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

[MidwesternGirl]

If the kids want to see him, let THEM text or call him, not YOU.

Do not try to figure him out as it will not make sense. You have way too much in the way of expectations. Put it back to ZERO.

[theotherhalf]

The kids are alot smarter than me. They stopped trying with him a long time ago.

MWG, I think I call it faith instead of expectations.

[theotherhalf]

why do I have to do this, why am I responsible, why do I have to be left holding the bag. How can he treat me this way? How can he speak to me this way? How can he do what he is doing when I have tried to keep to the high road and hang ON?

All of these are good questions BUT…the answer to all of them is….what? Will it be useful? Will it help? Probably not because at the root of the present problem we somehow expect that all of what we are trying to do will bear fruit but the harvest is sometimes radically different from what we plant.

It was our choice and hopefully will continue to be our choice to do this…he did not ask us to and should not be beaten up in our mind for not responding to that….he is on his own journey and how we choose to react or NOT react is more to OUR benefit than it ever will be to his…there is no assumed responsibility on his part to change anything because we choose to take the “high” road. Just as a fever may not break in spite of a doctor’s best efforts to fight it, this mid life confusion is a law unto itself, reason has little to do with it and emotions have full control and the trick here is to remember that this is true for BOTH of us…. But try telling yourself that at 3 in the morning after you have had a crying jag at the sheer enormity of the pain you are feeling.

The sad fact is that this is a process without a clear end result, there is nothing we can gauge the success of our efforts against, it is what it is and it will continue until “it”, the thing affecting him and by extrapolation affecting our marriage dissipates, the end result cannot be known and THAT is what causes the stress we feel in trying not to react. We don’t know what will work and it is only by living this that we can find out what will NOT work and finding THAT out usually happens AFTER more damage is done…that’s SOME good deal isn’t it? NOT!

There is a fallacy present here in a great many of the posts on this forum to a greater and lesser degree and this is that the OP is the main reason we are in the situation we are in and feel the pain we do and that is simply not true. I hate to frighten anyone but the issue of the OP can be dealt with and in fact BANISHED and that will not, by one iota stop the emotional and hormonal impact on the marriage as long as hormonal cycles continue. I know that some of you simply will not be able to believe this but for me, having another woman present in my marriage was easier for me to deal with than hormonal cycles still present and still impacting us after SHE was banished. When she was there I had a simple choice…three people in the marriage was NOT going to be…I could put my life into compartments and one of those compartments was the choice to put up with that or not….I chose not to put up with it. The cycles that followed my stand I could handle simply because I thought they had to do with his withdrawal FROM her, they were expected and I could deal with them as long as she was gone…I ASSUMED that things would bet better when she was gone….we would work on the issues that all of that brought up, deal with the pain and feelings and get on with our normal lives….as we WERE able to….BUT!

What happens when the OP is gone and the cycles and confusion still visit? How do you keep your new life in a safe compartment while reeling under the effect the cycles have on both of you? How do you not take it personally after a time when you momentarily lose your ability to detach from the emotional turmoil that your husband still goes through? Turmoil that ebbs and flows, no pattern to it except vaguely for ten days to two weeks a month with no indication of how severe or benign they will be? How do you keep a guard on your heart and not react while still holding yourself open to the love you feel for him? How do you traverse the abyss that will suddenly open in front of you with no warning without reacting? How do you keep yourself safe while keeping your love for him safe enough that you can bring it out and still FEEL it when the storm has passed? And how can you help him deal with the shock of realizing what he has said to you while in the throes of his storm?

How does he BEGIN to deal with the feelings of horror he feels when it passes and he realizes that once again he has done damage, damage that he sometimes cannot remember…refuses to believe he inflicted until he sees the emails he has sent from that other dark place? How can a man continue to trust himself and his love for his wife when he is capable of doing this time and again with no clear idea why it came up or he felt it necessary to do or say whatever it was that he was angry about THEN? How long is it before he fears that there will BE no room for him to receive forgiveness the next time and for the life of him he cannot understand why it all seemed so real and necessary while it was happening and how it could be just a wisp of memory in his mind while it is a cacophony of pain in his wife’s heart and mind? And this is just in the minds and lives of the men who have realized that something other than their confused reality is responsible for what is happening, men who are trying to fight their way back to the life they once had but did great damage to while trying to deal with their feelings and emotions without understanding what may have caused those emotions.

This passage that we are all traveling is a dark one, there is no rhyme or reason to it, it attacks without discrimination, without reason, it takes on a life of its own and sweeps up all in its path and when it passes the beaches of our life are strewn with debris…debris we must, both partners…pick up, sort through, deal with, try to repair where we can and put back into some semblance of order all the while suspecting that this will not be the last time we will have to do it… and not knowing if we CAN go through this one more time….that just possibly having had to do it the last time will BE the deal breaker the NEXT time…..and THAT is the heart breaking part of it.

Very good post from another board.

Good morning all. I am wavering so badly. H came this morning but did not come in. I didn't call him this time. Not saying that I don't want to. I want to do something to ease things over. I hate this place where we are at. I don't care what happens between us. I don't want us to be angry and avoiding each other. But I know, I know. Leave him alone. And I will.

We got snow last night YUK. So I'm sure will be fun getting to work. I might sneek off after work and get some last minute stuff done before the holidays. By the way the weather sounds I won't have much chance the rest of the week.

I have decided I will not be spending Christmas at the inlaws this year. If I go H ignores me and that is really hard. I feel out of place. And last year he ended up asking me to kiss him in front of everybody. Got my hopes up for a minute. Then follows me home and drives past and goes to OW's. I will not go through that again. What I don't know doesn't hurt me. So this year I am staying out of the line of fire. And it is time to face life without H and his family.

Have a good day everyone.
TOH