Can you see the Morning After

[Zoo]

Another thread...I knew it !!

Pam you got some excellent edvice on the last page of the last thread. READ IT through several times! Commit it to memory, print it out...LL has bluntly told you what I've tried to for a week now Opt has told you what Shiny, Sage, me and so many others have been repeatedly saying.

You are making it way too hard by looking for hidden meanings and ulterior motives in everything that David tells you. Stop letting the nastiness of the past dictate the way that you and David interact with each other. I realize that it is probably impossible for any of us to let go of the past completely but (and correct me if I'm wrong ladies and gents) ALL of us who have been successful at DB'ing have made a concerted effort to push the past away to a little, obscure corner. When we did this we were able to begin working toward our goal one day at a time and begin reaping our rewards

I'm not trying to beat you up (well...maybe just a little ) but it seems to me that you AREN't using the tools that everyone here has given you. You ask for them and you use them for a little while but then it's like they get too heavy for you so you just toss them down and walk away from them When we ask WHY you stopped doing what was working you (and I'll probably catch He!! for this) give US an excuse (pms, tired,down,David didn't respond the way I wanted, etc). We all commiserate with you for those types of feelings...we all experience them at various times but they ARE excuses. Excuses can often be interpreted as a sign of laziness and/or fear.

I'm hoping that in your case it is fear...because if it is laziness then you are going to end up being your own downfall in this sitch. Db'ing (and I KNOW YOU KNOW THIS!) is WORK . Hard, painful,gut- wrenching, self-loathing, hateful, insane,mind-blowing WORK. Db'ing makes you examine yourself and learn things that you would prefer not to know about yourself. It makes you see yourself bareA$$ naked in front of a MAGNIFIED 3d-mirror...and too often points out all of the flaws that you have been denying YOU brought into the sitch as well. I think it is these flaws that are feeding your fear.

Those flaws aren't immutable in stone though. There is no law, written, physical or otherwise, that says those flaws are permanent and cannot be undone. The ONLY thing that can tell you that is YOU . Nothing that David can say or do for you, nothing that we can tell you, no amount of wand-waving in the world can make your fear disappear. It is self-induced and thus can only be self-ridden. In other words...you got to face your own fears and beat them with your own 2x4.

I have the feeling that you think/feel that if David comes back to you, embraces you with open arms and says I'm sorry, you were right, all of this was MY fault and I'll never do it again that everything will be fixed and life will go on it's merry way. Your right, it will...for all of about a few days, weeks or months. Then one day David will be in a bad mood or say something that you take the wrong way and that FEAR will come flooding back Tsunami force and take you careening back through every cheeseless tunnel and cause you to "do more of the same" and you won't just backslide a little bit...you will be all the way back to square one or worse.

What you perceive as the ONLY solution is actually only a quick fix. Until you address YOU and your fear, change and make the changes permanent, you will be running through the "cheeseless" maze you are currently in ad infinitum.

Again...if I am being too brutal I apologize. I think you are a fantastic woman who deserves only great things out of life and it bugs the he!! out of me when the main thing denying you those great things seems to me to be YOU yourself

You know what to do Pam You've started time and again with good results Don't let the difficulty of the work beat you at this. Don't let your FEAR beat you at this!!

I know you are thinking...that is all well and good but what about David's part in all this? What about the pain he caused me, the EA, the resentment, the sense of betrayal etc. Well, when you made the conscious decision to begin db'ing the A$$umption is that you want your S back badly enough to acknowledge those feeling but set them aside. Nothing says you can't feel them but you can't let them dictate your life nor deny you the happiness that you would prefer to have with your S. Again...this is something that only YOU can address and fix within you.

Simplified: You want a R/M with David...one that is better then the one you had before. This current broad goal is unobtainable for you at this point because you have yet to reach the smaller but more important goal of changing you. DB'ing 101: "interreactions in relationships are circular...your partner does something, you react,your partner reponds, you react...when things are spiraling out of control, there is something you can do other than try to convince your partner to change. You can interrupt the cycle by changing your actions."

I want your M to work for you Pam...we all believe that David wants this too. I KNOW you are waiting for David to say this himself but that isn't going to happen until you show him you have changed and the change is good and here to stay.

If I have offended ANYONE by this post that was not my intention. I care about Pam and want only the happiness she deserves to shower down on her in buckets

Zoo