"Home Improvements"

[nightshade]

Hi Shiny,
I started reading this thread and found it quite interesting, usually your threads do come up with a lot of insight
Anyways I was reading the part about "behaving ourselves for success" and had to add my own success - if partial story.

Rui's first affair was certainly "stronger" than the second one and things were touch and go for quite some time.

I know that in a way the fact that he never leave home helped me to work from the "inside" so to speak:) and facilitated many things, but for a while I was so shocked, depressed and sorry for myself! Most of my thoughts were negative and although I wanted for my marriage to survive, I couldn't think of how.
Well talk about the way we feel affecting the outcome! It certainly was going nowhere or if it was going somewhere it was completely backwards...

Until I had the "brilliant" idea of waking up.. smell the coffee.... get rid of all the negativism, take better care of myself.. and start tackling the situation from a completely different perspective. Out with "I'll try but don't know if it will work" "i don't know how we can fix this" and in with a completely new attitude: Act as if I was completely sure, with no doubts whatsoever that we would be able to fix the whole thing! I cold loose some batlles here and there but I knew I was going to win the war.
Well, there is no quick "fix it" for anything, but I did start getting such good results after a while I was not acting like it.. I was almost bellieving it :)
True that there was a lot of work to be done, but I was then geared for success, and not sabotaging my own efforts. I was aware that there are no guarantees and that it was possible that even with all the changes it wouldn't work. But with all the changes I became stronger as well and ready to deal with whatever came my way.
And it did work.... I know that only 5 years after all that there was another affair. But there is no link between the two of them.AT least not in the sense of happening because we didn't work it the first time.
The second affair happened simply because Rui does have a problem recognizing boundaries and being able to refuse what's so gently offered. It is an issue that he has to work on.. but it has nothing to do with me or the way we solved the first one.( It took me a while to get here though, I kept looking back to what I was doing hoping to find reasons for what happened, ways of fixing this or that, ways to change myself! I finally understand that it is a problem that he has to solve, fix, understand. I can help, but I can't fix it for him )

anyway great thread,
hugs
nightshade