BND - Whether they live at home or live away - it doesn't make any difference (my ex lived away for some of the time). It all hurts. And it hurts because it is supposed to hurt.
Braveheart - yes, God does allows us to go our own way...for a while. When others are praying for us God will use those prayers to help change our minds. It is ultimately up to us as to whether or not we want to obey what God is telling us to do. Prayer changes things. Also, I said "God wins in this MLC." I know that he doesn't win in all the MLCs. God didn't win in my ex's MLC. I walked away nine months before my ex wanted to come back. By then I was already going another direction. I quit praying for the return of my husband and for my marriage. It was me that left not God.
Nothing is different in this MLC - God gave me a choice. I could go another way or I could stay and let God lead me and my husband. God told me that there would be pain. There has been. BUT God also told me what was going to happen in the end. We aren't to the end yet. Let's just say that there is going to be rejoicing in heaven and on earth.
When I stopped focusing on me and my pain and could focus on my husband and see the pain that he was dealt as a child...I started understanding the pain that he went through. Sometimes I can't stand to think about it because it brings tears to my eyes that anyone would have to go through what he went through ALONE as a child. He was emotionally abandoned as young child by his entire family. I won't do that to him. I won't abandon him. I don't know how much of the past that he has been able to process. He has processed some of it and I know he hasn't processed all of it. Maybe he doesn't love me, Braveheart, but maybe he doesn't know how. All he knows is that when he needed someone when he was a young child everyone left him. They moved out, they died, or they sat in bars getting drunk trying to drink away their pain and they left the little kid alone.
God has asked me to love this man while he goes through the processing of clearing his past so he can move on. I'm going to do that. And because I love him unconditionally I do not expect anything in return. I don't expect apologies...he as a young child didn't learn them so he doesn't know how to sincerely give them. I don't expect him to love me...because as a young child he didn't learn how.
One day my husband will have his eyes opened as to what has been going on. One day he will suddenly know what he was supposed to learn at a young age he never had an opportunity to learn. And on that day my husband will be broken. He will be humbled. He will realize all the people he has hurt, not just recently, but all of the people he hurt his entire life. The experience will bring him to his knees. That will be the day he hits bottom and from there he will be able to rebuild his life. How do I know this? Because about four weeks ago God let me have an experience of my own. Because something was taken away from me around the age of ten it changed my life forever. Over the years I hurt people without meaning to. However, since it was taken away from me at a young age I never learned the things I needed to learn. It was earth shattering for me. I spent hours apologizing to my family (husband included). I had to apologize to co-workers, close friends, my dad - he was the hardest one, my kids, the list goes on. I just didn't know. I knew when I had the experience that it was so that I would understand the pain that my husband is going to feel. It is just through typing it again tonight though that I realize that it happened to me around the same age all the bad stuff happened to my husband.
Ottocat - I want to be able to come back when it's all over and let everyone know that we are okay BUT I'm hoping I don't have time. I am hoping that I am just too busy living my life with my husband that I don't have time.
