I am always amazed at how the WAW's think that no one else will want their LBH's. It seems to come as a shock to these brilliant women.
Why is that?
It is because of the WAS' negative self-talk. She spends so much time telling herself (and her friends) the things she hates about her husband, and she becomes convinced that that's all there is. It's all she hears.
But, of course, new women don't see all those faults. They see the attractive side of the LBS, which WAS has forgotten about. So, LBS finds a new woman, and starts being happier, and looking more attractive, and WAS suddenly sees what she was overlooking before. AHA! He is funny, or enjoys fine restaurants, or is an interesting conversationalist, etc. But now she is odd man out. And, if there is no OM wooing her, then she starts to reconsider what she has thrown away. And if that's what she really wanted to do.
Not saying it always brings them back. But many times it does. In my case, it made me aware of something I had not noticed before. That is, the spiritual part of both of us that had intertwined over the 30 years we were together. It's a subtle thing. Hard to notice until you try to rip the fabric of the marriage apart. But it was there, like two tails that had grown from each of us and become intertwined. And that didn't rip. That connection was strong enough to get both of us to a Retrouvaille weekend to see what could be done. And from there, it all fell into place.
@Gypsy: I sometimes find it hard to follow your posts because the referents in them are unclear to me, and I start to wonder whether they're clear to you.
For example,
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Her weekend getaway is nothing mysterious or foreshadowing. It's a charity event planned before the bomb though the physical separation may cast it in a different light.
Yeah, not sure really what that has to do with anything.
With respect to "sauce" for game birds, four days after the Bomb WAW was en-route to Upstate City for a weekend in a boutique hotel and at the slammin'est of slammin' Upstate City restaurants with Signore Schmuckatelli, he of the limitless pockets and limitless free time. So this notion of @polly's that WAW will "resent" other-focused sexuality strikes me as being a miss and not a hit.
@Sara (I believe) then posted, asking why, if Signore is out of the picture, is WAW going to Upstate City next week (I having pointed out that, symbolically, she is leaving the area one way while I and the kids leave it another way). My reply was, Oh, that's got nothing to do with Schmuckatelli -- that's a charity event. So that's completely independent of the sauce discussion.
With respect to sauce, you wrote:
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you can boink to your heart's content.. but understand why. You're lusty and a tasty morsel is dangling without salacious reach of your tongue.
Do I infer correctly that the sentence starting "You're lusty..." is the "why" to the preceding clause, "but understand why"?
Because if so -- yes, I never didn't understand that. Of course that's the reason why. Charter member of the Lucky Bastard Club, I'm getting mercy tumbles -- and booyah! to that.
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How's the old psyche? How true to yourself are you being in counseling? Do you still go?
The old psyche's okay. About where it should be.
I'm starting to miss things in a healthy way. It struck me the other day, for example, how easy it is to take for granted those trivial, about-nothing conversations you have with your spouse. "Hey, what's that?" That kind of thing. Solitude in "the" house is so quiet it's loud -- know what I mean? But that kind of missing doesn't send me off into paroxysms of sobs and snot and head-beating. Just that comfortable kind of achiness you have when you remember things you used to like.
I still see the head-shrinker, though I've been getting bored lately, so we're shifting our focus to this idea of life-coachery for me. He asks, I answer, he keeps saying, "God, you sound healthy." Then he takes a bunch of notes, and we talk about Things Wrong With The World. I think he's getting bored, too.
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what comes across to me is that your wife's physical departure, letting you assume she was renting a house has blow the lid off.
Here, too, we have the kind of miscommunication / misinterpretation that is endemic in these fora.
She never let me assume she was renting a house. In thread 4 or so I talk quite a bit about this. The rental idea crapped out very quickly when it transpired that, given our credit ratings, a mortgage was cheaper than rent. No, my point there was that this separation does not have the markers of "temporary" -- she's committed to a mortgage, not a 6-month lease. See the difference?
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Sex is a good thing...Consider the total picture.
