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Ok, stbxh didn’t contact me on my birthday, which made me sad. I know he’s a loser, and I know I wouldn’t take him back in a New York minute. But I was still sad because we were together so long. I guess that’s another issue I’ll be discussing with my therapist.

Monday morning, the day AFTER my birthday, a text pops in from loser, "Happy Birthday." Nope, I was just mad. I thought to myself, "No contact, because I’m not doing that."

Today. I get to work, and pick up my mail and deliveries to take back to my office. Do you know what I found? A Happy Birthday box of gourmet cookies. No note inside. But with his phone number on the shipping label.

Did I open any of those cookies? Heck no. I can’t send them back because the company has a no return policy. I think I’m going to ship them to his new address with his girlfriend with a note that says, These are for your whore. Ok, maybe no note.

Why? Just why? He’s supposed to be happy with her. We haven’t talked to him so why even freaking bother? My daughters say it’s because they still won’t talk to him and he’s trying to play nice and butter me up so I will smooth the way for him to start seeing them. Yeah, right. I see pigs are flying outside my window as we speak while hell is freezing over.

Whatever. I just want to start the ending of this.

Lost – friend…
FOCUS!

First you are unhappy because he doesn’t contact you on your birthday. Contact you would have refused because you state you are in NC.
Then you are unhappy that he does contact you next day. The person you are divorcing because you don’t want him in your life.
Then you are unhappy that he does acknowledge your birthday – after all you have been together for a long time.
Then you are pissed when he does acknowledge it by sending a relatively neutral gift like a box of cookies.
Then you plan on enforcing NC by contacting him and returning the cookies with a note.

Friend – the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.

Don’t expect anything from him. You are divorcing and his bday or your bday, your anniversary, shared Thanksgiving… they have no relevance anymore.
Just eat those cookies.
Expecting contact is a form of contact.
As is planning contact.

No Contact is simply ignoring all you can from him. Not acknowledging it with replies. The only contact acknowledged is something that might be relevant to the divorce process.

I know it's difficult and breaking years of habits feels strange.

Don't send those cookies back. That's just giving him head space, and telling him you give him head space, instead share them in the work kitchen, or if you don't want to do that, throw those things away.

Then when he asks if you got them, play innocent, nope don't recall that.

Indifference. It's a great goal. It takes time to reach it in your brain, and your heart. But fake it until you make it.

I know I’m all over the place with this situation. Even as I reread that post, I can see the see-sawing and the crazy. I think I was hoping he would send a message, just so I could ignore it. But when he didn’t, I just got sad, which made me mad. Mad at him and mad at myself for still caring.

Bigger, I realize that the opposite of love is indifference. I’m just not indifferent yet. And yes, habits are hard to break. But I’m still struggling. I’ll be fine, I always am. I just needed somewhere to vent and a few 2 x 4’s to put me back on the path.

Bigger, I realize that the opposite of love is indifference. I’m just not indifferent yet. And yes, habits are hard to break.

I was going to comment that you need to get to indifference but the others beat me to it.

I am quoting your precise language because that's the next thing that I was going to say. It's hard to break old habits... but you do that by starting new habits. Your new habit is treating him with indifference.

I personally don't recommend that you eat the cookies or you send them back to him. Instead, you can give them to someone else or throw them away. From my perspective, you need to live your life as if he does not exist. So, you pretend that you didn't get cookies from him... they were cookies that magically appeared but you don't want them. No big deal.

And... then you do something similar the next time this comes up.

In my case, I have been able to build this into a new habit. I went to one of my kid's sporting events this weekend and I didn't even notice that my ex was there until my current partner pointed her out. Last week, my daughter ran a race and she was talking to my ex immediately after the race was over. I walked up, hugged my daughter, gave her a few words of encouragement, and then I moved on just like I would have done if my ex was not there.

The phrase that I use is that I treat my ex as if she is a ghost and as we all know... ghosts don't exist, so you can ignore him/her (this only works if you assume that ghosts don't exist, I guess).

I know how you feel!!! On my anniversary date when we were separated I knew he would email or something-but nothing. He was too busy with Slut.

I like the returning of cookie idea, but it’ll gmfeed into their world.

I realized if I stayed in the drama triangle they would have something to bond over-fighting with me. So... I went out of my way to appear extremely happy and confident if I see them anywhere. ~They even took me back to court to get the house and boat from me. I never said anything to them, I let my att handle it. I saw them a few days after the papers were served to me, at our child’s event. I wore makeup and chatted on the phone laughing and laughing with a friend til the event started. They seemed perplexed. At the court hearing my atty made xh and Slut look very incompetent. I won. I still just looked faraway when leaving the courthouse.

So. About my xh, after 2 years of xh and ow cheating then getting married, it started crumbling. The kids went there one Father’s Day. The slut and xh were fighting. My kids came home after 1 hour. They said —are you ready for this— OW was yelling at their Dad, hitting him, and locked him out of his own house!!!!! On Fathers day!!!! she told a lady I know from years ago that she is miserable! She looks miserable too!! They are two sick people who never got help-and now they have each other.

My sons very rarely go see him. I have tried to build a life with my sons, now 22 and 26.

I also realized that when I go somewhere, I don’t have to cringe that xh is going to be looking at women, or saying something inappropriate.

Keep moving forward. Maybe plan a small trip with one of your grown kids or a friend. (I went to Fl with sons soon after the D. We had a great bonding, relaxing time. It ate xh up that we could go on about our lives without him and have fun. He texted me and I deleted the text. )

((Lost))

[This message edited by homewrecked2011 at 8:36 PM, Wednesday, September 21st]

Crumble the cookies and feed them to the pigeons and then imagine they shit on him.