UPSIDE DOWN - still struggling, trying to detach

[TooLateForMe]

...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).
...

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.

...

... 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.

My W is in her own MLC, but I went through my own and it's probably not even completely over. But when reality smacked me in the face I came to my senses. I realized I couldn't recapture my youth and I'm learning to appreciate my age. It caused a lot of damage that my family and I are going to suffer through for a long time.

I don't know if my W or your H will get to that point. At least not without doing more permanent damage. And maybe never fully. I waver at times but the real way through this for me is to remember how my W dealt w/ me. She suffered but was strong and supportive. She got a life, took care of our kids and herself. I have to keep remembering that.

Take it from someone who was willing to give it all up, that MLC illusion makes people stupid. History is rewritten, love is thrown under the bus. But I know now that real, deep and vital love is so much more worth it than trying to turn yourself into the teenager/20-something again.

Besides not being able to go back, those times really were harder than we want to believe. I was lonely back then, wishing I would find that person who could "get me." I did and screwed it up.

Take some comfort in that and try not to fall into the regression trap yourself. It's seductive, but very false.