I was very surprised last night when I checked my email and saw a name I don't see very often.
There was an email from my Brother-in-law.
The last time we spoke was back in April this year (6.5 months) when my he was to moderate and observe my wife taking some of her belongings from my house.
I don't know exactly how to describe my relationship with him. I can tell you he is a loving husband and father who places his family as a priority. He is fairly intelligent. He seems, for the most part, to be a very fair and high in integrity. That being said, he also likes to 'right', and while I've never seen him raise his voice to anyone, he can, at times, come across very stern and stronger than he needs to be, He likes to make his point and to be heard, but doesn't draw on an on.
Our 'friendship' has always been cordial and he's polite towards me, but we just don't always 'click'. I've been told I have a great sense of humor when I'm a happy person...where he is pretty dry. Not that he's a dour person, or unhappy, just doesn't express it well towards other men. Sometimes his advice, while with good-intentions behind it, sometimes feels like a back handed insult or a 'talking-down' to.
Anyway, he sent me an email last night and wanted to share with me a program he is in the middle of at his church and wanted to turn. It's called "authenticated manhood". I'm going to look it up for myself, but he mentioned, as politely as he could a conversation he had with me sometime back that I needed to "grow a pair" and perhaps I'm more of a mama's boy. At the time it was kind of offensive to me because over the course of our history together, he never really spent anytime with either of my parents, or even me for that matter, to make that kind of determination.
However, I do recognize with me looking back today on past events, I did defer a lot of situations or looked the other way as only to avoid a confrontation with my wife. I 'shrank' in my role as both a leader and a husband and more andmore allowed my wife to do as she wished just so I could avoid an argument. In a nutshell, she wore the pants in my house and took my 'man card'.
Well, as humbling and perhaps unwanted as it is, I will allow for the fact that maybe he was right to a certain degree...it was just his 'delivery' of the past messages I didn't warm up to. And now that her family did a 180 on me, the fact he is reaching out to me at all is a surprise. I could have just ignored the message, deleted it, of replied with a snark....I instead took the opportunity to write back.
I wished him, his family, and especially the kids only the best. I let him know that perhaps he was right and I am taking steps to get my spine back. I'm sure my ex is presenting it in such a way that I am the devil right now, not budging, etc., etc., etc. So I am killing him with kindness. I offered an olive branch to him and his family I have no ill-will towards them and told him I would like to one day repair our fragmented relationship. So, I will take him up on his offer and look into this program, and hopefully learn something for myself.
I just hope he can do the same and be objective and see through the B.S. that has been told the last 20 months and realize I did infact put my foot down with my wife and won't (and don't have to) put up with her shit anymore.
Ball is in his court now.
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