The Dark Man...undercover

[Jimbo]

OK- The next few posts are going to be me posting some stuff that was recovered from a thread that went missing. I'm reposting it here because I want to have access to it, and I want anybody else who might happen to come this way (especially any newbies) to have access to it as well.

<Beginning of Post>

Ok T2- this is what I wanted to say to you on Trapt's thread before we were so rudely interrupted... (and any response will have to wait until I get back from lunch! )

Love scares me now.

God is love. Are you still affraid?

Yes I am still very much afraid. Not so much afraid of love, it is the having my heart broken again that scares me.

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How do you learn to trust the next guy/girl?


The same way you learned to trust him in the begining. It doesn't come to anyone in a day. It takes time and it takes overcoming your fear.

Trust in the beginning was not hard at all. I was 19 years old and he was 16..YES, I freaking robbed the cradle. How could I not trust he was a baby just stepping out of his mom's nest.

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The past is the past.


The only reason to bring it up would be to intentionally hurt somebody, why? especially if they were truely remorseful.
You have to leave it where it belongs.

Easier said than done. I was hurt the last 4 years so now it is his turn. Sorry, but that is how I feel.

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Is there such a thing as 100/100? Isn't it usually a give and take world?

In a perfect world yes. Perhaps I should have worded this better. There is such a thing as trying your best, if her best means only 85 because life happens, then so be it. I guess for that day mine will be 115. However I would expect her to do the same for me if ever I needed a little extra. And unfortunately we DON'T live in a perfect world.

T2, dear: your responses (both overtly and otherwise) say to me that you are still hurting very badly. And no one can blame you for that at all! I can see from the language you use and the conversational tones you project in the language of your posts that you're running the whole gamut of emotions: anger, resentment, frustration, bitterness, and a deep seated desire to "make/see him pay"! This is all to be expected, and it's part of the process.

Maybe you'll benefit from a realization I discovered about myself yesterday that I want to share with you (and everybody else here, for that matter!)

I was reflecting on my sitch yesterday. Since we all hope that one day our spouses will "wake up", and take a long, hard look at themselves and what they were doing to us, I decided to try the same thing for myself. After all, how can I expect my W to do it if I won't?

And I came to a surprising conclusion that I hadn't realized about myself that had been staring me in the face for all these years.

I was expecting my W to validate that I am "loveable".

When we first met, I had no self-confidence. I had just recovered from having been cheated on and betrayed by my first love (who, I found out after the fact, was not worthy of my love in the first place!)

She picked me up, dusted me off, and made me feel good. We fell in love. Life rolled along great! We spent many happy years together both before and after we got married.

Then came the MLC.

Does the fact that my spouse went into the MLC tunnel mean that I am less loveable than I was before?

No. It means that my spouse has issues that they need to clear up for themselves.

Am I at fault that my spouse went into the tunnel?

No. From what I have read and what I have learned from talking to the people who have been through both sides of MLC, my spouse was going to have to deal with these issues sooner or later. Whether they were with me or someone else, or even if they had never met me or another.

Does my spouse reflect my value as a human being, or my "loveability"?

No.

Not anymore.

Not now that I have recognized for myself that I don't need my spouse to validate anymore the fact that I am a "loveable" and worthwhile person- they already did that for the past 2 decades.

Don't make your stbx your validation tool. For one thing, he's too busy "working on him" now to be there for you. For another, you already know that you're loveable- he's shown you that before his issues began.

This whole MLC process makes us confront our fears- of being unloveable, of being "not good enough", of being alone. But when we finally get to the point where we're whole in ourselves- that's where we will truly bloom.

The old addage remains true, no matter if you're the MLCer, the LBS, or anybody else...

"No matter where you go, there you are."

When you get to the point of being whole in yourself, you won't have to live in fear anymore because you'll have everything that you need for YOUR happiness. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

Be the best you that you can be, and everything else will fall into place.