Praying For Us Every Day!

[still hopeful]

Marriages today lack 3 critical components, often time from the beginning, and sometimes because the M becomes the convenient scapegoat for one's inability to commit for life (not just until it becomes difficult or inconvenient), their inability to be completely honest, and/or their inability to communicate regularly in the environment of complete honesty and undying commitment.

Sometimes it's one partner who falters and other times it's both. In a committed M, when one partner has difficulty and/or falters, their other partner must step up to fulfill their responsibility to assist their partner back to emotional health and strength. And sometimes, the faltering partner is unable or unwilling to admit their need for assistance, but with commitment and regular communication, the faltering will be apparent to the other spouse, who offers his/her assistance in healing with love and undying devotion.

Your husband was not 'just' unhappy. Several factors may have led to his unhappiness, including your inability to be attractive to him, his lingering unmet (and probably uncommunicated) expectations led to unresolved frustration (again still uncommunicated), which resulted in anger and his disengaging from you and emotionally detaching. None of this would have gone unnoticed if your commitment, honesty and regular communication were in place. And the tell-tale sign may only have been his unwillingness to communicate which would have been awfully difficult to miss.

Those three marital ingredients are the necessary legs that hold a marriage above the and out of trouble, and if one or more are weakened or removed, the table will simply fall because because all three are essential for a happy, healthy and whole marriage.

Your XH is simply not communicating the truth because he may have lied to himself for so long that he believes his own lie as truth. Your task is to strengthen and improve yourself; to disengage behaviorally and detach emotionally. I have found that changing my behavior is much easier, and it removes your suffering and sadness from the view of your XH. It is the detaching emotionally that I am finding more difficult because I haven't yet emotionally divorced my XW. I need to do that because I am only wasting my life by living my life this way.

As phoenixdeux posted to me, I must let go. Letting go does not mean giving up, it simply means seeing my XW as my ex and not as my wife and living my life for me; no longer expecting our reconciliation, but remaining open to it. Hope that all helps. Live your life for you. Go to the library and check out new books to read. As an aid, log in to amazon to read summaries and reviews from other readers to assist in making your choices. If nothing else, this is a productive way to pass your free time and it will infuse your mind with new stories and ideas and make you an even more interesting woman.