Triggers Updated

I posted last time about the trigger I had, which was the main point. But a side point that went along with what was happening came out, relating to our earlier dynamic with our kids.
Well, looking back at that, I realized that was mostly from my point of view at the time, and while valid as far as it goes, isn't the whole story. I don't want to make it look like I'm saying it was all my W's fault things were the way they were. Some of it was just me.
Two things specifically that played into that dynamic. One, I'm very much the introvert. I've never had much in the way of "close" friends. Not the kind that I would spend a lot of time with and be "the" friend I hung out with. I have a lot of friends, but I don't get into their life a lot. Not what I would imagine is like a close friend.
The only one I've ever had of that nature, not counting my wife who I consider to be my closest friend ever, is a high school friend. We hung out with each other. But I didn't talk to girls that much, never dated until college and that only because she took the initiative to ask me out for a tennis match, and she pushed it along from there. She pushed me to give her a kiss after dating for a month or two.
IOW, I'm not much of an initiator in relationships and I don't naturally form close ties with people. And it isn't something I feel I need to do either. And that attitude may account for why cheating wasn't that enticing to me as well. It meant initiating a relationship with someone, and I've never been driven to do that more than I have to. As a pastor, I had to force myself to not do that. To engage people. I can do it, but it takes energy and effort. It doesn't come naturally.
 
Two, I'm not sure why, but I've never felt comfortable around kids. I figured when I had my own kids, I would feel different. And to a degree, that was true. But I think that uncomfortableness carried over. I don't seem to have a personality that engages with kids. They are draining. You can't reason with them like adults. And I distinctly recall thinking to myself, "I'll be able to do more and engage with them better when they grow up." And as far as the two boys goes, that's pretty much happened. My daughter, due to some circumstances, is a different story.
But those two things from my own personality no doubt contributed to me not engaging with the children as much as I should have, in addition to the dynamic described in the comments of the previous post. Add to the above, a situation where I didn't feel that my W and I were a team with the kids and family, but more of an uneasy alliance at times, and almost at war at other times, and my natural inclination to just go hide out and focus on things I wanted to do was a given.
Not that I didn't try at times to engage the kids. I know I made efforts off and on through the years to play with them and do things with them. But it seemed those were largely ignored, or simply wasn't enough to offset the time I was away from them. And at times I felt like their expectations, for whatever reason, were set too high that I could never expect to fulfill them. What I thought was enough interaction would probably not be considered by them to be enough.
But I didn't want to leave the sense that it was all my W's fault it was the way it was. It was both our faults. Different expectations on what that would be, and failure to work together as a team, and the kids picked up on that division and my absence from activities bore that out.
And since dday, we've changed that dynamic a lot. I'm no longer at the bottom of the totem pole in the family. She focuses on me, and no longer is that concerned for the kids like she used to be. Not that we don't take care of what needs taking care of. But they are older now. 27, 23, and 18. They boys have always felt close to me since early teen years. So all that is no longer a big issue anyway. But I could tell the change in my wife since dday, as far as where I stood on her rank of importance. We went back to focusing a lot on each other, just like when we were dating.
But we've had some good discussion on all that today. And discussed it in a way that didn't end in frustration, but great understanding for each of us, I think. Which is a good thing.
But part of it is me. As the author of "After the Affair" has stated, the good qualities we like in our spouses when we started dating them and when we got married, are usually the flip side of what we don't like about them. She likes me because I don't get mad easily. I'm "steady" and my emotions usually don't take over and send me going into a rage. But, that also means I'm not easy to emotionally engage in the "good" ways as well. I'm not immediately drawn to "care" about things that are not of interest to me that deal with others. Which is a flaw I have to work on, but comes from the qualities she does like about me. So it becomes a sort of catch 22 to some degree.
Anyway, that should help balance out things. If it sounded like I was blaming her 100%, I wasn't intending to. I have my short comings as well.