Amy, if you are doing good with your sitch, I want to read about it. Could you point me to your thread? And if I go there, I'd want to read the details of whats working. I know my sitch is a lost cause, but who knows. Maybe I'll find hope in yours.
I really wish I could find the goodness and inspiration I once found from everyone here. I've seemed to have lost it somehow. Where are all the positives? Is it that time of year?
Poet ~ I do not maintain a thread here any longer. I stopped a few months ago when I thought I was going to throw in the towel on my sitch and I started to date someone. That did not go well at all because while all the warm fuzzy stuff was nice at first, I am in no way really desiring a relationship with any man other than my husband. Once I untangled myself from that situation, I spent a few weeks really thinking over my sitch, all the ups and downs, positive steps and backward slides and I remembered my husband (who has known about this board for a long time) once told me that because of my being here, sometimes he had a hard time knowing what was really me (caused by real changes) and what was just a strategy that I'd picked up from the board. I don't know why I remembered that but I did and I decided to no longer keep a thread with details of every little encounter my husband and I shared.
That said, I have settled into a place of peace for the first time in over a year and I'm back in this completely and for the long haul. I know the pitfalls. The lonliness, the doubt, the obstacles, the foolish pride and the outside deceptions that will come to lure a stander from his or her post. I have been a slave to guilt over my MLC. I have been a fearful enabler. I have been a pissed off quitter determined to find out what was 'out there' only to discover that no matter what is 'out there', it is not out there for me. My family remains separated - split right down the middle - and I'm not leaving it like this when I have the knowledge, the heart and the conviction to turn it around. My race is no picnic. It comes with some very formidable opponents; depression and functional (for now) alcoholism.
Poet, "what works" is simply not definable. This is a journey of getting to know yourself on a most fundamental level and then creating your own definitions and writing your own story with them. I don't know your sitch well enough to comment to you personally but I can tell you this: Determining to continue to grow as a person while you DB and still refusing to leave someone else behind (in my case) is a very hard line to straddle and it really comes down to a battle between the heart and the ego. In my case my heart won out but my ego did not go down without one hell of a fight.
My husband and I are very close now. I'm the one he talks to about everything again and even when he doesn't use words it's okay because I already know. I just know the man and I love him. Where he is right now is not where he wants to be and there truly, truly is not another person that's going to help him and believe in him and help him fight the battles that are ahead of him. His parents and a handful of friends are all that are in his life. He isn't close enough to any of them to share the things he shares with me. That said, I don't see my husband as a burden. I don't feel obligated to stick around and 'be there'. I want to be there. This is who I am. I am his wife and I love him deeply.
Time, patience, insight (first into yourself and then your spouse), the humility and courage to allow yourself to be the first to change and a million steaming mugs of 'shut the hell up' is what all this requires. And reaching a place of calmness and peace inside yourself so you can actually do it. And in the midst of all this personal drama, you have to get a life of your own. One of the things I am doing is taking a course for what our town calls the "Community Emergency Response Team". I'm just getting myself out there, meeting people and trying to position myself to be able to help others because so much help has always been provided to me at so many different points in my life. I may never have enough money to give any of it away but I figure I can learn some new skills and then I can give my time. It's a start...
At this stage - 3 years post MLC - it isn't just me doing things and being there for my husband. He does things for me as well. It took a LONG, LONG time for us to get to this point but I don't want to give the impression that this is all give on the part of the stander. It is not. However if you are the stander, you'd best be prepared to give more than you get for a while. Maybe even a long while. Only you can know if your efforts are fruitless. Sometimes it takes a long time to see the positive results of your labor.
Poet, I am sorry that I can not provide you with a story of reconciliation to inspire you. Largely, a stander must just search marital resources and their own heart and soul. A lot of the work to restore a marriage is actually done within yourself before it starts expanding outward, eventually touching your spouse. And if you think you've done that work and you're feeling impatient, you probably need to stand down for a while and think again. At least that's been my experience.
Good luck and God bless.
Frank - I read this morning that you asked me to repost a timeline of my period of "awakening" from MLC. I will do that as soon as I can. My apologies for the above hijack.
