Detachment, Pop-Tarts, and Hope

[ThinkingItThru]

Well, here I am 7 months later and things are OK. I've decided to keep posting because what I'm doing is working for me. Maybe it will let others know that there is life after all this. And to think last Fall I was a complete basketcase.

Hubby is still living at home and we're still in the same room. No affection or intimacy. The occasional "get together" which I'm mostly doing because I don't want to cut off all emotional connection, but honestly he's not real interested. We are co-parents and roommates. And not the kind of roommates that sit up into the wee hours talking and drinking wine, but the kind that share chores and go to kids activities together.

No idea if the girl at the office is still his BFF.

I've had a good counselor through this. She's hard on me and I don't always think she's right, but I've listened to her and a lot of the time she is right.

I've started going to church again for the first time in 20 years. A Universalist Unitarian church that accepts everything from the atheist to the Catholic on equal footing.

I've read a lot of spiritual books by authors like Elizabeth Lesser, Cheryl Richardson, and Deepak Chopra. I'm reading GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT by Harvelle Hendrix which has made me realize that my spouse has the positive and negative qualities of my parents. If I can forgive and forget my mother for her emotional distance, I'm realizing I can forgive my hubby for it. It's their behaviour, not mine. Although it is interesting to look into myself and really see my good and bad qualities.

I've been through periods, as late as last week, where I took hubby's emotional distance and lack of interest in me as a woman personally. I really don't think its me though. I'm pretty much the same person he fell in love with and I'm just as deserving of love now as I was then. So, he's the one with the issues.

I've kept the girls out it although they have to realize something is different.

I think you reach a certain level of peace when you realize that you can't change them. You can't make them the person that they used to be. You can't make them be the person you need them to be. So that leaves you with your options which can be looked at with less emotion.

First, I want to make sure the girls are launched before making any big changes. Second, in this economy I'm in no place with my house and investments to try to liquidate and split. So I figure I'm here for the next 3 years or so of my own accord and I will make the best of it. I'm the kind of woman who can only be attached to one man at a time, so any extracurriculars are out for me.

Someone (and you know who you are) once told me that its about NOT having expectations good or bad. That's one of the most difficult things when you're in this. You're hoping that they might come around or come back. If you do X, they will see the light. If you say the right thing they will understand. If you say the wrong thing they'll freak out and leave. Having no expectations is where its at...

Just traveling the road and seeing whats around the next bend. Maybe hubby will be there 20 years from now, probably not, but maybe.