I don't know if it's just me, or if my perspective has shifted, or what it is...but it seems like sometimes we just spend too much time talking about our spouses when what we should be doing is getting ourselves back in order...focusing on what we've lost and what brought us to a given point in our lives that seems like nothing but crisis after crisis...
For me, in my situation, I went from being the first to talk about divorce, to being the one who wanted to fight for our marriage - to being the one that lifted himself off the floor in an empty home, struck hard by the heaviness of all that I was losing - to finally arriving at this strange point where I knew what it meant to let go...and what it meant to feel happy...
Here are the most important lessons I've learned over the last year of my life:
1. Fear tells me that I am avoiding something in my life - something deep and pressing that I must address. It is a force that obfuscates the real situations - and sets up little paper dolls that act out drama and invite my attention - but never help me get anywhere until I look past the dolls and see that I had long been the lonely puppeteer.
2. Liars always seem to tell you they're going to lie...often with promises and condemnation of others..in my case, it was my STBX telling me, with disgust in her voice, about all the people having affairs while she was working out of town...and, of course, she ended up having an affair while working out of town.
3. Letting go is not an action in and of itself, nor is detachment - it is a process - and it takes as long as it will take - and it can be extremely painful - but letting go is one of the only ways I can see that allow a person to love another in a healthy way - since it begins with a comfort in loving oneself in a healthy way.
4. One of the only ways to gain clarity when in a space of pain, turmoil or fear, is to accept it and feel the emotions that come with it. There were many times over the last year I felt a burden on my chest - a terrible pain that felt like it could grow into a parasite and devour me from the inside out...until I would find a safe space - both physically and in my and heart - and in my soul - and allow myself to feel that pain, that sorrow, that wrenching pain. It doesn't happen as often any more - but when the emotions arrive, I know now to allow myself to feel them...since as they subside, there is always a lingering moment of clarity. Sometimes that clarity lasts a day, sometimes two...but I know that as I feel and purge, that clarity will become more and more of my present...and that allows plenty of room for hope.
5. The lapses of our partners do not make them evil - their lapses make them as much a collection of their past as we are of ours...my wife had an affair...and I forgave her....she then started to have another EA...and I would have forgiven her again...and I've even forgiven her the need she had to spread lies about me to her family - and I still love her - though with that love is an awareness that I cannot be with this person. I want the best for her - wish she could find it for herself - but so long as she does not believe she needs to change anything in her life, I don't think she will ever learn to be happy. That's sad to me...but she must travel her journey, just as I am now traveling (and enjoying) mine.
6. Loving an abusive partner - which was very difficult for me to admit - can mean that we're trying to sort out why we were abused by trying to understand a new abuser. It's a fruitless endeavor...since the abuser's behavior never has anything to do with the abused...so looking for answers there, and getting addicted to the (familiar) pain got me nowhere until I let her go and rediscovered just how calm my life is...how happy I am...how entangled I had allowed myself to become with a reality that was not mine...which leads me to...
7. It is quite possible to love someone completely - but to do so in a completely unhealthy way. As my T put it, I loved so much that when my partner tried to return the love I was no longer there...I had given up too much of myself in order to feel/be loved. And now, to me, that is the epitome of unhealthy love.
8. Actions do speak louder than words.
9. In the phrase, I love you, the copula "love" does more than link a subject to a predicate - it links two lives, however imperfect, however filled with joy or sorrow - but if there's too much of an imbalance, and that solitude of an "I" gets subsumed too much by the lure of the plentiful "you" then the balance falters - and the phrase falls apart. The "I" becomes blurry, the "you" can be replaced....and even the term "love" can be morphed into any number of confusing and unfamiliar phrases...all of them losing the power of that simple word, love.
10. Anger from another person, like fear in myself, is an indicator of something deeper at play. When I witness anger now, when I feel it expressed toward me, I try to step aside and let it rush past me, and try to see, instead, that intense anger rarely has anything to do with the present object of that anger. In other words...I don't take anyone's anger personally anymore...which comes in handy when dealing with a customer service rep who's just had a rough day or week...
That's really good stuff. Looking back changes our perspective for sure. Can you check on SmileysPerson? I think you could offer him something and his is in your part of the country. Cheers Coach
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
