It has been awhile since I was last on the site, so I’m catching up a little here.
I want to commend you for you helping your H when he needed help. It is a good person who goes out of their way for another, regardless of the relationship or past with that person. It’s a great example to set for your children and a great stride in working toward a friendship with your H.
It is often very difficult to balance the advice we receive. In “real life” you are faced with exasperated people throwing their hands up in the air thinking you’ve gone batty when you say that you want to work on the marriage with a man who would leave you. Then on this site you’re presented with the opposite side of the coin and everyone is very optimistic and fighting to save the marriages that the real life people scoff at.
So, what do you do? The number one thing to remember is that at the end of each and every day it’s you that has to live your life. You have to live with your own boundaries, you have to answer to your children in 10 years when they want to know what happened during this time in their lives, you have to reap the consequences of your own choices. The people in your life that see you everyday want you to be happy and care deeply about you, but they also aren’t walking very far in your shoes. Cat said it best when she said she had to keep the details to herself much of the time.
That said, I do not understand where you are seeing “negative” feedback from anyone here. I can tell you hands down that I learned more from this website than I have from any college, any job, any marriage counselor, etc. The reason I learned so much was that it all had to come from within me. I could read a thousand books (oh, and I did) and I could beg a thousand people for their advice. But, as I told you, at the end of the day it was just me and me. You have to know what you want, be able to take a little guidance and really consider everyone’s point of view before dismissing it. This is the single most important time in your life – transforming yourself! You don’t want to miss any detail along the way.
Someone (Cat maybe?) mentioned that a WAS was so impressed by the LBS’s new self that they begged to come home. I can tell you that’s how my story ended! Not in a neat and tidy two-week time frame, mind you. It took years for us. Yet, here we are. I’m a better person and he’s able to grow with me now instead of under my direction and on my time frame. It works. I don’t know what is right or wrong, but it works.
So, I’ll ask you. What do YOU want for YOU? What are your goals? What are you hoping for?
-Meredith
PS: Sometimes when we’re going through this process we tend to have our back up on the defensive. I’d just like to mention that I re-read CNMN’s posts and I honestly didn’t see anything negative about them. As with all of us, sometimes the really hard to read stuff is some of the most important in the end. Just my two cents!
"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere."
--Agnes Repplier, writer and historian
