2 weeks to get ready for The R Talk......

[Dawn of Hope]

Arianne,
I have just read through your thread; you sound much better now than you did in the beginning! There are plenty of others here who have more experience than I and can perhaps can advise you better (snodderly is a gold mine!); however, I think that if your H is giving you some money, that is as much as you can expect from him right now. You just have to pretend you're single as far as just about everything except dating, I think.

It sounds like you are beginning to detach, which is very good! I think your best option is to keep detaching, GAL like crazy, and leave him alone to flap in the breeze! No R talks, no D talk, don't bring up anything negative, and if he does, just listen and validate. He doesn't know who he is, where he's going, what he wants...so DON'T ASK him about any of that, because he can't give you a straight answer and it puts pressure on him. If he contacts you, be light and positive and friendly. Otherwise, leave him alone to sort himself out, because any demands or pressure or questions from you (pure as your intentions may be) are just going to complicate and prolong the process, IMHO.

I have to tell you that this takes a while, but "fake it 'til you make it" really does work eventually. I am living proof. I have a VERY long history of serious depression (almost 30 years), and I seriously considered suicide EVERY SINGLE DAY for about three months after I found out about my H's OW. I had purchased the means for my suicide (sleeping pills), and had a plan for when and how I was going to do it, and was mentally writing my final letters to loved ones and thinking about how would be best to get them delivered, and was considering how to find a lawyer to prepare a will and other final documents. I have been in suicidal mode many times in my life, but this was by far the longest period that I was so close to actually taking that final step. The only times during that period that I wasn't thinking about suicide, I was thinking about murder and mutilation (you can guess who the subjects might have been).

Finally, FINALLY, my antidepressants kicked in, and I slowly started to feel like death might not actually be the option that would make me feel the best. (I have been on antidepressants in the past, and before, when they kicked in, it was a sudden, dramatic difference--going from depressed to relatively happy in half a day. This time the improvement was much, much more gradual--took about three weeks after they started working for me to be sure of it.) I began doing GAL activities, as much as I could stand (I'm an introvert, so being with people is a drain on my energy). I spent a LOT of time, and every iota of my energy, pretending to be much happier than I actually was with most people, especially with my H, which really confused him because I had never hidden my depression from him before, so he was used to seeing this very sad person, and it was one of the major issues in fracturing our M. Very, very slowly, I was faking my happiness less, and feeling it more, until today, one year after my descent into the tenth level of H-E-double-toothpicks, I would estimate that I am at least as happy as the average person who has no major crisis occurring or history of depression. And THAT, my friend, is a miracle in itself!

I would not be here today were it not for four factors: 1) God; 2) friends and relatives who went above and beyond to help and support me during this horrific experience; 3) antidepressants (when they finally started working); and 4) having been through a similar but less serious experience six years earlier (although it certainly felt serious enough at the time!), and knowing from that nightmare experience that if I could just hang on to the edge of the cliff a little longer, I would eventually feel better and be able to climb back over and away from the edge of the abyss, due to both the passage of time and the effect of functioning antidepressants. There were many times that I didn't think I could stand it for another five minutes--I had "emotional hives" (not an actual physical ailment) and wanted to crawl out of my skin all the time--but I did stand it, and managed the five minutes after that, and so on, until, after what seemed like eternity, I eventually found myself in a pretty good place emotionally.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my H still seems pretty miserable, despite still going hot and heavy with OW, and also despite the fact that I have done everything I can think of to avoid being the source of a problem in his life--no pressure, no demands, no nastiness or arguing, always calm and pleasant to him and just accept whatever he dishes out and let it roll off my back, don't take offense. By no stretch of the imagination am I perfect, but I do pretty well with DBing. I am sure he finds a million things about me to gripe about to other people, but the fact is that they are nearly all either quite minor, totally in the past, or all in his head. For example, he probably blames me for preventing him from living with OW, but the fact is, he has never indicated any definite plans to move out of the marital home (although he has indicated several times that he is considering it), and I have not tried to stop him from doing so in any way other than to make things more pleasant for him here. I do sometimes wonder what he tells OW or anyone else about why he is still here, but I don't waste a lot of my time on that...trying to figure out the thought processes of a MLCer is an exercise in futility, and I have better things to do with my time and my brainpower.

Anyway...the only reason I have spent so much time describing some of the details of MY sitch on YOUR thread is to give you hope, by my concrete examples, that it can get better if you keep at it. Hey, if I can be happier, given the sitch I'm in, and given my depression history, anybody can! Antidepressants help, of course, but they don't usually make you giddy--they just put you on an even keel with the average person so that you actually have a chance at being happy.

I hope you don't mind me taking up so much space on your thread with all this, but my hope is that it helps YOU. I think your chances at winning back your H are decent; more so if you can detach and GAL and all of that other DB stuff! Beyond that, you just need to give him lots of time and lots of space, and go about putting together a life you love in the meantime! We all know how hard it is, especially when you have been with your S so long...but it can be done, as evidenced by the many, many success stories on this board.

I hope this helps you! Keep us posted!

Blessings and peace,
Dawn