Questions

[goingtofixME]

I want everyone to realize that just because I come back to post often in this thread doesn't mean that I am not listening to your advice. I am doing a lot of self introspection and in doing so am working on me. Which is all about DB, right?

I just had the most enlightening discussion with my 14 year old daughter. She is wise beyond her years and her just listening helps me ramble through the crap that is jumbled in my brain and allows me an outlet. Going to write this down so that I can remember it at times when I am struggling.

I have come to a point where I understand how my H feels. I was in a relationship with my oldest daughter's father and I left him because I felt totally invalidated. He wasn't interested in going to counseling or working on the things I perceived as being wrong in our relationship. The day I left he did something that was so not like him. He went outside and blew bubbles with the kids. This only caused me to be furious because I felt it was too little too late and I was right. He fell back into his same behavior and never changed, but then I realize now that I didn't either.

The weekend before my husband left we were talking and I finally figured out that maybe this whole time that he was trying to change and failing that I needed to change as well. I told him that I wanted to change. This shook him to the very core and you could see him struggling in his mind over this. He even went so far as to tell me that I had thrown something out there that he never contemplated. That maybe it was me that needed to change. The next day however, I was right back to my nagging. Telling him how he should feel and how I was right and what he felt was wrong. Not exactly changing my behavior was I? This cemented in his mind that he had to go. Me pleading, begging, and crying further cemented this. It was all about how he was making me feel. How he was hurting the kids. Guilt, guilt, and more guilt. This pushed him even further out the door. The times I have put my feelings aside and validated his. The times that I have looked outside of myself to see his hurt have all been the times that he has opened himself up a bit and left me confused. His very words have been, "I know I don't want to be with you right now." are a testament to this. I continued to prove to him that I haven't changed. I haven't listened to him tell me he needed space and to be away from me. I've tried to push my agenda on him and prove that I love him. All in the wrong ways. Typical me! I'm still having a difficult time believing that me detaching and not pursuing is what I need to do to make this relationship have any sort of possibility, but it is what I need to do to change and give him what he needs. The old adage about letting something go and if it's meant to be is true, but with a caveat. You have to let it go because it's the right thing to do for them and in order to love them you have to be able to be altruistic. It's going to hurt like hell and will bring you to your knees, but this selfless love is necessary if you ever want to be the person you are supposed to be and make the changes necessary in yourself.

I have to be honest and say I am so scared that I am going to change and it won't matter to him and my relationship with him will be over, but the truth of the matter is I need to change regardless of what it does in this relationship. I need to change to be that better me that will attract the right relationships in my life whatever they may be.

I am sad that it took the love of my life leaving me for me to finally understand so much about myself and my roles in all of my relationships in the past, but it is a necessary hurt and I thank him for having the strength to walk away. What he did was not easy even though I have told him over and over that he took the easy way out. Putting up with hurt for a very long time and not feeling that you have the right to hurt and finally being able to take a stand and realize that you deserve better is not easy. It has totally given me a new respect for my husband. I wish him nothing but happiness. He deserves it and I hope he finds it whatever it may be.