Working on acceptance and forgiveness

[AntoniaB]

Heard from H today. He sent me a thank you note postmarked Dec. 24th."Thank you for the Christmas present. I will put it to good use. I hope your pump is fixed and all is "well" with the house and kitties. I'm sorry if I upset you but a gift as nice as this deserves a thank you! Take care, D."

I gave him an art set of all kinds of paints. He had been getting into drawing and painting and said that was his way of finding himself, so I thought that this would be a supportive gift but not sentimental or anything. I wasn't going to give him anything but he sent me a check for Christmas for me and the cats so I thought I should give him something.

I look at this card and feel so weird, seeing his handwriting and my name and his name and knowing that I have tons of cards and letters here where he isn't using this formal tone with me, where he's writing about how much he loves me, and now, it's just like there is nothing there.

And this makes me dig deep, and bring me to something else that nags at me, and it's that he is RIGHT and that this woman/this relationship, no matter how sordid it all began, is right for him, and that I'm not. Again, no evidence of pain or sorrow or confusion in him at all, unlike so many in MLC. So maybe he is NOT in MLC. Maybe he is just a guy who couldn't see a path to us fixing what was broken and he gave up before I did, and that's that.

He and I were extremely co-dependent. His comment about us was that it would take a tremendous amount of work to fix that. But he and she were already NOT co-dependent. She had her own set of friends apart from him and a lot of interests apart from him.

After all these months of work on my end, I'm in the exact place I'd need to be to fix that old marriage. I've now got my own set of friends, interests, and independence from him that I would never give up were I with him again. But he won't give me a chance/us a chance because in his mind, it's too late.

Why am I so stuck on him choosing me? Notice I don't say "maybe he's no longer right for me." I am starting to think that the Catholic upbringing has really affected me even though I'm no longer Catholic. I wanted to "mate for life" and I'm having a terrible time trying to get rid of that belief in my head. I bet you on some level I'm afraid I won't be in another relationship because I don't think I'm "supposed" to be in a relationship with anyone but him...