Detachment issues

[AntoniaB]

So is what he's doing now still MLC script? Or is this not a hallmark of MLC? I guess where I am confused is that I've seen him break down in front of me spontaneously several times and he's even admitting to me that he cried as he wrote this, and I haven't seen that side of him since before he left the first time. He's always been so cool and collected since he got with the OW. This breaking down and the accompanying owning up to what he did and the frequent apologies are all new. In the beginning, it was all MY fault and I got all the blame. Now he's sounding like he is taking on all of it. He told me that he expects to be very saddened by the divorce and expects to "cry all day" over "his failure" and doesn't see the divorce being final as changing anything in terms of his feelings about regret, and he doesn't "celebrate" it at all in terms of seeing it as him being "free" to be in his relationship with her.

What I find unusual is that it is only since I have said I don't want to know where you live after you move and I want us to cease contact permanently (and this time when I say it, it's pretty obvious that I mean it) that this "side" of him came out. I am shocked that he would say that he thinks the thought of not seeing me ever again hurts him potentially as bad as the way I hurt over him being with someone else. Really?

Is what I'm seeing here from him that now HE feels rejected or abandoned by me? And do you think he never expected that this would be the way it would end up?

After I replied to him last night to say that I still had a powerful love for him and that because of that, I needed him to be out of my life for good because it was too painful to have him in it, he wrote back AGAIN and he said this:

"You're right and I know it's for the best. I think I always thought that we could somehow continue to have a friendship but now I realize that would be selfish and cruel of me. I can't continue to cause you pain like that and I wont ask that of you. Your observations are dead on and now that I see your point of view I respect your request. I've always felt compassion for you over for what I did. I just couldn't show it because I had to help you to let go. I just wanted to let you know before I didn't have the chance to do so. I hope these revelations haven't hurt you in anyway. They were my attempt to give you some comfort and I hope that they have.
My life is better for having known you and I will never speak badly of you. I'm not sure how to end this. I hope everything that comes your way from now on brings you happiness.

With love"

I guess what I don't understand is that I feel like this man still has an enormous connection to me that now that I've threatened it and said I don't want you in my life at all, he's scared and rejected. But if he REALLY LOVES THIS OW, as he says he does, saying she is better for him than me, that she is what he needs, that she is the right decision for him for the rest of his life, then HOW can he also still have this connection to me? How can those two things coexist? Am I supposed to believe him when he says all he feels for me is friendship? Why is he signing his emails love and with love now? Is he patronizing me? I just don't know what to think anymore other than that he has issues.

But maybe he doesn't have issues. Maybe we just are star-crossed lovers (of the past) meant to fail.

The reason I say that is that he is right about one thing. Being abandoned by him destroyed me to such a degree that the old me "died." I had a lot of emotional problems and anxiety and fear and I was NOT HAPPY with myself. I was filled with self-doubt and self-hate and I was getting worse. I was neurotic as hell and I was on a very destructive path. It is only because of his affair that I had to start over and I am VERY happy with who I am now. I'm not kidding. I am a totally different person on the inside and I don't need a man to find happiness. I am incredibly self-reliant and I have so much in my life now that is wonderful that never would have been there if he hadn't betrayed me.

What I'm saying is that his affair destroyed me but it also forced me to be reborn, and this horrible event was the most horrible thing AND the best thing to ever happen to me.

I think it's better for me that he has run. None of what is good in my life would have been here if he hadn't done what he did.

But despite that, I don't know whether to harbor hope. There is a corner of my heart that still says to me that I "hope" he finds himself and when he does, finds that the OW is not his soulmate, that I am. Not the me from before. But me now. And I don't want him back as the guy he was before. I want him back if he "gets" what happened. If he grows up. If he gains his confidence and independence and sees this is all part of a larger picture.

But it also seems to me that living with that bit of hope is hanging onto something that has a chance in a million of coming to fruition.

And I guess that brings me to the biggest revelation of all in this whole week of catharsis for me. I think I have to believe in something bigger than me taking this over. I have struggled with faith my whole life, and I'm agnostic, but I am exhausted from the effort of holding this all together myself and I feel like I have to just try to cultivate trust that God or whatever power is going to make things right for me someday. I don't know what else to do anymore.