Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums For Newcomers Maybell X

Then what are we doing here?? Trying to hang on or just trying to move through with no expectations?

Nine months to go on the one-year wait. So I guess moving through the experience with no hopes or expectations.

Maybell, I feel ready to give up right now. He's been threatening to move out since April, been apartment shopping in earnest for over a month, and some days I'm just ready for him to go. That way I don't have to worry about what time he'll be home, who he has had dinner with, whether the house is clean enough, whether I look good enough and am charming and yet detached enough. I can be myself in my own space and enjoy my kids and assist them with their evening routines without interference.

My big fears around him leaving centered around finances and the kids. Those haven't gone away entirely, but I am certainly in a better place about both of those than I was a couple months ago. I used to feel like curling up in a ball on the floor at the thought of him leaving, now I'm mostly OK with it, in theory anyway.

I have no faith that H will ever take any responsibility for his share of this mess, ever acknowledge how deeply he has hurt me, ever ask for forgiveness, ever grant the transparency that I would need to go forward, ever make the necessary changes to begin a new relationship. I just don't think that will ever happen. So, yeah, a lot of the time I'm ready to give up.

I think that is most difficult to accept and easiest to actually see is the person your h is right now. Do you like him? Or is it the behaviors you don't like? I think that's the key. You have to be *open* or *wiling* to accept and get to know him the way he is now knowing things *could* change-keeping expectations to near zero. In some cases (and only the LBS can decide), it's probably best to move on and in others perhaps not.

You feel what you feel. There is nothing wrong with that.

I no longer know if I like him. There are things that have always been important to me that I've had to do without, like the 5 year planning that rppfl mentioned in her thread. Intentionality in how we live. Snuggling on the couch happened in our early years then died out for a really long time and I don't know if it would ever come back.

If he could be the person with me that he used to be, only SIGNIFICANTLY more invested in tending the relationship, then yes, I'd be open to getting to know him again.

His priorities right now appear to be: Job. Job. Job. Self. Job. Kids. He would have to become MUCH more balanced. That is possible, if he seeks help for the ADD. Whether or not he does... well, he doesn't know it, but he's on the clock for that.

Thank you, Georgiabelle, for framing that response in a way that gave me helpful perspective.

Nope, actually I don't. When we were on our various family vacations this summer, I really tried to be objective and think about whether the man I saw in front of me was someone I'd date now or not. The answer was no. He's terribly good-looking, and while he can be really charming to strangers, he's not really all that nice much of the time. I watched him pick fights with his own mother. He and D16 got into a couple of terrible fights, her razor mouth is a match for his. He was rude to a parking garage attendant over a dollar. He's certainly not treating me with much respect. I'm just not that thrilled with who he is now.

How about revisiting letting go? I don't think you've ever gotten to that point.

Take the ring off, decide you're in the waiting period so you'll wait, but live your life.

Don't have dates with him, talk about only the kids, when you start to wonder or worry about him, stop. Move your mind to something that's about you. Don't worry about lists of ways he would have to change in order for you to want to be in R with him. Don't worry about if you'll have a R where you can smile and be comfortable around each other.

Sometimes we have to really step back and give space for anything to happen. We need perspective.

Let go.

Have you read any of Underdog's posts? She's a "vet", been divorced for quite awhile and she and her x have created a friendly parenting R but not without struggles along the way.

She's active over in Surviving the Big D.

You're getting through this, it just doesn't feel like it to you.

Maybell, I like your answer and I think that's reason to keep standing for a while. I just came up with a different answer for myself. :-(

Labug, when you say "revisit letting go" what does that mean to you? Does it mean just doing my thing and not filing or anything, just doing my thing? Like you did during that LONG period that your H dropped off the radar?

Does that include dating? Because I'd really rather not be a person who does that while married, even if it's just on paper.

I saw Underdog when I first started lurking but lost track of her. How far back in her posts should I look?

I don't feel like there is any co-parenting happening. H is MIA except when he calls the kids or when he has them for the weekend. He (has always) delegated all decision-making and discipline to me. When I asked him in the past about strategies for dealing with kid stuff he always either rubber-stamped my suggestions without thinking about them or said he didn't know how to deal with whatever it was and left it at that. So co-parenting is really not an issue to me.

It is so hard to figure out how to navigate this whole idea of letting go when my housing situation depends on him. So long as we keep everything joint and he keeps paying for mortgage and upkeep I can stay in the house. But at some point we're going to have to figure out where this is going so I can find a new home in the small area that I'm trying to stay in (for myself as well as the kids). That sort of keeps me stuck, although frankly if we end up selling the house and I get my own place it won't be any more pain than what I've gone through. I just want to know how to plan for those sorts of things. If we do sell the house, though, it will be a hurdle for him to jump if he ever wants to reconcile.

Good things are happening for me in other parts of my life, though I'm going to keep it to myself till I know more. Thank you all so much for being part of it.

Maybell,

Bug asked me to come over and visit, so here I am. Forgive me for not reading all your threads, so I don't know all of the back story here, but I read this thread to get a feel for why Bug wanted me to visit.

Bug said what I was going to say! So read her post and absorb it. It's the essence of what the doctor is ordering for you and the other posters who are chiming in on giving up.

I'll take what Bug said and expand. Giving up does not equal not standing. It doesn't mean jack. What we all are called to do in ALL our relationships is to let go. Take a deep breath and let go. No amount of worry or overthinking or overacting is going to change any outcome. The only thing any of you can control is how YOU interpret things and choose to behave. Notice I didn't say behave - I said choose to behave.

