UPSIDE DOWN - still struggling, trying to detach

[Eskimo Nell]

Hi Sanderika
So good to have you back - I must go check your latest thread now that I know that you are around again. How are you doing? It's great to see you here and THANK YOU for your wonderful post - you have totally grasped my situation and I am so grateful for you watching over me.

Getting up this morning, I really needed something to push me down one path or another and I think that you being back has done that - you have renewed my faith - it was almost gone, as you will have detected. I think that, reading your response, I can do something toward regaining my position as a DB'er - even though it will be from a distance. I have to take up the n/c stance now - I know it in my heart and head this time and I am resolved to making him come to me in the future.

I am also encouraged that you say it's still early days for me at 4 months. I feel like it's been forever and, with H carrying on his A and seemingly getting much more serious about his separation from me, I am hitting the skids.

I am pleased that you have diagnosed this as MLC too - I was wondering if he was 'mad or bad' and concluded that this is his choice and so came down on the side of bad. Your explanation of him not having done stuff as a young man, that he now wants to act out, is spot on. I was his first 'real' relationship and I think that he feels that he has to make up for some lost time. I guess that's what MLC is all about, right?

I have tried to work on my issues by seeing the C (and by the way, I agree about the letter - I'm not going to do it). I'm not sure that it's getting me anywhere - I shall review it after the next session and see how it goes - for me initially, it was two hours out of the house and a chance to see if it would work. I really like my C but it feels more like I'm going for a challenging chat with a friend now, than for sorting out my issues. I have to give her an opportunity this week though as she has constantly changed our plotted course as I bring other worries to her at each session.

You are right about the independence thing. I certainly was before I met him and he saw all of that side of me. Owning my own home and sailing my own ship. We have done so many home projects together over the years and had so many challenges ahead of us and I am wondering if it now feels like he is a so-called "empty-nester" - we don't have the kids that have flown but our projects have since we now have a neat and orderly life with nothing to strive for ... it's all done.

I'm glad that you have been able to become friends with your H and I am sure that we can too, however - and this is a big however - I don't feel like I want to be friends with H when he is still having A. How can I do that to myself? Why would I want to be friends with someone who is chopping up my heart? How do you overcome those feelings to become friends? I just want to rip his head off sometimes and shout into his soul "WTF do you think you are doing to me after all that we have been to one another?" I guess that I am just hurting too much still.

As in the spirit of good DB'ing, nothing has seemed to work so far, so I shall try your approach and see if that brings any success. NC resumes from Saturday onward - when he contacts me, which he will soon due to the tribunal notification which I sent to him, I will answer and REALLY try to keep my cool. I did find it much easier to deal with ow when I pretended that it did not exist but when it is flaunted in my face, as was Saturday, I see the red mist descend like a thick fog and it sets my anger off again. I have done heaps to work on my anger management but to no avail.

I think that there's a lot to be said for people being in the right place and time before they can accept what is happening. You say that you are not an advocate of how long you spent but I really don't think that you can lead a horse to water unless he is ready to drink. I know that, for me, I have to go through these gates before I can reach the other side of the field - until I have processed a lot of this stuff, I am not ready to take action. It's why everyone who doesn't understand this stuff tells you, "get over yourself - it's 4 months now - you should be with someone else". Yeah, right.

I have also considered how easy it must be for H to be doing this. He WANTS this to be happening, he is happy with his own company, he enjoys flying interstate, he has a job in which he is comfortable and earns good money. He has a sister who lives over East and parents who support him with whatever he wants to do. No wonder he is in the lap of luxury - and then there's a loving wife who he knows would have him back in a heart beat.

For me - I have no established friends here, no secure job, no family - even back in the UK, only a sister who's contact is minimal to say the least. I have nothing going on in my life - no safety or security blanket and I wonder why that is. Probably because I have made H my entire life - believing in him and needing no-one else. That was a big mistake.

However, I don't feel that I deserve to be left with nothing the way that I have been. Perhaps this is all part of my evolving ... I wonder at why some of have these struggles in life - the misery and heartache. Others have it all and never a day of worry or hardship. What's the deal there? I thought that I was done with misery, when I married my H. I believed in him and our new life together - even starting again in a new country, striving for something even better than we had ... and then within two minutes of the bomb, my whole world was blown apart. Now I have to put those pieces back together and I don't even know where to start.

I only ever needed H - he was my best friend and now he's gone too. No wonder I feel so alone ... but what I have just worked out as I am emptying my thoughts on to this post, is that H is pushing the right button - and time after time I am letting him. The answer is there ... it's my epiphany and now I must disable the button.

As he does when he comes to visit (all except once) he constantly makes an argument before he leaves. In our phone call on Saturday, he said the exact thing that he knew would make me flip - and it did. Why haven't I worked that out before now? Perhaps I had just not been through that gate. In future, when he says something that he thinks will spark an argument, Nell will purely say something disarming. Am I a slow learner, or just a quick reactor?! Well, look out my friend, next week is a whole new way to go.

Sorry folks, I have really hosted my pity party here today but it does feel that a weight has been lifted! Thanks Sanderika - you may just have sparked a vital change in me.

(((hugs)))