Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Midlife Crisis Working on acceptance and forgiveness

And by the way, why isn't there a pill we can take for "patience"???

Hi Antonia - you may be comforted to know that I struggle with the same issues with My H...Sometimes I feel that "I'm done" and I want to move on and start meeting other people and then it goes back to "I'm standing, I can wait this out"...especially after he surfaces from his fox for a moment and trows me a bone (read hope).

Eric has a good point.



I have tried to answer that and my answer to myself is "I DON'T KNOW". On my best days it's a maybe.....

So like you I'm not doing anything...well accept going out for dinner with a male friend....(just dinner LOL)

Antonia


There is....it is

TIME
WORK
HONESTY
and
LOVE

Eric

AB whatever you do, don't make a decision while you are emotional. I always found if I sat on something for a few days my feelings or emotional side of me no longer found that decision important any longer.

I always tried to go with what my heart was telling me and prayed for guidance. My h was a cake eater for years. He denied having an ow, all though I suspected he did. We stayed close friends and lovers throughout his crisis. In retrospect not sure if cake eating was right, but it did keep us close and he ultimately returned.

What is your heart telling you to do?

Hi Antonia, sorry for the hijack...just reacting to what Glam said.....Glam - Yes your H was probably cake eating, but I think that by staying lovers must have helped to keep the connection alive....There is absolutely no intimate connection between us since OW came into the picture...I wonder if that makes a difference in reconnecting in the long run....

Like Mila, my H and I have had zero intimate contact since the OW--he won't even talk to me about his feelings about processing the end of our marriage because he says that would be "betraying the OW" as then he'd be having an emotional affair with me! The only thing he ever volunteered was that he was deliberately not taking her places he once took me to.

Well, the reason I say I "want to be done but maybe I'm not" is that the thing that set off my feeling to be done was that this morning I got a listing from match.com (I never registered but answered 80% of the questions, so they send me matches all the time) of a guy who looks pretty amazing and compatible with me based on all the info/pics/job type/interests/etc., and he is local, and I am lonely for physical attachment--if you want to know the truth :-)

I don't see people talk about that stuff much on here, but my H and I had an amazing intimate life--right up until he left, even, that was never a part of the marriage that suffered at all, especially in the past few years. And so to be cut off cold turkey from all physical contact--even just hugs/kisses--has been brutal.

I feel like he walked away from me and he never had to go ONE DAY without this part of things, and here I am, 6 months, with nothing but girlfriend hugs, and I hate it. So I saw that guy on match.com, thought, you know, I've been telling myself that he was the ONLY ONE for me, but you know, maybe there are other fish in the sea, and this fish is local, and maybe I should throw in the towel.

I know, that's not a reason to throw in the towel--but it is part of it. When Eric asked that provocative question it sort of jolted me back to the larger picture, to what was in my heart. I guess I was thinking with something other than my heart today :-) Sorry if that was too graphic, I just think it's something we don't often talk about here but it's a reality.

Hey Antonia, I know it gets lonely. My H and I have been intimate only 3 times since the bomb, and every time he pulled back and runs away even further. Maybe he felt like he was betraying OW. Don't know. These guys are really twisted when it comes to justifying their actions.

Going cold turkey is harsh though. One thing that has helped me when I just craved being held was to go get a massage. Nothing trashy, just regular kind. It helped. Not with all my needs, but it did help.


Hope you feel better soon.
((())))

Antonia...
I don't think you were too graphic at all and it is not spoken of often here. I basically think the reason comes down to "cart before the horse" if you will. Commitment, care, love, etc. is the core of marital intimacy. Without it...the physical is just that...the physical. We have all lost that core and while of course we miss the physical contact just as we miss any "moments" we may have had in our relationship - I think many of us, at least I know I do, don't just want pieces back - I want the foundation.
You are amazing and you deserve the life YOU want. I would not judge ANY decision you made because I believe only you know your situation and I respect the fact that you have come to this board and have really made effort to process through these decisions.
IB

Yeah me! I finally made a signature after all this time. Anyway thanks for the support, hope and IB. To make this all worse, at least for me, is the fact that my H and I were never intimate with anyone when we started to see one another. We had wanted to "save ourselves" for our married partner, and once we decided we were going to get married, we lost our virginity to one another. So for nearly 23 years, we had an amazing intimate life--and no one else was ever part of that. That's highly unusual in this world, and I'm not on a high horse about or saying it made us better than anyone else, but it was something we shared that was incredibly special. When he dropped the ILYBINILWU speech on me back in '09, he told me that that fact recently made him feel "like a freak" or "abnormal" for a guy. Yet when he ended up leaving me for the OW--he swore, and still does to this day, that it was "never about sex." To this day he insists that he never did anything but kiss her and the guilt of that alone was enough for him to make him not sleep for 3 days until he caved and told me he had to leave "before he did anything worse". That was when he moved out. I don't think it was much longer after that that he became intimate with her. I remember I asked him "how can you do THAT with another woman, after what we shared" and he said "I have to move on with my life." And yet just a few days ago, he emailed me to say he wanted me to "promise him I wouldn't get in a relationship for 'revenge or compensation' but only out of true affection." Like he doesn't want ME to physically be with anyone, but he can do it all he wants, because of course, he is "in love."

So that whole side of things makes this worse on me. I feel like I saved that part of me for one man who felt the same about the "specialness" of that as I did, and to what end? Look where I ended up. Hence I see a guy on match.com who looks compatible with me and I think maybe someone else WILL treat me better and I should abandon all feeling for my H.

Thanks for listening.

And yet just a few days ago, he emailed me to say he wanted me to "promise him I wouldn't get in a relationship for 'revenge or compensation' but only out of true affection." Like he doesn't want ME to physically be with anyone, but he can do it all he wants, because of course, he is "in love."

Hence the confusion in MLC. Your h really doesn't know what he wants. He is in a fog and can't see clearly right now.

I do think that the intimacy did keep h and I close. Afterall, he did come over 5-7 days a week to see the kids and me and many of those days were filled with intimacy. I guess in my case my h had no loyalty to ow sexually. So when he finally did return there was not that awkwardness of having sex after years of not being together, just the weirdness of having someone sleep next to me again.

Again, I just followed my heart. I could have just been cold and bitter to my h. I just tried treating him like a good friend even though my kindness for the most part was NOT recipricated. IE, living with ow, not returning phone calls, not showing up when promised, etc etc. I just focused on what I could control and did the best I could with GALing and tried not to think what my h was doing and why.

It's not easy to decide what to do, how to respond, so it was easier for me to just go with the flow and show my h love and kindness. I did much praying and asking God for guidance and my heart was telling me to kind and friendly and lots of lip biting.