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I feel like a dumbass because I know that anything other than being friendly towards her right now is pressure and pressure is the uber-enemy. It just stinks in that the more I think about myself, the more I feel love and understanding towards her and her feelings. I get, in many ways, where she's coming from. She's a good woman and was a good wife. I can see us being great together. In my head, I know I can't make her see it and that time and patience are my friends, because I am getting in shape and doing things to make me happy again. I feel better. Yet, I keep doing what I know I shouldn't do regarding how I act towards her. Ergo, Heim = dumbass.

Keeping things short and sweet is the best that I can do for now. I can't allow myself to keep doing this. Somewhere, I've gotta find the self-control and discipline that I used to have regarding many things and use it in a consistent, meaningful way for this.

The foot thing is a reference to something OT wrote on someone else's thread a while back [url=http://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubb...true#Post679252 ]http://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubb...true#Post679252 [/url] (by the way, read this and you're dead-on regarding OT. Sad thing is, I feel the same way as she does reading threads from other folks. How could you . . . Don't do that . . . While at the same time, if I were reading my own thread I'd be screaming at myself.)

Would that tattoo be available as one of those kid jobbies for which you wet the back and it then slides onto your skin? I'll go for one of those.

BD

Heim,

I hope you do not take offense to what I am about to say & I understand that I want your situation to get better:

I am starting to understand how your wife feels. I am reading through your latest pieces of your sitch and I am so FRUSTRATED. All the great advice that you give and you get on this board you do absolutely nothing with. You talk a good game on here, but then your actions are that of someone who is new to this situation and someone who hasn't read DB and does not understand any of its principles.

You just said 2 days ago that you realize that going over her house un-invited was wrong and you apologized for it to her - and then in just 48 hrs. you are doing it again? Using the excuse of needing to use the bathroom? C'mon - who are you kidding? In this situation, you should know that it would be better to use a 7-11, bush, stranger's house, snapple bottle - whatever - but you should not have gone into "her" house without asking her first. It shows that you are not giving or respecting her privacy and that you are not listening. Then you go and rummage through her drawers (which also shows the p'ing was just an excuse) - to find what? BC pills? You and everyone on this board already knows that she is with this OM. Do you really need to find out further details? The details don't make any difference to the situation. Like OT said, you just need to assume that she is and act as if accordingly.

Your ONLY chance with her is if you show her that you are independant, confident and attractive. And you do that by GAL'ing. Let alone that it will give you better PMA to help you deal with whatever end result happens. You have the hardest fight of your life ahead of you and you have the tools to win - but you keep choosing not to use them.

Think of her impression of the way you are now - seriously reflect and think about what you are showing her of the type of person you are for a couple minutes. Now think if you lost all the weight that you wanted to lose, got a personal trainer @ a gym and got very muscular, occasionaly going to the tanning salon, get a new haircut, get 2 pair of expensive jeans & some new clothes, and started joining groups to meet new people. Which person do you think has a chance with her? Visualize the person you want to be, make a plan and DO IT! It really does not take that much time or money - all it takes is the choice.

Are you meeting with a therapsit at all? I think that it might be good for you to maybe meet with someone face to face to talk to about these things. These virtual 2x4's don't seem to be working...

Hiem,

If you believe in prayer, then do it. Pray that you will stop hurting and be able to move on with or without your wife. My faith has been the biggest help during all of this. If you don't then lean on people who can help you through this (many of them are right here). We all know the pain, we will help you through this.

((hug))

M-

Heimlich---

For what it's worth, I'm with Sara on the snooping. For me, at least, it was better to know. After all the strong emotions wore off, I was actually more compassionate, more kindly towards my husband. I had little, if any, respect left for him, but for some reason---pity, I guess---I was better able to treat him with respect---and he responded in kind. I'm not sure if I quite understand this dynamic, but my guess is that it is not so very rare.

"You okay with that answer, OT?"

Nope, I'd say it was very, very off target in most ways. I certainly do not have some particular black and white view that I think applies to all sitches. Indeed, I give different people very different advice. And, I doubt that those people I generally post to would consider me cruel, cold, or robotic. I have a pretty good sense that they would call me compassionate, giving, and incredibly sensitive to the nuances of their sitches.

The reason I post to Heim is because I think I can help him and I think he understands me. There is no need for me to edit my very direct style with Heim. Rather, he seems to understand and appreciate it.

