Quoting Shay5: my H said this exact thing to me too. Many times!! What does it mean? That I was unhappy? expected too much? didnt speak his love language? Or is / was it an excuse to pursue the OW? How did you answer this Sage? I would like to know more about your earlier sitch- good synopsis someplace?
Hi Shay --
My first thread here in Piecing has an OK synopsis of my sitch:
In MY sitch, my not being happy was about a couple of different things...in the background was the feeling that I've "always" had that my h was going to cheat on me and leave me....this has all kinds of tentacles back into my childhood and my own crappy thought process, etc, etc, but I think that my attitude towards my marriage was clouded by this overwhelming feeling that I was doomed to start (or, that we were).
The second aspect was more in the foreground....fact is, I was angry A LOT of the time...well, angry and worried. This had a few different elements to it...one was the feeling that h wasn't pulling his weight in the r, wasn't grown up enough, wasn't doing things the way that I wanted them done...therefore, whatever he was doing didn't count. The second was this worry aspect -- I did a pretty lousy job of not freaking out over just about everything...money, the future, the past, whatever.
So how did I solve these elements conspiring to make me miserable? Well, the background/childhood stuff I've been working on in C. The worrying about little things I've attacked in a bunch of different ways...meditation, mindfulness, present moment stuff...also, not to be glib but many of my "day to day issues" became trivial when I found out that h was having an affair and wanted a divorce! And, as for my expectations re. h, well, DB'ing has really helped me shut up, drop the rope, look at the positives...what I realized fairly quickly was that my h HAD BEEN doing things but I hadn't been paying attention to them...and, the more critical I got, the less he did...no kidding.
I also have to say that the Mars/Venus book was a true eye opener in that regard...how I'd been doing a cruddy job of appreciating h and his gifts.
It DOES tie into the LL stuff...I'd been looking for things in MY LL and missing all the stuff that he was doing!
I guess, in closing, the biggest change I've tried to make is to accept the fact that my h. is not under my control...that dropping expectations and ASSumptions, dropping the notion of SHOULD when it comes to him (he should be doing this, etc) that combined with appreciation and gratitude for his presence in my life...well, that's been a winning combo.
Sage
Relax. Appreciate. Be calm. Laugh. Enjoy. Be secure. Be loving. Be loved. Don't personalize. Don't ASSume. Accept. Be grateful.
the biggest change I've tried to make is to accept the fact that my h. is not under my control...that dropping expectations and ASSumptions, dropping the notion of SHOULD when it comes to him (he should be doing this, etc) that combined with appreciation and gratitude for his presence in my life...well, that's been a winning combo.
