The Course of an Affair

[GainingStrength]

Everyone - I need your thoughts regarding detachment.

Background: My W is rushing headlong toward an engagement with the OM. She has been helped along in that direction recently by the fact that she feels excluded from her family gatherings planned for both Thanksgiving and Christmas (largely of her own doing though, because of trips planned with the OM), while I will be at both with our kids. So she feels as if it is her and the OM against the world.

In the meantime, I am giving the gift of forgiveness, to myself. I'm tired of feeling pain, anger and hatred toward them, and I want to get past all of that. Until I do, I don't think I'll be happy again.

So I've been working very hard on what I call "FAD": Forgive, Accept and Detach. I feel that all three go together and that working consciously on the first two has helped me make progress on the third (which seems more resistant to conscious effort). All this works better of course if it is in the framework of active GALing.

It seems that working on forgiving my W by being compassionate about all the stress she is under and even rationalizing some of her actions, actually does make me feel better, more accepting of the way things are, and better able to "let go".

Sorry if I seem over-analytical here, but for me it helps to have the info to work with. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

LL