And I really got sick of reading here about how hard it is for single moms and "tee-hee, she'll fall on her face and come crawling back"...what does that infer for a LBW? Like moi?
I agree on this one! Why would I want to be married to a woman who was only there because it is "hard" no to be? There's a basis for a relationship!
I think that almost anytime we say something should be avaoided "at all costs" we may be setting ourselves up for paying too high a cost. At some point there is a cost that may be too high. Each individual has to find that point for themselves.
Last edited by Virtually_Handsome; 10/14/0905:45 PM.
Rob- I think your logic is sound and inspiring. Unfortunately, the premise and motivation behind DB is rooted in how bad divorce is and how it must be avoided at all costs. It is extremely difficult to reverse that conditioning and know whole-heartedly that there's a better life after divorce. Especially for women; MWD's recent article highlighted how much women suffer after divorce. Men on here are constantly spouting "let her see what it is like and she'll come running back." For the men, the challenges are similar depending on the angle one takes. But, it is tough to make the shift from valuing marriage as a critical entity to enthusiastically kissing it goodbye.
Somewhere in everyone that comes here is the "knowledge" that financially, emotionally, statistically, and for the benefit of the kids, staying married is better. Moving out of that paradigm has been a monumental challenge.
And I really got sick of reading here about how hard it is for single moms and "tee-hee, she'll fall on her face and come crawling back"...what does that infer for a LBW? Like moi?
Anyway, I'm not negating your post. I agree with it but it is a struggle to shift philosophically. We all know that delayed gratification is good and necessary sometimes. There are some situations that take years. I think most of your assertions apply no matter what.
That is the DB premise, you are correct AAK, take a stand for your marriage and fight for your marriage, be the rock that the marriage is built on, etc. Alot of the db principles are sound, I have nothing against that. My issue is with obstinate WAS's that do unthinkable things to hurt their former partners - at one point you have to rationalize in your head that this person did love you at one time but now choose to hurt you. Your choice is to hang in there, take the punishment, turn the other cheek, lovingly detach and hope that the "fog" lifts at one point and they realize how great a partner you are and that the marriage is worth it. However human nature being what it is, how many times are you going to be hurt by the other person before you resent them, how many times do you receive disrespectful treatment from your WAS before you reach your point of no return? As for divorce being harder on women, I'm not sure I agree with that, I would agree that divorce is hard on the LBS, man or woman. I know that men still get a raw deal during legal proceedings and joint custody issues and if they really want fair treatment in the eyes of the law when going through divorce & joint custody issues, they really have to fight for it and prove to everyone that they want to be treated fairly, if they don't fight for equal fair treatment, they get the "weekend dad" label, paying a ton of child & marital support because they took what was given to them. I almost fell into that trap but I wised up and know now that if I want what I want, I have to go out and get it.
Marriage is a financial agreement more than a romantic one.
As for LBW's or LBH's, I prefer LBS's, left behind spouses. Each gender has their own set of unique challenges when dealing with a WAS.
My post was intended for both sexes. Don't live in limbo forever, man or woman, don't allow anyone to actively disrespect you and push past all of your boundaries: man or woman. Know when to stand up for yourself, no when to say enough is enough and no when to walk away from someone who was supposed to be committed to you but chose to hurt, cheat & disrespect you. There is alot of power in that personal choice, it certainly generates alot of respect. Is the LRT for everyone, not sure, but people usually only change in these types of a situation when they're faced with a crisis - without that impetus, what else would make them move to action? We tend to value things that we don't have, as in "you don't know what you have until it's gone", we all want what we don't have, most of us don't appreciate what we do have, we all want to love & be loved, we reject people who try to control us and each & everyone of us have sold ourselves out of our existing marriages/relationships only to change our minds the next day and buy ourselves back in at prices that we wish we didn't have to pay.
It is a struggle to shift philosophically, and i'm not advocating everyone leave their spouses (especially not on a DB site), I am advocating leaving a spouse that is grossly disrespectful of you, your well-being and your life and the time you have in this life.
