NNP, WCW! It has been a while hasn't it? It's hard for me to keep up with boards like this now because everytime I'm at any computer I have deadlines calling to me. I think I also just needed a break from the boards. In order to walk away from XH I needed steely resolve. He did his usual cold declarations that it was all over and for the first time went so far as to tell me there was always something missing (of course, I knew that...he was missing). In no uncertain terms he let me know this time was it. So I turned around and walked away because my own life was somewhere else. And he has done things since to recant, telling me he was wrong to say he didn't love me, that he missed me, etc. But I had already picked up and moved and I knew if I told him I'd come rushing back, he'd recant again. It's the way of our relationship, and it continues to be even though we have very little communication.
I only admit on these boards and to a couple of my closest friends that my feelings for him have not changed. I love him, I'm attached to him, I'm in love with him. There are wonderful, upstanding things about him. Then, he becomes another person. I'm sure the years of alcohol and running away from himself have a lot to do with that. But I don't want to be seen as one of THOSE women. And I don't want to turn into my mother who never moved on from her last marriage and may be alone for the rest of her life, still crying herself to sleep a time or two a week.
And yet, I still haven't moved on and am not sure how to do it. And I know a part of me really doesn't want to. For example:
My XH is now in training at a unit where we were stationed together. The only part of our marriage where we lived together full-time in fact. And where our son was born. He sent me a text before he went telling me to call him on his cell if I needed anything and that things at our old stomping grounds hadn't changed much. I don't know why he felt the need to send that text. But I didn't reply. Last night he sent another text saying the bartender on base remembers me. I don't know why he would send that text either. I haven't responded.
I kind of want to ask him about his training, because I was a part of the course years ago and want to know if they're doing things the same way. I know that it would probably start a texting conversation. I don't know if I want that.
If I was actively DBing I would text him back (the going dark thing never worked with him). But that keeps me hooked.
On the other hand, can I be a big enough person to start a friendship with him and yet harbor no expectations? I don't know. My gut tells me it's too soon. Any friendship I start up with him is going to just lift my hopes of a reunion no matter how I try to justify it to myself.
Should I just tell him I'm not ready to be friends because I'm still in love with him and it wouldn't help me move on with my life? And ask him to please not send me messages reminiscing about our past together?
Part of me thinks that would be smart. Because I know he would comply. Part of me just doesn't want him to stop sending me messages.
Obviously he is thinking about me, and I like that. But it does put me back on the roller coaster. An alcoholic shouldn't keep booze in the cupboard. Maybe I shouldn't allow XH to keep sending these messages.
**on a positive side note, an hour after XH sent that text and I was awake in bed, crying a little, I got another set of photos on my phone from a bunch of guys I got to know on a business trip last summer (a very respectable group of guys) who are stuck on a boat for a month at a time. I told myself to stop feeling sorry for myself because at that very moment a whole bunch of men were thinking about me, even if they were all in other states. This little bruised ego could use as much of that as it can get:)
