This is different...today...for the first time in all of this...I am feeling anger about my situation...I am looking back over the years and looking at the pain of the recent months...and the pain that I will continue to process in the months ahead...and I realize that I had given her a lot - I had given her much more than we are supposed to say we have when we arrive here as DAMs or LBSs. She took everything I had to offer her - for years - she accepted my money, support, love, gifts, compassion, patience, forgiveness over her affairs...all of it...I am a giving person by nature - I love to give, to offer help to others...I know it's mixed up in my fixer mentality - but it was/is also part of how I offer love...by giving...and I see now that she was and is very willing to take what she can - and she is just not someone that I could ever love in a safe and healthy way.
I don't want her back and don't want my marriage to continue - that much is clear to me - it just pains me, cuts into me so, so deeply that it will have to affect my baby boy. I never wanted to be in this position again - but when I see our history together, when I set aside the DB idea of taking on all the responsibility for now because I should be the one leading the way - I see that she has not been healthy for me since we've first met. That is not to say she is a bad person - or a lesser person than I - I don't see her that way - I think she's an incredible person - but just not someone I should be with anymore...and I hate having to admit that...and I hate having to know that it will affect my baby boy...
Here's something that's not written about much on the board or in the books...when you let go, when you truly let go, it gives you a perspective you may not have had before. For me, I expected to let go and be washed over with love for B - and to find a new kind of patience and resolve to stick it out for her...but that is not what has happened...I let go, felt safe finally, and felt free of her way of defining me through her anger and abuse - and I found that I could not be with her anymore...I know that's not what DBing is supposed to be about -it's supposed to be a method, a process, by which we save our marriages by saving ourselves...but here's the rub...for some of us...saving ourselves...finally mustering the strength and courage to see our pain and to heal that pain and to improve ourselves...for some of us we arrive at the painful, sad conclusion that our partners were not the right people for us...and that's where I am...I love B. I admire her. I know her strengths and I wish the best for her - but I also know that her deep issues make her abusive toward me and toward my S11 - and I cannot have that be a part of my household with my children.
She is on a journey - and I know she's going to learn a lot about herself through this journey - and I hope that the process leads to much happiness for her in the end...but my journey has taken me in a different direction now...and so that is where I am heading...facing every beast of sorrow that waits for me along the way...disarming it, getting stronger, and continuing onward. It frightens me at times - but if I stop moving, that fear will consume me and hold me still in a bewildering maze - so instead I use that fear as a reminder to move on, to continue stepping forward, to push through the darkness, confront the ghosts and goblins that await me...because I know there is a way out...and with every victory over my fears I get closer to that light.
