In Support of Strong Puppy

[fearless]

Sometimes I wonder if I am overthinking the past but I guess I just want to make sure that I avoid repeating mistakes if possible!!

As someone who can relate to your H in terms of often seeking validation from other people, I do not think I would be in that state if I was receiving this validation from H. I am now, so we are on a good path. My H seeks validation from me as well. And I don't think there is anything wrong with that. In fact, I think it is necessary for the passion to stay strong.

I was very good about giving validation to my XH. I think I'm good with Raven too. To me it's easy to give validation to the man I love!! My XH and I were opposite in that while outside validation is nice it's more important for me to have validation from my partner. He was the opposite. Although I'm sure he would not have liked not getting validation from me if that had happened.

That what he was doing was painful to you because you loved him so much and really want to be each others "go to" person for that stuff.

Yeah, that's also what I did. I was told I was the one with the problem - jealousy.

Maybe like you said, your H was just really dysfunctional. But then why would you be attracted to him? It doesn't make sense.

Actually I did recognize the problem but I didn't know how deep it was. Like I've said, while I can't say I liked it, I could handle my XH doing some flirting. I also just wrote off some of his need for validation as "just the way he is." And probably he's not as dysfunctional as some either. I think much of his issues boil down to Jung's idea of the Shadow. We all have Shadows that develop and then we develop coping mechanisms for the Shadow. However at some point the coping mechanisms for that Shadow fail and basically MLC CAN occur if a person doesn't learn how to integrate their Shadow. James Hollis has written a lot about this.

My XH stated that his issue was that he was always looking for others to lead him. He started to become aware of it and hate that about himself and yet he still wanted to be led. So whether I led or tried to have him lead didn't matter because he was angry at me either way. if I led, he was mad for being weak and letting me lead. If I wanted him to lead, he was angry because he didn't want or like to lead. He did tell me that he thinks I did too much for him. Of course it's easy to say that I shouldn't have however with his mother and sister less than half a mile away along with other women around, anything I didn't do was usually done by them. Plus when I didn't do things, he would be angry too.

So again I did recognize a lot of this prior to our marriage but I didn't recognize the depth of his issues or the significance of the issues to our relationship.

But as far as wondering why I was with him, I don't think I make it clear enough that he is a wonderful man. He's smart and dedicated to work. He's incredibly gifted as an attorney and especially working with Juveniles and being a GAL (Guardian ad Litem). He has a great sense of humor and we had a lot of common interests. We laughed all the time. Our SL was good. All-in-all most of our life together was great. I didn't start DBing because I was afraid of being alone. I started DBing because I had lost my best friend and believed my marriage could be saved.

It's still ironic because if the woman he had an affair with had not gone after him, I'm sure we would probably still be together. I just wonder if we would have sorted any of this other stuff out or not.

FWIW...