The essence I see here of being stuck is focusing wayyyyyy too much on what your WAS thinks or what others think (rings vs no rings). You do what makes you feel like the best you that you can be.

My XH and I were separated a little more than 2 years before he filed. I wore my ring-because I love my ring (still do) and felt that I needed to wear it. Then one day I felt differently, so I took it off. It reflected how I felt. Nothing anyone did or thought mattered at that point. I took all my photos of him down the weekend he moved out. That was for me to cleanse my own living space and I never doubted that it was right. Was he mad? Absolutely. I think he had his own ideas on how things were supposed to go, and me doing what I needed didn't fit his script. You do what works best for you and the kids.

Let's get to the important point here. The kids. They are watching your every move and word. They are literally focused on how you act toward their dad (they didn't ask for this) and how you treat someone who has hurt you greatly. So you use this opportunity to have compassion for the father of your children. You show them how to take the higher road and to gentle yourself in their eyes. My girls were 8 and 5 when their dad moved out. While he was off living in a hole apartment and drinking himself to death through a horrible depression and MLC, I took charge of our girls. They became my primary focus - doing things that propped them up and using teaching opportunities as they arose. I worked at not protecting them from any truths that were out there. When their dad let them down, we talked about it. I didn't slam him to them. I let them express their feelings to me and helped them move through them.

I had to laugh when I read your comment about not wanting to date him if you were in that spot. Like the other posters, I think all of us felt that way! But the flip side is also true - I didn't like myself much and didn't think I was a great candidate for dating either. So that left me with me.

I spent 2 years Dbing the heck out of my family. I kept a solutions journal so I could try new behaviors and monitor results. I worked on my own baggage and all the negative things he complained about me. There's one that was a long term project and that was my penchant for bringing stress and unpleasant work stuff home and taking it out on my family. So it's always a project with me.

Now about the other friendship stuff. What torqued me the most about our splitting up is that somewhere along the line, we stopped being friends. We were friends for a year before we even dated, and I truly missed that person. I still do, and we've been divorced for 9 years! But what I worked on over time was to create a good parenting R with him, encouraged him to be present with our girls, and tried to create an atmosphere where I didn't make it uncomfortable or impossible to be around. It took awhile.

All of this wouldn't be possible if my XH was truly a jerk and for years I overlooked his jerkiness. My XH isn't a jerk. He doesn't like being a jerk and his sensibilities are offended if people put him in a position of having to be the jerk. So I intrinsically knew that if I didn't put him in a box, he wouldn't choose to be a jerk. Time has a way of healing things, and it definitely did it for me.

Once our D was final, things took a funny turn. Several months later, our oldest was 11 and convinced both of us that she wanted to play club volleyball. We were both against it, as it was time consuming and expensive and we'd both have to commit to her. LOL. It sure does read like we're stupid, doesn't it? She pulled a guilt card and got her way. We set some ground rules, and sometime over that first year, we looked at each other on a random court and realized that we were both in love with our daughter and how much joy playing volleyball was for her. It forced us to cooperate fully, to plan things as a family because our family was affected a lot by the volleyball family, and to have a purpose. In effect, we created our own little mission statement.

Our daughter played club and high school volleyball and is now playing college ball as a junior. So we've been at this for a really long time (she's now 20).

With each passing year, we'd have team events and dinners. At some point along the road, when I wasn't chaperoning, my XH and D17 and I traveled together. About the time she turned 15, we started to hear from people who met us for the first time, "Are you really divorced? You get along so well and are a lot nicer to each other than lots of married people are." And Maybell, we get the same stuff today! It cracks us both up.

Eleven and a half years have passed since he moved out. He's got a serious GF and I've chosen the footloose and fancy free route. I learned how to hold myself responsible for my own happiness. And once I did that, I could see things very clearly.

Somewhere along the line, he apologized to me for his choices and actions and for the outcome. He's told me that he'd choose differently if he had to do it over again. I'm glad he feels this way because it makes me see that he grew up after his horrid MLC. But when it happened, I was at the point where I didn't need it. So it was a lot less impactful than what I had imagined early on.

I've received 2 incredible gifts from this crappy road. 1) Several years into this mess, my now D20 told me that I was her role model in how to behave with friends that were acting sh!tty. 2) 2 years ago, my dumbass XH told me that he was the luckiest guy on the planet to have an XW like me, because he couldn't have picked a better mother for his girls. And he gave me credit for being the parent who did the right thing at the right time for the right reason.

This is not to say that we don't have days where we aren't snappy with each other or say things that piss each other off. We do. But unlike 11 years ago, we typically come back and apologize for being the a$$. It takes the sting and resentment out of the equation.

So let me drop this final bombshell on you so you have something to consider on that resentment note. One of the ICs I saw told me early on that resentment occurs when we expect others to take care of our needs when we're not willing to do the work ourselves. Think about that long and hard, okay?

Getting back to what Bug said, instead of making those lists of things he'd need to change to be in an R with him, make a list for yourself. Make a list of things you want to do to make your R with yourself happy and fulfilling.

Once you stop looking at his train wreck, you'll better be able to see the things in your own house that need your focus and attention. So like Obi Wan said, "choose wisely". There are no do-overs!

I won't be on much for the next few days, as my D20's volleyball team is flying home to Colorado for a tournament and I get to have her on home turf for a few days. Plus my dad is flying out too. It's going to be a family first weekend.

Take care, all of you. Put your focus on YOU. Once you do that, you can let go. Whatever outcome prevails, you're doing what you need to save yourself. That's what is important here.

Betsey

Ditto on the house. I am at the point where I am ready to just sit back and watch the show. The longer this all drags out, the longer I stay in my house.

Glad good things are happening for you!