Steelers Fan-H Left After 5 Weeks Pt. 2

[a new 2moro]

I feel for you (((((((Steelers)))))))

not much to say excerpt im glad you finally told him that....now i would be as dark as possible. Let God have him and step back. are you prepared if chooses OW?

[MidwesternGirl]

he will not choose her over his family.

he told me he is miserable with her which i already knew.

there is no place like home but he will have a harder time returning for now.

the kids and i are not trinkets to be tossed around.

he is already spinning and cycling like crazy

[a new 2moro]

well yeh...wants to come home in one breath and he is sleeping with her in the other. He wants you both on an intimate level is what hes saying. these mlc-ers are crazy. what seems so simple to us is rocket-science to them. i havent been posting ...a break, but i wanted to give you my support

[MidwesternGirl]

thanks but think of it another way:

he has nowhere else to stay--she is providing him with a "free" place to stay and in order to do that, he has to do things if you know what i mean.

sounds like something out of american gigolo.........

[Bworl]

In my humble opinion, you give him too much credit.

I don't buy the "he doesn't have anywhere else to stay." If he truly loved his family and missed his family, yet felt he was too messed up inside to be with them, he would find somewhere else.

The fact that he is sleeping with her still makes it very clear that this is NOT just a place to stay.

I'm sure he'd like you to believe that though.

Doesn't really matter. Not trying to argue with you. More than anything I just want to encourage you along the lines that it is perfectly ok to insist that it's time he made a decision.

A nice first step would be for him to say "I can't come home, but I can't stay here anymore. It's not right. I'm going to find SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE that I can stay. Even if it's a shelter somewhere." THAT would make me believe that this is just him still feeling too messed up to be with you all.

For crying out loud, pitch a tent in a campground somewhere if you're being THAT noble about this.

Infidelity is wrong. Sweeping it under the rug is not somehow noble or a sign of great strength. It comes perilously close to treating yourself like a doormat.

I support you 100% in your stand. I want you to understand that. These are my opinions, for what they are worth.


Blessings,

Bill

[MidwesternGirl]

finances do not afford the luxury of having to rent an apt anywhere.........

let him suffer and let God continue to do His work is all I have to say right now. i gave it my .02 worth.

[butterflymom]

Ok, I’m going to jump in here too.

Steelers,
Yes, he’s feeling a tremendous amount of guilt. Yes, he most likely does love you and wants to be home with you. Yes, he’s most likely miserable at her house.

That said, is he only staying there because it’s the only place he has to go? NO. Don’t believe it for a second. He’s not ready to give her up. He’s not ready to make that break. I think he may be close (close is a relative term when dealing MLCer’s, however), but not ready yet.

Yes, God is working on him BIG time right now and your H is feeling the push/ pull of this. It sounds a lot like what FW went through.

What he doesn’t realize (and I don’t know if you do either really) is that he’s trying to self medicate his depression with outside stuff. What he’s got to realize on his own is that a certain living situation (whether it be with you or OW) is not going to take away his bad feelings. They are still going to be there. He can’t run from them any longer.

FW still gets them from time to time. He still gets very depressed. Gets what he calls the “Funk”. He still misses OW sometimes. Not nearly as bad as he once did, but it does happen every once in a while. He even calls them “fleeting” feelings, and it’s been over 5 months of NC. Heck just a couple of weeks ago, FW told me that he felt like leaving again. Not leaving and going back to her, but just leaving and going somewhere, anywhere. He just wanted to get AWAY, but he realizes that even if he did that the “funk” would still come back eventually.


I took much the same approach as you did. Very patient. Praying for FW and letting him know that I was praying for him, for OW, and for God’s will to be done in our marriage. I too allowed a lot of what some people term “cake eating” while he was gone. (We were still sleeping together, how much more cake eating can you get than that!?!?!)

When FW started to express an interest in coming home, in working on us, I did much the same thing that you did last night. I didn’t so much issue and “ultimatum”, but I let him know that I was not going to wait around forever. That he was eventually going to have to choose between her or us. I let him know that I couldn’t force him to choose, but he understood that eventually he wouldn’t have a choice anymore because I would no longer be an option.

