Working on acceptance and forgiveness

[AntoniaB]

I've been here reading but not posting for awhile due to being too busy but I'll get back to posting this week. I have one issue that has come up that I want to vent about and it's not even H, strangely enough. It's my family.

They mean really well. But they are putting a lot of pressure on me during the holidays and I wondered if you are all getting this pressure. Since I don't have kids, I can kind of "skip" Christmas, so to speak. I decorated my house "for the holidays" but I just sort of feel like not paying attention to Christmas.

My family is really all over me about being with them Christmas day. My H and I didn't spend that many Christmas Days with my family. Often we went on vacation and saw them a different day over the holidays. 1/4 of the time we would end up driving up the night of the 25th as a surprise. But for 23 years, I have seen them over the holidays and it has been with him next to me.

It's not that I don't want to see them all, but I do not want to see ALL OF THEM, for the "big" get together, alone. I just don't. I'd rather go a different day and just drive to my sister's, see her, stay at my parents, etc. More like it's just a normal time of year and I'm up alone for a visit, which I did do in the past without him.

I have tried very hard to explain that they are good-intentioned but they are making me feel worse. I said "look, for 23 years if I have seen all of you over the holidays, it has been with him there. If I walk into that situation, you are forcing me to feel his loss a hundred fold. If I stay home on Christmas day, I will act like it is ANY OTHER DAY. I'll get up, exercise, make breakfast, play with my cats, straighten the house, do some reading, watch a movie, maybe even do work for school in a few weeks, be productive. This is what I want/need. I just want to SKIP the holidays this one year."

And they just keep saying "we don't mean to put pressure on you" but they ARE. They are now saying "look we'll pay for your cat sitter to come an extra day so it won't cost you more to come visit" and "we'll get lots of wine so you can relax" and "you won't have to lift a finger, there'll be lots of food." It's like they aren't hearing me.

They saw me have a monumental breakdown 6 months ago and I've done a lot to heal myself, and yes, they helped. But I know that what they're asking is going to trigger a lot of sadness and depression in me. I am stressed and anxious just thinking about it. I did the Thanksgiving thing with them and that was tough (again 23 years of T-giving with him and/or him and them, and suddenly, just me with them). It is so soon to do this all again. I feel like they think that family being around me will help right now, because any day the divorce decree is coming in the mail, our 19th wedding anniversary would have been tomorrow, and the holidays are here, but the reality is that I just want to BOW OUT of these things and go into my coccoon at home where I've learned to cope alone VERY well, and they are pulling me into situations I want to ignore for this year.

[Twink]

AntoniaB,

It sounds to me as if your family wants you to join them mostly for them. They are worried about you and want to do something to help and support you, yes, but they also feel guilty about you being alone, and they want to make sure, in person, that you are alright. Can you call some of your family members individually to touch base over the holiday week just to chat? Can you make a quick call sometime during the "big" event to wish them a good time?

That said, I do worry a little that you are hiding from the holiday pain rather than facing it and working through it. Only you know whether that is true, and what you handle at this time.

[AntoniaB]

I talk on the phone to someone in the family every day, yes, already, and I can still do that this week. I wanted to set up a "new" tradition of sorts for Christmas eve so I invited my girlfriend over for a big dinner because I love to cook. She's single too. But then they shifted off the whole "come Christmas eve to come Christmas day." So I'm not avoiding holidays altogether, just portions of it. I admit, yes, I'm trying to avoid rather than work through. I am tired of working through pain. In 6 months I have faced every single thing head on and dealt with it. I am tired. I am just so tired. In all of this I've never retreated into my own world but kept very involved with everyone, and I'm tired of the effort. I have a tremendous amount of research and work to do for school in a few weeks, and I just want to be able to get lost in that stuff. It's not like I want to sit here and bawl all week. I want to be productive. But yes, that productivity is a real escape from the pain.

And I keep thinking why, why can't I just do what I feel I need to do here, if it's escape from it for ONE holiday and substitute with work, why can't I do that? They do not trust that I know what is best for me. None of the people in my family have ever been as close to their H by far as I was to mine. They do not know what I am going through. They cannot. They think that it is "all better" if I'm just around my family but it's not. I have been off anti-depressants for over 2 months now and doing fine, and the stress of these holidays is making me feel like I need to go back on them. That's why I want the holidays to just "go away" in my own mind, and my family is hellbent on not letting that happen.

I don't want to be mean. I know what they have done for me. I don't want to say "the more you push, the more I feel like I have to go back on these pills." But that is honestly what is in my head.

[AntoniaB]

Today is our 19th wedding anniversary--if we are still married. I suppose we could be divorced and the papers just didn't get to me in the mail yet, or, worse yet, the judge is decreeing it TODAY and I'll get notice of it in a few days.

Surprisingly so far I'm not feeling much of anything. Just disbelief more than anything, I guess, that one person can turn his back entirely on the one person he ever claimed to really love. But since it's happening all over the place, I guess I shouldn't feel singled out.

Bleh. Happy freakin' holidays...

[punkin]

Antonia,

Many years ago, a co worker found out that her husband was cheating on her with one of his co workers and left her, 3 days before Thanksgiving. She was devastated. Everyone around her invited her to their house for Thanksgiving, all with the best of intentions, including me. When someone said to her "You don't want to be alone on Thanksgiving", she replied " No, YOU don't want me to be alone. I don't know what I want." She was right.

