UPSIDE DOWN - still struggling, trying to detach

[Eskimo Nell]

Bless you, Sanderika.

You are really giving me some food for thought today and I appeciate you being here and supporting me. You know, in all of this, the advice that has brought the most response from H has come from you and so I intend to keep listening. You told me to wave him off as he left our penultimate meeting, rather than arguing with him, as would be normal. This is the best memory that I have of him in four whole months! I can still see his face in the shadows as he drove away, smiling and waving. Everything since then has blurred out due to more and more pain.

I keep thinking over what he has said in the past. I don't know if it's truth or the MLC speaking. He says that we should never have gotten married - that he realised very early on that he was still in love with his old gf (they were NEVER an item, I have since learned from his friend)! He says that over the years he has enjoyed our life together and he has totally loved me but the past few years have been wrong and he was telling me so but I was just not listening. (You know, all the usual rewriting of history, leaving all the good parts out and concentrating on the negative stuff).

I never heard this. Each time I would bring up the fact that we had difficulties, he would become upset and say that he knew that we were living like brother and sister, didn't know why he did not feel the need for a physical relationship with me other than on the most infrequent of occasions, and how we have got this far is a mystery to him. He says that he has not felt loved and in turn, has been unable to give his love. I have been feeling rejected by him for years and all the while I learn that he was feeling the same. Reading 5 LL has really hammered that home to me. H was speaking Russian and I was speaking French.

Now, he says that he has had enough. He wants to love, be loved, have a life and be happy - all the things that he thinks he can't have with me. He says that we have gone down ever widening parallel paths and there is no turning back - not ever. He seems to be having his needs fulfilled by ow and his only sadness is that the tramp lives interstate and he can't be there or vice versa due to 'barriers' whatever that means ... that's the only sadness I ever see coming from him - NOTHING to do with us or our situation. He has left me in his head and in his heart.

I was reading through some old texts that he sent last night and I can see that his misery is quickly resolved as soon as something with ow happens. (Wish I could get me a pair of those rosey coloured spectacles). It is working for him to be living this new life and he doesn't give a jot about me. He doesn't see this as an A but as a whole new life for himself ... he's not playing and I believe that this is for real. It's why I feel so desperate and that I am not going to win him back, whatever I do.

How do I break in to that?? I can be as friendly as I like but that just makes him feel better and less guilty as he sees that I am coping. If I cope, he has nothing to worry about. In the meanwhile, I am the thorn in his side as I am living in our home and remain here as a constant reminder to him. He hasn't pushed on D or selling the house in a while. All he is doing now is trying to tighten the financial screw on me so that I am the one to crack and admit that the house has to be sold. Again, he would walk away with no blame attached to him for the mess that he will be leaving me in.

H has to always have a clean face - no egg is ever allowed to come near. It's not allowable for him to be seen as the villain - it would kill him. So much so, when he dropped the bomb and I retreated to the UK, some of his final words to me were "it's OK by me if you want to save face and tell everyone that you are binning me". My reply - "oh no, I won't be telling them that. You have to own this shame - this is your doing". He visibly winced.