Outside of the funeral, in a big picture sort of way, I'm thinking that Wes has a point. Take time to review the past 3-4 months. I see Andy as making a turn of sorts, and sending out quite a few feelers regarding his interest in you, and making sizably greater attempts at appropriate behavior and empathic statements toward you.
On your end, I see you wanting it all, and now. Good Rs have to start with friendships, and from this basis, the building up of trust, especially after such hurt has occurred. You seem to overextend yourself with offering help, then follow it up with parallel expectations about how he 'should' be or ought to respond.
To assume that he'll be contented with your friendship is just that: an a$$sumption. You can't predict fully another's behavior, Jo. No one can. The whole reason DBers are here is b/c we believe we can change ourselves and therefore the R. If we can change, so can the WAS. And if the WAS can change, then they aren't very predictable.
There are no real hardset rules with post-D DBing, Jo, but I'm not sure of your chances of success if you want to jump from no R to an R with little trust-building opportunities in between.
Jo - I agree with you completely. Sorry but OW and her D are not family. Even though you and Andy aren't married, you are still family. I don't think I could go either in your sitch.
As for being friends, I feel the same way about my XH. To be friends with him without loving him doesn't work for me. There will always be a part of me that will want more. I hope to keep him in my life that I can still be a part of D9's life, but I know a real friendship can never happen between me and XH. I've never been able to figure out how to unlove someone.
hopeful, i feel the same way but i keep thinking that the only way to win my W back is to try and be her friend it will be hard and i have tried before without success but if i'm her friend i will be close to her and she will talk to me and maybe just maybe who knows
Quote: I mean, I take pity on him over his father and now I just feel as if he's taking the piss out of me, expecting me to go as an 'ex' with flippin' OW1 and Rose there. I mean, who does he think I am, some sort of turkey???
I have been reading Jo but not saying anything. Sorry to hear you have to go through all of these feelings. If something drains you, don't do it. And you are no turkey.
Quote: If I am 'friends' with him, the 'in love' feelings always come back and then I end up wanting him
I can see why you feel this way.
Quote: In my opinion you can't go back to holding hands and chatting once you have become lovers.
I can understand this too. I would say some people can do it, some can't.
what you need to ask yourself is do i want this man back in life as a lover as a partner as a H, if the answer is Yes how can you do this if you dont talk, how can this happen if your not friends and able to be there for him, your have ben partner and i now believe that to be there again you have to grin and bear it for a while and see what happens. I do know wht your feeling and there are days when i feel the same, at this moment intime my W dosnt want to talk to me and i mis that and the only way i see any improvement is to be her friend
Those are big questions. I at the time Andy left, suffered an emotional breakdown, which meant I was unable to look after the kids. He initially left them with me but I was so out of it I just cried continously and ignored them. I did not clean or tidy etc. I would feed them but that was all.
I then admitted to Andy that I wasn't mentally well enough to have them so he moved back in for a time, we got childcare and basically he just dropped them at the daycare provider in the morning and picked them up in the evening. He would put them to bed etc and then go out partying/drinking/drugs in the evenings while I stayed on the sofa and just cried.
We did this for several months. I stopped eating but would still feed the kids. I would pretend to Andy that I had already eaten. I lived off water and very ocassionally tea with sugar in (I was pregnant with DD4 during this time).
Then I OD'ed 3 times (because our M was breaking up, I didn't want to live) and slashed my stomach when 8 months pg (terrible, I know, but I wasn't mentally right at the time).
When the time came for Andy to leave, he tried to take all the kids but I stood in the way and told him I'd physically attack him if he tried. So he plea bargained. He said let me have DD1 and DD2 and I'll let you have DD3 and DD4 and then we don't need to go to court.
In the state I was in, I thought it would avert court action so I agreed. He took my 2 eldest and left DD3 with me, who was then 2.
The baby was born (I was going to give her up for adoption as I was so ill but then she was born at home, with no medics, straight into my arms and this did wonders for the mother-child bond.
I had 10 blissful minutes with her, totally to myself, before her dad turned up, and then the ambulance 45 minutes after him. It was the nearest I've ever got to Heaven. I just can't tell you what it is like to birth your child alone with no one telling you what to do and no one fussing and no one taking the baby away to weigh her etc.
It was just her and me, attached by the cord, and lavishing each other's company.