Oh, I am! Make no mistake about that -- Florence Nightingale #1 sent me a "total" picture, just to whet the old appetite. Booyah!
@aliveandkicking wrote in response to @Sara and @Kimmie Lee:
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Obviously when you live with someone and are in a difficult relationship, you see your S through a different lens.
I think that's exactly right. Male and female alike, I suspect it's often the case that Total Desirability and Length of Marriage are inversely related.
Herself has said on a couple occasions, "I know you'll find someone else, you're great," most recently in The Note. And she's mentioned my obvious "opportunities" and "prospects" recently. And a couple woman friends she's told have had the initial, shocked, "you let THAT go?" response. But as she likes to say, I'm a nice guy, just not her guy. So it's not a matter of leaving something valuable in the trash -- it's not wanting that valuable anymore. A couple years ago, WAW basically called "halt" on gold jewelry and switched to silver and platinum. Nothing wrong with gold, had a bunch of it -- just didn't suit her any more. Boring. Last decade.
That's Smiley's Person in a nutshell, I guess -- good as gold.
@alive then wrote:
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Do you see what I'm saying? Basically, finding someone to boost your ego and make you "feel good" about yourself means nil about the circumstances or culpability in the M. IMO.
Ummm, no -- I actually don't see what you're saying.
It's true that "someone to boost your ego" means nothing about what you did in the marriage. But I'm not clear why that matters. Can't you both acknowledge what you did in the M and get your ego boosted? Or are those mutually exclusive variables -- they cancel each other out? Or is your claim that a person in a D situation is "unauthorized" to feel good about him- or herself until such time as all debts (emotional, psychic) are paid?
@Orich wonders if
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in some cases, it might help the WAS to separate completely. In other words, the WAS might be holding on just because they are afraid of hurting the LBS. Once they see that the LBS is doing ok, the WAS can leave without any guilt.
This one has me puzzled. For one, nothing I've seen
(... sorry, got distracted there -- Procol Harum, "Conquistador" -- always have to stop for that one ...)
For one, nothing I've seen in any of these threads, or read in the MWD books or any other books suggests that guilt-at-hurt is decisive for the WAS. After all, by definition the WAS has decided that her/his pain in the marriage is greater than any pain that might be caused by leaving the marriage, so the cost-benefit ratio always favors WAS.
For another, potential guilt-at-hurt is assuaged by the strategic deployment of the litany of bullsh*t phrases that are the heart of WASspeak: "I love you, but...," "it's not you, it's me," "kids are resilient," "heck, half of all marriages," "you'll be better off without me," "I know I'm losing a good thing, but...," "I'm trapped," "I can't breathe," blah blah blah-dee-frickin'-blah.
Moreover, if the guilt-at-hurt were substantial enough, the WAS would ultimately prove only to be an AWAS -- and that's seldom the case.
Now in a specific case or two, as you suggest, seeing the LBS survive might reinforce the decision, but I'm not convinced it would be decisive in the decision. And why not? Because (a) the WAS is all-about-WAS and (b) there has to be an implicit assumption that LBS will "get along somehow" in order to permit WAS to move along.
If your WAW hasn't pulled the trigger, I hardly think it's because you're not out doing the Wild Thang. It's probably got a lot more to do with your DB'ing and her own thought processes.
@BobbiJo wrote:
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Love how she keeps reaching out to you (vaguely) with these e-mails!
Good! You keep loving it for both of us for a while longer, if you will. At present, I wax and wane between curiosity and irritation!
I think both parties can sort of turn on their best qualities for new people. It is a sort of sad irony that if they could just turn them on with each other, R might be possible.
I think both parties can sort of turn on their best qualities for new people. It is a sort of sad irony that if they could just turn them on with each other, R might be possible.
They can 'turn them on with each other'! It's possible, with work, to get rid of the bad...and increase the good!
"Always go straight forward, and if you meet the devil, cut him in two and go between the pieces." - William Sturgis, clipper ship captain, 1830's.
