Nas - Nice goals. You'll learn that you'll pursue far less if your actively seeking your goals. Keep it about you for now. You'll see from my sitch that things will fall apart w/ H's OW.
Try not to get too excited about anything. You're a happy woman, act that way all the time.
Hi, goldeylox! Thanks for the vote of confidence. I am pretty secure in who I am - worked through a lot of that years ago. Just need to make a few adjustments. Like a tune-up.
I really appreciate your support, and thanks for the advice about the sisters. I love them, but I have backed off. Not going to contact them, but if they want to call me, that's cool.
Regardless of what they say, I know that they will tell my H that I'm asking about him, and I know that they will try to influence him with their opinions, so I'm staying dark and not calling them. In "normal times", I wouldn't talk with them except once a month or so, so there's no reason to break that pattern now. As curious as I am about him and his state of mind, I'm only hurting myself by asking.
Thank God for this place and for my girlfriends (all with the patience of saints).
I haven't seen your sitch yet, JCJ, but I'm on the way now. We are about the same age as well. I'm 26, and my H is 27.
I feel very lucky to have foudn DBing early. I'm trying to relegate myself to the length of time this is going to take, and hopefully things will work out. Either way, at least I'll be doing something.
I'm so sorry you had to go 6 long months before finding DB. Those months must have been ever worse, but I'm glad you're here.
It really does suck to be walking on eggshells, but in the end I have to admit that he was probably doing the same with me for much longer. In the end, it's probably only fair.
If life was, why would we bother, you know?
As far as the DBing principles are, here is where I am so far:
Not sure what works yet. So far, not pursuing seems to be working well, but it's really too early and only time will tell. I'm sure I'll have a better idea when I see my H tomorrow.
As far as what first attracted my husband, it's hard to say as we were much, much younger. Not sure that what attracted him to my 15 year old self is what kept him around or what he ended up loving, but here's a few notes on those days:
1. I was a challenge. He had to pursue me for sure. 2. I was "exotic" as he used to say. We went to a fairly rural high school outside of Savannah, and I was certainly the only Sri Lankan-Hungarian girl at school. He and I were the only "Asians" there at the time. I came from a metropolitan area (Chicago), and I bellydanced and wore a bindi and was definitely different from every other girl at that school. 3. I was smart, and I wasn't easily impressed by a few poems and platitudes. He'd write all the girls these poems, and I was the only one who could beat him at his own game. 4. I was loyal and committed. I wasn't the type to run from guy to guy. 5. He got to defend me a good deal. 6. He was more adult than me back in those days. 7. His family loved me, and I was a "good girl". 8. I was interesting, unpredictable, and outside of the box.
What put him off for the two days he came back? Well, here's what I did:
1. Tried to reason with him about the R, especially in terms of talking about my logic and POV. 2. Tried to give him advice about the R and about himself. 3. I did some AOS for him - and I think that's his LL - but I did them expecting a particular response and sulked when I didn't get exactly that response. I did those things grudgingly, and he knew it. 4. Pushed him to talk about the R and out problems. Wanted an immediate resolutiona nd wouldn't give him space. 5. Was sad all the time. Didn't go to work and sulked around constantly. 6. Didn't allow myself to have normal conversations with him. He kept asking me about this idiot that I work with because we laugh about this guy all the time, but I was too busy sulking to have a normal conversation. 7. Didn't allow him to set the pace or tone of our interactions.
After he left the second time, I made the mistake of emailing, calling, and texting way too much. I tried to get him to spend time with me before he was ready. I told him about the changes in myself and was clingy.
All in all, a lot of mistakes. In some ways, I'm glad that I've continued to confuse him. I got him thinking, and I at least made it clear that I'm willing to try. Now, I just have to back off and wait to see what happens.
I'm excited about GAL. I had a life, but I was slacking in many areas; I'd become very complacent and was depending on him for lots of things because of laziness. I'm feeling good and doing ok on the goals, so hopefully I won't fall off the happiness wagon too many times.
Thanks for the support, JCJ, and take care! Thanks for checking on me.