But, you are correct that I often feel like beating my head against the wall when I see people involved in what amounts to clearly self-destructive behavior. There are plenty of cheerleaders around here to make people feel better about that behavior in others (and thereby in themselves). So, it isn't really useful for me to add my pom poms to the fray.

What you may see as black and white thinking from your perspective as someone in the middle of all this sh*t is in large part simply distance and a more objective perspective. It is a lot easier to see that the earth is round from space than from your front yard.

If anything, I try to disrupt the very black and white thinking on many points that is chanted as a mantra on these boards. It really keeps many people very stuck and when it does get them moving, it can get them moving in unhelpful directions.

Anyway, back to you Heim. It is entirely standard to feel like a dumbass. We've all been there. We all wanted to think that we were different from the other DBers. So, you have plenty of company among all the DBers who have pretty much shared your dumbassness to a T. There should be some good company among those peeps. So, if you can understand it in then, have compassion for them, recognize their strength, respect their intelligence, and so on, then DO THE SAME FOR YOURSELF.

Thanks, everyone. Going to do my best to turn the spotlight from my W (which is part of the reason I'm in this mess, when she was willing to work on us, as some of you will recall from my original couple of posts, I was so focused on her role in all of this, I forced her away. My heart was in the right place, but I was blaming her) and back to where it should be: on me.

I've a number of self-help books and will check into seeing a therapists as well.

No, I appreciate the directness, OT, as you indicate. I know that you can be perceived as cold, but I do understand what you're trying to do with your advice. As I've mentioned before, it's appreciated.

Savings/GD, You're both on target as well. I know I can see these things in others, but, to steal OT's metaphor, that's not my front yard. I am not sending the image of myself that I feel growing inside to my W. To her I seem duplicitous, manipulative, pushy, disrespectful of her and her space, and weak. Along with probably a few other adjectives.

Mandy, I'm not a religious person, but I may start going back to church of some sort, or at least meditating (which, to me, has always been very similar to prayer).

BD

BTW Heim, this is the kind of thing I was talking about last week: "We really could build a beautiful life together."

You *really* don't know what an M that would work for both of you would be like. You have really only started to scratch the surface on how the M was bad FOR YOU. You've not really confronted your own years of deep pain in that M that got you to the place you were in that M. You don't know how the changes you have both undergone in this process would play out in a new R. Maybe you could build a beautiful life together, maybe not. There is simply no way for you to be in a place to know that from where you are. If you can let go of the need to feel certain about the possibility of being able to build a beautiful life with W in the future, you'll be more open to getting to a more authentic place in the present. And, if you do that, you'll greatly increase your chances of building a beautiful life that includes a strong, vibrant, healthy, passionate R with your SO, who, of course, might very well be W (we hope), and might very well be someone else.

In a nutshell, try to have more of a beginner's mind about *any* potential R with W. That opens up a much bigger world of possibility than holding onto the comforting threads of an old fiction.

Hey Heim,

Man, I'm sorry to hear about the latest slip! I trust you've decided not to mention to W that you were at the house, not to mention snooping through her undies.



I'd like to add to this that as long as you're chanting this mantra, you're likely coming across as a desperate salesman, and you're selling something the W don't want. You're still trying to convince her---that you could be great together, that you've changed, etc---but it's about her. I'm glad to see you're deciding to put the focus back on you.

Take care.

Hey Heim,

I don't have any good advice or sagely wisdom to impart, I just wanted to let you know that I am keeping up with your situation and am deeply sorry for the pain and frustration. Just know you are among many of us who are going through the same sort of pain. It does have its ups and downs and I think you are in a down cycle.

Your wife is not going to confess. For whatever reason, they see no need to come clean and feel as if they owe you nothing. That would be too honorable and make things much clearer. I guess you need to ask yourself if you think that the A caused irrepairable damage or if you can work through it. For me, it is something I would not tolerate; it is a boundary.

Best,

--Chris

(((Heim)))



I am dealing with the exact same issue and I wrote a little about it on the last post I made on my thread. Like you, I think I would be able to eventually accept that my H is with OW, no matter how painful accepting that might be. But I cannot respect the fact that he is being dishonest about it. I am not sure how productive it is for you or I (or anyone) to obsess over the dishonesty, though. It is probably no better than obsessing over the OP. But I wanted to let you know I hear ya on that and I have a really hard time with it too.

Take care, Heim. Use that big noggin of yours!