How should I proceed now? Is there hope?

[NotCrackingUp]

Thanks Pinhead

I should forget about things he said, not believe them all, but I just can't. They rattle around in my brain and pop up unbidden at any time. While I'm at work, dealing with teens who are - in the vast majority, for the difficult ones - the direct, suffering results of divorce and separation and serial parenthood, I manage to keep it at bay. But when I'm at home here and the kids are asleep, these thoughts come flooding back. I was at a parents' meeting tonight at my younger children's primary school. It's a small village, I know the other parents. I looked about at the other Mums and Dads. The wives are not glamourous or perfect, just ordinary, yet they're mostly loved and cared for by their husbands. I can't help wondering why the hell I was different. I deferred to him and put him first in many ways, was loyal and loving and I'm neither stupid nor particularly ugly. I always went to those meetings, not he. All those things hurt. There was coffee after, but I came away, couldn't face the concerned (but smug) looks and inevitable questions: "How's M? We haven't seen him around lately" sort of thing.

I know I'm not the person he said I was. I mean that I'm not the person he chose to see me as, conveniently. At some point, he chose to stop seeing me as a wife and partner, someone to turn to and also to support -morally, not financially - and be loyal to. He stopped seeing me as someone to share his dreams with, as a friend. It wasn't just a feeling that came unstoppably over him, it was a CHOICE he made; he chose to see only my faults and failings, to see them as outweighing any good points. I now still choose not to give up on him, but he has taken away my life as a woman, ignored my needs and desires and those of his children.

I read and read here about detachment; those who write most clearly about it seem to be men. Could it be that men detach themselves more easily? My H seems to have had no problem detaching himself from his family, from the woman who chose to stay and make a home in a foreign country for him, who gave him three children, always went out to work and paid her fair share, gave him loyalty. It's so unjust. I suppose that's life. He was always the champion of the underdog, hated injustice, was very concerned about the OW when she was divorcing her ex because he was "a controlling so-and-so who always put her down and denigrated her". So why so unjust with me?

I'm beginning to think that if I'd been a selfish, nagging waggon who demanded attention and kept him on his toes, he'd still be here.

I need some -masculine?-help with detachment. I don't want to stop loving him or destroy any chance of reconciliation, but I realize I'm not doing this the right way. It hurts too much. I don't call or text, hardly, try to be busy and unavailable, don't ask questions or give any information about myself. But inside, I'm waiting for him to come back. I dopn't have the right mindset at all. Or maybe this is just a natural phase of weekend discouragement and blues?

Help on detachment, please. For an old-fashioned sort of wife who wants to stand by her man but also wants to survive and not get too depressed.
NCU