Hey, marriedCrazy! Thanks so much for popping in and offering support.
I'm very familiar with Brunswick, and I live just outside of Savannah myself although I work in Hilton Head. What a small world!
Thanks for the kudos. I'm trying to learn quickly and really apply myself to saving my M. I really do hope he's noticed, and I am hopeful that by taking this opportunity to grow that I can not only have a better M but become a better person.
And thank you for being so understanding and commending me in my turnaround to be supportive of him. You know, I really was a total b****, and I am ashamed of how I treated him/viewed his professions. It was so bloody ridiculous of me that I can't even articulate my feelings properly.
I think your assessment of my husband feeling he married down is spot-on. And I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't subconsciously agreed with him.
And I was wrong, of course. Very wrong.
I think he does have major self-esteem issues, and Lord knows i have some of my own. It breaks my heart to think that I probably contributed to those issues, and I hope that I am helping him by letting him sort this stuff out on his own. I think that by the time I started trying to be more supportive and respectful, I'd already done a lot of damage.
I'm so sorry to hear about you sitch, Tom. I'll check out your posts, and I wish you the best in your situation. Thank you so much again for being so supportive, and thanks very much for the encouragement to write. It really means alot. Best of luck in the Air Guard, be safe, and take good care of yourself.
Thanks so much for the advice, AinO! I hope I can follow it; I know I intend to.
I have no doubt that it will fall apart with his OW. I honestly am not even interested. There's about a snowball's chance in Hell that she can compete with me in the long run, and if he need sot be with her to figure things out, I can't begrudge that.
And good luck in your sitch, AinO. I feel for you, and I know that your sitch is really draining. I'm sorry if i gave you some bad advice. Follow your gut and you'll come out smelling like roses regardless of the final outcome.
So I actually worked on poem during my lunch break. Thought ya'll might want to give it a look.
At least it's something.....
Preliminaries of the Engagement
He bats lashes lean as spider legs, turns humid-eyed at the echo of his father arranging coffin, hearse, pyre. Shuffles across the patio and sets the grim line of his mouth. Worries the flesh from my fingers, teeth from my gums, caps from my knees, the belt buckle loosened now.
We do not speak of mothers, of the car curled into the elm, of the fetal tuck of the limbs, of the shudder of branch and leaves and the grass that remained unbent beside the rear tires.
He withers into the lawn chair, soothes away scabs of rust with the pads of his fingers. Joints groan. Settle. Skyline is sullen with sandflies, the light grayed with rain, dour as the lips of the Low Country Atlantic, pursed against the shore. He swats, drawing blood – Mine. His. Welts rise in angry puckers.
We slump wet-faced, straining towards the rain; we prickle beneath the hole punch sky, and the porch steams, tiffin-hot.
We rasp, our mouths smoke-dry, chapped lips seizing his collection of foreign cigarettes. His eyelids wilt to closing, wet bulbs wandering beneath taut skin, brown sockets and purpled undereye.
He picks a continent and we stroll through memory slow-slow, categorize those byways like lover’s skin, fingertips skipping across spine and clavicle, plateau of sternum. Our tongues amble, lulling away grief. Sigh into him, a rasping of throat, and uncoil against thigh, hip, against the round vibration of his voice.
I smoke a Lebanese cigarette and explain Colombo, how you shop and learn the beggar’s smells, how the market-fish shine, how Thoo-rye-rath-inum twists their barrels.
Rainwater puddles, the color of ghee. His eyes roll to the milkwhites.
He wanders his lanes slowly – blood clotting in Kandahar and the glottal sound of bolted doors, the strays one-legged, fearing mines.
We quiver atop a tow missile, eyes cold with remembered night and sand, that feeling of grit beneath the lids.
Crush my cigarette into the cement. Pass him the Glock. And then that familiar snap, like a shucking, and he extracts the shells, turns the rounds in the dimming light.
I am pretty secure in who I am - worked through a lot of that years ago. Just need to make a few adjustments. Like a tune-up. 
We are about the same age as well. I'm 26, and my H is 27.