They can 'turn them on with each other'! It's possible, with work, to get rid of the bad...and increase the good!
Absolutely true. But that's the DB puzzle in a nutshell, isn't it? How do you convince someone who, by definition, doesn't want to "work" to "work" against the probability that the work won't, er, work -- at least from their POV?
Has anyone taken into account that maybe, just maybe it's all about growing into different people with different wants and different needs. We all grow and in doing so we change. What if these WAS are really the people they are meant to be in the grand scheme of things. They have pretended to be who we (LBS) wanted them to be and they wake up one day resentful of this fact because it isn't who they want to be. We (LBS) are stuck in the status quo of familiarity and are fearful of admitting that we can change as well. How many of us are jealous of the WAS taking care of themselves? Admittedly they do it in overdrive becoming too selfish, while we work through our issues and some of us become healthier and better people because of it. I am not a person who believes in God, but I do believe that all things that happen to us prepare us to be the people we are ultimately meant to be. Those who get stuck and do not learn and/or continue to blame others instead of accepting responsibility for themselves end up repeating the lessons until learned. It has taken me 36 years on this planet, 4 serious relationships, 3 engagements, a soon to be had divorce to learn who it is I am supposed to be.
"It is excruciating pain. It is the pain of separation, the pain of loss, the pain of dreams and expectations unrealized. It is the loss and death of a mirage."
You are very insightful. Ultimately it is a matter of perspective. It used to be that I was the voice of reason, the rock, the one who balanced H out. Now that he is moving on, I was holding him back and he was faking it...no matter.
If my step-dad who has been with my mom for over 30 years, left her for another woman, he would say he couldn't be himself with her, she held him back etc. But, if they grow old together (which they are and I suspect will continue to), he will regard her as his strength, his better half, his partner who was different and wonderful.
We twist and turn these things in the ways that suit us and make it more comprehensible. There is no verifiable truth. Today this separation is the worst calamity, in ten years I'll probably say it was the best thing that could have happened (although, hopefully I'll be wise enough to know that it just was what it was)...
(although, hopefully I'll be wise enough to know that it just was what it was)...
Possibly the wisest thing ever written on this board! You've grown so much, but knowing this is much different than believing it and accepting it as so. It is so!
"It is excruciating pain. It is the pain of separation, the pain of loss, the pain of dreams and expectations unrealized. It is the loss and death of a mirage."
Re: @goingtofixme: Well, yeah, there ya go. A point I've been mulling over, flirting with, tossing around hither and yon for a couple weeks now. What if WAW "really is" WAW? Is that someone I want?
It gets to a bigger question I have vis-a-vis the concept of "reconciliation."
reconciliation, n. 1. the action of reconciling; the state of being reconciled.
: reconciling, v. 1) a: to restore to friendship or harmony (reconciled the factions); b: settle, resolve (reconcile differences);
2: to make consistent or congruous (reconcile an ideal with reality);
3: to cause to submit to or accept something unpleasant (was reconciled to hardship)
I'm not sure what we think "reconciliation" really is -- I still opt for the (for me) much more positive construction of a "new" marriage that just happens to have the same 2 people in it.
Had to LOL at your last sentence -- reminded me of one of my favorite scenes in my primary scriptural resource, Joe Versus the Volcano.
Ossie Davis plays Marshall, the limo driver who opens the doors to Joe's (Tom Hanks) eventual spiritual liberation: "They just hire me to drive the car, sir. I'm not here to tell you who you are... You're hinting around about clothes. That happens to be a very important topic to me, sir, clothes... Clothes make the man. I believe that.
"You say to me you want to go shopping, you want to buy clothes, but you don't know what kind. You leave that hanging in the air, like I'm going to fill in the blanks. Now that to me is like asking me who you are, and I don't know who you are. I don't want to know. It's taken me all my life to find out who I am, and I am tired now, you hear what I'm saying?"
Make no mistake about that -- Florence Nightingale #1 sent me a "total" picture, just to whet the old appetite.