I decided right then to save myself from depression, for her sake and for the others, so I began to climb back up. I went in a mother and baby unit at the hospital for a little bit, I went on anti-depressants, I found my life-coach, I did everything I could think of to get well. I had one further blip when she was 6 weeks old (caused by Andy's behaviour) and none since then.
I got my house clean, started eating etc, but it was too late for my 2 eldest because I volunteered them away and they'd already been with Andy for a while.
They awarded me custody of DD3 and DD4, but then he snatched them both (repeatedly). I managed to get the baby back by brute force, but not DD3. He had broken the law to get her so we scheduled an emergency hearing but that took 3 months to get, and then they wanted psycho evals and so we had to wait to be interviewed by psychologists and by the time she had completed her report, DD3 had been with Andy for 10 months.
He was allowed to keep her, despite me having custody, because of the 'status quo' argument (they said it would stress her out to move her from him after 10 months).
Because I was recovered from depression and looked after DD4 well and she was a happy, bonnie baby, they let me keep custody of her. She was also breast fed until she was 3 so it would have been hard for him to have custody.
There was also a LOT of disability discrimination going on behind the scenes for which I had a formal apology from the Chief Superintendant of Police, but that's another story.
Andy was partly to blame for the circumstances, and I was partly to blame - but at any rate there's nothing I can do now.
As I said before, I did have my kids 10 days a month but then the court wanted to lower it to 4 days a month and cut out me home educating them. It had taken me 2 years of court battles to win the 10 days, when they wanted to take that away from me, I was so heart broken, I walked out of court and said I wasn't going to be a mother. So I didn't see them at all for 8 months, and Andy for a year.
Andy won't offer me more than 4 days a month and I won't accept less than the 10 days I had. A court would not listen to me either, and even if they did, I have run out of legal aid (it only goes so far). I find when we get into discussions over the kids, it just wrecks all DB'ing and stresses us both out and causes arguments, so I prefer to go with the flow, as it were.
I don't hate him, I think both of us caused the sitch with the kids, but I do think he hasn't been fair/honest about a lot of things, and yes, I don't think it's appropriate for OW to be at the funeral.
Did he do this in the M? No. He had 1 bout of depression where he was emotionally attached to a co-worker (not physical) but aside from that 2 month blip, was a model husband for 8 years. Did everything he could for me for years, romantic, considerate, thoughtful, hardly ever angry, never smoked, never drank excessively etc. Regular family man, cried at the birth of our children. Proposed on an airplane over the loudspeaker in front of 200 passengers, that kind of guy.
Greek I feel for you I have been there and still from time to time think about it, I have tryed to OD walk into the sea and even tried to drill a hole through my chest into my heart because i lost everything, ( i did try to od before i left house) it was then that i found out i have depression and had for 2 years, i know its not an excuse for what i put my W through but there is a reason for the way you , me and many other feel that way and we need the love and help of our S not for them to ignores us just makes things worse. keep your chin up
Hugs from me, together we can climb out of the hell hole
I have been very busy lately, not alot of time to post, but I have been thinking about you and your family. I wish there was some magic advise that someone could give you that would make things better.
The book I am reading (The Purpose Driven Life) has helped me greatly. Without my faith in God, without reading the book, without my DB friends and me being willing to change, I would not be where I am at today.
Jo, I am by no means out of the woods, but from what seemed like an impossible sit. to almost having a post D busted I am in heaven on earth. One day Wes beat me up a bit, but I listened to one thing he said. Yesterday, last year and the past is gone, I had to quit rehashing all the bad things that happened. Its very hard to stop thinking and hurting about the past, however when I did my PMA started soar.
I know this is all very hard to deal with, but I hope that you go to the funeral with your family. I was not able to make it to my uncles funeral a few yrs back and I feel alot of guilt as we were very close. I don't want you to end up with this kind of guilt, its a sick feeling thats hard to get rid of.
I pray that God gives you the guidance and strength to gain more peace and comfort in your life.
Yes I know he has feelings for me, that much is obvious, but after all his on/off I am just not sure what those feelings are. I don't get him.
He can be so contradictory, even in the same day (such as today, I'll write about that in a minute).
And also since this is all we're *likely* to be, I don't want to invest in a friendship I know I won't keep. I know it assuming, but I have been at this a long time.
