L2, Be careful here, you could be creating a self-fulfilling prophesy! You do not know the future, but you can influence it. If you are acting AS IF...your M is doomed and H will be leaving in 6 weeks, you will create a climate that could make this more likely to occur. If this is your goal (which I don't think it is), then that is OK.
On the other hand, if you act AS IF...your life will be fine no matter what H does, then he will be seeing a picture in his mind that is totally different. A calm, loving L2 who is patient with her (and his) S's, who is unaffected by all of his MLC cr@p, etc.
Just my .02$ from a long ways away. Hope you can find your peace either way!
Take care, SD
Me 41 W 41 Kids: S9 S7 Married 16 years Bomb dropped 2/2/07 Still living together! current thread
While I can TOTALLY identify with an irrational angry H, with spew directed in the wrong direction, SuperDad is totally right. I have learned to let H's crazy moods no longer affect me. The benefit of this is my newfound patience, and I am setting a good example for the girls.
In the past, I would scramble, tap dance, beg, cheat and steal to get H in a better mood. Post bomb, I would act with anger and bitterness. Neither works.
A balanced attitude is the only way. Let H's moods wash off you. Call out the blatant rude remarks ("That wasn't called for", then moving on).
Chant "I will be fine with or without H. I will be happy. I will be secure". You get it.
And yes, H sees the backslides 100 times more than the DB'ing. That being said, you aren't perfect, neither is anyone. Wake up tomorrow and try again. HUGS
Why do I continue to do this??? What kind of sick, twisted dumb#ss am i to not be able to turn away from looking at H's words to OW? Am i some kind of masochist? I ALREADY KNOW that they are seeing/contacting each other more than ever, that H sounds totally besotted with OW... why am i compelled to confirm it on an almost daily basis???
I tell myself to stop looking, so turn away, to assume the status quo...and then I find myself hours later looking "just one more time..." What do I think I will find??? It's like opening the refrigerator door multiple times, looking for different food to show up in there (when I haven't been to the store)
Magical thinking....wish I'd never seen H's new password (when i wasn't even snooping at the time...) makes it that much harder to follow this path; makes me start to question why I'm even doing this... and then i feel like such a weak-willed idiot for this whole darn thing.
(((L2))) That's all I can really say. Except, you are not a loser, just maybe an optimist!
Here's to hoping that you will be able to find a more productive focus than H in the near future and that snooping does not even cross your mind. Once you get there, it really is a much better place!
SD
Me 41 W 41 Kids: S9 S7 Married 16 years Bomb dropped 2/2/07 Still living together! current thread
A very early morning...although after having posted to SD, I may be able to get a bit more shut-eye (yikes...only about 1/2 hour, so better hurry!) Fortunately, have my IC today; know what we'll be working on/talking about!
Well, now I've done it!! I post to C_K about setting boundaries, and trying to turn away from snooping, and then in the course of this evening turn around and contradict everything I said...and of course, H caught me in a snoop, and then we wound up having a R talk...yuck!
H had a function at school that he had to go to tonight. I had taken S12 to watch a soccer game, and had already gotten back home, and H seemed to be way late. I was suspicious that H was seeing OW both before and after this function, so I was feeling anxious. I had looked in his briefcase once to see if I could find anything to clue me in (it's sitting right by the front door) and of course who walks in...and wanted to know what I was doing... I said I was looking tosee if he had his cellphone since I was wondering what was taking him so long... so lame, i know. He told me that the program ran long and he had stopped to get Mother's Day cards (which I think he did...and maybe he saw OW before the event, not after) Anyway, it led to a really sad convo.
H's response was 'you know, i really don't care what you're doing, if you're spying on me, I just really don't care'... I apologized for messing with his stuff, and that I don't "spy" on him. And then it moved into a R convo, with H talking about how he hadn't cared in a long time, years (which, sadly, is pretty true), and how our marriage R was dead; how he felt that last year I had told him I would 'do whatever I needed to do to protect myself' with regard to the end of our M, and that he felt that meant I wasn't thinking about the boys and mainly about making things really ugly, etc. (H also said I'd probably deny having said that...I didn't, even though I asked him to clarify what he was talking about [and this was his interpretation of my stating a boundary that I was going to stay in the house until we sold it)
A lot of this is kind of blurry; I have a hard time focusing really carefully on remembering these convos. (self defense mechanism?) what I tried to do was validate H's feelings, although I did say that I love Ss just as much as he did, and that I would always look out for their interest. I agreed with him that our current M relationship was dead; that the primary concern for both of us was our Ss. I said we were good parents and that we have a very good family unit together.