It's never an easy decision but it's a decision that has to be made - an uncomfortable decision laced with fear & doubt (what will happen when I actually decide to do this?) and we're all comfortable in our current "uncomfortable" places because change can be scary and lingering in doubt for several months to several years robs you of time you could be spending on other worthwhile pursuits.
Always remember life is precious, your own life is the most precious above all others, it's the only life you get to live, you don't get to live anyone else's life, that's why your life is the most important. When you do this, you set an example for your children to follow so that they can do the same thing in their own lives: they will only learn by your actions not by what you tell them.
What I'm doing in my own situation is detaching, not sure if it's lovingly but I'm detaching. We are still separated but we see each other regularly, date every so often, someone on this site called it "married single", it's what it feels like. I have my children most of the time now, 80% or more, I'm actually starting to push back on my wife and getting her to have the kids more of the time. Seriously I could have my kids 100% of the time, no worries but I have to think that children benefit from exposure to both parents, not just one or the other. She tends to slack in that area because she doesn't have to work as hard because she doesn't have them as much (her excuse, her work schedule is very hard for her to have the kids - she works part time). The truth is after I packed her things and moved her out of the home in January, she has been living with her parents and they don't get along very well and when she has them, her parents do the bulk of the "parenting" and take care of the kids more than she does and that is a source for many arguments they have: they are your kids, you have to spend time with them, make them their meals, do their laundry, etc. etc, and my wife doesn't like hearing that from her parents, she believes they should help her no matter what and just support her during this time.
We are currently in limbo, first it was by my wife's design, now it's by my own, I have gotten used to living on my own, in my own house and I feel happier when the children are around and when she is around, she is a reminder of all the bad things and it causes me issues that I'm trying to work through. When she starts acting up: rude disrespectful behavior of any sort, my knee jerk reaction is just to tell her to leave and lately it's a regular thing and then she complains about it afterwards and she has a valid issue, how can she feel comfortable at home around us if everytime she screws up, my reaction is to kick her out, I see it now, I don't give her many chances, I have boundaries and while they're extremely important to have, I have to believe being a little flexible is what is necessary. Before I had no boundaries and she walked all over me, now my boundaries are in place and they're inpregnable, so I'm looking for my harmony or balance to somewhere in the middle where I can enforce my boundaries while remaining flexible.
There are other issues, I think about all the time we've spent in this problem and I have thoughts in my head on a regular basis, telling me to rip the band-aid off really quickly, it will hurt at first but I will get over it and move on. The other side of me tells me to db and to remember what I was fighting for and to continue pressing forward because the prize is just around the corner.
Can a person change? Yes I'm 100% sure of it, I'm living proof.
When a person changes though, what happens to the marriage they were once a part of? At one point in my life, I attributed very little value to myself and I was lucky to be married to someone like her, my self-esteem was extremely low, I had a poor attitude about everything in my life and I just existed. Now I attribute alot of value to myself, I AM HIGH-VALUE, I know it & feel it. I am happy, funny, and really enjoy my life, no more existing day to day, I'm thriving, I need to do stuff, I can't just sit at home anymore, have a busy job that keeps me very occupied and when I'm not working I know I need to do something to offset all this hard work. I am big into my children, we talk everyday, do homework everyday, share meals everyday where we talk, really talk about stuff, I bring them to school everyday, I'm active in that as well, coached the little league teams, weekends are about them and we're always doing something. Heck when my wife has the kids, she usually comes over (she asks if it's ok first) because if she has them and i'm not there, they're usually doing nothing except watching tv which is BOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIING! When I don't have the kids, I'm out on the town, have a lot of friends and seriously I can't keep up with the requests to do this & that, my life is super busy and I need it to tone down a bit but I realize that I'm operating at 200% whereas before I was living life at 10% if that.
So now that I'm this different person, how does that marriage fit in with me, detaching so much so that now marriage isn't as great an idea as it once was. Or maybe it's just this marriage that isn't so great, I realize what i'm worth now and if I can't get that same value out of my marriage, do I really want to be part of it and the fear is if I do, does it bring me back down to that previous level so that I can repeat this mess all over again?
