H deep in A & MLC, need support 4 roller coaster!

[Dawn of Hope]

LHF, Glam, and BeingMe,
Thank you all for visiting my thread! I so appreciate the feedback and fellowship--we may all wish we didn't need to be here, but at least we can all help each other!

I know, I keep telling myself, "it's not real, it's not real, it's not real" which helps sometimes but not all the time. I think I'm worried it will turn real, mostly because there is phone conversations happening as well as stuff I've read about eventually getting together and being soulmates, etc. and (b) the whole emotional component of it.

But it is messed up. And I just keep repeating that to myself. And there is a part of me that says sometimes "can I be with someone so messed up?" But it's like so many others say here: "It's an alien." And it is. Because I think I know my H better than anyone -- including his parents -- and this is totally not him. At all. Or it least, it's not who I thought he was.

LHF, I could have written that first paragraph myself (except that I omitted the SL "marriage" part from the quote) back in September, except that I KNEW they would be meeting in RL in mid-October. I developed a sudden, raging case of anorexia AND bulimia overnight, I was so upset. There are other people here who have been doing this a lot longer than I have who can give wonderful advice, but what has helped me most is to DETACH. I'm not there yet, but I'm doing better all the time. Keep rereading your second paragraph, which I also could have written at many points during this ordeal.

Hey, don't you wish that there was some kind of visual litmus strip that would tell you whether he was still with the aliens?? Like, hmm, his earlobes are still bright green; his brain is not coming back anytime soon!

LHF, hang in there--we are all hanging in together!

Hi Dawnofhope. Thanks for your insight into depression. It's great to get another perspective. I know my h is deep into depression and that is so much of what he is going through at the moment. Thank you!

Glam, you're welcome--since I have had to go through this anyway, other people might as well get the benefit of my experiences. I certainly don't mind sharing, although of course everyone's experience of depression is a bit different. I'm not sure whether having acute depression is worse than having a S who is having an A and all the other stuff we deal with on this board, but they are both pretty horrible and there are certain parallels. In both cases everything just seems so incredibly difficult and hopeless and your control of the situation seems so miniscule as to be useless. You figure Sisyphus had it pretty good, because at least he actually got that rock to the top of the hill every day, even if it did roll back down again every night! For both depressives, and people like those on this board, who are trying to save their Ms singlehandedly, it usually seems like the rock is permanently glued in the mud at the bottom of the hill!

Just caught up with your sitch, Dawn! Sorry to read of how your H is treating you. During my sitch, when I found out about the EA, I insisted that my H refrain from using our home phone, or space to keep in contact with OW. I had children to think of, however. I didn't want them overhearing him.

BeingMe, thanks for the support! It's still pretty quiet most of the time in my house, but that's partly because I bite my tongue a lot. H only uses his cell phone to contact OW. No wonder he decided to go to a more expensive cell phone plan--it allows unlimited minutes (and texts) for no charge anywhere in the country! Before OW came on the scene, we were accumulating hundreds of minutes per month that were allowed on our plan but we weren't using, and texts were 5 cents each. After he blew through all the accumulated minutes, within a couple of months of getting involved with OW, and started racking up $15.00 a month and up in text charges (that's 300 texts a month!), he changed to a flat rate for unlimited everything. I haven't insisted that he take his discussions with OW elsewhere, so that I don't have to hear his voice coming from the basement for a couple of hours a day, because I've finally gotten to the point that I don't really care any more. I mean, I do, but not very much. No kids to worry about in my case.

I do think you have a right to not have OW sleeping in your house. That is so disrespectful of you and the vows you and H made.

I don't think he will have her here again (although I have no guarantees), so I'm going to leave it alone for now. I agree that it's tremendously disrespectful, but so is having an A in the first place. I guess I just don't have a clear idea of when and how to set boundaries. I know there are certain things that I would immediately put my foot down about--like if he ever hit me, for example--but there aren't nearly as many of those as I used to think there were.

I think he is sitting on the fence because he is probably not absolutely sure about the OW. She is young, and probably very insecure. Maybe, your H doesn't fear so much that your changes won't last, but that they will. So, he sits on the fence, eating his cake, and waiting to see how long you will keep up the changes.

Based on what I know about OW, you are right that she is very insecure. It's my understanding that she has had a major weight problem for a long time (she probably weighs twice what I do, or maybe even more), and has had difficulty attracting interest from males for that reason. I think H even told me that she dated a guy for a couple of years and they broke up when he decided he was gay. If she weren't screwing my H, I would probably feel sorry for her, but I'm not quite that good! So now she's got a married man twice her age very interested in her--seems to me she's made up for any past issues.

BeingMe, I REALLY want to hear more about your thoughts on H maybe being afraid that my changes WILL last. I'm not sure I'm following your train of thought there, so could you elaborate? Please give me the benefit of your thinking!

Have any of you thought about going onto this SL game, and enticing your H's away from OW without them knowing it's you? You know your H's best, and you could possibly keep them dangling for years, until the MLC is over. Play them at their own game, IOW's. You could even set up a separate email account and have an ongoing A with them that way ... no phones of course, unless you know of a way to change your voice, and you would need a separate account for that. You could pretend you live in another country, making calls costly, and visiting even more so. You could send him fake 'pictures' of you. Ooooh! This would be so awesome.

Just a thought! A naughty one, but an intriguing one, perhaps?

I've actually thought of this! And if I were going to do it, those are some great ideas! But I don't think H really spends that much time on SL anymore, now that he has what he seems to want in RL. He now has a laptop of his own, so I can't really track his activities on the computer any more because he almost exclusively uses the laptop, which last time I checked was password-protected. The other problem is that unlike LHF's H, mine is of the "loyal 'til it hurts" personality type, which was great when it was applied to me, but isn't any more. So I don't think it's likely that anyone new in SL could pry my H away from his current OW. But even though I don't currently think that would work with my H, I think it has definite possibilities, and maybe LHF and others with H's lost in SL would find it useful! It definitely gets the "naughty but intriguing" vote!!

So, in other news...I had dinner last night with a long-lost friend. I met this guy when he worked on the student newspaper with H and me, when we were all in college together (H and I had already been dating a couple of years by that point). He got married a year or so after H and I did, and we lost touch after that. A week or so ago, he e-mailed me out of the blue--first time I'd heard from him in almost 15 years. He said he'd been in touch with H through a business networking website. Come to find out that he and his W had a daughter who is now 12, but they got D after about five years of marriage because...that's when he finally admitted to himself (and others) that he was gay! Has been involved with his current BF for 8 years now. Whoa...major head trips there!

Has been living in same city with H and me for 10 years but had not gotten around to getting back in touch. So we talked on the phone last week and I told him about sitch with H, and then we met for dinner last night and talked some more. He was very sympathetic, and it was nice to have someone else to talk to about all this. It was really good to see him. It's been a while since I had the opportunity to see anyone I hadn't seen in 15 years. His voice is exactly the same, but he has gained enough weight--especially in his face--that I would not have recognized him if I hadn't been expecting to see him. Not an enormous amount of weight, but he was rail-thin before. He has not yet seen or spoken with H--just brief e-mail exchanges, as I understand it--so it will be interesting to see what his take on things is after that happens and he hears H's side of the story, or whatever he's willing to tell of it.

Okay, the length of this post got WAY out of hand. Sorry about that! Now I REALLY need to get back to work!

Thanks again for stopping by and reading my ridiculously long posts! Talk to you soon. Best to you all....

Peace,
Dawn