H talked about how he had tried so hard, and about how he kept talking to me and nothing would happen. I talked about how he had tried so hard to work on fixing 'my problems'; and here H alleged that he had work on his issues too (i sure never saw any evidence of that). THere is a good bit of truth to the idea that I was unable to see the things I needed to work on for me (blinded largely by my unwillingness to accept how much I lacked in selfconfidence), although of course the reality is so much more complex than that.
THere was more, but bottom line this is all rehashing old ground for on his part, and of course, gets us nowhere. He said that he wished he felt differently about me, but he just dan't/doesn't.
I'm starting to fall asleep, so will post more in the morning. I 'm going to ask for some help in deciding (and then editing) maybe something to send to H about this...
We are all human and we know what we should do but there is this need to poke the sore.
I know how this feels , another punch to our hope , and none of us would be here if we did not have at least some hope.
In reality nothing has changed. H has been caught and has told you a lot of stuff to try and validate/ justify what he has been up to. Try not to buy into it , he probably dosnt believe half of it himself deep down.
I think hes still in the Game for now , I tend to think if they are still trying to keep secrets and not be honest and up front they are trying to keep the path back a little clear just in case.
The question will be how long are you going to stay in the game?. My advice to you is similar to what I should do ( Should being the operative word ). Let him go , realy let him go. Think about yourself and do the best you can for your boys. do something different and unexpected.
You know all this of course . and avoid R talks , they will be negative while there is an A going on and PMA draining.
Work on your Goals , and thats easy to say , hard to do. I have had an interesting development that makes things just a little clearer but more confusing as well.
Of course, I know you are right...I'm so frustrated with myself right now...I'm letting myself feed my mood off what I know (unbeknownst to H from my d$mn snooping) instead of sorking from what's being handed to me. It's happened twice now in 2 weeks; and at the rate i'm going, it's all going to be a done deal soon!
I'm having a pleasant Mother's Day...everyone is out doing things right now, which is also nice. Going to have steak on the grill tonight with some nice red wine H got for me...yummy!!
But here's what I really need some advice on:
THe other night when H told me yet again how much he doesn't want to be married to me, he talked about things that he knows matter to me in our marriage/R (which of course, in his mind, makes it the absolute truth). He proceeded to say that,as with him, the kids were first(which right now, given the nature of our non-R, is true, and has been for too long [a problem i contributed to for sure].
But then he said the house, which to me is really only true to the extent that I love this place as "our" house, that we've all lived in for so long, and I vlidated him with that interpretation...but he gives it a reall negative connotation. And then he proceeded to say that other things that mattered to me were H's income and then what I would get from H when he (and here I have a feeling he started to say DIVORCE, but then wound up saying DIED)... (and we are not talking about a great big amount of either!) I don't know where in the h#ll these came from! I'm guessing this is another result in his mind from my statement last year that I wasn't going to move from here until the house sold...and his belief of how selfish this is.
It didn't even really sink in what he was saying until yesterday, and then I decided to just sit on things through today at a minimum. ANd I really don't understand at all where he's coming from on this...and i know that one option is to just let it go.
BUt i'm really tempted to respond/clarify these statements; ask him to tell me more about why he believes this...and how that's just wrong. It really bothers me that this has somehow become some big deal in his brain...
I'll be back this evening with some ideas of how to broach this...quickly, simply and in a real 180 for me...very strong and deliberately. BUt i'm still not sure at all of how or whether to proceed with this.
My H said stuff like this too when he was in the early stages of his affair with OW. Like I don't really care or love him just care about his money. I have always been totally unlike that; I helped him financially for several years and have never spent any money on myself, just him and the kids, so he was really doing crazy talk! I think from what I've seen in my sitch and others, they villainize us b/c otherwise the guilt would kill them. My H has now admitted to me a few weeks ago that he made our situation worse in his mind back in Dec. when his pa started. He says b/c he was under stress, but I think it also helped him justify the pa.
I don't think you can logically argue with someone in that state; H has realized some of that now a few months later, but I still don't think he really has become fully aware of what he was doing. I mean he would get horribly upset at me blaming me when he lost his own keys and that kind of thing. He was basically determined to think of me as some awful person for a time and even now picks fights just to make the affair/divorce/separation easier I think.
I try not to fall in the trap of arguing with him or falling into that; I think it's pointless to argue with someone that's kind of crazy and messed up like my H. I try to just avoid him when he is like that and try to be as happy, busy, and focused on me and the kids. I'm friendly but try not to spend too much time around him. Karen
