Newcomer in Pain

[GainingStrength]

BeingMe - A cute naughty idea. But with W and OM, it would not help.

The WAS's can't keep the A away from the children because they are emotional drug addicts. It appears that judgment, grace and caring go right out the window. Below is a little fable I wrote for my other thread ("The Course of an Affair".):

A FABLE FOR LEFT BEHIND SPOUSES ENDURING AFFAIRS

From what I've read, the walk-away spouse in an affair is on an emotional high, enthralled with the other person and addicted to the endorphins and adrenaline flooding their brains when they think of or are with the OP. As a left-behind spouse with kids and a walk-away-wife in an intense affair, I've written a little fable as self-therapy. The fable admittedly is partial to the LBS and may not always be true. But please indulge my little fantasy:

Once upon a time, a walk-away-spouse and the WAS' lover (the Other Person) created an emotional island paradise for just the two of them, insulated from the feelings and needs of those left behind on the mainland of Marriage. Affair Island, though built with the pain of their spouses and children, was beautiful and glorious and provided everything they wanted.

As they built and beautified the island, the lovers made plans to be together in bliss forever. However, there was a little problem. They were surrounded by dangerous oceans all around the island. On one side was the Sea of Guilt and on the other the Sea of Loss. Also the island was located below sea level, otherwise known as the Tide of Reality. So they needed large dikes to keep from being inundated and drowned. To do this, they created a big stupid extension of themselves, a giant named "Dopamine" ('Dope' for short), to build and maintain these Dikes of Denial. These dikes worked fine at holding back the water for months and the two lovers remained excited and happy, planning for their endless future together. However, the sea levels around the island kept rising and the pressure on the dikes kept increasing. Sea of Guilt water (from the pain they caused their children and others), started to undermine the dike and water from the Sea of Loss (as they start missing their now-shattered families) started to erode it.

The lovers then needed more interaction with each other to maintain their drug highs and to keep Dope strong in order to reinforce the dikes and plug any leaks. Fortunately for them, his strength was occasionally increased by the left-behind outsiders on the mainland who sometimes unknowingly threw food over the dikes in the form of anger, pleading, interrogation, and blaming. When they stopped doing this and instead adopted attitudes "as if" they were friends of the absent spouses and turned to improving their own separate lives, the Dope weakened. He could then be sustained only by the lovers themselves.

It took a lot of energy to keep the walls strong enough and high enough to keep out the ever-rising seas, so Dope needed larger and larger doses from the lovers to keep strong. After awhile, the lovers were not able to produce the same level of sustenance for the Dope and he weakened more. Eventually, he became too weak to maintain the walls and the Seas of Guilt and Loss start to flow in, making the lovers unhappy with themselves and each other. Finally, the seas overwhelmed the dikes and swamped the lovers. They were engulfed in the flood of guilt and loss that they could no longer keep out and Affair Island broke up and disintegrated. The lovers eventually washed up back on the mainland, exhausted and alone, each wondering what became of their forever paradise.

The End.

Any comments are welcome.