God grant me the patience and the strength...9

[Bworl]

When you say you CAN'T do something that nearly everyone who posts to you tells you is necessary for a chance at healing this mess, you condemn yourself and your marriage to death.

There should be no CAN'T on this board.

You should not be able to care enough about your marriage, your life together with your spouse, to invest yourself in a place like this and then say "I can't."

There is no person on this board who has been unhurt by a spouse who turns to the physical and emotional comfort of another person. We ALL have felt and lived with that pain.

One of the first things we learn here is that we cannot allow our emotions to drive our actions and choices. Particularly now when most of our crisis is because of a spouse who is doing exactly that. WE have to be the rational ones. WE have to be willing to use our BRAIN as well as our heart.

You come here KNOWING that there will be incredible pain. You've read other stories on this board. Have you found a single one yet that did not including crushing emotional hurt? We ALL have walked that road, the same road that you are on.

TOH, I honestly believe that your stubbornness is your greatest downfall in successfully finding your way through this mess with your husband. I understand that you grew up in a family of fighters. And I don't care. I understand that you've had to be strong and stand up for yourself throughout your life. And I don't care.

This is not a simple matter of someone ticking you off and you having to find a way to deal with it.

This is your life. And your childs life.

You have to go BEYOND yourself. My son's football coach shared a quote with them this season. They were 0-6, and facing the possibility of a winless season. The week they won their first and only game of the season, he told the boys THIS during their practices that week.

"If you want to accomplish something you've never accomplished before, you will have to DO something you've never DONE before."


Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary efforts. It is simply not enough to say "I can't," or "This is just who I am." Just how far are you willing to go, what price are you willing to pay to at least be able to say one day, I did everything I possibly could to save my marriage and my family?


You had no business calling the man. None. You know how he has been, what he has been capable of. By this time in your situation you SHOULD have moved yourself to the point where you ACCEPTED that he was a broken man who was capable still of inflicting great pain on you. Who in their right mind would continue to cling so tightly to a person who has made it a regular course of business to do things that broke their heart?


You hold him to a standard that at this point in time he will never meet. And many on here have told you that this is HIS journey, and that there is little you can do to influence it's outcome. And yet you continue to hold expectations, and you continue to be both offended and crushed when he does not meet them.


You've missed one of the fundamental concepts of DB'ing. You must love and care for yourself first. You must value yourself enough that you accept ownership for your own happiness, even absent the happiness that your spouse once brought to your life.


With what you told him last night, I am glad at least that your actions of today were consistent with what you said last night. I am glad that you did not waffle with a nights sleep.


That being said, you have now chosen a path, and it's time for you to at least COMMIT yourself to that chosen path. At least be consistent in what you have decided to do.


Leave the man alone. Stop EXPECTING things from him. He is not concerned with fulfilling your expectations. He is not concerned about how happy you are or are not. Quite frankly, I think it's safe to say that he's not even concerned with what you think of him and his choices. He is indeed in a lost state. The same state that he has been in for the past year or so. NOTHING has changed in him.


You had taken an approach that was bearing SOME fruit. You were being low pressure and inviting to him. You gave him space. You left him alone verbally regarding the future and decisions. He responded with being around more. He responded with being less angry and irritated with you. Those were positive signs.


Unfortunately you chose to read those signs as indicative of a man who might soon be choosing to come home. At the least you read them as signs of a man who was beginning to make good choices. And YOU, you began to apply expectations to him again.


So, when he fell again, as was almost inevitable, you lashed out. You could not take the disappointment. Disappointment that YOU created by placing unreasonable expectations on who he was or what he was becoming. And you closed the door.


The good news is that I honestly don't believe that your words of last night and today with stick with him for long. He is a lost man, wandering back and forth between the past and an unknown future. But YOUR job was to be his lighthouse. Your job was to be immune to his lostness, to have understood he was lost, accepted that he was lost, and realize that the only thing that you could do for him was to be the ONE thing that he could always count on. You were to be that light that he could always find, should he ever regain his heart and mind and choose to begin making his way home.


Because that is all that most of us could ever do in these situations.


Stay consistent. But think about these words. And think about what they might be saying TO YOU. You do not need to speak to him, you do not need to apologize, you do not need to smooth the way back. You have charted your course, now stick to it and do it in a loving and aware kind of way.


Blessings,

Bill