were first deciding on it last year, isn’t likely relevant to us. This was a financial reason that I won’t go into. Suffice it to say that, when we saw the mortgage advisor on Tuesday, we found out that even in the worst case scenario, both of us will manage financially.

I do struggle emotionally with the idea of divorce and particularly the fact that our house will be fully signed over to her. Not that I ever lived in that house or that I’m ever going to again. Practically, it’ll make no difference, but it does feel kind of off that I’ll essentially be signing myself out of the opportunity to live in a “normal” house for life. Then again, in reality, I did this in 2019 when moving into long-term care.

On Wednesday, my wife and I established a pattern of multiple, long phone calls. That day we were on the phone seven times. I was struggling with feelings of self-hatred over the ways I’ve treated my wife poorly over the years. Particularly, I was struggling with the idea of emotional vs. cognitive empathy. I’m an emotionally sensitive person or so my wife says, but I still end up hurting my wife and other people regularly. I guess that’s me being autistic though.

I also talked to my wife about how I’m regularly being confined to my room for having meltdowns in the living room. I somewhat see the reason behind this, though not fully because my behavior scaring other residents, isn’t the full story (there’s also some part about my being presumed competent enough to hold it together). However, what I clearly don’t understand is staff’s inability and might I say regularly unwillingness to help me prevent having a meltdown. I’m still kind of struggling with the battle between autonomy and protection.

Yesterday, I was trying to figure out how to get to a cerebral palsy meeting in Utrecht next week. The restaurant the meeting is being held at, cannot be reached by ParaTransit taxis. I might be able to travel by train, but that’d be quite a challenge too. Again, it was my wife helping me make decisions. I’ll most likely not go to the meeting this time, but remain in the WhatsApp group so that I’ll get a feel for the other people attending and have more time to make arrangements. By the way, my wife and I had four phone calls and she said we’d better create a new pattern or we’d have to call each other a negative amount of times tomorrow (7-4-1-etc.). Maybe I’m wrong though, as my wife said the number of times we’d be calling each other had to be a prime number and four isn’t one.