I want my Monkey and Sheep Back

[orangedog]

If you want to go dark then go dark. You can do it. Keep moving forward.

[25yearsmlc]

"(Husband),

After much thought and prayer, I've decided that I cannot sign your letter. I simply can't pretend that our marriage is something that it clearly isn't, and I certainly won't lie on paper to cover up what you're doing here.

I hope you can find another way.

If you need to pick up any of your stuff, please let me know what would be a good time for you, and I'll arrange to have someone here to let you in and see you out. It needs to be by the end of the month, or I'll assume you don't want it, and will give it to charity.

I do wish you well.

Regards,

(Wife)"

This is the letter to send. Do NOT apologize for not being willing to commit perjury for anyone, let alone someone who left you. And stop defending yourself. The point you wanted to make (and brevity will do it better than the long defensive posture of your first letter) was two fold, you won't lie AND you are a different woman now. The more you talk about the past and defend yourself, the more you sound like your old self. Enough about that. You would surely do some things differently if given the chance. But you are not being given that chance...so move along and if he wants back in your life, it won't happen with a long letter/scorecard which is what it was.

And in the future, if your partner has to choose between you and all his friends/family b/c somehow you all cannot get along together....don't marry the guy. And take a long hard look at the R....(but that's for later. For now, be done with the email and send it off. Otherwise the wretching and giving him SO MUCH POWER over your life, is literally sickening. Seriously).

Please keep it short and simple and polite.
j-

[SDFoundGirl]

Hi everyone, thanks for your advice but i had to do this.I emailed him back and told him i don't want to do this anymore

Sure you do that's why you responded. I make a prediction that you sign that immigration form for him by the deadline.
Rinse, lather, repeat.

Ditto. If you really didn't want to hear from him, if you were really done, you'd just delete his emails.

Are you going to take our advice at all? Most of us have been doing this for a long time and have been where you are or worse.

I found a love letter my H wrote to another woman, and as much as I WANTED to go down and rip him a new you-know-what, wake him up and just toss him out, I DIDN'T. He made me out to be sh!t, and she was just perfect. The man was living in my house, I found this, and I CONTROLLED MY *DESIRE* TO SAY SOMETHING.

I posted here. I took a walk at 1:00 in the morning. I wrote furiously in my journal. But in the morning, when he saw me, I said not one word, and he had no clue.

Was it hard? Yes. Because I WANTED to beat the snot out of him because it hurt. But I wanted my M more, the EA wasn't a deal breaker, and it was more constructive to bide my time until he'd recommitted and we'd dealt with the big issues he had with me...which, in the end, he found out was a bunch of assumptions on his part about me.

Your H is not doing this to you, YOU are doing this to you. Get control of yourself and your emotions and your REACTING and start being smart about this. *No matter if you're done or not.* You are not making your situation better, EVEN IF you end up divorced. You have a unique opportunity to grow and learn some things from your situation, but if you continue to REACT every time he lobs a bomb at you, you will learn nothing and will most likely repeat the same mistakes in your next R.

I'm sorry for the 2x4, but it is kindly meant.

SD

[beepee]

Ok, I know I'm doing so many wrong things and I'm not listening. I'm sorry. I am finding it really hard not to defend myself when horrible accusations are being made. But i know i need to stop and the only thing that matters is how i feel about myself and knowing that there is no truth to those accusations.

I'm sorry, I'm learning. This is really, really tough for me. I know its tough for everyone. I know. But I don't know if I'm strong enough to do what everyone else is doing. I love my H and I want to be with him and work everything out, but at this point in time, I don't want to anymore. I'm just so tired of it all and I don't have the strength or the will to continue getting beaten down anymore. Theres a lof of things I need to think about, to re-evaluate. There are lots of problems that I need to look at and determine whether or not I want to continue to work on this and to get my marriage back.

In the meantime, if he emails back, I'll post it up here and if you guys would still be willing to tell me what the best way to proceed is, I will take your advice, because I clearly am not doing anything right or listening to everyones advice.

[25yearsmlc]

My other post about the email is moot now....

SO, just do what SD said. Please don't reply to his latest guilt/victimhood attempt. Let your silence be the last word b/c the more you do this "verbal fencing" the more you look like a woman who is not healing and moving forward in her life.

Can't believe this guy is 37 y/o...."just a signature"...you mean, perjury? But don't engage in this anymore. It's manipulative on both sides and it's a scorecard and you both are doing the victim thing...enough!

Let silence be your last word and move on as if he's in the Austrailian bush and is unreachable for 3 years. If he grows up and wants to reconnect, he can man up to it and find you. Otherwise, it's time to do the real 180' and NOT give him all this power....good grief. In the meantime you will have healed & become a woman in charge of her life/happiness. RIGHT?
j-

PS I used to walk by a homeless man who lived on a grate every day on my way to work. He hated me for some reason & it bothered me that he did. I'd ask myself what I was projecting or doing to set him off. One day my boss was with me and the guy kept screaming at me and the boss said, "is that your old boyfriend"? Which made me laugh hard as heck but then I thought, "Wow, I've given so much energy to wondering why a guy who lives on a street grate doesn't like me when he knows nothing about who I really am...so...WHO CARES??" Same goes for your h and his ilk.

[Virtually_Handsome]

(((((beep)))))

It's up to YOU to break the cycle. He pokes, you poke back, he pokes, etc., and on and on.

Let him poke... and don't respond. Not at all. He'll probably poke again, and maybe again. Eventually, his small brain is going to register that he isn't getting the expected reaction. Then he will do something different. Don't know what it will be, but you will have changed the dynamic.

You can do it. But you have to want to. You have to go against you instinct. You have to accept that he can think whatever he wants, and there isn't a thing you can do about it. And then stop trying.

[mishka422]

Exactly what Jeff said!!!

[Virtually_Handsome]

One more thing, with a bit of a sting behind it.

Don't say you can't stop responding when you mean you won't stop responding.

[beepee]

Thanks everyone, I get what you all are saying.
Its not like I want to keep this going, I really, really don't but I am finding it hard to let him say things about me that simply aren't true. Because it hurts coming from him, anyone else, fine, but him, its not fine. Because I love him and I feel the need to prevent him from thinking a certain way about me. But he's going to think them either way. I just need to shut up and forget everything he says. He is really, really, really, good at making me feel guilty. And I know I need to stop that. I need to control my own feelings whenever he tries to give me a guilt trip.

He said he was going to email me later on today and address everything because he's toooo tired now and he doesn't want to come across as negative and he says he tried very hard to choose his words carefully so as not to provoke me or be taken up the wrong way. He always says he'll address everything later because he is "too tired." And he never does. Just like when we were together. "We'll talk about it later, I'm too tired" and we usually don't. I'm going to find it very difficult to not answer him whenever he emails but I know I have to ignore it. If he says anything accusatory or mean or whatever, I just have to tell myself that I know its not true and thats all that matters. Boy, this is insanely tough.

But the good thing is I kept myself busy today. Didn't really have time to think about it. Right now, I'm relaxing after a hectic morning, listening to some music to keep my mood up. I just got back from a walk in this beautiful weather. I can't wait to go for walks in the city with different scenery! Its going to be great.

[Virtually_Handsome]

Because I love him and I feel the need to prevent him from thinking a certain way about me.

You can't control what he thinks. You can only control your reactions.