Your family and friends are just doing what they think they can to help the situation, even if that isn't helping much at all. Take a deep breath and just keep saying "One more week" until it's all behind you.

The anniversery, I just had my 20th, alone, the day before surgery. Fabulous pity party I threw myself. Wish everyone could have been there, but more lucky for them that they were not. It [censored], no two ways about it. This too will pass, and we will come out of it stronger. Promise.

[AntoniaB]

Thanks for the advice, Punkin. I told them at this point that it's a game day decision for me whether to go up on the 25th or not. I'll see how I feel that day. I think now they understand since I explained it more.

Well H sent me 3 texts today. I would rather he had not contacted me at all, if you want to know the truth. Everyone who has read this in my life says they think he is really playing the victim here and I'm tired of that.

"After asking several people's opinions everyone agrees I'm in a no win situation. If I fail to acknowledge today I look heartless and if I do I may stir up bad feelings. Let's just say that I haven't forgotten and I hope you are well. I hope you are having a pleasant evening with family, friends, or kitties. Please don't feel that a reply is necessary. Take care."

I'd have preferred nothing at all, or if something, maybe just a feeble "I'm sorry." But this, well, I just think it's offensive. I don't know this person anymore. I am tired of using energy thinking about him and holding onto that marriage and that life. Today was our 19th wedding anniversary, and instead of being together, he's off with the OW and worrying more than anything about how he is going to "look" today in my eyes. There isn't any love in there. There just isn't.

You know, you have all said that you just know when you're done. Well, I know. Strangely enough, I know today, on the anniversary. I'm done. I'm done with this marriage. I'm done with him. He is toxic. I was handling today fine, and then he sent me this and it just sent me into screaming, bawling, gut-wrenching sobs. I blasted some music, I wiped off my face, I took off my rings and put them away, and I went to facebook and I calmly changed my status to divorced. I am not waiting for that piece of paper to come in the mail declaring me divorced. I have to take some control and power back in my life over my emotions and over how much of "me" I invest in him, and you know, there is no reason to invest anything of myself in him anymore. There are tons of people in my life who really need me and who love me unconditionally who would never in a million years betray me the way he did or blame me or their relationship with me if they had problems facing who they were.

I tried my hardest to DB and to get the marriage back and I could not do it. He is one of those people MWD talks about as one of the very small number who have turned their back on the marriage.

Well, there is nothing more I can do, and even little contact with him is bad for me and it's holding me back. I am not making this decision out of anger. Yes I was angry earlier tonight, but I have felt this coming for awhile now. Today just seals it.

I realize that sometimes we say we are done and then we change our minds. I don't know where I'll be in a few days or a week. Maybe I'll change my mind, maybe I won't. But I feel like I've been holding this rope for so long and it's at the point where I have to let go of it because there is too much negative energy surrounding the end of the marriage, and it has to die. i have to let it go. I have to embrace that I am divorced. That piece of paper comes any day, but emotionally, I'm already gone from that marriage and from him. And even if I'm not always "gone from him", at least now I know that I need to be because that connection is no longer serving me and it's keeping me from being happy with the things in my life that are good and right.

[irishblessings]

Sorry Antonia - I think everyone has their "moments" of clarity with this. I hope your next few days are peaceful!

[beatrice]

Antonia, I am so sorry. Your husband wants to think well of himself, and like all MLCers [and whatever he says, he isn't in a normal psychological state] thinks only of himself.

The letter is part of a typical MLC script. Why did he have to consult several people? If he needed to communicate he could have thanked you for being his wife for so many years, and said how sorry he was to have hurt you.

As to being done, I think you are hurt and angry, and would like to be done, but I suspect you are not. We do not 'get over' a long and happy marriage in a few months, or even a couple of years. It takes time. I think we are really done when we are enjoying our own lives, and their hurtful acts no longer really touch us. Then we watch the show and eat the popcorn.

We cannot think or will ourselves into detachement, only live our lives as we want to live them, and try to become the people we want to be. The emotional ties we still feel, the long habit of loving, these take a long time to fade.

Now I am grateful for the good times, and sorry it had to end as it did. I see my h for a very damaged man who refused, (and refuses) to understand his own damage, and projected it onto those he loved the most. But gradually they become their actions, and until they face up to what they have done they cannot move forward into a meaningful relationship with anyone.
Many years into this I have some insight into the messy relationship they actually have with OW. As has been said many times, a relationship that bgan in betrayal, hurt and lies is unlikely to be healty. Nice people don't mess around with those who are married.

This is probably the hardest thing you will ever do, and your positive attitude will move you forward, until you genuinely do not care about the stupid, pointless and insensitive things that these people do. I don't think we ever stop loving them, but we eventually emotionally detach pretty much entirely from the mess.

[TAMF]

Antonia - I completely understand. I think there is just a moment when we can't do it anymore. When we say it isn't worth it anymore. A person can only take so much rejection and pain and then the heart hardens and we are just not sad or angry - just done.

I want you to know that my heart goes out to you...

[punkin]

Antonia,

Tie a knot in the bottom of the rope and hang in there. It's somewhat crowded at the knot end, but we are all coping as best we can. And we are here for each other.

I suggest you let the battery die in your phone for the next 3 days or so, or just turn it off.

Enjoy your Christmas with the people that matter to you, and who you matter to. ((HUGS))