I never put a timeline on him. I never told him how LONG I was willing to wait, but I did let him know that my fear was that he would want to continue on with both of us forever, never making a real choice and that that was not going to be acceptable to me.


FW said he was scared of losing both of us in all this so he was very reluctant to make a clean break from either of us for a while.

I think this is where your H is. Scared to lose you and the kids, but scared to lose her too. What if he makes the wrong choice? What if he comes home and it doesn’t work and then the OW is gone? What then?

You see, he THINKS he’s in love with her. Whether he really is or not is debatable, but what is a fact is that in his mind, right now, he loves her. Yes, he’s miserable with her, but he’s still clinging to that “fantasy” that he has made her to be in his mind. In his mind is not the reality of his situation, it’s the fantasy of the life with her that he has created and he’s holding onto that fantasy for dear life. It’s hard to compete with a fantasy. He still thinks that giving her up would in some way be catastrophic to his well-being

I think there is a fine line there that has to be navigated with these men. I think patience and understanding is key, but with the right amount of boundaries put into place. It’s a learning process. A lot of prayer and a lot of reading and listening for God’s instructions. I call his will, his help to be my “gut” feelings. It’s the still small voice. It’s not going to wap you over the head, but if you pay attention it is there. I think the approach that you and I took is one of the more successful ones I’ve seen (well, DUH! BFM, Of course God is going to be more successful than anything humans can come up with!). I think your text last night was the still small voice of God telling you to let him know that he can’t continue in this way forever.

God is working on him from above and through you. The key is the balance of patience and the loving reminders that you do have limits. Letting him know you have limits without coming across as a b!tch is hard, but very doable. I think you did good.

BFM

[BethM]

Hi SF,

I am so sorry that you had to go through that. For me reading your story is like Deja Vu. I've been there, done that. I think what you said to your husband was the only thing you could have said. They act like children and they put us in the role of the parents. I accepted the fact that this was an illness when I realized that it would be onething for my H to walkout on me but when they sacrifice their kids, there is something very wrong with them.

I wanted to clear something up. I wasn't trying to tell you how to handle your husband or your sitch. My post and the suggestion of the LRT was for you. He's out there doing whatever it is that he's doing, so all you can really do is to try to find some happiness for yourself. Funny that I should put it that way because there isn't all that much happiness to be had while we're going through this and trying to decypher what they tell us. For me LRT gave me my life back. Thing is it doesn't have to be an ultimatum. It can be as much as telling ourself that I'm not going to let him hold me emotionally hostage anymore with having 1 foot in 1 life and 1 foot in the other. You can still be kind but at the sametime letting him see that the world isn't going to stop and wait for him to do the right thing. I never did tell my ex that. I just made up my mind. I kind of assumed this mantra and I would repeat it whenever I would start to get scared again and worry about what he was doing. I would repeat to myself over and over again, "He moved out and you have no control over what he does." It might sound silly but for me it worked. It allowed me to concentrate more on the things that I could control and that was me. Leaving ex to fix himself was like a weight that had been lifted from my shoulders freeing me up to once again really live and find happiness once again. I don't mean to say that it was easy, but eventually it does get EASIER and life becomes more normal.

The other thing I know without a doubt is that we're ready when we're ready. It really doesn't matter what anyone else says, they don't have to live your life. Most times people who love us feel they know what's best for us, and I do appreciate that, but they don't have to walk in your shoes.

So with all that being said, I wish you the best and I'll keep you in my prayers. Afterall, I'm a Steelers fan as well, and lord knows we have to stick together!

Love,
Bethie

[MidwesternGirl]

guess who texted me in the middle of the day? yep.

said he was not mad at me about lastnight's conversation, and i asked him if he could assist me with my financial situation for the summer over the weekend and he said of course. he is planning on being here this weekend.

Not to worry, I am keeping it as if it were a business meeting.

[glamgirl]

Steelers you have been at this a really long time. I think your situation is prime for turning the tables. You should stick to your position of it's time h to make a decision or how many more years are you willing to go on like this.

At some point there is only so much you can put up with or help and support. The other spouse must meet you half way.

Just thoughts! You did the right thing last night, now don't entertain communication with him. Let him make a choice and come to you or not!