I won't respond to every post left over from yesterday but I will say this in response to all;
You are all right, and everyone has a bad day. Yesterday was mine. Actually I have had a bad few weeks. I can't say I am totally better today but I think I am. I can't say I am going to be better from now on, but I am going to start making choices to help that process.
I am so appreciative of all your help. I am so appreciative of the time you take to care and all that crap about death penalty rooms, etc, was just that, crap. I don't care what your sitch is, the fact that you take the time to care about someone you don't know and try to help them proves that you still have some kind of hope and probably more than your average amount of optimism. So accept my sincere apologies for the negative garbage I seemed to be slinging yesterday in the general direction of some of you. I suck for that
Ok, now to what yesterday finally made me realize. It took a bit of a beating to make me remember the absolutely crucial missing part of my puzzle. Thank you for that.
What I learned years ago, 3000+ posts made and countless posts read on this board, not to mention tons of reading and tons of living is that to LIVE life you actually have to make choices. I learned to make choices back then, and to own those choices. Back then, I learned that IF I was going to suffer through my W's bad behavior, her affair, whatever, it was going to have to be a CHOICE I made. It was a choice I had to re-make sometimes daily but that was better than just pretending I had no choices. Just crying every day and saying "woe is me, my life sucks and all this horrible sh-t is happening to me, etc" was not going to get it done. I had to learn that yes, it IS possible to DB in the face of this kind of sitch but only if I chose to do it. Just reacting to everything, allowing life to happen TO me instead of actually participating in the direction my life took was my most major problem.
What has happened to me over the past few years is that I stopped making choices for myself. I started just coasting through life again, comfortable in my little inner tube, just letting the river take me wherever. Of course, eventually rivers can take you places where you're either totally lost or to a waterfall/white water where you are in extreme danger.
The difference between lazily sipping a beer while floating down a river in an inner tube, oblivious to the white water ahead... and choosing to board a white water raft to adventure down the rapids is considerable. One you chose to be in danger and prepare yourself to be as safe as possible and the other you are just another drunk idiot talked about on the news after you drown in the rapids.
I have been that guy in the inner tube until yesterday. I realized through the feedback I was getting, and reading my own writing, that no matter what I was saying, or how I was feeling, ALL of it came across as a victim trying to weigh his options.
Damnit, I learned NOT to be a victim and I hated reading all that. You all were and maybe are still right I will now fight to change that.
In the end, boundaries, affair, changes in my behavior, etc, all that is ancillary to the real issue. I stopped making choices. I stopped owning my own course in life and that has not only hurt me, but my marriage as well. You can't put up or enforce boundaries if you can't even make simple choices for yourself.
So I can't promise that I will make choices you all will agree with. Hell, based on my past here, I am 100% sure I will make choices that you will not agree with but what I can say with absolute certainty is that they will be choices I made, not just things I allowed to happen to me. That crap stops today. If I am suffering, it's going to be because I chose to do it. I don't like suffering too much so it's likely I won't be choosing that route.
My W is gone today on her trip. We talked about it some more. She tried very hard to convince me that everything is legit with this trip, that it's not at all what I think and that she will do whatever she can to prove that (calling, etc) but in the end, she still went over my objections. My behavior already changed last night. I decided that I cannot be the doting, loving husband I have been over the years. I need to pull back and let her have the space to figure this out. I need the space to stop being such a reactionary bit-h. I have been so focused on trying to change her that I stopped living for me.
I am choosing to do exactly as I said I would yesterday and I am 100% fine with that. She doesn't like it but I don't really care. I need to do what I need to do to protect myself. I may choose to do that within the confines of my marriage or maybe not. You all were dead on that I was not prepared to make the hard choices and frankly, I may not be ready today but at least I won't be whining about it.
So today I am determined to have a GREAT boys night out and if she calls us, great, if not, no sweat off the b-lls I just rediscovered I have.
A heartfelt thank you to you all. I may not agree with everyone, and may not like the direction you are coming from but you are ALL a valuable part of what I experience here.
Lastly, this is not an abrupt 180. I hope it's not temporary. It's me making a return to the me I was at the end of a year and a half of soul searching, a me I should have never stopped being.
