Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Midlife Crisis Help Me Act AS IF, Part 5

lmg,

I hope that your shared sense of humor will keep you connected on a deep level. I don't know. I don't really have much to offer other than HUGS. I'm not where you are. While my H and I are seperated, there hasn't been any movement towards a D (not b/c of any changes in his thinking though).

This whole mess feels crazy. I know you'll get some good insights here though.

LMG, it's a crappy situation. I also wonder what happened, how this can happen. But it wasn't until I accepted the situation that I actually looked hard enough to see the reasons. IMO, my H gave up waaay too early and didn't fight hard enough, for sure. But there were reasons, there were causes and I was definitely involved in a lot of those. Granted, I would have chosen to deal with them differently. However, how many times in life are we forced to look at ourselves in a mirror? To really analyze every mark, every line, every move? It's painful. It can also be used to great advantage.

Take this time to look yourself over. What do you not like about yourself? Take your H completely out of the picture. What would you change? What small steps can you start today that starts the process of becoming a better LMG? It's true that we can become better people and oftentimes it's this better person that they want to come back to.

My M.O. is to become the best CW68 I can be. Hopefully my H will want this person, but if he doesn't, I'm a better person. I've grown, I've improved, I'm better off on a deep personal level regardless of my relations.

Once you start doing this, you'll never know what you'll find. In January when my H moved out, he was done with this marriage, had nothing left in the tank. Yet he hasn't seen a lawyer or anything. While he couldn't say the words that he would work on our marriage or say that in a perfect world he'd want our marriage to work, he's actions say that.

Set him free. Free yourself and then see what happens because only bad things are going to happen if you stay in this place.

Of course I could be a better LMG (lol love the code names!) I've changed some things in the past year or two, things that I knew my H didn't like and I didn't either. And he has noticed--for instance, this morning D11 started shouting at me, telling me she hates me--y'know, that special kind of love only a pre-teen can deliver. The old me would have reacted, yelled back at her, scolded her, threatened her. The new me said nothing at all. I just stood there silently until her tirade was over.

H later commented on how I'd let her words roll off my back like water off a duck, or something. He has noticed several little changes in me--but I think he finds them appealing because he feels like he can leave now that he sees I'm not as crazy as he thought. I feel like a baby bird being pushed out of the nest--or being left in the nest, as it is.

I do plan to work on myself, I do. I am going to a volunteer fair next week to find out where I might volunteer in the neighborhood. Of course, what I really need now it to make MONEY. That aspect of this is overwhelming.

You need to stop thinking like this. What's appealing about us is just appealing about us. There is no buts. You improve for yourself and don't give a hoot about how your H thinks of the improvements. What he thinks is what he thinks. This is something I'm trying to stop doing: thinking for my H. It's a problem and even my T has pointed it out to me.,

I just got through a convo with H re S without crying, which is a first. His coldness is contagious, I guess. We talk like zombies. I didn't DB perfectly--I asked him why we bothered to get legally married if you can just get out of it without giving your spouse a real chance to save the M. It just continues to bug me how plan A for him has been to S. There's this overwhelming sense of failure.

There really is something very empty about him. He kind of stares off into space when we talk, makes no eye contact.

I hope one day I can recall all the fun and love we had without it being overshadowed by the way it ended. I never thought this M would end--never.But neither do any of us.

At the school bus stop today, I saw this dad who I've always had a little crush on. He and his W just S (I think he pulled the ILYBINILWY, so why would I want him?). I was sort of daydreaming about him becoming my next boyfriend, but then I got really depressed when I remembered that I am 44, not 24, and that dating, if I dare to do it ever again, will be a weird complicated thing. What I really want is the pure, true love of a dog--but I'm allergic to them!

Don't give your H the power. You didn't cry because you are strong, not because of anything he did to you. That was all you, baby! A little non-DBing for sure, try not to go there anymore. For a few weeks after my H and I separated, I got the blank looks, him avoiding eye contact. Today when he left (he came over for dinner and to help with the two extra kids who are sleeping over tonight), he gave me a really long, really tight hug. Whether that will turn into us not being S anymore, I don't know, but it's definite progress and I feel better.

I can't even think about dating again. I've already sworn off marrying again. This is my second marriage. (First one I was young, but the kicker was that H was an alcoholic and drug user. It's virutally impossible to work on your marriage problems when there's substance abuse in the way. Really bad sitch. Basically I left just before I felt it was going to turn into an abusive situation.)

LMG, I just thought of something that I thought of after re-reading your "plan A" comment. Before we separated, I needed my H to really try to improve our R, I needed him to look at us fairly and completely and do all sorts of things BEFORE we separated. H needed to separated in order to do those things. We were at opposite ends.

Just a thought I wanted to share.

That makes sense in my situation too. In fact, the best time we've had recently was yesterday morning, when he was all relieved that I called a L. Later, he was upset to learn the guy is a litigator. I told him I am just gathering info at this point and that I'm not intending to rake him over the coals.

I've accepted that he is leaving, as best I can. He's the one who has to make it happen though. He's talking about moving in June, but he hasn't begun to look at apts, nor does he have beds for himself and the girls. He is on jury duty today which means he will not get paid, as he is a freelancer at the moment.

For us, the financial realities are huge here and H is just dismissing all of that, which drives me crazy. When he dropped the bomb, we agreed to see a MC and he insisted we find someone in our healthplan, which we did (we got very lucky.) Now, when his benefits from his old job are about to end (in June), when d11 needs braces, when we are thousands of dollars in debt for assorted reasons, he is suddenly ready to pay rent on an apt, pay for consults with lawyers, etc.

I know that he truly feels he MUST go, no matter the financials. So I am letting him, but I can't pretend that the money aspect does not make me extremely anxious.

My H and I agreed to a number of things that haven't happened. The two biggest, to me, are that after each of us having six IC appointments, we'd go back into MC and that we would have a date night every other week. H refused to go to MC and we've been out together exactly once since January.

When my H said he had to leave, I gave him a deadline to be gone. It was a Thursday that he told me. I told him he had to find somewhere to spend that weekend. Then he could come back Monday, I left for FLA on Thursday, returned on Sunday. On Tuesday he left for DC to return on Friday. He had to have an apartment to move into that weekend. I couldn't have it hanging over my head and I wanted him out right then.

Sorry for the financial aspects. We were able to halt our monthly investments and 401k to cover the extra expenses. Sharing the house allowed us to get a smaller, cheaper apartment, too, and we didn't have to buy beds for the kids. He brought our guest bed and an extra dresser from the house. The rest of the furniture either came from a friend or Craigslist. Craigslist rocks. The extra expenses suck.

One of the things that keeps coming up in all of the reading I am doing to try to understand how I can learn to accept this change in my life and move on is the concept of resistance - basically, what you resist grows stronger. The resistance actually feeds it. I remind myself of this pretty often when I start dwelling on what I don't want. I am still very much a beginner at learning to control my thoughts, but I do think it helps. I have viewed your thread from time to time (altho I don't usually comment) and I have thought a couple of times that resistance has been a big part of your experience in this sitch. I am glad to see that it is easing up for you. I hope you have good GAL plans for the w/e.