Still trying to find my way

[newmama]

OK if you like to be told what to do, let us boss you around and whip you into shape! lol!

You say you don't like to go out with friends, etc. Have you done anything alone?

My SIL was with her H since highschool. When they were married for 10 years, he divorced her. She had no idea how to be alone or how to function without him.

So the first thing she did was nothing. She is the tiniest thing, about 4'11 and I am guessing 100 pounds? But she lost weight and it was sickening to see her and scary. She couldn't eat. She couldn't sleep. She couldn't pay her bills (she had money but didn't pay them). Her work told her to take a 3 week absence because she couldn't function. She didn't answer the phone when we tried to call her.

I HAD NO CLUE what to do to help her! Except to invite her to dinner, say "you'll feel better with time. You'll be happy again. You can meet someone new."
(I have apologized to her so many times for saying that to her! No one wants to hear that fresh after a divorce/being left (he left her and filed for divorce the same day).

WELLLL she is a religious person so she comforted herself with the bible and kept going to church. She went to counseling 2x per week! She took antidepresants. She made herself go out to dinner alone or go see a movie alone when her H had the boys.
(she just tried to get out of the house)

After 3 months she started to emerge, befriended the other parents at her sons' baseball/soccer/football games (they play all of them) and met a couple of other single moms whose husband's left them for other women. WOW we are everywhere!

She read tons of relationship books, she picked up sewing again, and by Thanksgiving (he left her in February) she decided to do new traditions with her sons for the holidays. She redecorated the house and claimed it for her own.

The next spring she met a great guy and they took it slow. Then they started to date exclusively and seriously contemplated marriage (YIKES...) but wouldn't you know...her H started acting really nice. He had bought a house to live with his OW but she cheated on him so they broke up and he sold the house and rented an apartment. He wanted to spend more time with the boys and hang around, helping my SIL. He knew she was dating someone.

Well, 20 months after he left her, he told her he wanted to come back. He made a mistake. Of course she didn't take him back right away! She insisted he go to counseling. But they did go on a few dates. She told her boyfriend and he was patient (I don't know exactly what she told him?). Then she broke up with her boyfriend and tried dating just her H. They fought. He bailed. She went back to her boyfriend. A few months later her H was back.

She insisted he go to IC and said she didn't want to stop seeing her boyfriend and she didn't want to get back together with her H. He just kept pursuing her...and she realized she still loved her H, wanted to give her boys their family back, and it wasn't fair to her boyfriend to harbor feelings for H and think about getting back together with him. SOOO 2 years and a few months after he divorced, her H moved back in, living in a separate bedroom. They went to counseling and then remarried last fall.