We are currently in limbo, first it was by my wife's design, now it's by my own
We're not in limbo in SPLand, but separation and movement towards divorce were first my wife's idea and are now mine.
I'm not being disrespected, at least not in the sense of "taking it." That power shift took place long ago. She continues to probe and prod -- she's like the Viet Cong -- but has no power to mount a full-scale offensive.
I did all the bad stuff -- groveling and begging and "I'll-change-for-youing"-- and then stopped. I started divorce-busting and, at some point, that morphed into solo living. And that's where I am now.
I'm just fascinated, in a laboratory, intellectual kind of way, with how readily WAW can sustain her WAWly ways. I'd think that it would get tiring. But no, it seems to be some kind of perpetual WAW motion machine.
But I don't take her nonsense, I don't up the ante (anymore). I do MNR -- Minimum Necessary Response -- therapy on her. She doesn't like it -- that's obvious from some of her emails -- which means my reactions are not what she wants. She's clearly hoping for more words, so that she can pick at them and attack them. "Ohh, so NOW you say X....." Instead she gets bullet points without even pronouns.
Hey -- she's living her SiS dream, and I think that's swell. She used to say, "No one will ever love me like you did." I hope she's wrong -- I hope someone loves her better than I did.
Could that be me? Maybe. Maybe not.
Meanwhile, Miss Someone and I are getting closer as people, enjoying each other's company, learning more about each other. Is it an EA/PA scenario? I suppose so, if you want to be technical about it. WAW told me to go find someone. I did. So what's the beef?
So who knows what will happen? For me the Main, the Most Important, the Biggest, the Greatest Thing is that I'm no longer worried about it.
It's not the end of the world; it's just divorce. Nothing left but casual conversations. ----------
And casual conversations, how they bore me. Yeah they go on and on endlessly. No matter what I say, you'll ignore me anyway; I might as talk in my sleep, (I could weep).
You try to make me feel so small, until there's nothing left at all. Why go on, just hoping that we'll get along?
There's no communication left between us, but is it me or you who's to blame? There's nothing I can do, yes you're fading out of view. Don't know if I feel joy or pain, (it's such a shame).
And now it seems it's all been said; If you must leave then go ahead. Should feel sad, but I really believe that I'm glad.
I am advocating leaving a spouse that is grossly disrespectful of you, your well-being and your life and the time you have in this life.
This is very tricky. My H thinks that is what he did but in reality, he wasn't holding up his end and "felt" unappreciated, disrespected etc. But the fact that he felt that doesn't make it true or represent his contribution to what was happening. It is easy to stomp your feet and scream "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" But, what is your part?
Once the person leaves, this gets even trickier cuz there is no safety especially when OP are involved. I mean why should I be looking at my part while he's off boinking someone else? But there are changes I need to make and they are not limited to setting boundaries. I think this may apply to you too Rob. There are changes that would have benefited your M or any R that are softer and more revealing and scary changes. How do we make those changes and maintain boundaries? It is tough.
SP- there is no way you get the quantity of information you get without engaging with her. Any chance you want the info? I know that in my case, sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me and I want to know.
SP- there is no way you get the quantity of information you get without engaging with her.
That's true, but also trivial.
A typical (though artificial) email exchange: Mrs. SP: So long as SHE is involved I won't go to counseling.
SP: Okay.
Mrs. SP: Fine! And it doesn't make any difference to ME, anyway! Signore il Secondo and I didn't sleep 10 minutes the whole time I was in European City! And skills? You WISH you had those skills!
SP: That's great! I'm happy for you. You needed it.
Mrs. SP: F*ck you! Leave me alone!
So do I engage? Yes, at a fairly minimal level. Do I ask for information? No need -- it's shoveled at me from the back of a truck.
Does it bother me? Naaah.
Mind over matter; I don't mind, because it doesn't matter.
Well, it sounds from that exchange that she's bs'ing a bit about her Signore situation and was asking you to give up OW to got to counseling and then tried to save face.
I'm sure I'm wrong. But, did you catch that in the slightest?
