Thanks for your post. There is a lot to think about there. As for backing off. I have for the most part. I do not bring up R conversations anymore, but I do backslide when she brings them up. Today we are going to counseling and we are going to be talking about our R(I think), I plan on not telling her she is wrong and just validating her feelings. I'm also going to stop being afraid of how she is going to react to what I say or do. I cannot live that way going forward with or without her. Today is a good day to start this.
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I have noticed some people want the WAS back IN PART b/c they don't like losing and let's face it, it hurts like hell. But then, when the WAS wants back in and the LBS really lets all the acts of the WAS sink in, the LBSer decides he doesn't want the WAS back. So I guess you need to really assess whether you DO want your WAS back knowing what you now know about them. If you really see this episode as an aberration in your W, then don't analyze so much b/c if this is OUT of character, why bother trying to figure it all out? Just ignore everything she says, and half of what she does.
My W hasn't wanted back into the R in the past 6 months, so I haven't been forced to deal with these feelings/emotions. Hopefully I will. To be honest this sitch I would say is an annomoly for my W character. It is totally out of character for her and really has burned up the moral person that she really is. She is only human, so at this point I would say that I wouldn't hold it againest her. Rightnow, unfortunately I probably will be not holding it againest her apart from her being my W.
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Here's food for thought. I love my h, but since his MLC I can now see that he has a very selfish streak in him. And all the usual questions about whether I was blind, in denial, or even caused his behavior, come up. And we all do have roles in our situations, today. I find It's weird to see my h in this light, but I am trying on some new attitudes.
I to love my W, but am now seeing sides of her that I just ignored because I loved her. I ignored it because I just thought that was how she was and lets make the best of it. I did not realize in trying to appease her that I would lose myself, my dreams in the process. This is what happened. Now that I am more aware am I going to continue to ignore traits that I dislike? Probably but I will not compromise myself and lose myself ever again. We are all human and have things about us that are not so appealing. I will not hold that over anybodies head. But I won't let that stop me from being me, which is what I did for so long. I also have to be careful and not doing things out of spite for my W. I will probably have to ask myself is this me or am I just doing this to prove some point that does nobody any good.
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I hope it's the latter. I'm giving my M another shot and that is despite lots of misgivings, and lots of going back and forth. And forgiveness is a great concept but it takes much longer than i expected, and I actually want to forgive.
Good for you! This is a tough road and I believe that the road to reconciliation is different but just as hard. You, I and everyone else on this board has been wronged in many ways by our S's. It takes an awesome ammount of personally courage and strengh to forgive. I commend you for going down that path.
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So you know, as an LBSer, be prepared to have many mixed feelings if your WAS wants back in. it isn't all joy on your end and it isn't all remorse on their end. In fact, the WAS may not seem totally interested in making it ALL up to you, though they do at first. But when they first return, or signal their desire to do so, They seem to do one of two approaches: either they go over the top with their regret, so much so that it's almost a bit indulgent, and they beat themselves up until the LBSer (!!?) comforts them to make THEM feel better....
OR, they say they're sorry and they mean it, but after a relatively short time, they want to move forward all fresh. Sort of as if they were simply mistaken, or did a bad thing but more or less they expect forgiveness. Don't assume it's easy for them to ask for it, or to admit they've handled very important things in their life, really badly. And to some extent, at least for now, I think we have to accept that. I do know that the the returning WAS has to know we won't hold this over their heads forever. There has to be an end in sight for them to finally feel that they can start over with US, or they'll want to start over with someone else, if you kwim... Just food for thought.
I have actually thought about both of these and would love for either one to occur, I just don't see that happening rightnow.
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I think the last words of her book said, we have to "learn to embrace the ambiguity" and that seems like a good idea to me. Be here now. Especially for our children, we have to be fully present, today. Their childhoods seem shorter than mine did, and I know their years with me went by in a blink. So I'm working on dong this: embrace the ambiguity b/c it exists regardless, and live today as well as I can.
